Featured Hot Rods How to tell real gearheads?

Their daily cars aren't parked in the garage!
The garage is reserved for project cars

 

2 lifts 3 toolboxes and tools hanging on the wall. 2 floor jacks. 3 grinders.
I have every tool to cut a car apart. I must be a gearhead.
Is there a place for meetings? I may have a problem.

 

He doesn't own a suit.

 

What about there is 2/3 of a speed shop, Napa, and a dealership in the garage. Kinda like Krass and Bernie from Cartoons Magazine

 

Laundry soap works better compared to dish soap The problem is laundry soap will split your hands open if you use it more than a few times a day.
Personally I'm a permatex fast orange kind of guy. If it's fresh oil or grease it takes it right off it'll even remove spots from clothes I've learned. If it's 70-year-old Grease it might be a little more difficult I don't think anything washes that off not even gasoline.

 

Has used GoJo instead of shampoo, MANY times!

 

I've used shampoo for hand cleaner !!

...

 

A guy at work had a CD many years ago that analyzed peoples personalities. He passed it around the office and let us try it. One of the things it said about me was (I'll paraphrase because I don't remember the exact wording) that I had an aversion to wearing suits and could actually become ill if required to wear one everyday. It made me proud.......... I think suits are long overdue to go the way of the dinosaurs and many in the tech industries have moved away from them already.

Get a spray bottle and fill it with Simple Green and set it in your shop..........you will never want any other hand cleaner. I don't know how it would work for shampooing but don't recommend trying it for that. It leaves my hands soft after using it and doesn't crack or irritate the skin......and its convenient for quick cleaning when you have to keep your hands clean while assembling an engine. After you try it, then buy the big container and refill the spray bottle. I've got several of them around the shop.

 

Oh hell I guess I’m a prima donna then……

 

I love it!! Here’s my “let’s grind the shit out of something” drawer in my other toolbox that is mostly for fabrication tools and what not. It’s nice and unorganized but I know where everything is

 

Guilty!

 

[QUOTE="lostn51, post: 15655671, member: 47898"!! “let’s grind the shit out of something”
][/QUOTE]

And I thought I was the only guy to think that !! Silly Me....
6sally6

 

They end all their sentences with, "but it could use a little more power."

 

Or, if they are closer to 80 than 70, and keep hauling in more equipment. A friend bought this over the weekend, with me in mind. It's going to require major modifications to the slide mechanism and build in an adjustable lower pad mount. The good thing is, plug it in, and it runs!

 

He can assemble a 39 Ford gearbox.

 

Wrong!
You own a "bespoke suit" made out of Nomex.
Here's mine


And you wear Green tint "Aviators" so you can see through rain [because the wipers don't work]
With sportsman arms [that wrap around your ears] so they don't slide off your face when you slam on the brakes.

 

Ya!, I wore one of those to the office.

 

1957 Chevy bel air hardtop… the most modified of all of our teenage cars. It was the second fastest of the modified cars in our area.

Hello,

When we worked on that 1957 Bel Air Hardtop, we usually ended up with hands that had tons of oil stains or just grime from working on the car. The hours spent working on the motor, transmission and even the Positraction rear end installation, our hands looked like black gloves. But, we were happy to be under the car doing what we could to make the hardtop sedan fast.

But, when we took a break or finished for the night or day installations, we had to clean our hands. So, we used the standard petroleum based hand cleaner and it did its intended job. We also had to go inside to use the Lava Soap bar to get the final stains/smells off. The gasoline/petroleum product was good as it got most of the surface stuff off. It did smear most of it and we wiped our hands with a cloth.

The Lava soap was not the most gentle of soaps and our moms never used Lava. But, with a brush, we were able to get the stained hands fairly clean. When we went out on dates, we had to use an old toothbrush to get under our nails and in the cracks of our hands. Sometimes even that did not get all of the black or dark stains off. So, there were comments about oil on our hands. Despite the hands being clean and soft. My hands got the extra treatment of sharp fingernail files to dig out the last of the oil/grime and was always given the comments about how clean my hands looked and felt.

Thanks to my mom, my Levis had two pairs always ready for a change of clothes. Plus, she would not let me out unless I had clean clothes and my hands were perfectly clean. Which meant Lava soap, even Ajax or Comet, which ever was available. Now, my hands were clean, but smelled, so a nice hand lotion took care of that… Yikes…

Jnaki

So, yes, we were teenage hot rod folks and people knew our cars. They also knew we did all of the work and our hands showed the daily work during those modification days/nights. We almost spent as much time washing our hands as we washed our cars… even more, if we went in for lunch or dinner.

When I was the main person to make modifications to my brother’s 58 Impala, such as changing the rear Positraction gears weekly, I did get dirty and my hands got very dirty. My clothes also got somewhat dirty, but was allowed to sit on our 50s vinyl kitchen chairs as they could easily be wiped clean when I was finished with my snack break. The old adage of Levis are good when they can stand up in the corner by themselves was a good one, among all of our hot rod friends. YRMV

Note:
My mom would flip if I had Levis that stood up in the corner by themselves. That is why I had two pairs of Levis at all times. If she saw the daily Levis even somewhat dirty, they were instantly washed and dried on the sunny day, outside clothes line. If I got the second pair dirty, there were cotton pants always available for the last choice.

If we saw some of our friends wearing cotton pants, we all knew their Levis were in the washing mode. Yikes!

 

LOL Good stuff, fellas.
A lot of truth.

Paint boogers.

 

When I got married (at 19) I was already a mechanic with almost 4 years of experience. My wife was my buddy's sister, and I worked on her off topic car a lot. She was a broke student in the nurses training classes at our local college, and I worked at a gas station where my boss would allow me to use anything in the garage after hours. She knew very well what she was getting before we even started dating.
The 1st rule she implicated as we got serious was 2 sets of clothes, one set for working on cars, and one set for not working on cars (the "good" set of clothes). It took a while for me to grasp the concept, but eventually I figured out the "good" set of clothes was much easier to keep clean, but we also found out it also required buying "good" clothes more often, emergencies happened that could convert the "good" clothes into work clothes really fast. Here I am, 50 years later, and I still have work clothes and good clothes.
Funny thing, when my daughter got married at the end of May, I had to buy another set of clothes, "dress up" clothes. A pair of dress pants, a dress shirt, a pair of dress shoes, and a tie (someone had to tie it for me), and a vest (I thank my daughter for not requiring a tux)! The last set of dress up clothes I used 30 years ago, didn't fit very well...
Now I have 3 sets of clothes, but I don't intend to wear the dress up clothes very often, they are not very comfortable. I told my wife not to bury me in those dress up clothes when my time comes.

Another way to tell if a gear head is near is by looking at the vehicles in the parking lot, a gear head's ride will nearly always stand out from the rest of the crowd, regardless of their automotive style.

 

They own an engine hoist.

 

You might be a gear head if your DD has:
Jumper cables, assorted wrenches, small socket set, at least one hammer, gloves, duct tape, electrical tape, apiece of mechanics wire and electrical wire, section of log chain.
You pull over at broke down cars and trucks to see if you can help.
Dan

 

They know that Chevrolets aren't the only engines with the distributor in the back, and Fords aren't the only ones with it in the front.
They know what a Flathead, a Rocket, or a Nailhead are.

 

About suits..... as a true gearhead I went to prom looking like this:

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=now+thats+what+i'm+talking+about+willis+video&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1153US1153&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgAEEUYOxjCAzIJCAAQRRg7GMIDMgkIARBFGDsYwgMyCQgCEEUYOxjCAzIJCAMQRRg7GMIDMgkIBBBFGDsYwgMyCQgFEEUYOxjCAzIJCAYQRRg7GMIDMgkIBxBFGDsYwgPSAQkzNjgxajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBb-vqnmCgOeE8QW_r6p5goDnhA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:10fc7b71,vid:Qw9oX-kZ_9k,st:0



Now that's real gearhead tool storage.........semi-organized !!!!! Someone can come to my shop and it may look somewhat dishelveled.........but there is actually an underlying method that tries to keep similar use things in the same box/shelf/area.............but at a glance there are a lot of things that also are oddball and just have to look disorganized. Many many years ago I went to a closeout where an auto parts store was shutting down and everything was CHEAP. This is what my truck looked like when I backed up to the pole barn. I think I still have much of it in some drawers. Gave some of it away.

 

My hands are fairly clean and my nails don't typically have dirt under them because my I built my shit to be reliable.

 

I have a sizable closet. Golf clothes and riding apparel on one wall, dress shirts/slacks/kilt on another. And a rack that is just for sport coats and suits. They are work clothes so I can afford to build cars, no different than Carhart and steel-toed boots, just a different occupation. I know guys that wear Carhart to work and are crappy mechanics, careful judging a book by it's cover. @Pist-n-Broke had me over to his house the first time to look at a PU project he wanted me to take over, he took a look at me and figured the truck would never get completed (he shared with me a couple years ago) but sold it to me regardless. 5 years later I proved to my new friend what I am capable of building.

A true gearhead doesn't need to advertise it, doesn't need to talk about it, doesn't need to wear a car show shirt or have a tattoo of a spark plug on his arm. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

 

I agree completely, but a "kilt"....just kidding knowing your last name, it makes sense.

 

My hands are fairly clean and my nails don't typically have dirt under them because my I built my shit to be reliable.

My dad was a great mechanic and was annal about keeping his hands clean while working on cars and afterwards.

This is a fun thread with some true definitions of gear heads, however I don’t take any of this shit seriously. I think there as many definitions of gear heads as there are actual gear heads. One thing I’ve noticed here is that the members are highly individualistic. Sheeple need not apply!
Dan

 

That's exactly what I think....................but a "kilt" ???????? (and I'm Irish) never did hear how the Irish and Scottish came up with wearing a kilt, probably a part of history best forgotten.

That's exactly what I think........................