RANT! Its 'Punch A Resto-Nerd In The Nose' Time

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If you really want to piss one of them off buy one of their totally restoed cars and turn it into a hot rod. When you are done drive back to their house and tell them that it was their car.

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And how do you piss off a HAMBster? Buy his period correct, flattie/early overhead powered roadster and stick billet geegaws all over it with a crate motor and a faux-EFI aircleaner.

 

We're restorers too, we just have time machines with more adjustments available--
If those guys get hold of a deuce, they have one setting stuck on the time machine: That thing has to be brought back to October 5, 1932 and that's it.
We can take the same heap and choose to transport it to 1952 or 1962 or...

 

There are No-Rules.

If you don't do what makes YOU feel good, your wasting time and lot's of money.

 

Wow, that's the wisest thing I've read all morning!

Can I use if for my sig line?

 

Bruce, That almost sounds like a quote from Fred Offenauser.

" Restorers have their time machines set a 1932, A Hot Rodder has multible settings of 1942-1952 and 1962."

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We're restorers too, we just have time machines with more adjustments available

[/ QUOTE ].. Bruce Lancaster
I love that saying!

A Streetrod has a Smallblock up front and a can of Wax in the trunk.
A Hotrod has a Flathead up front and a box of Tools in the trunk.
Fred Offenauser

 

The Fordbarn has always had that element on there. I've been on there for years. Good people have come and gone from that forum because of the holier-than-thou mentality of many of the participants.

But to play devils advocate a little bit...

We all know how hard it is to find suitable bodys to Hot Rod, think about how tough it's gotta be to find one to RESTORE. And for all of you saying that period-correct hot rodding is the same as restoring, I'm calling BS on that one. We can start with something of much lower quality and create a bitchin hot rod out of it that will get all sorts of awards. But try winning anything with the same piece of crap as a restoration.

For myself, I understand the frustration of restorers and will never hot rod anything I find that I feel is "too nice." It just wouldn't feel like hot rodding. It'd be cheating. But then again I have a pretty good idea of what restorers are looking for and I just don't have the cash to but into that market.

 

I can respect people who bring a car back from the dead. If they chop & channel & hotrod it or hunt everywhere for that NOS dash clock to make it just like it came from the dealer. Either way, they're car people, having fun with what they're doing. I can dig that. Holyer than thou attitudes detract from either group. I can even understand ricers and V-Dub freaks. Everybody has to start somewhere and while I think putting the slicks on the front wheels of a drag car or putting $4,000 stereos in $400 cars is just plain wrong, at least they're not competing with me and jacking up the prices of the stuff I want to use. The HAMB is for traditional rodders, FordBarn is more for the restorers and there are other sites for the ricers and Volks-Folks. As long as we keep our dogs from shitting in each other's yards and show a little discression there's no reason we can't all get along in this neighborhood.

 

Here we go again...I can understand it pissin you off, but when you stopped going on the board you once thought was great....they won. We have a vendor spot at Hershy, yeah you get some looks...but I'll bet there aren't too many people having more fun than us!

 

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For myself, I understand the frustration of restorers and will never hot rod anything I find that I feel is "too nice." It just wouldn't feel like hot rodding. It'd be cheating.

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Does this car fall under this category? I have been struggling with this one since i bought it. It has every nut,bolt and even extra pieces of sheetmetal.
29 A Briggs

 

I know i just found the hamb not to long ago but i grew up with cars and see a pretty good tragic flaw. In two cases with different cars i have owned i have incountered the same crap. With my stude the older club members had absolutly no interest in being any help other then to tell me it was wrong to make it a even slightly hoped up. With my olds the club took me in and was very nice about offering help in locating the few parts i needed in the beggining. Mind you when it came time to get parts i got two seperate talks from two different members basically telling me i was in the wrong if i was not going to use the parts to make it original and that all deals were off if i had other intentions. So in the end they both have never seen or had any of my support for there club. The particular olds i bought was well know to the club - they had first dibs on it and passed it up, i bought it got it running and took it straight from the field to there meet happy as a clam. They even gave me an award for the work i had statrted to do and were astonished i drove the car they did not want to buy. After that meet i had no desire to be part of any group that thinks they need to think for there members. The tragic flaw in both cases would be who is going to get there cars when they turn for the dirt nap comes? Not all the young members they embrace! They have a holy quest that is too heavy in stupid and not so filled with wise folks who can see above there own limited opinions. Crazy's folks are good because they keep a group interesting and drive up - fanatics end up with lots of stuff they can never enjoy and very bitter. I like the hamb because the folks are taking the time to hand the knowledge down - not the bullshit! Thanks to those who make it possible - and to the resto nazi's it don't matter - you whont be around.

People who carry the torch need to keep in mind the torch was passed and it is hard to continue the tradition when theres nobody left!

 

Aaaah, the engine's the wrong color, and the emergency brake cotter pin is zinc rather than #2 cadmium. Might as well chop and channel it.

 

Hell, I've got nothing against restorers - I'm glad there are guys that make a point of preserving stuff just as close to original as possible, but once there are several hundred "perfect" ones out there, the rest are all fair game.

A few years back, I was at a local auto museum and the volunteer tour guide guy spots me looking over some cars real close and latches onto me (mostly cause I was about the only one in there) and starts going into his monolugue. Eventually he gets around to asking me if I have an old car. Yep, I say, I'm working on a 40 chevrolet. Well...now he really lights up - big smile - and starts asking me about it. So I tell him I'm trying to make it look like an early 50s custom ....I chopped it, and stretched the....Wholey cow! you'd think I just pooped in his cheerios! He starts on a tirade about how wrong it is not to restore it.

I said, "well, you should have seen what I started with, it really wasn't prime for a resto"..."Dosn't matter.." he says...So I say "I wouldn't even want an all original 40 Chevy, 'cause they were damn ugly cars straight from the factory!" now he's really bent.

When I left, I dug around in my truck and found a couple photos of how fucked up my car was when I originally brought it home - really just a rotted shell on two frame rails, so I walked back in and showed the guy. He utters very quitely "yeah, there were no good parts left on that"

 

Well Pete, if you want my honest opinion...

I'd try to sell it to a restorer. It's a 4dr which isn't as desireable for a hot rod in the first place. I think in the end it would be more valuable as a restored car than it would as a Hot Rod. If it's all there down to the correct bolts, someone will probably bring it back.

 

My dad has a pretty tight 37 humpback sedan with fames. Wax in the trunk too.

Anyways, a few years back, some old turd saw the 454 under the hood, looked over at my dad and said "It's a damn shame that you cut up a perfectly good car to do THIS to it"

Well, my old man came unglued and replied with "Who in the hell said ANY of the cars here ever started off as perfectly good? The truth of the matter is that street rodders and hot rodders have saved WAY more cars from the scrapheap then you asshole restorers EVER will and since you are at a STREETROD show, I suggest you either start to appreciate STREERODS or get the phuk outta here."


The point is the same here though, you might not like what you see at a certain site or show, but you should at least have enough common sense to act accordingly - at least till you get what you wanted.

John

 

I had an old guy come up to me at a show where I had my Roadster, And he said " You took some libertys with that body."
He made it sound very accusatory...
I could have explained to him that I built it out of parts of 5 different cars ( different types and years too ), but I just looked him straight in the eye, smiled and said "yeah."
If anybody is going to be pissed off, I'd rather have it be him than me...

 

Hobbies are always changing...I wanted to raise Passenger Pigions but that look unlike as they are all dead. When all the "good" bodies are gone then people will have to change. I think the funny thing is that people feel as though they can effect this evoloution. If there was only two original 32 three window left in the world some guy rich then any restorer would buy both and hot rod one just to make it real rare...

And ya that car is Racers5c's dads car, personally I like the car better in that picture then in the extended frontend version that is in the Museum. But its cool the car is still is around in any version.

 

Although I would never defend someone that was cutting down a hot rodder for not restoring a mass-produced early Ford, I can understand both points of view.

Whenever I see a group of hot rods, it's maybe one car in twenty that will really get my interest. The rest of them always seem to miss the mark in some way. Either somebody started with something that I wouldn't have bothered with, or they did something to their car that detracted from it in some way. In cases like that, the car would have been more appealing to me if they had just left it alone.

Although I love traditional hot rods that are built with authentic, early parts as much as anyone, I also appreciate nicely restored cars, too. If you think that a '53 Studebaker coupe needs louvers and Moon discs to look good, wait til you see one that's been flawlessly restored. Those cars were great art. And I don't think that when a hot rodder finds, for example, an uncut '32 Ford Victoria and decides not to chop it and fill the roof that there's anything wrong with that.

I've seen thousands of hot rods and customs that I just plain didn't like: cars that were changed for the sake of change without achieving the improvements in performance and aesthetics that we strive for. Think back to the Eighties, and all those billet smoothie cars that were built. When I see someone take a '39 or '40 Ford Deluxe coupe or sedan delivery and take off all of the trim and paint the grille, to me they spoil the car.

I don't care what most people think. Aside from sites related to drag racing, I don't read any other hot rod or classic car forums because I don't have the time. But the split between hot rodders and many of the restoration crowd has been going on since before most of the people on the HAMB became hot rodders. My first exposure to it was when I was 16, in 1968, and had to convince a 70-year-old man that the '29 Tudor I bought from him was going to be a father and son restoration project. Then, in 1970, when I bought a Deuce five-window and went to a meeting of the local classic car club, I got up and announced to the group that they could have their mechanical brakes and their gutless engines, because I was building something that I could drive on the highway. My remarks were met with nervous smiles and weak handshakes and I never went back.

We are hot rodders. We build what we want, what we love. The restoration crowd has its vocal purists and I can understand and appreciate their passion for preserving history and being respectful of the work of people who designed and built some very beautiful cars.

There will always be restorers who look down on us, just as there will always be classical musicians who don't relate to metal bands or jazz legends.

Dave Mann
http://www.roadsters.com/

 

Just keep in mind that the guy(s) who raise all the stink are in the minority.

Btu because they are so vocal, they seem like they are in the majority.

I grew up in a Model A club, and the politics and bs that make up the stock vs. hot rod argument are engrained in some people... and they will not go away until they die.
(boy do I have stories to tell)

So, take pride in pissing these people off and getting a rise out of them... and never, ever... EVER let them see YOU sweat.

FWIW, there are MANY restorer's out there that appreciate hot rods and what we do... just as there are many hot rodders (like me) who appreciate restored cars... one hand washes the other... and it is the guy who is pissing and moaning (in both camps) that is loosing out.

Sam.

 

This happened to us this year on the way to the Hamb drags.Me and choprods were fueling up at a convience store, a guy comes up to choprods and says"I hate to see those old cars all cut up like that"---choprods reply was a classic---"then turn your head and look the other way".

 

back when i was beginning to learn bodywork, the guy i worked for and i were discussing how uptight those folks are...at that point i came up with a great idea...wouldn't it be a f'n RIOT to take a nice, older-resto model A to one of their shows along with a truck full of tools and start stripping off everything and start chopping the top on it...stick a for sale sign in the ground and start making a pile around it: fenders, steering, etc...everything you would not use! they'd shit their pants!

 

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This happened to us this year on the way to the Hamb drags.Me and choprods were fueling up at a convience store, a guy comes up to choprods and says"I hate to see those old cars all cut up like that"---choprods reply was a classic---"then turn your head and look the other way".

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Yeah, they hate to see those old cars cut-up like that but they also dont see the pieces of shit we start with, they sure as hell dont wanna RESTORE em!!

 

What shuts them up best is this:

"If YOU want ME to restore MY car, than YOU pay for it. I'll restore it no problem. Oh, you're not going to pay for it? SHUT UP and SIT DOWN. It's MY car I will do what I want with it. If you want to restore it so bad, I'll sell it to ya. Will cost you $250k."

That got the Kaiser purists off my back for me wanting to customize my 48 Frazer. It's worked on a few guys that want me to put my 60 Buick back to stock too. They back off when you mention their pocketbook.

 

Don't know nuthin' about the fordbarn so I can't comment on them. But I do know somethin' about resto guys. I think they should all own Muscle cars and leave our stuff alone.
About a year ago I was going to buy a 51 buick 2 door from a guy cheap because the tranny didn't work/shift right and it was rough (but doable with a little primer and some blankets) but solid.
Almost had the deal tied up 'til I opened my big mouth and said I was going to drive it. he said," Nope you can't drive a car like this." and it was instantly not forsale. And he was a younger guy to boot.
Ya know what they say, anyone can restore one but it takes a real man to chop one up.
Just blow it off friend, we still like ya.

 

Elrod drives a bone stock Model A

 

We would not be able to find a car to hot rod if it had not already been passed over by a restorer

 

I agree with SamIyam The guy I go out car/part hunting with is a restorer and we have no problems. Hell Ive bought a car from him and cut it up. Although the more we hang out the more he seems to be leaning to the dark side. The asses are always louder than the silent majority who dont care its your car do what you please. Even if I had the money if I found a RARE car in great shape I probably wouldnt use it for a hot rod or custom anyway, but mostly because I cant afford it.

 

ya know what FUCK them all. first off if its my car i'll do any damn thing i want to it, but at the same time i'll never bad mouth someone who likes them restore them. and who really gives a fuck what kinda car it is, wethers its a damn ricerburner/VW/stocker/streetrod/hotrod/old school or whatever. to each his/her own.
personally i cant stand the newer ricerburners/VW's but i do like some of their older stuff(pre70's). i could care less whatsa got, personally i may not like your car but i'll respect your choice(at least most the time).
this kinda reminds me of a friend who raced a hot vw bug. it was an all steel, 32,000 mile car that was given to him when his g-ma passed away. well after driving it for 3yrs stock he decided to make it a street/strip car. he built a 2500cc mtr & wild tranny set up. at the track he was known for pulling about an 1/8 mile wheelie & going through the traps in the mid 10's. and all he ever got was grief becuase he was winning lots of races against big block chevy/ford/mopar cars. for the most part all he heard was "Fuck'n Volkswagon" from the guys he beat, very few would talk to him just because they got beat by a VW
i told him one day, yea know Elo fuck'em all. cause all i know is if a car, any car beats ya in a race, ya ain't gotta like it but you should at least respect the guy NO MATTER WHAT HE's DRIVE'n cause on that given day he was better & faster then you.

same goes w/hot rod'n or restoring a car. ya ain't gotta like what the other guy is doing but ya should at respect his views on how a car should be. wether it be hot rodded or restoring a car or truck..... like i said b4.. fuckkkkkkkkkkkk'em........joe

 

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OK. Im not some young stud covered in tats

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i am but i still feel the same.

 

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Aaaah, the engine's the wrong color, and the emergency brake cotter pin is zinc rather than #2 cadmium. Might as well chop and channel it.

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Well put. But it is hard doing a resto, and it costs more money, so I have respect for that crew and their way of preserving history. Too bad they don't have the same respect (as often) the other way. I can go to a vintage car museum or car show and get just as excited by a period perfect resto or a custom. There's good work done by both camps. It's hard to play perfectly within the rules, and its hard to think outside the box.

 

I don't know about the "restorers" in other parts of this country, but out here it's the biggest joke you'll ever see. Old guys with these "all original" cars they keep locked away, when in the hell did an electric fuel pump on a 34 ford become original equipment! If you repaint your "all original" 50 chevy, guess what? IT AIN'T ALL ORIGINAL ANY MORE DUMB ASS! I have a good friend that is a "restorer", high dollar cars(shellby gt500, edsel convert, 55 t-bird, etc) they are really something to look at. He is also into buyin new stuff and putting it away, how bought an 82 vette with 386 miles on it, or an early 90's Bentley with a thousand miles on the clock, but he is also a hot rodder from back when. I love his stories of the old coupe he ran with a 430 Lincoln with a homemade log manifold on it. Guys like him are the true "restorers", they don't just know what size the hater box bolts are for their 34 Hupmobile but they know the history and understand all the aspects of this hobby and they respect those aspects. Sorry this was so long, I'm a dumb ass who has no friends.