Has the hobby gone to the Rats??

wtf? you gotta be kidding, skull air cleaners & spider web grills are not traditional. Tractor paint and tractor grills aren't either. Pseudo tough guy posturing with the spikes on your car doesn't count either. I think Rat Rods are more anti traditional cartoon character than the 80's BS was.

 

Being from the late 50's era of customs and also building a 50 Plymouth wagon with a chopped top right now, I get what you are saying.
The main thing everyone has to understand......when it comes to hot rodding everyone's taste is not the same.
The thing to remember is that no matter what kind of hot rod you like, it's still a hot rod in their eyes and who are we to judge what others like or dislike?

 

finishing a 48 Cadillac sedanette and have a 52 Packard 2DHT waiting , both are/will be mild custom big elbow-room cruisers..I am seriously trying to work out a trade(have no cash, whats cash?) for a full-fendered 34 Pickup..my problem is I don't fit into most roadsters and hot-rods and if I get the 34 will be monkeying with the firewall for a little more legroom...

 

Our hobby and life style keeps evolving. It will come back to the center at some point. How ****ing boring would it be if we keep building the same old thing over and over. We all have different taste but we are gear heads and we make up less than 1 percent of the population. My Last 2 cents

 

Youre smokin crack bro. Anybody who would put that **** on their cars deserves to be beat down, and thats what im talkin about. The general concensus that ALL so called 'rat rods' have this ****. Maybe we need to re-define 'rat rod'.
If youre talkin about someone who has used all old or custom made parts to build their chopped, channeled, Z'd Tudor on the road, and drives the thing daily, then I stand by my original quote.
If your talkin about the posers who have a gl*** A body w/ inde front susp and a vortec small block and disc brakes....then ill hold em while you hit them.... Just sayin, the naysayers are groupin everyone in the same catagory and that just aint right.

 

Me i love them both I'm building a 27-T Rat and a 41 Chrysler custom as money will allow. I'm new to building and really enjoy working on both. but being short on money the rat will be done first. Rat or custom I'm just happy to be a part of saving a little piece of Rod history for my kids..

 

I don't think customs are gone at all, there are some great ideas being applied to metal as we speak, For example...everything that OZ builds...and then there are some amazing examples here on the HAMB, my favorite being Kustom7777's shoebox.

As for customs with the younger crowd...most people my age (19) don't have much room to work on something...or much money to pay for anything. I am fortunate enough to have a dad who has a great shop to work in, some amazing skills to p*** down to me, and a bad *** selection of Snap On tools (which makes my craftsman set, and harbor freight welder look like trash). I'm lucky enough to have grown up in a repair shop all my life and have mentors who are masters in their fields...Not many kids can go 2 doors away and learn how to tig weld damn near anything and be taught by someone who's been doing it for years, or go out the back door and watch someone work magic with a few hammers, sand paper, and a paint gun...or go another 2 doors down and watch some crazy guy with a sewing machine! And then go back inside to finish rebuilding that engine and trans, and finish some suspension work...

Most kids beg and plead to get an old car and end up with an '89 honda..or end up building a rat rod and being damn proud of it even though it is what most everyone percieves it to be...a hunk of rust on wheels.
They may admire the beautiful customs, and the real hot rods everyone else has...but for now...that roached out A sedan they threw together for $500 is good enough...even if the brakes don't work and it won't go over a speed bump.

As for me I can't wait for my T body to get here, or to figure out how to reattach the rotted off roof to my '26 Whippet, or to start working on my '38 Pontiac, or even to figure out what to do with the other 3 crusty cars I need to do something with... All this while saving some money for a '51 Chrysler 2dr I'm bound to have someday.

 

+1
Only reason my car is in primer is its not finished yet. I know a handfull of old timers and they are in bad shape a few of them but the cars they have words wont do them justice, hell pictures wont either.
You wont see them at any shows there more or less doing what they like and trying to get a little more work done.

 

actually tractor grilles have been around a long time, i have a picture of my dad and my uncles with one of their rods from around the mid 50's and they are running a tractor grill on it as well. they didn't have a lot of money back in those days,so they built with what they could find. I suspect a lot of people did the same.

 

Do what you want to do.
Build what you want to build.

But before you share it on the HAMB, just be sure it belongs here.

 

I'm trying to keep the torch burning. I bought a `49 chevy w/ an "unfinished chop" (you know what that means) a few years ago and have been trying to collect the parts to build something unique. Unfortunately (for the Chev) I've also had two daughters, lost my garage, & a motorcycle accident (shattered leg) in that time...But I'm NOT a fadster, this is something I have always wanted and WILL finish it, given, if I live long enough! It would be nice to have some sort of cash windfall to get things moving forward, but in the meantime I'll concentrate on the little bits that I can.

 

I see it like this: keep negative opinions to yourself. Positive opinions should and ought to be shared.

 

i skipped afew posts and just went to reply. the R-ROD thing is a trend. hands down. there are some older fellas in town, who want a r-rod, so they spray a flat black paint job over a beautiful paintjob. in my opinion that is a trend.

myself on the other hand, i cant stand it!

i cringe when people call any of my cars a r-rod. I just laugh and explain that, i think "rat rod" are bad words to someone whos trying to build a nice custom or hot rod. i then explain that im 22 years old, i build on a budget, and someday i hope to have the car finished as a real nice custom. i then explain that my car is in primer as of now becuase its not ready for paint, and i still have a lot of work to do, and that its not a rat rod, you wont find zip ties, duct tape or bailing wire anywhere in the car. and when i open the hood, people see that alot of time and effort has really gone into my work. Even more so amazed and the small customs things that have been done that they usually dont catch at first.

i also think that a lot of new people or younger kids getting into the "custom car scene" dont really take the time to admire body lines, and look through old custom crafts or rod & custom magazines, to really see what the pioneers used to do. Im all for being original, and doing something different, but im not for making a piece of garbage just for the sake being different ya know?

anyways....thats just one mans opinion. people will always build what they like. some will like it. some wont.

 

actually I love old custom magazines, i was just up in Augusta at a friend of mines house, and we stayed up till three AM going through his collection of old custom ones from the 70's and eighties. and I hear ya on the duct tape and bailing wire, when i was building my manifold everyone kept telling me to use JB weld, I don't think so. only duct tape is holding some wires to the inside of the roof under the headliner.

 

from the 70's and 80's??old? i gues mine are ancient..ha

 

I have only been building cars since the mid-seventies, but from my observations, customs have never been the larger trend. Don't get me wrong, I love customs, but they have always been the wonderful exception to the hot rod rule. And they survived the van craze, the (ugh!) smooth, billet, belly-****on street rod craze, and now the rat rod faze. Actually, I do hope all of these fazes continue, along with customs, just to keep the hobby alive. If not, we are destined into tricked out Hondas or green-rod Preisus. Besides, even I get tired of seeing rows and rows of Dueces. (hence my current build of a custom 53 Studebaker coupe)

 

Word up, ZMan........you know whereof you speak......I'll never understand where the young crowd (whom I mostly love, by the way) got the idea that flat paint, rusty sheet metal, and the things you mentioned were done in the 30's, late 40's or early 50's, the real time of the *traditions* we try to learn from and emulate........the rodders in those years built their cars to the highest standard that they were capable of.......mostly all homebuilt cars too.....

By the way.....I am 66 and I was there in the late 40's and all through the 50's........I can tell you how it was from personal experience..

I guess the misconceptions will only continue.......

CB

 

Enufff!!!!!......now everybody sit back an take a deep breath.........let the smoke clear.........count da bodies..........now get back in the garage an go to work!!

 

'zactly......Even though some of the modern rats are ****boxes, i'll bet it makes up less most of traditional, everyday fifties cars from back in the day....Most, nowadays, if they are to be driven at all will have some sort of basic,structural engineering into it

 

Hey guys, I'm a 67 year old,old fart and I now have a truck that is PAINTED in a semi flat paint. When I was a kid we built what we could afford and what we could scronge up. Most all of the guys that I ran with could not afford a FANCY paint job so we put our cars in primer hoping that some day we could afford the shiny stuff. As I grew older I got to the point that I could afford the shiny stuff and had several really nice cars over the years. Some of the cars that I built as a kid were built damned good mechanically but did not have all the finish that was beyond my means. At that age I had a wife, three daughters that of course had to be taken care of so there were limited funds for the shiny stuff.
The truck that I have now is done the way I wanted it done. No shiny paint but damn sure not a R Rod. Old school it ain't because I have used newer components to build the car so my wife and I could take a long road trip and be comfortable. It has the look that it might have had if I had done it 40 years ago but with the new stuff under it. Does that mean I do not appreciate the traditional Rod or Custom(Kustom)?
Absolutely not. What it does mean is that I built MY truck the way I wanted with it being built to a high standard of SAFETY and RELIABILITY.
Personally, I like my truck and I am the one that payed for it and that is what matters to me.
Later,
****

 

There were a couple of things goin on that excited me when I first moved out to CA from the UK. There were a lot of old rods being pulled out of barns, given a tune up or sympathetic rebuild and run like they were found. I thought this was exciting and could stand a stare at them for hours at shows. the patina and at***ude was inspiring and I would kill to own a car like that. Gradually people seemed to grasp the wrong end of the stick and the patch panels and rust became more important than the soul and style. The stuff I see in certain magazines now just makes me feel uncomfortable and has got sod all to do with traditional hotrodding, its more like those shows you go to to see peoples miss informed versions of the knights on horse back.

The other thing I saw which was more exciting was a lot of young guys buying affordable 50's cars, putting a set of white walls and steels on em, spraying the thing flat black and slamming it and then driving the nuts off of it. Those guys gradually tackled simple kustom tricks like shaving the trim and locks and then gradually tackling bigger and bigger jobs like chops and grafting in different lights, grills and trim. all the bench marks of trad kustoms. These guys are in their mid thirties and below and are doin this stuff on a budget and a bit at a time but I see more and more of it all the time. Building any kustom takes time and a full on show standard car is a big investment but there are plenty of young guys learning the tricks and doing it a little at a time as money or skill development allows.



The other thing I see which may be a little OT but relevant to the discussion is the use of a lot of the tricks from the kustom scene turning up in the Euro and Rice tuner scene. I see a lot of those cars now getting the chopped and sectioned treatment and some to a very very high standard. Of course a lot of them are abominations and it goes without saying that it's not to my or the majority of the HAMBers out there tastes but these are young kids learning traditional skills to make their vision of beauty out of a common production car. I've met a lot of these guys who discover Hot Rods and Kustoms and dont look back.

Since I've been hanging out here I've learnt so much detail about how too do things I've spent a lifetime reading about that's its got me all fired up to start cutting steel on my cars. The fact that the site is attracting more and more members every day means that a younger generation are in for a great education in how to do it right. Taste and personal preference are one thing but you cannot knock a guy willing to learn and turn out workmanship to the best of his ability on his own vehicle.

I think the future for kustoms looks bright. Especialy if you guys who know all the tricks keep educating those of us who are just starting to learn.

F

 

I have a trophy winning, poster boy Kustom, but I also have a just finished 50 M1 I painted with a roller, and is staying that way.
I don't see it as a Kustom culture vs Rat-Rod culture. They're all cars. It's a "car" culture. If I have a spiderweb on the glove box of my award winning Kustom does that make it a Rat-Rod? My Rat-Rod has no skull, spiderwebs, tribal art, bamboo or tiki torches. So it's not really a Rat-Rod??
I'm a Chevy guy. Always have been, always will be. But I can appreciate every kind of car out there. At least at some level. If I see a 1994 S10 on bags, so what, unless it's owned by a 16 year old kid and he did it all on his own in his driveway. I can respect that. He's on his way.
That's my 2 cents worth and I feel better.
I'm going out to the shop now to work on my Kuston Rat-Rod,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

Intersestin, I also have noticed the rat rod trend. Only problem I have is that this is the "traditional" way of doing it. In the 60s I had a 55 chevy. I made it go, made it look better too, but GO was the key word. I never got around to painting it. Always needed something else for the go, not the show. It isnt that we didnt want a car that looked as good as it went, we just plain didnt have the money for all of it. Most of the older guys here have said the same thing. It was the economics of the time, no one had much money (more stuff changes more it stays the same). There is also another reason for the "flat paint", ever see a black and white photo of a train engine? Looks flat black doesnt it? Well they werent, they were gloss black, the photos of the time took the shine right off. Learned that one helping an old boy fix one up for a museum when I was a young buck, he was a retired engineer, I figure he knew what color the train he drove was LOL oh yeah also they didnt spend hours waxing on their trains so they mostly faded and lost their shiney. But they came from the factory all shiney and nice.
I dont care what someone does with their car, hell its yours, shiney it up, make it go, cut holes in it, drive it off a cliff, aint no sweat off my back. It would be nice to see some more origianlity though, how about a ford engine in a ford car? or anything besides a sbc LOL Wow Just had a thought, or brain fart, how about a nice big hemi in a chevy, used to see that stuff back in the day, we either couldnt afford or they didnt have the crate motors I really dont remember, ya dont look for what ya cant have LOL
As for learning, they got books. Are you going to screw up? hell yeah, I got that screwing up thing down to a science. Fancy shop? can you say driveway? or when I moved out on my own, Barn? yup rebuild engines, transmissions, rearends and Painted in a dirt floor barn. Its what I had so I used it.

 

Man lets see, The **** picks back up 02 03 04 for alot of folks. Build a car! six months a year. get that car out of your system. build another car might take longer doing it a bit better now, hone some skills! Find out what you like now, you have multiple builds going. Money! what money! Kustom time! dedication! Work!

Current: Kustom in the shop! not done! rod or RAT rod on the road! or **** somthing broke on it and your fixing it. nothing on the road!

I think there are alot of kustoms in the wings not to mention good cars waiting for the chance to come out.

They will be coming look at the timing!

ofcourse mine wont be done for at least 2 more years. DAMN!