this is how people learn restraint... I did a similar thing when I wanted to chop my old 55 chev hardtop. I was in my early 20's and had just seen a bitchin chopped 56 hardtop at the KKOA show that summer. I was working part time at goose lake auto parts (salvage yard) at the time and there were many tri five chevs in the yard. I made a deal with them to borrow a 55 hardtop, I had a sling tow truck so I put wheels on it and dragged it home. I of course had no idea how to chop a car and I cut the roof off the junker and instantly found that it wasn't as easy as I had fantasized... the junker got dragged nack to the yard and I gave up. at least I didn't practice on this...
I don’t think so…Johns is a ‘49. Frank Palmer sure has a great eye for profile. Bump’s car is maybe my favorite shoebox.
For the record, Frank Palmer did save the car that I destroyed and did a masterful job. I can't remember the customer's name though... If I remember correctly, he was from Arkansas.
Well I’ll be damned. What other previous history rides you have Ryan to share ? Fun to learn/ reading.
You did really good until you didn't oh the confidence of youth reinforced with tutorials from Mad Magazine and Hot Rod magazine cartoons To have that unfettered confidence again... now....if I could just find my car keys.....
I turned one of those $2500.00 checks into about 10 different cars in the 80's, didn't do it to make money, I just wanted to drive different old cars around. probably broke even on all the buying and selling.
I still have mine, a '53, aged and dirty, a car I bought in 1992 when I was 11 years old. The chop is pretty awkward when viewed from certain angles and is full of fillers under the paint. We made the roof longer and sunk the rear window into the trunk, it leaks and looks way too long. I bought a complete roof off of a Skyliner glass top when I was about 16 and I still have that as well, had always planned to incorporate it into this car, hopefully eliminating a lot of the horror filler job in the process. Someday I want to go through it. Fixing the butchery I inflicted on it but not changing anything that would make it unrecognizable, saving as much as I can. I'm really glad I never sold this car. I haven't touched it in years, but I know that if it were gone, it would haunt me for the rest of my life.
My first and only chop was on my daily driver 63 Ford short bed pickup. I was working between two van customizing shops. At the time we were doing many glass sandblasted borders and stencil jobs. Remember those? In a magazine we read where you could successfully cut down a windshield by sand blasting through from both sides then cutting the laminate. Well since I only had $150 and repair parts in my pickup there wasn’t much to ruin. I think I did the whole job in one day, cutting down the glass then removing about 4 inches from the posts and doors to match the windshield. My windshield cutting was going famously until the cutting of the laminate. I was working by myself and the glass shifted when cutting the laminate loose, the two pieces bent apart and the spot still uncut leveraged and cracked the “keep side” of the windshield. The crack was short and only on one side and I needed to drive it home that night so I reinstalled it with the crack. The top was split into four sections right in the middle and two filler strips were added. It was all tacked and brazed together before a quick paint job of leftover green paint was applied the next day. A plexiglass rear window was fashioned some days later. I did a cut coil and leaf spring mount repositioning to lower it down. In my memory it wasn’t half bad.
Great story! There's a whole lot of bad welding on my '64 Pontiac I got when I was 18. Fortunately, I never finished it at the time and didn't see my 18 year old 1980's dreams to fruition....it's going to be a lot easier to fix that way. LOL
I could be wrong, but I have a very vague recollection of an early Jalopy Journal home page with a flamed shoebox (and maybe a well-dressed nailhead?) Can't remember if it was the TJJ homepage or Kustoms by TSR (those two and the early Road Zombies site...with the thing about bringing customs back to Rod & Rod & Rod & Rod & Rod & Custom...were the first couple car-related sites I found in the dial-up days). @Ryan was that car on here, and was it what became of your car?
The Jalopy Journal
