Story and photos by Mark Wing and Paul Duncan

On this Saturday at Larry’s Garage Paul and Marilyn Duncan were busy work their 1918 pickup truck project. This included getting Mark Dominguez’s assistance to mount some particularly challenging 30×3 front tires.

Larry had helped Kirk Peterson prepare his 1924/25 coupe “Buster” to participate in this year’s Montana 500 race. Larry also participated in the event as Kirk’s passenger/mechanic for race and had a wonderful time! Kirk and Larry finished 10th out of a field of 20 entrants which was very respectable given that this was their first time competing in the race. Larry was hooked! He too wants to enter his own car, a 1925 Model T runabout that’s served many years as the “take-apart-car” for State Fairs. On this day, Larry was cleaning and assessing an engine block for the 2022 Montana 500 race. Larry needed to calculate how much material could be machined away from the top of the block to increase compression, horse power, but still stay within the guidelines of the Montana 500 race rules. The following day, he turned the block over to Empire Engines, a local Albuquerque machine shop, to have the cylinders bored out and the top decked.

Al Schwanke was cleaning and polishing fenders to Larry’s very original and rare 1938 Packard Twelve Touring Cabriolet – one of eight, bodied by the coach builder Brunn, made that year! This car still has its original paint job and Al was cleaning and polishing the fenders to bring the paint job back to life.

Mark Wing was using Larry’s surface grinder to flatten the head and engine block for his 1909 project. This engine block is s/n 8143 and left the Ford Piquette plant in Detroit, Michigan on August 2, 1909. The build sheet for this block was just received and it revealed that the McCalley book was correct, the car was originally a Tourabout body style, and not a touring as originally thought when the 1909 project was purchased.

Thank you Larry for a productive and fun work day!