Sometimes the best place to start a story is at the beginning...but that’s not how I’m going to start this story. Instead I’m going to start at the end and the end came in 1989.

That’s when the then 52-year-old Harv Humphries and his 59-year-old car decided to retire from drag racing. The scene was Milan Dragway in Milan, MI. The event was the Nostalgia Drag Racing Association North American Nationals. It was the second time Harv and his slightly revamped flathead-powered 1930 Model A altered coupe had taken part in the event and his last race was against another Model A with a Chevy engine. “I blew his doors off,” chuckle’s Humphries, now 77 and retired from both work and racing.

It was common for it to blow a little oil on the windshield each pass but during the 1989 event it was misting a little more oil than usual. “I never worried about it before but I just got the feeling that I shouldn’t run it anymore,” says Humphries. “It was telling me that the pistons and rings weren’t doing their job and I didn’t want to blow it up over stupidity. To replace it would cost me a fortune so since that last race in 1989 I haven’t started it.”

Drag racing had already taken hold of Humphries and as an 18-year-old Ford dealer mechanic in Windsor in 1955 he street raced a 1951 Ford with a lot of success. When he moved to Lambeth, St. Thomas Dragway was right next door so he raced his 283-ci flathead powered ’40 Ford street car and in 1962 he saw that back alley chopped Model A make its first runs as a B/Altered coupe. “He put a great big Merc or Edsel motor in it,” says Humphries. Seems not too long after that 1962 season the gentleman decided he wanted to move to California and that would end up making’s Humphries decade.     

In the winter of 1963 Humphries was making a parts run into London when he came upon the Model A sitting on a side street with the motor out of it. “I wheeled down there and saw it was for sale. It was pretty crude, which back in those days wasn’t surprising and there was no motor or tranny. I paid $250 and couldn’t believe my luck.”      At the time he wasn’t too worried about the car’s history but he’s since discovered it was likely a street driven hot rod out of Chatham, ON that was stripped down for drag racing.

In 1963 all he cared about was that he was going racing in a really cool car, even one so crude that the early ’50s Ford rearend was welded to the chassis without a spring and the driver’s seat was a ratty looking sponge cushion with a separate seat back of unknown origin.
The front axle was a early ’50s Anglia unit with the transverse buggy spring and shocks. The front wheels were VW bug wheels bolted on backwards and there were no front brakes. Humphries eventually bought a set of custom made wider rear wheels from local racer Doug Kennington so he could install a set of M&H Racemaster 12.5x15 tires that remain on the car to this day. The steering box is a 1956 Ford pickup unit. An exhaust tubing roll bar was welded to the tops of each side of the Model A frame and had been installed by opening up holes in the roof to slip the hoop through. It meant you couldn’t take the cab off the body.

Humphries took the modified 283-ci flathead out of his ’40 Ford and installed it in the A. “I had a stock car buddy, Clem Durant, who was a welder and he installed the motor and tranny mounts for me,” Humphries remembers. He then bolted a Ford pickup truck 3-speed transmission behind it and for the 1963 season raced it in the E/Altered class. He didn’t race that engine long, though he still owns it. It was replaced for the 1964 race season by a bored and stroked 346-ci Flathead running a Harmon-Collins magneto. The build started with a ’49-54 flathead block bored to 3 7/16” and stroked to 4 5/8”. A custom crank had such big throws the block was clearanced on one side, by as much as 1/4” in some places, so the full floating stock rods would clear the block and just clear the cam. A set of Jahns Racing Pistons were installed along with a Crane Cam’s camshaft with adjustable lifters. The stock Canadian aluminum heads were used but were machined to accept bigger SBC intake valves. The stock Ford exhaust valves remained. The internals of the motor were polished to reduce friction. Exhaust headers were bent at a local muffler shop with the technology of the time “so each one is a little different,” says Humphries.

Humphries raced that flathead with a lot of success with twin carbs, then three carbs in the 1964 season thanks to a buddy also cleaned up the exterior with a coat of Burgundy Red, which remains on the car today. He can’t remember if it was in 1964 or 1965 when he got a call from a buddy to ask if he wanted to buy a brand new Algon Fuel Injection setup. “I couldn’t get down there fast enough,” says Humphries. Another friend worked at the Weatherhead factory and he provided all the fittings and hoses needed to make the setup work. Humphries says the Algon Fuel Injection was so easily tuned he’d have no reservations driving it on the street. “The setup was fully adjustable not like a Hilborn,” says Humphries. “This one has an idle circuit so it’s easily adjustable.” The fuel flowed from the chassis mounted fuel tank to a fuel pump mounted low on the front frame rail which pumped the fuel to the fuel injection unit at a lowly 5 psi. “I didn’t have a fuel pressure gauge in the car but I had one mounted outside the car so I’d have a guy run alongside the car to tell me what the psi was just before I staged,” says Humphries. That fuel tank may have Mooneyes decals on it but Humphries says it’s a Mooneyes knockoff he bought in the early 1960s.