"The Coolest Car Guy Story Ever"…….for me.
Page 2
Page 2
"I Guess You Were Just Saving It for Us"
It was about 11:00 am on a beautiful sunny day when the brothers Jim and Jerry met us in their driveway. Jim had bought the car from my brother Jerry in 1962. I think it’s ironic that these brothers had the same names as my brother and me, Jim and Jerry. The car was covered with a silvery grey car cover, where it sat between their garage and a fence behind their typical east side St. Paul 1950’s style neighborhood home. The excitement built as we started taking the cover off. Justin had our video camera going, because this was an important moment. We peeled the car cover from front to back, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Wow!
The color - what remained of it - was definitely yellow, and the horizontal grille bars had been removed. It was definitely Jerry’s car; I recognized it immediately. Jim shuffled through some keys to get the door to open. We opened the driver’s door and the green Delray interior was in surprisingly good shape. It had Stewart Warner gauges, Hurst four speed, and I recognized some little feet on the dash (that’s a whole nutha story). I got in and I was in awe. I was in "car guy heaven." What a find, what a moment! I couldn’t wait to surprise my brother. Jim asked me whether I told Jerry about it and I told him I wanted it to be a surprise for later.
It was about 11:00 am on a beautiful sunny day when the brothers Jim and Jerry met us in their driveway. Jim had bought the car from my brother Jerry in 1962. I think it’s ironic that these brothers had the same names as my brother and me, Jim and Jerry. The car was covered with a silvery grey car cover, where it sat between their garage and a fence behind their typical east side St. Paul 1950’s style neighborhood home. The excitement built as we started taking the cover off. Justin had our video camera going, because this was an important moment. We peeled the car cover from front to back, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Wow!
The color - what remained of it - was definitely yellow, and the horizontal grille bars had been removed. It was definitely Jerry’s car; I recognized it immediately. Jim shuffled through some keys to get the door to open. We opened the driver’s door and the green Delray interior was in surprisingly good shape. It had Stewart Warner gauges, Hurst four speed, and I recognized some little feet on the dash (that’s a whole nutha story). I got in and I was in awe. I was in "car guy heaven." What a find, what a moment! I couldn’t wait to surprise my brother. Jim asked me whether I told Jerry about it and I told him I wanted it to be a surprise for later.
My dad, Jed Gaboury, owned and operated Gaboury’s Body Shop and Service Station on Minnehaha and Hazelwood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Jerry, my brother Dick, and I all worked with Jed in some capacity in those early 1960’s. I about died as I spotted in the driver’s door jamb a Gaboury’s Body Shop and Pure Oil Station oil change sticker dated June 4, 1962. I got goose bumps a mile high about that – still do!
Next, we opened the hood. It took a little bit of effort to get the latch to loosen. Who knows how long it had been since it was opened? I was amazed that nothing had been touched or altered on the car, as far as I could see, since Jerry owned it. I asked Jim why he had not done something with it, but he just shrugged his shoulders and didn’t really reply. I said, "I guess you were just saving it for us." "You and God," was what I was thinking to myself.
I have a picture of Jerry’s first RAT 55 parked next to our dad’s body shop and Pure Oil gas station that Jerry gave me from his photo album. I scanned it on to my computer years ago, as it is the only picture that exists of Jed’s shop. I don’t think Jerry ever took any photos of the 55s engine compartment which was so impressive to his little brother.
How impressed was I? I remember seeing his name painted on the gold firewall in red, it said JERRY. Even after all these years I remembered the stripper’s name was John Babler. I remember that there had been beer and pizza involved in the payment for John’s services; well pizza anyway, for sure. Jerry and I have had many discussions on what it said on the firewall. Jerry has been called a lot of things over the years, nickname-wise that is. His real name is Gerald; at home he was called Jerry; some of the Dualateers called him Stomper or Stomp, but most called him "Jed," since he was our father’s first-born. All that, is to explain that Jerry and I had always disagreed about what was written on the firewall of his 55. He thought it said "Jed," but I said "Jerry." So we popped the hood …and right there in red - behind the big block Rat 348 with the 3 Deuces with all the pin striping and the gold background - it said "JERRY."
It felt like the old days working on the "First Rat 55" at home in the garage. Justin and I decided to work on it out of sight and away from the commotion of our new state-of-the-art shop. We only worked on it early in the morning before work and after hours, wanting to keep it top secret.
The first thing we did was to get the pressure washer out and remove forty-five years of grunge, spider webs, and other debris from the bottom of the car. We jacked it up in the driveway to do the initial cleaning. We also emptied the trunk and vacuumed the interior along with cleaning the windows of the old car cover material. The glass was in exceptional shape and we were very careful not to harm the decals. The initial plan was to clean it up and display it somehow in our show room at Jimmy’s CRC. Then we would later unveil it with Jerry and any Dualateers that were in the area who were invited to our first annual "Cruze to Jimmy’s" car show and grand opening in Belle Plaine.
We put it up on jack stands in our garage and removed the tires. It had two of the original front wide whites, so we cleaned them up and "quickie" blacked out the very rusty rims. I had some other larger wide white tires in our collection, so Justin painted a couple of rims for the back. Under the car, it still had "Smitty" mufflers that looked like they were found under the sea, and it still had cutouts/lakes plugs that were capped. The bottom of the car was in decent shape for being outside for over thirty years. We’ve restored worse!
I pulled the valve covers that at one time were chrome, but now had this forty-six year patina that actually looked kind of cool. They matched the former chrome air cleaners on top of the three carbs. We pulled the plugs and loaded the valve train and the cylinders with Marvel Mystery oil. After a few patient days of turning the engine a little each day with a breaker bar, when I decided to go for it, I heard a snap. I didn’t know if something broke, or if it freed up. I couldn’t believe it! It freed up, and as I turned it over, compression forced the oil out of the spark plug holes. We had compression!
I then pulled the distributor and carbs and hooked up a battery. No ignition key came with the set we received with the car, but Justin found an ignition key in the glove box. (I expected to hear the Twilight Zone theme song at this point.) The engine turned over with the key and that forty-six-year-old starter! Amazing! The lights also turned on.
When I looked at the odometer, it read 13,345 miles. On our oil change sticker (Gaboury’s Pure Oil), the mileage read 5700 miles, so we figured that Jerry put on 5700 miles since the motor was built, and Jim had put on the remainder, about 7600 miles. This Rat has only 13,345 miles on it, 13,345 miles and forty-six years.
I had a 348 engine at the shop that donated its carbs and linkage to the project. The car was now up on jack stands and we pulled the fuel tank and old electric fuel pump, which was a Bendix Aviation electric fuel pump. I had decided to do the brakes also. We turned the drums, bought new shoes, replaced the master cylinder and wheel cylinders, and we had brakes. I had the tank cleaned out and serviced and replaced the fuel pump with a blue holly and a regulator. We now had fuel to the carbs. Hmm… combustion, fuel, so far so good. Somewhere along the line it had lost the "Flame-Thrower" dual point distributor, but it had a stock GM distributor, so we replaced the points and plugs, cleaned the cap, checked out the wiring, and found spark.
"Let’s try it Justin." With a great cloud of smoke and after forty-six years, the First Rat 348 started and then cleared out. It was just plain unbelievable! After forty-six years, it was sitting in my driveway, loping as if it were ready to make a pass down the track. Again, unbelievable!
We had the tires and brakes on already, and I had noticed that the clutch worked just from pushing it into the garage. I tried it, and it had no problem moving back and forth in the driveway. I was so excited that I now shifted our plans to driving it up to our car show with Jerry and the guys standing there waiting. It would be outrageous! It may not run great, but there was hope that it would drive well enough to pull right up to our booth and blow everybody away. Wow! The show was coming up fast.
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