Bill Rudich

Previous owner of this roadster, Dick Pickeral of Southern California, made a living building racing engines and restoring vintage race cars. Dick also is a member of the 4 Ever 4 Club and like many people who work in the industry, he had the '29 for 30+ years, slated for a project. When Dick found the car, it had a 265 Chevrolet small block in it. That long storage served to keep the car from updates through the years and made it a lot simpler to restore. Dick was a friend of Multi Aldrich's widow and when he put a banger in the car she gave him Multi's No. 7 - 90 MPH Club plaque. Dick let a copy be made from the original plaque which is somewhere in Southern California on a car.

In 2003 Cindy and I got the car in a complicated trade that involved both money and a restored 1935 Ford roadster which belonged to another car guy. The car was running with the banger but was not sorted out and the driveline and brakes were actually frightening. We began restoring it to how it ran on Harper dry lake in 1939 when it recorded 96.56 mph with original builder/owner Sylvester "Si" McCabe, a member of the 90 MPH Club, which was one of the founding charter clubs that formed the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) on November 29, 1938 along with the Knight Riders, Sidewinders, Throttlers, Idlers, Ramblers and the Road Runners. The banger is now in a restored early circle track car in Southern California again. Cindy found the Culver City Halibrand Quickchange in San Diego and that's typical of how difficult finding vintage speed equipment is today.

We constantly remind ourselves that 96.56 mph in 1939 was incredibly fast and the hotrodder’s running the dry lakes were fearless and determined to set records. We want to preserve a bit of that and so we have resisted updates to the car to keep it traditional. Several of the traditional aspects of this car are its SCTA pre-war Harper Dry Lake timing tag and the vintage (Duke) Hallock windshield. One thing we didn't get from Dick was the sheet metal sprint car nose.

Maintaining focus during the re-build and using traditional parts and period equipment rather that update the car has been very important to us. Many friends urged us to update the car in small ways rather than stay with the basic late 1930's dry lakes car which was the vision.

We won the 'Suede & Chrome' category at the Goodguys Southwest Nationals in November of 2007. Boy, were we surprised!

Bill