First published in the February 2009 issue of Street Machine

Ed Iskenderian leans over his 1924 Model T roadster. Dressed in an Isky Cams work shirt, baseball cap perched squarely on his crew-cut scalp, he squirts fuel into the workings of the ancient carbs. His trademark cigar languishes at a safe distance on a nearby wall.

Blink hard and it could, for all the world, be the late 1930s. You can almost smell the hot dog stands where car clubs such as the Bungholers would hang out. You can almost see Ed pulling up to the filling station in his T and handing over 50 cents for four gallons of gas.

Isky turns away from his work for a second and adjusts the brim of his cap against the California sunshine.

“You know,” he says, “back then they used to call these things get-up-and-go jobs, or hot iron.”

Then he turns his attention back to the business of getting his car started.

Back in 1933, Ed was just 12 years old. Like many an LA kid he spent his time riding bikes around his neighbourhood and fixing them when they broke. Isky had moved to Los Angeles from Tulare County, California, where his parents had managed a vineyard. A terrible winter’s frost ended that venture, but his folk’s misfortune was Ed’s lucky break.

“Living in LA at that time every once in a while you would see somethin’ zip by,” he smiles, before tinkering some more with the V8 flathead. “It’d usually be a little stripped-down roadster with one or two guys in it. Then we would meet someone who knew where those fellas lived, so we would ride over there and boy it looked like a whole lot more fun than riding a bicycle.”

The young Iskenderian was hooked the moment he saw his first hot iron and he bought into that world completely when he heard about the racing at the Dry Lakes.

The high desert lakes are a series of sprawling dried mud flats that stretch throughout the Mojave Desert’s Antelope Valley. These flats are more than 800 feet above sea level and because they are so solid and so big they drew the attention of LA’s hot rodders. The first actual Dry Lake Speed Trial was held in 1927, and by 1931 they were being organised by the newly formed Muroc Timing Association.

“For a dollar or two we could get a ride in someone’s rumble seat up to the Dry Lakes,” Ed recalls. He straightens up, puts down the bottle of fuel and walks around to the cockpit to give the ignition a try. “We would travel the 100 miles up there through the night and when we arrived we would see hundreds of different cars from all parts of California. They’d even come from Oregon and Arizona.”

Back in the 30s, California’s scrap yards were full to the fence tops with potential hop-up parts for the Dry Lakes racers. Most of the cars used at these pre-war time trials were stripped-to-the-chassis Ford Model Ts, As and 1932 roadsters. Engines were 200 cubic-inch Ford Model A or B four-cylinders. Little wonder then, that Ed’s get-up-and-go job turned out to be a Model T.

“I was about 15 years old when I built my first car. You’d find these old Model Ts sitting in a vacant lot and pay $10 for one and drag it home. Then you’d strip it down and build your own little rod, just like those guys out at the Dry Lakes.

“We learnt from the older fellas who’d been building the cars a while. Of course we’d take ideas from the guys who ran their cars at the lakes. We also read an English motorcycle magazine called Speed and How to Obtain It. Later on we found out that even at Indy the teams would hire motorcycle guys because they were more up-to-date on tuning engines; you couldn’t fool those motorcycle guys when it came to engines.”

That first Model T was a four-banger, initially running a Frontenac head and later a twin-spark Riley unit. Ed soon got tired of the fragile T engines and built a sidevalve V8 T roadster in 1939, which ran 97mph at El Mirage. Ed then bought the ’24 pictured here from pioneering hot rodder John Athan, and went to town on the car.

Like most hot rodders, Isky went through a number of engine configurations before settling on a 1932 Ford V8 flathead with a rare Maxi F-head semi-overhead exhaust valve conversion.

The unusual stance is a result of the rear end being mounted behind the spring instead of below or in front of it. This adds six inches to the wheelbase. The front axle is from a 1932 Ford and hangs on a set of 1937 Ford wishbones.

It was during the assembly of his Model T that Ed was introduced to the mystical art of camshaft design. Despite the riches served up by southern California’s junkyards, hot rodders occasionally had to buy new parts, which led Isky to Ed Winfield’s door. Winfield was the master cam-grinder and knew pretty much everything there was to know about engines and tuning. Iskenderian bought his first cam from Winfield, who took time to show the teenage hot rodder his cam-grinding machine — a machine Winfield himself had built. Entranced by its workings, Isky started to learn as much as he could about engines. But before he could make anything of it, along came Pearl Harbour and World War II.

“I joined the Army Air Corps because I wanted to be a flyer,” Ed explains as he throws the Model T’s starter. “I went in kind of late — 1942. I was due to graduate from flying school in April 1944. It seems we were preparing for a longer war than expected because when the Germans lost control of the air I was no longer needed as a pilot. I was washed out of the program and asked what I wanted to be — a bombardier or a navigator. I said: ‘Neither — I want to be a pilot.’ Then they said they had openings in Air Transport Command, so I thought I was going to be a pilot there. But I was made a flight traffic clerk on runs from San Francisco to Brisbane, Australia.

“I was lucky,” Ed says earnestly. “Everybody from back then gets credit for being in the services but some people really had it rough and some had it pretty pleasant by comparison.”

Despite never being a pilot, Isky made good use of the time he spent around planes. Working on the bases meant he saw lots of stripped-down aircraft engines and he studied them, learning as much as he could about superchargers and anything else he thought might be useful.

At the end of the war, he returned to California. With a pocketful of Air Transport Command pay and an arsenal of new-found skills, Ed and his buddies were keen to get back to racing at the Dry Lakes.

Naturally, work resumed on the Model T, including a new set of headers — the same headers you can still see on it today. Then an idea dawned that would change Ed’s life forever.

“I got to thinking about building a circle-track race car,” he smiles. “I’d put it together during the winter, then go back east during the summer months and race it maybe as much as three times every week. I didn’t want to drive myself because I didn’t want to turn over and get hurt in one of them; lakes racing on straightaways was much safer.”

However, his flirtation with track cars didn’t become a reality. Instead Ed decided to launch a cam-grinding business. “I bluffed my way in,” he chuckles as he tries the starter again, to no avail. “It was considered a very technical business but as I look back on it, what was really needed was somebody willing to try some radical new ideas.”

One radical idea was to take a sales pitch at the first-ever hot rod show. Held in 1948 at the Los Angeles Armory, the event was the brainchild of Bob Barsky who employed Pete Petersen and Bob Lindsay to track down the best cars for the event.

Following the show, Petersen and Lindsay teamed up to create Hot Rod magazine. And Ed’s fledgling cam business took full advantage.

“I didn’t know about their magazine until the second issue,” he admits. “I took an ad out as soon as I could. It was only $5 per inch, so I took two inches. I didn’t know what to write so a friend said: ‘Why don’t you put: ‘Winners Use Iskenderian Racing Cams’?’ So I wrote that, even though we didn’t have any winners.”

To back up the advertising, Ed toured LA’s numerous speed shops trying to drum up business for his new cams. But no-one was interested. Back then you had to have a track record and, of course, the fledgling Isky Racing Cams had no such thing.

“Karl Orr’s Speed Shop felt sorry for me and bought one or two cams but most of them thought I couldn’t know anything about engines because I was just a kid who raced up at the lakes.” Ed laughs out loud at the thought of it.

But he did know about cams and that second issue of Hot Rod proved to be a real turning point: “My gosh that ad pulled,” Ed remembers, with undisguised amazement. “Some NASCAR fellas in north Carolina were running flathead Ford V8s and bought two cams over the phone. I was amazed and couldn’t help wondering if they knew I was a beginner. Or were they buying cams from everyone to see which worked, which gave them an advantage? Who knows, but that was the start for me.”

A small crowd gathers, word spreading that one of hot rodding’s true innovators is working on his old rod, and about to actually drive it.

Ed makes a few final adjustments, straightens his cap and clambers behind the wheel. He flicks the ignition. There’s a cough and a clamour before that old engine starts to turn of its own accord. A smile spreads across Ed’s face as the years fall away. It’s as though he’s back there at the Dry Lakes or cruising LA with the Bungholers.

“You realise those are the original tyres?” says a concerned and clearly knowledgeable bystander. “And the brakes have seen better days.”

At that, Ed leans on the accelerator and takes off.

Who knows what a car like this is worth? Today, in the Californian sunshine, the thought is frankly irrelevant. We can only watch in awe as one of hot rodding’s originals enjoys the car he built with his bare hands some 70-odd years ago. It speaks of a simpler time. The pleasure that’s etched on Ed’s face is somehow humbling, and that is surely the mark of something truly special.