Whats the scariest thing youve seen on a rod?

That guy is in the thunderbolts central texas. The car has electric screw jacks that adjust the height of his ride like an airbag suspension. Thruthfully it is well thought out and seems to drive well....It does look scary though. I've never riden in it...only seen it drive. Last time I saw it he had punched a hole in his oil pan and was nursing the engine till he could fix the pan. he keeps it as rusty and beatup as possible for shock value.

 

When I was a kid, my dad picked-up a '57 Chevy. Back then, it was like an '87 CHevy would be now.

It had a built 327 and had been a drag car. The floor was gone and dad began making a new one. It was his daily driver and no big deal. For the whole summer, there was just two sides welded in and no drive shaft tunnel. Me and my kid brother would sit in the back seat with the driveshaft spinnin' like a motherfucker between us.
I think it was dad's way of preventing us from fighting...
I wonder what kind of life insurance policy he had on us...

The worst part was the mosquitos at the drive-in movies...

JOE

 

had a customers t bucket at the shop that had the hairpins up front and the rear rods of the f@#$ed up suspension made out of conduit....found this out after test driving the car and bent one of the rears.....had to cut it up to see why it folded ......nothing but good times...brandon

 

Love this one from the scary steering link.....

 

Previous PO of my '52 used no grade bolts on the disc brake conversion... Went through and replaced them all after one on the caliper mounting bracket broke, walked out, and scored the F@*# out of the disc. Glad it wasn't the steering arm!

 

Even before the frontend falls off...how do you think it drives with 30 degrees of caster in that axle?

 

Conduit front radius rods on a 327 powered model A coupe.
A 40 spindle on a 34 roadster that was worn 3/4 through on the bearing surface because they forgot to grease the wheel bearings.
Half of a pitman arm hanging on the steering box of a blown 28 touring because they forgot to cook it after plating, and it broke when their 2 year old turned the wheel while sitting in a park.
A Nile parade car that was a 58 Ford made to look like a boat that they gave rides to lots of kids in. The steering was a boat wheel that ran a bicycle chain 2 feet down to a shaft that turned the box. the car had a 427 FE in it to pull all the weight around.

 

i can't speak for all, but some trannys, ie turbo 350, don't need a kickdown hooked up.

 

i'm guilty of that myself. years back i had an s-10 blazer two wheel drive, stuffed 383 sbc in it, 450+ hp. i later body dropped it, took me a year to get around to doing the driveshaft tunnel after it finally occured to me i was running a ton of power through a stock driveshaft and u joints without so much as a sheet of 20 gauge to protect me.

i wasn't always perfect!

 

Here are some detail shots of the gem Tingler posted...

 

At least they stole the radio out of it...I just had some asshole cut the driver door window out of my jeep and all he stole was my face plate...

 

What about the front end with trailer couplings for suspension joints that was posted here a while back? I thought I had a photo saved but I can't find it.

 

You wanna see some scary things on hot rods? Just wait till April when all the wannabe "pin ups" will be out at Viva sitting on your car.

 

Yep...A pin up in your car can be terrible.


...or not.

 

I love seeing stuff like this...makes me feel better about my amateurish efforts, I just don't want to share the road with him! Hopefully it's just for "show".

 

Haha, no fair, i'm talking about the orcabetty wannbe pin ups, if you've been to hootenanny or viva or any other rockabilly show you know the ones i'm talking about. I'll abstain from the obvious sittin on my rod joke now.

 

Ever seen a "strip down"? A guy I know made them out of Oldsmobiles. Took off the entire body and built a little wooden box to sit in. Sorry no pictures.

 

90% of the welds on this site !

 

I know a guy who has a really nice 40 Ford convertable. He wanted to lower it a tad, and thought lowering shackles is the way to go. Instead of buying some for 20.00 or making them, he welded two stock length ones end to end, to make them double the length! Watch out for that pot hole!!!!!! CRACK!

 

Well, I can't top most of the posts on the subject; and a couple people already beat me to it... but I'll jump on the conduit ladder bar bandwagon.

In the early nineties, I was looking for something to drop a warmed over 318 mopar into.

This guy at the Monroe swap meet was loading a pretty clean '61 or '62 Falcon onto a trailer with a $1500 price tag. Lowered, shitty looking Cragar SS's in back, 9" w/ coils and ladder bars, roll bar. Set up for BBC. He was in a hurry and couldn't show me the car, but gave me his #.

I roll out to see his car the next day and find that those ladder bars were... you guessed it... conduit. The roll bar was one of those 'show bars' for mini trucks that the legs bolt onto. The rest of the fabrication was as you'd imagine it. Hope nobody ended up bolting a 454 into that thing!

 

Me too, I cant speak for all custom applications or combos but a stock daily driver, like mine (an inline no less) wouldn't get far without one. Any car can boot around without one its a 'wear and tear' issue on the longievity of your tranny and depending on the amount of highway and steep road you may encounter.

 

I saw a model a coupe with a dropped i beam front end with a rack and pinion seering rack u bolted to the axle with a block of wood "spacer" between them!

 

I remember that one!....He was bent out of shape because we didn't want him driving it around.....duhhhh
Skot

 

see a guy with strips of cut inner tube tied around his tierod ends to keep them from falling off

 

At the St. Ignace Michigan car show about 20 years ago I saw fenderless T coupe mounted on some kind of goofy late model chassis with wooden dowel rod for a steering shaft. I questioned the owner and he said it was allright since it had power steering...

 

I picked my car up from a "professional, world class" shop a while ago and the left rear wheel came off in less than a mile! The new rear end and front end had 4 3/4"X5 bolt pattern, they put my old wheels back on and let me take it away...the old pattern was 5"X5...they had to use hardware store bolts with washers instead of real lugnuts. That is in addition to the smashed brake lines, the piss poor arrangement of the rear bags...I could go on and on. The shop will remain scottless, (I mean nameless). I know of lots of locals with lots of stories about this place...I guess they've managed to pay off the latest law suits.

 

There is a guy around town that has a roadster with the rack and pinion mounted to the I Beam axle with 2 exhaust clamps.
I also recall that it has no slip joint in the steering,so massive bump steer.
One day,One of these Bozo,s is going to kill someone and we will all be fucked.

 

I came out one morning and there was a crow setting on my hot Rod, just above the door. And everytime I got close in acting like it was going to attack. That kinda scared me.....

 

Like Ray said - it depends on the transmission ...

Some transmissions require the kickdown connected because they use the throttle position to set the internal fluid pressure in the trans. If you drive one of these transmissions without a kickdown then you will screw up your trans because it will have the minimum fluid pressure and the clutches will slip. An example of this type is a 700R4.

Others like the TH350 use the kickdown to operate a valve that just kicks it down a gear and has no direct effect on the fluid pressure. You can operate a TH350 without the kickdown connected without any unusual wear and tear issues.