TMCP #396: Nathan Warren, Warren Customs; Job Complete! The Full And Final Restoration Story of Kibbe Lee!

The MuscleCar Place

Robert Kibbe

Automotive, Leisure, Business, Careers

4.8 • 701 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week I traveled to Warren Customs in Hamilton Alabama to hang out with Nathan Warren and pickup my freshly updated General Lee! I dropped the car off in January for the full "Season 2" Dukes of Hazzard conversion and after months of hard work he was ready to roll. Last week, he was done! This is the whole story of the restoration, soup to nuts.

Even before I purchased this car, Nathan had offered to be the one to do the work to make my dream come true. Creating this particular car seemed easy....but was really tricky as most of the subtle changes were fairly major. Other than the fact that my car was already orange and wearing the GL uniform, cosmetically almost everything else had to change. In episode 353 of The Muscle Car Place I did the first full interview with Nathan where we detailed the plans how to make it as TV correct as it could get. Little did I know that things would go way beyond our simple plans.

Kibbe Lee correct brown interior
The General Lee is as much a character in The Dukes Of Hazzard show as any other cast member. Like most actors the role changes and the actor looks different over several years of filming. To be as accurate as it can be, a specific season had to be chosen and I chose to make the car a season two clone with all the oddities that time had to offer. Nathan was more than up to the challenge and even has parts he can make for other General Lee creators out there.

One piece that REALLY pulls off the "Season 2" look is the amazing push bar that is the most accurate recreation I have seen. In order to make it that great it had to go through a couple iterations, and change more, even after it looked correct at first. There is a lot of work in any restoration but Nathan admitted that in some cases he made more work for himself by striving for the most accurate representation possible. Customers in his shop agree that he is a stickler and they trust him to make the job right.

The post TMCP #396: Nathan Warren, Warren Customs; Job Complete! The Full And Final Restoration Story of Kibbe Lee! first appeared on The Muscle Car Place.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Muscle Car Place Online Podcast, episode number 396. This week, our guest is Mr. Nathan Warren
0:06.0	of Warren Customs on for his final interview of the restoration of my General Lee, and I'm sad
0:11.8	to see it end too. This is the full story, though, top to bottom of what it takes to make a really
0:17.3	accurate TV car from a 69 charger that when it was shot was new but now is old.
0:24.2	So now we have a restored 69 charger that looks like it did in 1981.
0:29.5	And this is everything from the custom push bar, the custom firewall cover, the custom interior color,
0:34.5	the roll bar, the exterior trim, the trunk interior, the tires, and even the
0:39.3	bow-duke helmet itself, all based off of vintage early 1980 photos.
0:44.8	We took the measurements directly from John Schneider's head, so I think they're right.
0:50.0	Like gospel.
0:50.7	Yeah.
0:51.3	You can't get much better than that, directly from his head.
0:54.2	And if that's not enough, he documented every step of the restoration, including grading
0:58.3	the helmets on his YouTube channel so you can do this all at home yourself, which is pretty
1:02.3	slick.
1:03.1	That's a very hazard county thing to do.
1:07.2	This is the Muscle Car Place, weekly online podcast.
1:11.4	Brought to you by National Parks Depot. This is the Muscle Car Place, weekly online podcast. Brought to you by National Parks Depot.
1:14.1	This is the weekly show dedicated to people worldwide who love American muscle cars.
1:20.0	Whether you're buying them, selling, restoring, or even racing them, this is the place for you.
1:26.3	Now, here's your host, Rob Kibby. Yes, indeed, I am
1:31.2	Rob Kibby, and welcome to the Muscle Car Place podcast. Well, fun show for you today. This is the
	...

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