1942 CHEVY TRUCK – GARY & DIANNE ULLMAN
Ask 10 different people what a rat rod is and you’ll get 10 different answers. By our definition, Gary and Dianne Ullmann’s Chevy truck is too well put together to be a rat rod, but it does exhibit the radical characteristics and home-built approach that we’ve come to expect from the movement. Whatever your opinion, it sure does attract attention!
Our first sighting of the Chevy was at the Brisbane Hot Rod and Street Machine Spectacular in May this year. Gary had completed the truck in 2015 and made the long haul down from his home in Hervey Bay to reveal it to the masses. Among machinery worth ten times as much, it was one of the most photographed cars of the weekend. We eventually made it north to catch up with Gary and find out what was going on in his mind to build such a radical concoction!
Gary had been accumulating parts to restore another ’42 Chevy 2½-tonne truck and initially bought this one as a parts donor for the first. Stashing the best of everything away for a later date, he happily admits that the RATN8R is pretty much built from the leftovers. The design of the truck was inspired by a radical ’48 Diamond T tow truck dually in the USA.
“I saw this thing on the internet called ‘The Undertaker’, a dual-wheel rat rod lookin’ thing, and I thought we could build something like that with the leftovers we had here. This is built with the worst of everything,” he grins.
Shadowed by his youngest son, Nick, who was 14 at the time, they built a mock-up by throwing a few parts together.
“I thought it would be a good education for him, to learn a bit of welding. I just said, let’s have a crack.”
Gary’s knowledge of mechanical engineering immediately came into play with the preparation of working design drawings for every aspect of the build, along with a little fieldwork.
“It took 12 months to do the design, and in that 12 months we spent two months touring the USA where we went to as many hot rod shows as we could. We drove from one side to the other; NASCAR, drag racing, East Coast Nats, West Coast Nats, to get as many ideas about what people were doing,” Gary recalls.
He also joined the local hot rod club, The Conrodders, who steered him towards the ASRF TAC early to ensure a smooth inspection and final registration process.
Starting with the worst of everything might not be doing things the easy way, but at least Nick and Gary shared some quality time, chopping and shortening the frame before Gary turned his hand to bodywork.
“The cab was awful. When we sandblasted it there was nothing left. The fuel tank usually goes under the front seat but we weren’t going to use that. We raised the floor eight inches. In fact, chopping out that eight inches got rid of most of the rust! I popped all the dents out and did the rest. The tunnel was probably the hardest thing to roll.”
Gary wasn’t against chopping the roof but, considering his 6ft-plus stature, it wouldn’t have made sense. He only just fits in as it is!
With the cab sitting snugly on the stepped frame, Gary began experimenting with different grille configurations. First he tried a small Austin grille, then a tractor grille, which he deemed just too big. Knowing he had a stash of Chevy truck grilles in the shed, he grabbed a spare and shortened it, using just a handful of grille bars top and bottom.
He stopped short of cutting up one of his spare hoods though. “I just couldn’t bring myself to put a grinder through them,” he says. Instead, he rolled up some fresh metal into a top and made the curved nose cone from multiple sections. “That’s four pieces, I just hammered them into a 4-litre paint tin to get the conical shape.”
There’s not much to tell about the front suspension and steering as it’s all 1942 Chevy truck gear, including the huge drum brakes. A booster and dual master cylinder are concealed beneath the floor.
At the rear it’s a different story, Gary using a combination of Chevy leaf springs and Toyota trailing arms to harness the huge Eaton two-speed diff.
“It’s our own configuration, we used the original semi-elliptic springs and just cut them down to be quarter-elliptic. They were off the truck with the Eaton diff so they were heavier than standard for ’42 anyway.”
The Eaton diff itself is a nice find. Gary reckons the old Chevy truck would have received it as an upgrade at some stage in its life. It’s been rebuilt by Gary and is fully functional, the two-speed function activated by a small electric motor. He says the high gear drops the revs by around 500rpm.
Things got real interesting when Gary mentioned that the Blue Flame six came out of an old speedboat, just not this one.
“The first motor came from a ski boat in North Queensland and cost us a carton of beer. It was built by the owner of a Holden dealership. It would start like a firecracker, it had quite a bit of work done to it. I knew it had potential issues, but we didn’t know if we were going to get through the final inspection, so we weren’t prepared to spend money rebuilding an engine at that stage. We just painted it up and put it in, but within a short time it started to disintegrate.”
The engine in place now is another 235 he located in Childers. Gary was told that it was originally in a ’57 Chevy pickup that came into the country, and that the motor had been rebuilt. When he pulled the head off, there were still hone marks in the bore, so he was happy. It also came with the original four-speed, which has been put to good use in the truck, but with no synchro in any gear, it’s a challenging drive.
The old race motor had a beaut set of custom-made headers, so Gary retained them on the ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ version. He used stainless pipe and a pair of Triumph motorcycle mufflers to create the cool exhaust that exits almost vertically behind the cab.
The interior still screams industrial but with a little extra class. We like how original knobs and levers have been utilised where possible. Gary found the speedo in his parts stash; it’s from a Land Rover, as are the two tell-tale lights mounted next to it. Other gauges are from his old MGB, but the steering wheel was bought at a swap meet in Nashville during his tour of the US. It’s been adapted to a shortened ’42 Chevy column and capped off with a used Chevy horn button he found on eBay. If Gary needs a little extra air, the split windscreen still swings outwards.
“They’re from a mid-’60s Toyota Corolla, shortened 100mm,” says Gary in reference to the simplified seating. “I originally wanted ski boat seats, but they’re just too expensive. These came up and they had runners, which was what we needed.” Trimmed in black vinyl, the truck theme is endorsed further with simple black aluminium door trims and factory-style cardboard headlining.
When it came to final body colour, Gary knew exactly what he wanted, until he changed his mind!
“The colour was going to be this, full stop,” he says, referring to Chevrolet’s ‘E85’ ’34 coupe concept car unveiled in 2007 and featured on the cover of Cruzin #96. “Two-tone, black and silver with a green beltline. We saw the car in the States six years ago. Then I got this Street Rodder magazine one day and there it was, this flat green roadster pickup. The local paint shop mucked around and mixed something up.”
Gary calls the colour ‘Bad Chico Green’ and the featured car was Tony Taormina’s 1932 Ford Roadster Pickup in the August 2013 edition.
Don’t go looking for Ullmann Engineering on the internet, even if you find something you’ll be barking up the wrong tree. It’s a fictitious name, a nod to Gary’s late grandfather who became well-known to restorers in the Maryborough region.
“Pop was a machinist like my father. He started around 1946 underneath his house, building boat parts and fixing outboards, then progressed onto vintage car parts. It was just a bit of cash on the side. He worked full-time until he was 65, but continued making parts until he was 90. We used to live right across the road from him, so I spent a lot of my childhood in his workshop.”
Sadly, the thrill of showing off such a fitting tribute to Pop came to an abrupt halt when a Toyota LandCruiser ran into the passenger door on the truck’s first outing! Down but not out, Gary quickly repaired the door and delivered it to the Paint Doctor, Hans Kruzen, to apply the door art once again.
With the truck completed, Gary has certainly achieved the goals he set out for the project.
“One of the aims from the very start was that anybody should be able to drive it, that was one reason for having a six-cylinder in it. And that’s why we went to the trouble of using seats on runners, because Di’s only five feet tall and I’m over six feet. We also wanted to build it as cheap as we could,” concludes Gary.
We’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t love to see a honkin’ V8 up front, especially with the Chevy tipping the scales at a hefty 1800kg. But that’s missing the point. RATN8R was never about horsepower or dollar value; it was about creativity, ingenuity and building something memorable from what others would have thrown away. By that measure, Gary and Nick absolutely nailed it.
