PERFECT FIT

Owner-operator/custom shop owner looking for the final puzzle piece in a custom restore of a special 1970 Kenworth W900A

By Todd Dills

Mercer-leased over-the-road owner-operator and Fast Transport custom shop owner Ted Streit is on a quest to find the “right engine” for his 1970 Kenworth W900A extended hood. “It came with an Allis-Chalmers in it,” he says, “and that’s what I’m looking for – an original Allis-Chalmers 25000 with 450 horses.”

If this sounds weird, that’s because it is: Farm equipment maker Allis-Chalmers was only in the highway-engine business for a brief period in the late 1960s-early ’70s, during which time some appeared in experimental units, including a few used in trucking.

Streit saw his first Allis-Chalmers-powered KW sitting on the lot of Gene’s Truck Stop located by the Spokane, Wash., scale. The truck stop owner had quit driving and gone to selling fuel and coffee, parking his white 1970 K100 cabover (both a former show truck and test model for Allis’ brief on-highway adventures) for all to see. It struck a chord with Streit.

In 1995, Streit went to work leased to John Sandburg’s northern Illinois-based small fleet. Streit and Sandburg hit it off, discovering both had a passion for classic trucks.

“I ran a restored 1985 Autocar and took it to shows,” Streit says.

Coincidentally, Sandburg owned the stable mate of the rare ’70 KW he saw in Washington: a W900A conventional, one of the two original A-C show trucks. Says Streit, “John always would point to it, saying, ‘Me and the boys will restore it someday.’”

Streit's '70 KW during the early stages of the long restoration.

But fate took a slightly different twist. A shop fire four years ago at Streit’s location destroyed his beloved Autocar. So he set his sights on Sandburg’s KW as his next restoration project. Over a dinner Streit finally convinced Sandburg to sell the Kenworth so Streit could “make it what it’s supposed to be.” And that he did.

During the four-year-long restoration he confirmed the W900A’s exact original color, A-C purple, by an otherwise hidden area of painted cab paneling near to the rear roll-down window in the sleeper cab.

He was also able to confirm the prototype trucks originated via Rihm Motor Co (now Rihm Kenworth) and the two purple Kenworths, the cabover in Washington and his conventional, were probably on display together at the Minnesota State Fair in 1970 when they were new.

He plans on continuing the show legacy now that his purple restoration project is finished, minus the gold-white-black stripe package (Streit’s still looking for a good photo to help re-create it accurately).

“I don’t know if it’s exactly road-worthy,” he says, but he’s got plans to take the W900A to events of the American Truck Historical Society (www.aths.org) in the near future—and he hopes it’ll have that Allis-Chalmers engine under the hood.—CR