Tia Loco stands for ‘Crazy Woman’ (in a positive way!) and we can’t really think of a better nickname to describe Emma, the owner of the two cars featured below.
The sympathy for American lifestyle goes as far back in time as Emma can remember, it was always all about building cool customs with that ‘Cali vibes’, drag racing and Chevy engines. Even though Emma’s daily cruiser has a Ford shell, it still runs on Chevy’s heart.
The ‘A’ has all steel body from 1930, chopped 3.5 inches and additionally channelled 6 inches over the reproduction frame. House of Kolor yellow gold over the lime-gold base looks great in combination with red tinted windows and white walls.
As mentioned before the ‘A’ is running small block 327 Chevy V8 with cam, roller rockers, Offenhauser inlet, Demon carb and homebuilt headers alldone by Emma. Power is transmitted via TH400 box with TCI converter to the fat slicks at rear.
Rod sits on So-cal front end and 4 bar at rear and rolls on 4.5 x15 Rocket Wheels up front with BF Goodrich whitewalls and 8.5 x 15 Halibrand copies at rear with 10×15 Firestone whitewall slicks.
Since Emma finished the build the car covered over 1000 trouble free miles on UK roads and … well it’s up for sale at the moment for 25k GBP as new project is about to roll in to Emma’s Speed Shop.
We’d normally wrap up the feature thanking Emma for her time … but not today. Why? Beacause RACECAR! If you’re a frequent reader you might have noticed that we have ‘the thing’ for the TriChevy cars as we featured Bad Apple Racing ’57 Snow White and very recently we had a pleasure to shoot Bry’s ’55 Mr. Americar. This time we got another ’57 with a mad twist to it. This ’57 two door was built ‘back in the days’ in its motherland and last raced there in Pomona, 1968. It was shipped to UK from Evansville, Indiana about 7 years ago and went through complete restoration, carried out by Emma.
First things first, being a gasser it was lifted to help the weight distribution during rapid acceleration. Chevy gained Speedway front axle with discs and steering equipment. The shell is covered again in legendary HoK blue over metallic base layers and sits on 4×15 Cragars in front and 10×15 60’s Slots at rear wrapped in Trackmaster rubber.
Under the hood sits late 60’s small block Chevy V8, bored and stroked out to 385cui, topped with Edelbrock cam, roller rockers, Eagle crank. The big bang is kindly provided by Weiand tunnel ram, Holley 750 carb and MSD Ignition and the power is controlled by TH350 gear box with TCI high stall converter. As on the model A, the V8 is dressed with homebuilt headers with cutouts for that naughty fun on the track.
Emma already has plans for the spring 2016: test runs at York dragway to fine tune the Chevy then rock the whole racing season with Gasser Circus. We wish Emma all the best for 2016 and looking forward to meet her and the Chevy in battle mode!
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Photo: Radoslaw Pajor