Seasons Greetings from Chester Greenhalgh

A cute video message from Chester Greenhalgh, author of the legendary "How to Build a T-Bucket Roadster for Under $3000", now available as a 250+ page eBook at TBucketPlans.com.

How to Build a T-Bucket Roadster for Under $3000, by Chester Greenhalgh

I'm very happy to see that Chester Greenhalgh's T-Bucket bible, "How to Build a T-Bucket Roadster for Under $3000", is now available in an eBook version -- for just $9.99! Talk about a deal -- I saw a post three years ago on the HAMB that it was selling on Amazon for anywhere from $184 to $393 for Amazon in Canada! The new, fully authorized edition features several pages of bonus content and is available from http://www.tbucketplans.com/.

Chester Greenhalgh: T-Bucket Genius!?!

A lot of disparaging remarks have been made about Chester Greenhalgh's out-of-print T-bucket bible, but they don't hold water. It takes a true mechanical and scrounging genius to convert raw materials like old truck front axles, steel bed rails, iron water pipe, cast-off house trailer springs, furnace louvers and glass doorknobs into a safe, fun creation of beauty like a T-bucket -- and on a budget anybody can afford! Just take a look at one of his creations on the book cover above. Chet can take a $500 rolling wreck Chevy passenger car and, like the food processing industry does with a pig, use everything but the squeal.

While the California Custom Roadster plan set introduced in the early 70's was instrumental in terms of useful T-bucket build information, it was limited in that it was just a plan set. CCR's plans covered building a frame, the associated brackets and suspension elements. However, a huge information void was still left. The guy living in Podunk who'd only seen T-buckets in magazines or maybe flashing by on the highway didn't have a clue about how to run the brakes; reinforce and mount the body, bed and windshield; wire it; find a suitable radiator, driveshaft, shifter, lights and dozens of other things. And if he was able to somehow learn how to do this or farm it out it was likely to cost big bucks!

Most people had nowhere to turn for this vital T-bucket build information. Fortunately, the unassuming, ingenious, budget conscious owner of Chet's Car Craft in Naples, FL decided to employ some of those same skills he'd used to successfully build T-buckets for his family and customers and self-published the legendary "How to Build a T-Bucket Roadster for Under $3000" in 1986. The first ad I saw for this spiral-bound book was in the February, 1987 issue of "Rod Action" magazine, with the bargain introductory price of $11.95. By September, 1987 the price in the ad had risen to $14.95 and in 1988 it was up to $19.95.

Around that time, the folks at Motorbooks International struck a deal with Chet to produce a perfect bound softcover version of his work that was introduced in 1990 with a price of $14.95. Somebody in Motorbooks' marketing department decided that the appropriate cover photo for this "how to" book about building a T-bucket on the cheap would be a high dollar, Total Performance T-bucket laden with chrome and a blown Chrysler hemi -- budget, indeed!

I mention this price history because Chester's book has been long out of print. Currently, used copies available on Amazon.com range from $169 to $198!