JW Rod Garage’s ready-to-roll chassis and glass bodies

There’s a lot to be said for building a hot rod on a ready-to-roll chassis designed to accept specific drive trains and to accommodate high-quality fiberglass bodies. You wind up with an engineered machine that fits together good, works well, eliminates drivability issues and goes together a lot faster than a scratch built rod. If you’re convinced that a ready-to-roll is the way to go, JW Rod Garage is a business that can help you put together your dream machine.

JW Rod Garage has been designing and manufacturing parts for hot rods for years, including nearly a decade of operation at the current location at 948 West Silver Beach Rd., in Belgium, Wis. Thousands of Hub-to-Hub chassis kits have been built in the Garage. These come in Basic, Coil Over and Air Bag models that fit specific 1928-1972 GM, Ford and Mopar vehicles.

JW’s Eric Borchardt says the Garage doesn’t build complete vehicles. “We do fiberglass bodies and chassis,” he explained. “One of our biggest items is the MK II (Mustang II) front suspension. It can be used in hundreds of applications on cars and trucks. We are even getting into ‘60s and ‘70s models.

Davis started by stamping out his own ’32 Ford frame rails. Borchardt said the interest in that product “just kind of snowballed.” When Davis added fiberglass bodies, he needed more employees and the product line grew again. “It just kept growing,” Borchardt explained. “That’s where we’re at now.

All bodies in the company’s illustrated, 32-page catalog are made in-house. ”We have the molds,” Borchardt said. “There are a lot of molds involved in it. So, we built a mezzanine to fill up with fiberglass molds. We turned the whole upper deck into a storage facility for all our molds. We bring the molds down as we need them. We like to do the rear axle work there, too. That’s all upstairs.”

“JW Garage offers a pinched Model A frame. “We take ’32 Ford frame rails and pinch them for Model A bodies, so the frame follows the cowl line,” Borchardt pointed out. The product line includes 1933-’34 Dodge truck, 1936-’39 Dodge/Plymouth car, 1936-’40 Dodge truck and 1941-’48 Dodge truck frames.