RPeek Rat Rod

Make/Model: Rat Rod
Owner: Donated by Richard Peek

RPeek Rat Rod

Richard Peek’s dream of owning a hot rod began in 1957, when he was a child playing in a sandbox with a yellow toy roadster with yellow wheels. Fifty years later, he began building the real thing. Though he usually lists it at car shows as a 1933 Chevy Roadster, Richard says the term “Rat Rod” covers a wealth of sins. His goal was to create, as closely as he could, the kind of hot rod roadster someone might have built shortly after World War II using whatever parts were available.

The body began as a 1947 Ford firetruck cab, chopped, opened up, and channeled over a boxed and stretched 1933 Chevrolet frame. The rear turtle deck was made from a 1957 Ford hood hung backwards, and the trunk lid came from a 1950s Coca-Cola box machine pulled from the mud of the St. George River in Maine. Richard built the car almost entirely from vintage parts, adding modern pieces only for safety and drivability, including front disc brakes, an alternator, a hydraulic clutch, and LED headlights and taillights. It is powered by a 283 cubic-inch 1965 Chevrolet V8 with Power Pack heads, homemade 1950s-style racing valve covers, laker headers, Cherry Bomb mufflers, and Mickey Thompson tires on 10-inch Cragar wheels. In true Rat Rod fashion, Chevy piston rods became engine mounts, an adjustable wrench became the alternator mount, and wrenches were used for brake line holders and pedals.

Richard built the Rat Rod in the converted summer kitchen of an old limestone quarry scale house at his 1842 home in Union, Maine. After discovering YouTube in 2007, he documented nearly every part of the build on his rpeek channel, creating roughly a thousand videos about the project. Many parts came from friends, viewers, and supporters, including tag plates, signs, gauges, a mirror, artwork, and pinstriping. Today, this car stands as a toybox dream brought to life: a rolling mix of childhood imagination, old parts, community support, and Yankee ingenuity.

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