Dad and Grandpa help Garrett build his truck
I got wind of this story of a teen building a 1940 Ford Truck through Scott over at Ron Francis Wiring. Scott introduced me to John Quinn, co-host with Ben Notaro of “Show and Go Garage” on WVLT.com, a local New Jersey radio station. The show’s focus is on interviewing backyard builders in their garage about the projects and the stories behind them.
In talking with John, the story of this teen, Garrett Baldwin came alive. John got me in touch with Garrett’s dad Ed Baldwin. A couple of conversations with Ed and we get the full story of how his dad (Garrett’s grandfather) Charlie found the hot rod bug and now how they are both teaching young Garrett how to build a street rod from the ground up.
Let’s start with Grandpa Charlie’s Story.
Charlie found his interest in street rodding as a young kid in the mid ’50’s when he would hang out at a neighbor’s who had a nice ‘37 Chevrolet Coupe. That guy went on to race dirt track stock cars locally.
Charlie started a small custom exhaust business helping out fellow rodders with their performance exhaust needs. Although inspired by the neighbor who raced, Charlie never caught the racing bug. He was more of a cruiser. Everyday, he’d build on 30’s and 40’s era cars. His son Ed would hang out with him in the garage. The hot rod bug would soon infect Ed. Today, Charlie enjoys hanging out at the local cruise nights and talking with all the backyard builders that tend to frequent these shows.
Right around the early 1980’s when Ed was a young kid, he would go with his dad to the Central Jersey Street Rod Association Picnic Grove Shows. His dad Charlie introduced him to some of the guys and with their help in a matter of a few years Ed was the first son of a member to get a car on the road. Like his son Garrett today, he was 14 when he started the project.
As you can see the Baldwin family has 30w running through their veins.
Ed’s son Garrett, the third generation of this story is a kid, like many others, has a lot going on. If not the Robotics club in the winter, or his Eagle Scout activities where he is building a roll-out walkway along with benches at the nearby Historic Walnford Park, or in the spring he runs Track with a best time of a 4:45 mile. The Baldwin family is raising both Garrett and his sister Katie to be well-rounded with many different interests. Although, seeing his father and grandfather have fun with these old cars, Garrett had to get his hands greasy.
This project started when he received a 40 Ford Coupe basket-case to put together. Garrett found more interest in a truck, so his Grandfather gave him a spare cab, hood and front fenders he had in the barn. From there, Garrett started with the frame of the coupe and started working with the well-worn and rusted cab to make it solid. His father and grandfather were there all along the way to show him how to use the tools and teach the kid to weld.
This isn’t one of those stories where the elders did the work and Garrett would be there to help. No, they taught him how to do, what he wanted to do and let the kid go at it. Charlie told Ed when he was younger: “If you are not interested in working on it, then I won’t.” These words were passed along to Garrett. In other words, he would do only work on the truck as long as Garrett works on it. Sometimes, Dad would work on a few things to follow-up on projects that Garrett did and get things prepped for when Garrett had time to work on it. That way they didn’t spend half the day thinking about what they wanted to do, and running to the parts store.
Garrett started getting into cars as a pre-teen going to car shows. He was excited for the loud cars, but as dad pointed out, it may be loud, doesn’t mean it’s fast. They would sit on the side of Route 30 in York, PA for the NSRA Street Rod Nationals and watch the cars roar past. Ed tells of another time when on the road trip rolling through Allentown, NJ they ran up on another street rod, a friend of Eds, and blew right past them. The G’s sat Garrett in the seat back and he was hooked for sure.
The biggest challenge so far was the rust repair. The bottom 6 inches of the cab was completely rusted out. They ordered a new floor pan and had to rebuild all the posts and side panels up to about 8 inches. A lot of the metal on the cab was thinner than they thought as it was painted thick with house paint. This is where Ed says: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Meaning, they could have taken some more time to find a better donor cab and avoid a whole lot of work. Although, admittedly that work was a great lesson for Garrett, not only on welding, but determination, focus, and appreciating a good job done well.
Garrett eventually set the Coupe frame aside and went with a frame in better condition, he acquired from a family friend; Ted Burke. Last winter they took all the suspension off the old frame and put it on the new one.
Garrett asked how do we get the left and right corners of the cab to match as there was a repair made to the upper cab corner? A neighbor who is a wood-worker suggested a contour gauge from Lowe’s. This made it easy as they marked every couple inches with a grid to find the exact curvature and make the other side match.
One night in April of 2018, the three were working in the garage, Charlie and Garrett went over to Charlie’s garage to get some tools. As dad was in the house he saw a bunch of smoke pouring out the big overhead door! He ran over to see what was going on, just when Charlie and Garrett returned. Apparently the cord reeler caught fire and flames were shooting 3-4 feet up under the center of the cab of the truck as it was on the lift. Charlie quickly kicked the reeler out the door and they hit it with the extinguisher. Catastrophe averted.
More Fuel Fed Family Fun as their buddy Ted Burke, who gave the frame for the truck found an identical SUN Tach that Ed had on his car for the truck’s dash. Neat to see connections across generations in builds like this.
When talking about the goals of the truck, Ed quickly said that this project is for Garrett to be proud of the work he did and to have fond memories of working with his dad and grandfather in the garage. Garrett wanted a truck as something he can use. Not a show car but a working truck. So far he has gained a lot of those goals with a great sense of accomplishment, and plenty of lessons of patience. He is keeping the original gauges and with the cab near complete, they put it on the frame, and with some finessing on the doors and fenders, they have a rolling chassis and body set up.
The truck bed and fenders were a tough nut to find. After a couple of attempts with rusted junk they found a good fender and used it as a guide to build up the other side. It’s beginning to look complete.
Stay tuned as we follow the project to completion.
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SEE! Part Four, Part Three, Part Two, Part One