At the time I was very involved with the Olds Club of Iowa and was serving as president. I decided to meet with Schubeck at the 1998 Hot Rod Reunion at National Trails drag strip near Columbus, Ohio. Another club member, Lynn Clark, came along with me and we were all going to travel down to Kentucky to see the reported remains of the Hurst Hairy Olds in an old barn. This turned out to be another lie and we canceled the trip to Kentucky.

I had heard another member of the Oldsmobile Club of America had the aluminum bumpers and hood off of the 1966 version of Hairy. I called and he offered to sell them to me, if I would restore the car. The agreement was made and the parts were shipped to Iowa.

For the next few year members of the various Olds clubs in the Midwest scoured the world and the Internet chasing down all of the parts we could find and we finally started the restoration project in early 1999. A lot of valuable and hard-to-find parts were donated by club members of Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Minnesota for the project. Volunteers from these states spent weekends working with me in Des Moines, Iowa, to reconstruct the car. No one was paid money but I did house and feed the volunteers as they applied each of their own skills to the project. Hundreds of parts were donated by many different manufacturers for the project. No less than 100 people put their hearts and souls into the restoration of Hairy. During the weekdays, I would try to coordinate people and parts for the next weekend. Local volunteers from the Iowa club worked many weeknights to smooth the body and get it ready to paint.