Restored REO is ready for AOP

An Oregon man's 60-year-old pick-up truck is all shined up and ready for the Autumn on Parade Auto Classic this weekend.

Paul Johnson, 57, plans to show his newly restored 1949 D19XA REO Speedwagon at the event Saturday, Oct. 3 at Oregon Park East on River Road.

Johnson's truck is almost one of a kind. Only 200 were made in 1949, and of those less than 20 exist today, he said, and only five of those still run.

Johnson bought the REO 10 years ago for $2,500 from a man in Iowa who had purchased it for his collection from a Montana farmer two years before.

"When I first got it, it was not running," Johnson said. "It was last used in 1973. It needed total restoration. The engine had a bad piston."

The restoration project took five years and was just finished a few weeks ago.

"I started working on it about five years ago after I retired," Johnson said. "It was a challenging restoration. It was stripped down to the bare frame. We just got it done this summer."

Johnson said he's not sure what his "new" old truck is worth.

"It's hard to put a price on them because they don't change hands very often," he said. "I've only seen one restored offered for sale in the last 10 years."

Getting parts proved to be a challenge because so few of the trucks were made and because REO went bankrupt in 1957 and sold out to White Motors.



White's records were destroyed when that company went out of business in 1974, Johnson said.

He spent considerable time doing research on where to get parts — or, more likely, where to get them made.

"The parts were difficult to come by. There's people who make parts but you have to find them," Johnson said. "if it was made before, it can be made again. It just depends on how much you want to spend."

Johnson belongs to the REO Club and found tips from other members to be helpful in locating what he needed.

He found out that while pistons for the truck no longer existed, he could modify pistons from an Allis Chalmers tractor.

"All the mechanical components were rebuilt," he said. "The body was redone. All the chrome was replated. The wiring harness was worthless — I sent that to Rhode island to get one made."

The obstacles were part of what made the restoration enjoyable, however.

Johnson said he's not interested in most old cars.

"All you have to do is get out your catalog and write a check," he said. "I like the challenge of finding something unusual and putting it back together."

The REO was definitely not his first project.

"I've been restoring vehicles since high school," he said. "Since I was a kid I've always had something in the garage that I was working on. My first car was a '36 chevy — that was in '69 or '70."

He hasn't limited his efforts to automobiles — his first project was rebuilding a 1940 Stinson airplane when he was in high school.

He also owns two other trucks he restored: a 1947 International KB1 Panel, and a 1947 Diamond T Model 404HH.