Renegade Issue 35

I am a firefighter by trade but grew up around

body shops, my father put a welder in my hand

around age of thirteen, a few minutes and I was hooked

I saw a picture of a ratrod on a website about five years ago

and quickly became interested in building my own. I wanted

something different; I didn’t want a full on rat but wasn’t

interested in a street rod either.

After looking at tons of pictures I knew I wanted a 29-31

Ford and began looking for a decent body. I located a com-

plete 31 Fordor near Charleston South

Carolina, only two hours from me.

After buying the car it was time to decide on a motor. I want-

ed something out of the ordinary. I am a diesel fanatic and

have owned Cummins powered trucks for the last ten years.

When I decided on a diesel and started telling people, they

thought I was crazy. This was before anyone had seen

Steve Darnell’s diesel rod and long before the tv show.

While searching for a motor and trans the itch to start was

killing me. A trip to the local steel supplier and I was started.

For the frame I chose 2x4 3/16th wall tube. I started building

the frame based off dimensions from the motor in my 3500

Dodge at the time.

I quickly became obsessed with having to include an ex-

treme amount of detail in every piece of the car. I wanted

people to be able to stare at it for hours and find something

new every time, guess that’s why it took me four years to

build it.

After a few months of searching I located a 1993 Dodge

D350 with an automatic trans, the body was rough but that

didn’t matter it was good enough to drive it home. 12 valve

Cummins motors make tons of torque and only need three

wires to get them running, which was perfect.

From the time I can remember my father always taught me

to build things ten times stronger than they needed to be

and that every weld had to be perfect. Concerned about the

amount of torque a diesel makes and not liking how much

wood was in the car every bit of it was removed.

This ended up being a major undertaking, nothing is square

or an ordinary shape in these cars. I spent months and

months using the wood as templates for steel replacements.

The body is channeled 4” and the top is chopped 4”.

After the body was welded up and mounted to the frame

it was time for suspension. I loved the traditional suicide

front axle look but didn’t think the transverse leaf would be