The Stovebolt Site Forums The Back Office The Passing Lane - Stovebolt Memorials George "'54 3600" Phillips :: Fall 2020

Received word today that George passed away in the fall of 2020.

George was very proficient in finding obscure part numbers thus helping many members find those hard to come by parts.

RIP George.

"54 3600 ,

George L Phillips lived in the Neptune / Asbury Park NJ area from what I can glean from his emails. I searched Obits on every Funeral Home I could find in the area and also on Legacy.com. Found nothing. He shared that his father was a crewmember on a B52 during WWII. He had wrote that he worked as a graphic designer is a business located in Asbury Park NJ and the business was a "family business". We never exchanged call's , that I can remember, or addresses. Regardless, I considered him a friend and somewhat a mentor in the gathering of information as it related to Advance design trucks.

George was super helpful when it came to providing information on replacement parts and in particular NOS parts, the use of the GM Parts Wiki and understanding Supersessions to part numbers and he shared the contact information of folks that might just have parts I was looking for.

George first contacted me in April 2015 in response to one of my posts to educate me on the value of using NOS parts or used parts whenever possible. That began a 5 year conversation on 1954 3604 Trucks. Unfortunately our emails ended in July 2020.

I sure miss being able to run stuff by him to get his thoughts...Rest in Peace George.

RIP George.

We got a very nice phone call from George's brother Jim. He said George's death in the Fall of 2020 was in the throws of the COVID lockdowns. So there was no obit made -- no funeral since no family gatherings were allowed. At age 70, George died of lung cancer. He was a very heavy smoker, as was his next youngest brother, who also died of lung cancer that same year.

George was the oldest of four boys. Two brothers remain: Jim and Shawn. George had been a postal worker and a limo driver but was not working at the time of his death.

Jim said George really liked autos. He started out in cars, race cars and go-carts. He liked stock cars -- there was a race track near where they grew up.

George spent a lot of time with the youngest brother Shawn, who is deaf, in helping to restore to stock a 1954 Chevy truck. Jim chuckled when telling the story of receiving parts for the '54. "Today, I'm expecting delivery on an axle for Shawn." Jim has a business so he's been able to have stuff shipped to his place at a much lower cost than if it went to a home address. Plus he's got the equipment to get heavier pieces moved off the delivery van. Jim says he's had some strange deliveries over the years.


Part of George's involvement with the '54 was to help locate "new old stock" (NOS) parts. Shawn and George did the searching. Shawn could do the email part; George did the phone calls. George also help with taking photos of the parts.

Little by little, they did a lot of finding and buying. It had gone on for many years -- and still goes on. Shawn continues to work on the '54, and building the whole truck with NOS parts, piece by piece. Jim says, "He's accumulated a lot!"


George logged in with us in July 2007. As a "Shop Shark," he had 23 pages of posts starting in Feb 2009 covering all the tech forums.


We found that George seemed quite handy with the computer. One of his big posts, and a great bit of info for Bolters, was " Free Booklet - 'Better Ignition' by Delco Remy - nice read - Illustrated" ... George coped 20 pages and made them available in PDF format via email to anyone who asked. Many asked! and many were grateful!

"If there's interest, I'll post up another - Delco Remy printed booklet: 'Generators / Regulators' also from the late 1940's / early 1950's."

These were so popular, George connected with Brad Allen's filmstrip project. SM 420 Synchro Mesh Overhaul Manual - free download pdf.


"Working with Brad Allen on this one. Stovebolt member Brad Allen in Utah has allowed me to use his Four Speed Synchro-Mesh Overhaul filmstrip slides. The filmstrip slides are better quality than scanning photos from the actual manual. I have the actual manual. Brad has the filmstrip."


A sad but important thought that Jim wanted to stress in closing: he has had a lot of employees who died from lung cancer ... most of them heavy smokers. My closing thought was we hope Shawn (in his 50s) is (will be ) connected to Stovebolt as we have a bunch of Bolters who would be very interested in how this story continues to unfold.

Rest in Peace George

The link to George's thread works, and the PDF file has been attached to it.

Thanks to Dusty53 for resurrecting Georges work.

Also posted the SM420 Overhaul manual in Driveline here.

Rest in peace our friend.

Don't stop by the Spoon as often as I used to. Seems every time I do there's some bad news about one of
the good guys that kept me around the forum for all these years.
George and I talked on many occasions, helped me out when I was filling in my reference library. Another
super nice guy gone but not forgotten.
Denny G
Sandwich, IL

Denny,

Glad to see you "stopped by" and was able to share some insight. I learned a bunch about Geoge when hunting down the info, especially from his brother Jim.

Also, I wanted to clean out his "cubby" (PMs) and found so many huge thank you's in there from Bolters who benefited from his kindness and willingness to share with others (the strength of this group).

Fascinating story about little brother's Bolt that George was helping on.

(Don't be a stranger, Denny!)