Sean C. Morgan
It looks like Ground Zero after 9/11, but Bob Hubler is back at work on the spot where his engine and machine shop were destroyed by fire about two weeks ago.
“You’ve got to have cash flow,” said Hubler, 69, who did not have the property insured. He is finishing work on six engines he had in the shop prior to the Nov. 19 fire, but he won’t take new work for a few weeks. At the same time, he is cleaning up his property, the former Cascadia School, and getting a smaller shop already on the property up to speed. He expects the cleanup to last through the winter.
In addition to Hubler’s shop, the fire also destroyed the Cascadia Post Office.
Among the debris are numerous engines and vehicles, although Hubler and others were able to save some tools, parts and engines. Some parts don’t appear harmed by the fire, but they have some rust from the rain following the fire, which means he must go through the debris to save what he can. Among the casualties was a $50,000 Ford single overhead cam engine used in experimental Mustangs.
He lost three engines that came over from Glenn Hackney Racing in Lebanon, Hubler said. They were damaged in a fire there and sent to Hubler for repair. They had been repaired and then burned up again, but this time, the owner had them insured.
“We’ve been going for it for two weeks now, and we haven’t even scratched the surface,” Hubler said. “We’re trying to get this cleared off so we can get up a new building.”
Hubler said he has lights up in the small shop, and he can work on head gaskets, tune-ups and other engine R&R there – just a fraction of what he had been doing. He isn’t set up to do machine work yet.
“We worked on hot rods, like muscle car engines,” Hubler said. He provided machine work, honing, boring, square decking, things necessary to build performance engines and cars.
Hubler does work for people around the state and some out of state, and he’s working on a 351 Windsor for a man from Forks, Wash., right now. He was able to get most of that engine out of the fire.
His shop has always dealt in old motors too, he said. “No matter how old it was, we’d rebuild it, even one-cylinders.”
He also sold parts at the shop.
Hubler is recovering from the fire with his own funds and help from friends, he said. He’ll be able to get the shop going again, but he’ll never replace his collections of antique parts, tools and cars.
“The worst thing about this fire, I had collected every antique performance car part from Model T days to the present,” Hubler said. He also had 13 cars destroyed in the fire, including a 1963 Fairlane Hi-Pro, one of 200 made. He also had a 1970 Gran Torino, a 1969 Torino, 1957 and 1965 Rancheros, a 1967 Fairlane, an Opal GT and a 1915 Model T he had just restored.
“It kind of sucks,” said Hubler’s grandson Michael Hubler, 16. “It’s a great inconvenience.”
Four years ago, Michael moved to Albany with his father, he said, but he couldn’t take all of his things with him. He had to get rid of them or store them at his grandfather’s place.
Michael also said was working on a couple of one-cylinder engines there. One of them was from the old blacksmith’s shop in Cascadia. His grandfather had used it to power the lights when he was a teen starting out working on Model As in a chicken coop he used as a shop.
“He had a lifetime’s worth of stuff here,” Michael Hubler said. “Every time he’d move, he’d just move the stuff to the new place.”
“This gets in your blood,” Bob Hubler said of high-performance engines. “This is more addictive than drugs or drinking.”
Hubler raced from 1960 to 1985, and he never stopped working on the engines. He built a motor for his nephew, who won the pro bracket championship at the drag race strip in Medford two years ago and was runner-up at Woodburn three years ago.
“We are in the winner’s circle,” Hubler said. “It takes a lifetime to do that.”
Hubler and his wife, Bell, are staying at a new house nearby in Cascadia, he said. People have donated just about everything they need as far as household items and clothing.
Accounts are set up for Bob and Bell Hubler at Key Bank and Wells Fargo Bank. Donations to the accounts are tax-deductible.
Hubler said they have had up to 10 people a day drop by and give him cash, then work all day on the property – kind of the opposite of how things are supposed to work.
“The thing that’s important to me is all the outpouring of the people that are helping me, donating time and money,” Hubler said.