Just something very relevant to this this morning! I’ll send you a link on IG and go steal some photos to share here
The Art Gerrick Rajo T roadster has an acrylic windshield. When Guffey owned the car he brought it here and talked me into assembling the engine and getting it running for him. These pics are from when Ralph owned it. There was a crack in the windshield that had a sheet metal patch with lots of screws that looked like it was done a long time ago Below are pics from when it was here, that was 2003
Stolen from Instagram this morning. So clever! Hope these load in order. Most of these are screen shots from video.
I did the same thing here when I was restoring Roth’s Road Agent back in the late ‘90’s. I talked to Ed about the bubble blowing process and did a practice one in my kitchen oven to test the theory.
Acrylic is easy to work with and there are almost endless possibilities. The bubble top on the futurian is acrylic I recently made a custom clear acrylic grab bar and a new rear emblem for my corvette Also made a custom laminated yo-yo shift knob for my impala when I swapped in a 4 speed
“One word… plastics!” Hello, Wow, that brought out a great memory. We had just decided to go up to Hollywood to see the matinee showing of The Graduate starring, Dustin Hoffman. It had just opened in New York and now in Los Angeles, the lines were huge, so we waited a couple of days. We also decided that a matinee would be less people than on a Friday/Saturday night. For a Deccember, it was hot. We had been hanging out together for over a year and were heading in the right direction. We loved going to Hollywood for the shows as it was the only place to showcase the exclusive, first run movies at the time. Our road trips always included stopping in West L.A. to the discount record shops that had the same LP records for half price or less in our own area of So Cal. The movies, the rock concerts, car shows, were all mostly in the greater Los Angeles area. This was one of the first movies we purposely went to, in the daytime, in the middle of Los Angeles. Jnaki The line up to get into the theater was long, but we got there early and had about 25 people in front of us and the line behind us went all the way down and around the block. The weather was hot for December and it was one of those things that 20 somethings had to do at the time. But, to score some points, I made a decision to do something out of the ordinary. I asked my wife (girlfriend at the time) to wait there, if she wouldn’t mind, and I would be right back. Then, I left to go to the intersection and crossed the street. I had spotted an ice cream store across the street (closed front door meant A/C) and decided we had plenty of time before the show, but did not want to lose our spots in line. No one was inside and service was very fast. In no time, I was running across the street with two double scoops of ice cream in cones for the both of us. Everyone in line was aghast and happy at the same time. My wife’s (girlfriend) eyes were wide open and the smile across her face was huge. She was impressed that I would do something like that. (score big time points for me…Yes!) So, the other guys in line broke away from the line of couples and ran across the street for the same thing. HA! An Ingenious Hot Rod/Drag Race/Photo guy comes through, Again! At the time, we did not know the movie would be so fabulous and win almost every award given out by Hollywood. We could relate as we were just finished with college and looking ahead to our future together. Note: In the late 69-early 70s era, I was invited to take some photos of a custom car that had a bubble top. It looked cool and futuristic. But, when I sat inside for a ride around this huge park, it was so hot that it ruined the idea of a cool custom car. When the owner showed me the controls and asked if I wanted to drive it around the empty parking lot, I jumped at the chance. It was short lived as the clear top made it too hot to enjoy the odd ball custom and driving at the same time. Plus, the controls were weird and not safe for any style of driving on public roads. YRMV
Mr. Emory sends his own inspiration: Louvered quarter windows on his 356RSR creation... I know Porsche was doing these as early as 1967 on factory race cars, but to me this is a bit out of our period. Or, at the very least, it's hard for me to imagine these working in my own mind's eye when thinking of plastics and traditional hot rodding. And this begs the point - Any time you take inspiration from another focus point, I think you have to do it with extreme caution and consideration. There's a fairly fine line between thoughtful execution of details like this and creating a full-on "theme" car... and I'm not much for theme cars at all... They make me think of reality TV shows. You want to look at it and think, "man... that's a cool execution of an idea I've never had..." You don't want to look at it and think, "That dude made a 1950's grand prix themed hot rod." If that makes sense...
Then again... a 1960's era show rod or drag car... maybe a model-a coupe with wildly colored lexan quarter windows featuring louvers? Hell, that might actually work.
Thought I’d seen it before it got pinstriped like the rest of the car but no luck whole car is very over the top but it’s an example oh, and the entire hood is colored plexi as well
The Iron Orchid, built by Dave Shuten, for Galpin Autosports , has acrylic hood sides & a trans inspection plate.
It's interesting that most of the examples we've come up with in our world are on customs and used almost purely for aesthetic reasons and novelty... Meanwhile, hot rods rarely used the stuff when they could have to a pretty good deal of benefit. It's light, it's easily worked with, etc...
And most anyone over the age of 45 that took shop class learned how to work it. We all made salad utensil sets, letter openers etc....
I "crewed" (i.e., a gopher, team photographer, but very little wrenching) on the Salmen family (Chuck, Frank, & Martha) Bonneville Roadster: The $UM FUN #734 Roadster Still holds the AA Unblown Fuel Roadster (AA/FR) record @ 263.781 MPH (Frank in '03) and the AA Unblown Gas Roadster (AA/GR) record @ 258.924 MPH (Chuck in '02). One of my "jobs" after each run was to carefully clean & polish the "plastic" bubble windscreen: NOTE: This car is now a part of the MARIANI Racing stable:
I made the pedals out of sections of square and rectangle tubing with plexiglass “pedal pads “ also the steering wheel has acrylic grips and horn cap Also the blower belt cover bracket has acrylic decorating the lightning holes I machined the offenhauser out of the valve covers and made acrylic inserts with futurian lettered on it, I backed it up with some holographic vinyl
Since Ryan is Kellison fan, he might be interested in knowing that Jim’s factory in Lincoln CA was down the street from a massive Formica plant. 55 gallon barrels of resin came in on a rail spur and Jim took advantage of the pricing and delivery that Formica commanded. Kellison products were often considered as “cheap”. Truth be known, Jim had an advantage when it came to buying materials. Since plastics are based on petroleum, I suspect that we will see some major price increases as pressures increase for sustainable energy.
The Jalopy Journal
