What's a Rat Rod? A Do-It-Yourselfer with Personality - Boston.com
Roughly 400 car owners had gathered to make donations to the Officer Charles Kondek Memorial Fund. He was a 17-year veteran of the Tarpon Springs Police Department, which he had joined after five years as a New York City police officer. Word had gone out throughout the surrounding area: “Even if you don’t usually bring your car to shows, make it to this one. My old friend Ken—and the old refers to the number of years we’ve been friends AND our ages—asked, “See anything you’d like to write about. Every car has it’s own story, but I was looking for something I hadn’t seen before so I pointed and said, “That one. Neither of us knew exactly what this rat rod was, so we started chatting up its owner, Ron Henning of Tarpon Springs. Henning and his son-in-law, Scott Siben, built the rod in a little less than a year. Siben found the body—actually a cab and bed from a 1948 Ford F3 pickup—on Craigslist in Lakeland, Florida, around Thanksgiving 2013. The guys then welded a frame of 2- x 3-inch rails of 1/8-inch walled steel. Henning built his own headers for the engine, fabricating homemade mufflers as well using low-budget SOS pads and boat fiberglass wrap for sound-deadening. Source: www.boston.com
