The Waske Effect Roadster. Part One

BY: Kevin Preciado

It’s kind of funny when one picks up some Kool tin in a roundabout kinda way.

This vey deal happened to me about 19 years ago. I was working on building Cyclone 24 Stud heads and intakes for a couple of customers.

A friend of mine knew that I was doing this and he being an old Hot Rodder from back in the day said that his daughter picked and old 29 roadster from a mutual friend of ours named Jim Palmer. She also had a 32 Roadster that her dad had kept in his possession since I don’t remember when?

Well she wanted speed equipment and I had it and she had the 29 body and I wanted that.

She got a little bit of cash on top of the deal, and I remember taking just a little bit of time to get that together. Money’s tight when you’re rebuilding a company.

So that all happened 19 years ago as I said above, and I really never had a moment to research where the 29 had been.

Jim Palmer knew that I had the body and sent me a little care package that had pictures of it when he bought it several decades back.

He bought it out of Gilroy, CA. And basically bought another 30 roadster that had some kind of racing history, but the seller said if he wanted the one, he had to take the other.

The 29 was originally cruising around in the 40’s on a 32 Chassis, but someone wanted it for a Deuce 3 window coupe.

Not much happened during this time and really no body knew its history. Until 2004…

So the pix that Jim sent along with some that I had taken had made a trip with me to one of our PRC meetings when we used to meet @ Marie Calendar’s, Pasadena.

Well a fellow club member Eric Loe was having a look see over the pix, studied them pretty hard especially the mods to the cowl and wheel well area.

At the next meeting he walked up and hands me a picture of the car on May 25, 1947 at the SCTA meet= the largest of them all!!!

Ok, so that’s actually about 2003???? So I decided to kind of look around in the programs for this car/owner. In 2010 I found something on him, but I didn’t have a way to photograph the program😔.

Here we are in 2015 and I decided that it was time to really work on this project. So I hired childhood friend who does body work to help me fix the rust, and generally just straighten it out, 2018, and he’s still not done.

Well I really decided to hunt down this former owner who was in the program. A friend is building a recreation of his grandfather Elmer’s 32 and he also was an early PRC member.

Well a few CTA & SCTA program pages were sent to him so I contacted the sender to find out if he had any info on Clem Waske-to my surprise not only did he have info, but a picture.

Pow! Right in the kisser!!!! Now these were sent to me, I started to diligently look for Clem only to learn that he passed on in 1993😔.

I figured, this guy had to have family, wife, kids, perhaps a dog or few😉😄😄!!!

I Started really looking up the name and it went back to Detroit-Motor City!!!! Well I needed to find someone down San Diego way. Low and behold, I find a name at an address in La Mesa.

Home Run! To me that’s SD so I wrote to him, sent him car info and sure enough it turned out to be his only offspring.

This guy was so stoked to know about his dad’s former racer, that he came up a coupe of days later and checked out what I had right then and there.

He saw the body off of the rails and the frame over in Alhambra at the OK Car-ral. Well the next time he saw it, it was roller.

So it’s been getting its parts back on it almost daily, reworking of some chassis metal and removal of brackets that were either hot wrenched (torched) off or welding cracks, holes and replacing pieces cut off over 84 years of existence.

Had to source that frame mentioned above, it came out from under a Deuce 3W that came from Nor-Cal and allegedly from Gilroy back in 1972.

So here’s the kicker…. Before I mated this body/frame, I was looking at the welds, workmanship and thought process that went in the build of this frame and body, Surely this had to be fabbed by the same guy.

I go to measure this frame and it’s not the same in the cowl area as a stock 32. Nope it’s been pinched for a 29….

So now I’m really kinda thinking, is this really the frame? Heck it has the exact same faded blue on the side rails as the body had and mourning holes for the body to the frame in the same location.