A lifelong love of collecting rundown car parts has given Grady Ballard lots to play with in retirement. His latest project: making a joy ride of a '39 Ford.
DENVER, N.C. Grady Ballard's car turns heads.
If he flies by you in the opposite lane, you may wrench your neck.
Pass him, and you will slow down for longer look.
It is a rat rod, made of an opportunistic assortment of parts from the '39 Ford truck grille in front to the scratch built tailgate with Harley pipes underneath. In between, a large photo of Sarah Palin smiles from the doors.
For Ballard, now 70, it's the result of a 56-year love affair with junky cars.
"I've got the love of old cars in my heart, the rat rods," he said. "I could afford them when I couldn't afford the other stuff."
He bought his first car back in 1960, a '31 Ford roadster with a 1955 Oldsmobile engine, cut low enough so you just slid over the top to get in it.
"It would run 60 mph in low gear and 100 in second," he recalls. "I would never dream of running it in high gear because the front end was just all over, it took both hands to hold it on the road."
He dreamed of building another during his 50 years at work at Ethan Allen and CommScope. Two years before he retired in May 2009, he started gathering parts and forming ideas for what would be his full-time hobby. With the help of welders John and Jim Ballard (no relation) in Stanley, his dream took shape. It was finished the month he entered retirement.
Rat rods - which are thrown together from old and rusty spare parts - are different from slicker hot rods. Back in the day, hot rods were easier to build because the parts were in better shape.
Nowadays, original parts usually can only be found rusting in forgotten places. For his latest ride, Ballard found a 1941 Ford truck cab in the woods sitting on the ground, the floor completely corroded away.
His dream ride is true to the custom of old-school rat rodders. The cab is appointed with '84 International school bus seats and instruments. It's all mounted on a 1975 Toyota long bed truck frame sporting a Toyota engine with Harley Davidson tail pipes growling out back.
All this painted black and red with rust proudly showing through in spots, with Rat Fink stickers and the smiling portrait of the former governor of Alaska. The rear bumper is what he calls a "formality," made from an old horse collar.
It is a work of art, one that he drives daily without worrying about the rigors of the road.
"Anybody can throw something together that just looks horrible, but to build a real pretty rat rod you have to know what they mean and represent," he said. "You have to have that inside of you that I call artist."
Saturday, Ballard hosted the 4th annual G & T Rodz Old School Rat Rodz show at his home near Denver. He expected around fifty entrants, all vying for one of eight trophies he has made from old car parts. Seven of the prizes are standard best of show designations. But the eighth, the Biggest Piece of ... Trophy, may be the most coveted. Grady has incorporated real animal droppings on this one, so the winner should store it in a cool, dry place, like a basement garage.
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