Folks Of Interest Remember when the only car you owned was a hot rod?

69 Chevelle, 396/375 with 4:11 gears would get me 5-6 mpg if I kept my foot out of it, but that was no fun. Gas was probably about .40 a gallon then and I went $2 worth every day during the week, and I can't even guess how much on the weekend. I eventually bought a $100 VW for work and saved a ton of $ on gas.

 

I mean I kind of keep part of this going in that I don't own anything without a V8 in it.

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That's the best pic of the day on the HAMB Danny! Wouldn't it be fun to go back and do it all over again?

 

Hello,

I was indoctrinated early on because of my older brother. When he got a car magazine, then I got one, too. Toys were the same thing as my parents did not want to favor one son over the other. I, being the youngest, I got the benefit of the situation. Old hot rod toys, yes, we both got one at the same time. Schwinn Roadmaster bicycles with the girder forks, I got a red one, he got a black one, etc. A plastic Model Kit? I got one of my choosing, too.

Jump up to 1956. This is where it stopped…my brother had saved enough money to buy his first real car, a 51 Oldsmobile 2 door sedan. Now, I was obviously too young to drive, but my mom made him take me everywhere as a mandatory command from both parents. My brother was no dummy. As an older brother, he was sneaky as far as I was concerned. So, he had me wash his new car, polish the hubcaps, bumpers, etc.

Once he paid me a dollar to wash the whole car and another dollar to polish the whole thing. I could not pass that up. What? ($1.00 in 1958 had the same buying power as $8.50 in 2017) He got a deal on the wax job, as today, it costs around $50-60+ to have it done by someone. The hand car wash was less than it costs today.

Finally, when he sold that 51 Olds to his HS friend, he bought a 58 Chevy Impala for his daily driver and racer. Now, my responsibilities were doubled. If I wanted to go anywhere, I had to do some upkeep jobs on the car. (besides washing/waxing) So, on Thursday nights, I had to change out the 4:11 gear third member in a swap for the 4:56 gears unit. He taught me how to do the exchange of the heavy 3rd members.

From that point on, it was my responsibility to get it done every Thursday night for the Friday night street drags and the Saturday Lions Dragstrip races. (Some Thursday nights were 12 midnight-1 am completion and a tired teenager the next day.) Then, on Sunday night, I had to reverse the whole complex process back to stock again.

Sometimes, when I was behind in school, the 4:56 gears stayed in place for a couple of weeks, preventing my brother from any long distance driving. Those 4:56 gears always played havoc with the rpms when cruising, as well as the speedometer.

Now, jump up to late 1960 and the 58 Impala was now my only car. Since I learned every little thing from working on it the last two years, I knew my car inside and out. It was now my daily driver and street racer. I could not keep going up against those 320-335 hp 348 1960 Chevy cars in the A/Stock car class at Lions. (335 vs 280 for us) So, I installed a Racer Brown Cam and lifter kit and a C&O Stick Hydro to hot rod my stock car. Now, it was fast on the street, but no longer stock, so no more racing at Lions.

Jnaki

I did learn to bide my time working on the car for my brother. I learned a ton of stuff for later stored information. But, I never thought I was being taken advantage of during that time because of the rewards of driving around in that cool 58 Impala at the drags and on the street.

My brother? I am sure he was smiling in the warm house listening to music, playing the guitar, and reading magazines while the poor little brother was out on the cold concrete driveway crawling under the car. I was making the necessary exchanges to make that 58 Impala a fast car at the drags and on the street. That was my reward. (As dumb as it sounds now, 60 years later.)

Even building our first 283 SBC, then later upping the game to 292 and a 671 GMC supercharger in the 40 Willys, he taught me a lot of valuable stuff for use in later life...Thanks, brother...

An exact duplicate to this SBC motor we built in April-May 1960.

 

What are you talking about, remember when. I daily drive my 55 Chevy when it isn't snowing, when it is I daily my 1974 Chevy suburban that is dropped 8". Your dang right I drive a ground scraper year round, hell the burb is lower than my 55 by inches.

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In '81 I had TWO cars registered and in driving condition. A '68 Mustang Bullitt car and a '65 Belair wagon. This way I'd have something to drive and luckily the 2 never broke at the same time. The Mustang was fast racked up a lot of speeding tickets and I'd take the Belair when I drove out of town.

 

I still remember that time well of only having one vehicle that I had to rebuild to drive in the first place, then continually modifying it to make it faster until I reached the point that I started having to borrow my folks stuff to get back and forth to high school (once it ended up with a big solid cam, two 450 Holleys on a tunnel ram, a big stall converter and 4.88 gears ). I am currently in the process of building vehicles with both of my boys (one is currently 14 and the other is 13) that will be their daily drivers until they can save up enough money to buy themselves something else. We are building a 50 Ford sedan for the older boy and a 52 Chevy pu for the younger. Pretty sure that all of what I learned by building and driving something old daily having to keep it reliable enough to get to work or school everyday made me a much better troubleshooter of not only car-related stuff, but pretty much anything. Not everyone agrees with trying to re-create that with my own kids, but I at least see value in them going through this whole experience.

 

"Hot Rod" means pre 49 to me. Most of my life [I'm 70] all I've had to drive was late 40s-60s cars but they weren't hot rods to me...just cars.
Getting a kick out of the guys remembering their 60s-70s "hot rods".

 

never had just a Hot Rod but at one time for a few years my two cars were a 62 Caddy and my 61 Dodge. broke my Dodge in Oakland one time, towed it home to Fremont with a rope using the caddy and my good buddy Jim... probably 20 miles or so. I never had to call a tow truck when Jim was around.

 

Had a buddy while I was in college, he daily drove a built 68 mustang, blew 3 390's up in one summer,
we finally swapped in a 428 we found in a wrecked police car. He had the first set of 50 series tires in town, imagine driving that in the snow. Someone made him an offer he could not refuse, the kid wrecked it within 24 hours, hit a telephone pole hard enough to put the front rt fender back to the rear
tire.

 

My only car, 1965-66, after that it was off to the Army and SE Asia!!

 

I've had Porsches, BMWs, and other high dollar rides for short periods of time, but they were what I worked on. (my actual 'vocation')
But in '72, I found my '55 F100, and by '74, it was my main transportation, shop truck, B'Ville support vehicle, boat tow-er, and weekend drags runner!
Been this way for...well over 40 years.
One day I was at the Target store, came out, some guys were walking around my truck, one says "Nice truck"...I say "Thanx", unlock the drivers door, another one says, "Holy shit, the locks still work?"
I take it he's the Main Speaker, the one with all the car knowledge, aggressive as he is ugly. "Yep, the locks all work, starts in one second of cranking, gets 24 miles per gallon, turns 13.20 in the quarter mile at 106. Everything else is pure frosting."
The loud guy steps up and says, (with a grin) "Now, that can't be so...old truck like this 106 in the quarter...they just ain't that fast."
I touched the starter, engine fired immediately..."Dar-Vroom!" The idle should have warned this dipshit off, but he persisted.
"Sounds fast, but still doubt it is..."
That was a Sunday morning, I had dropped in to get my usual deal on reduced price Rib Eye steaks. Hardly any cars in the parking lot, so I backed out of my space and straightened the truck in the through way...then nailed the big Moon pedal to the floor. Smoked the tires excessively, but truck leapt ahead...shut it down past the Dress Barn, (all the stores were closed on Sunday, except Walmart and Target...)
Guess I shut Mr. big mouth up...It was a trick, granted. Anything looks like 100 MPH within tight confines...maybe got up to 50, stopped fast enough.
Wonder what he said.