"The Project" (In novel form) Chapter 1 - The Find

Bracing is done inside the main body. looking good.

 

Sweet, got the 348 from the 58 impala, it turns over, was only a few hundo, and i think its going to make this baby awesome, with the Mcculloch!

 

You should be a writer, Man you hit me of all the feelings..My old lady say's IS THAT THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR CAR. I go hell yes and she gives `me a hug..

 

So a friend of mine Bear Graves wrote this the other day, and I found it to be a great way to start a letter…

You all are looking quite fine tonight; the holidays seem to agree with you. Late autumn is my favorite time of the year. There is something poignantly beautiful in watching the earth make its bed, in preparation for sleep. People start to dress a little bit better, it's a time for gatherings, and the event horizon of the most major of holidays is nigh. Last night, as I took my dog and pipe for a walk, it also occurred to me that all of my most memorable, and often lasting, relationships began during fall.”

So As I sit in my grandfathers old chair, with my great dane Brutus laying majestically at my feet beside the fireplace, making the scene of us both resembling a portrait of a medieval lord, except instead of a noble robe, a white tank top and warn jeans, I began to look at the discounts offered to HAMB members. (Which I add, if you are not a member, consider yourself ‘out of the loop.&#8217 I find myself looking for small parts for my engine, and interior that suits me

I took a moment today to ponder what has shaped me to want to put the small bits of my personality into the build of this car... what I came to realize is that it was the connection I share with people like you and like me.

Every car you own has its own history, its own childhood, so to speak. That childhood, we often consider starting at the point we rescue or acquire our car, seldom before it. It's as though when we find a classic car, either a massive rebuild, or a stock clunker were going to leave untouched, we often don’t take into account its past before us. We know that now the car has reached a place where we can bring it closer to its full potential.

No beautiful machine owned by any hot rodder is an under achiever, it’s full to the brim with potential as only can be truly experienced by a new owner.

With the exception of (winning) race cars, most people see the life of their car beginning with the day you found it and brought it home... cleared that space in the garage for it beside the boxes of your dads old clothes you’ve been meaning to go through, and just clear of your work bench... At least that’s how it was for me.

The day I brought my first hot rod home, I swept my garage cleaner then it ever had been, almost a church like setting, the holy light from those neon’s signs illuminating the tool box shaped alter, the holy communion of Schlitz beer anointing my coke machine, the heavenly choir of my rock-ola jukebox softly singing the angelic hymns of 1956 rock and roll… my garage went from a tool for to a to a temple in 1 hour. My 48 ford coupe being the arc of the covenant placed on display in the center, safe from the whip cracking archeologist and crazed Nazi treasure hunters. The car was finally safe with me...

This feeling of 'a new beginning' is similar to that of a really amazing book, and when we get to the part that is staging the climax or epic battle, the book is left blank.... not empty and void, but blank lines, open for us to fill in the way the book would best go in accordance to us and our own dreams. (side note, it is really amazing how much of our cars we build have small characteristics that reflect maybe our grandfathers car, or our dads car, the car we first took our wife on a date in, or the car we first made out in at the drive in theater... sometimes some of those events seem to somehow invade the canvas in our mind we have for our car so very subtly. For example I recall riding to the lumbar yard with my grandpa in his 1962 Impala ss convertible gold anniversary edition, drove like a floating cloud, to pick up scraps of wood that he would use to make small toys and drop off at the homeless children’s center. We would fill those seat floors as much as we could get and the guys at the yard knew my grandpa by name... something that added to his iconic image in the eyes of a child. And now, seeing wood bracing in a car reminds me of that. So when the steel was installed to replace the wood bracing, a original wood beam was left just under the dash were I could see it, and it made the car feel, older to me, and compassionate like my grandpa.)

A car in a garage is a euphoric intoxicating drug for the mind and imagination. You stay up late thinking of what finish on your headers would look best with the color scheme you love. The change from white walls to black walls might totally affect the engine you would imagine your car having... Perhaps you imagine if straight or diamond pleats would match the air filter housing lines... the point is, however you imagine it, it consumes your ability to dream.

This process of imagining how your car will transpire is one of the gifts that this lifestyle of being a “hot rodder” has given us. Each person here who owns a car weather completed or in pieces has dreamed equally on the completed form that car will take. I would make that claim that this connection we share as enthusiasts for our own machine is a connection that we all equally share one to another regardless of how many cars, how much money, are or gender, and therefore creating a family of people with an understanding and connection to each other based on something else… something almost spiritual. An equalizer I would conclude.

I have been involved in many social circles, some close and physical like a sports team, or a class room setting. Some work related like a team project, or even college. Come exist strictly on the internet, like The HAMB or a tobacco web site I occasionally view for spot on recommendations, even car shows are great social meetings were friends can be made... The connection one finds in each of these groups is that of community united by the similarities in the job or task at hand. Car people like us are united by something mental as we don’t have those tangible things in front of us at our computers. This desire and creativity we experience, and the imagination that accompanies it is something that we all share equally and therefore all are united by that ideology!

Just take a moment and think about it, we have hundreds of posts on people asking for help and recommendations, opinions, input and education. Each thread full of views and posts, but even there people posts saying I don’t know the answer but I hope you find it, here is what I figured out, or even links to other websites one could never find on his own.. What a camaraderie we share. This is really something unique, almost therapeutic. Keep it up!

 

Wonderful prose!

Your piece of wood under the dash to remind you of your Grandfather struck a note.

I always pin a photo to my dash at shows to remind me of my origins



My ole man's shiteatin' grin reminds me that he thought he was gettin' a new 49 Buick Sedanette when this pic was taken.

Little did he know that I was on the way.

 

now thats cool, i should get a photo of my grandpa, i think i do have one of him before the war, he was a Captain in the Navy, let me see if i can dig it up!

 

Great thread. Keep up the good work.

 

heres a photo from today

 

Somewhere I've got a couple of pictures of me in almost exactly the same poses only I'm with my '29 Model A coupe (your dad is "slightly" better looking). I'll bet both sets of pictures were taken no more than a month or two apart.

Frank

 

so in my search for some family photos, i found some stuff thats going to knock your guys socks off! now if i can figure out how to get them on this internets... haha

 

Man, when I saw the first chop picture, I thought Rat Rod. But boy, was I wrong. I looks sinister man, in a very good way. The McCulloch will look awesome on there for sure. If you don't know anybody with a scanner, you can send me the pics and I will get them on the internet for you.

 

ah this is brilliance! good looking car too fuck thats a mean chop

 

ALRIGHT! we have swingin doors, haha

 

Your post and story warmed the cockles of my heart. We are doing very similar builds. Mine is a 34 ford 5 window....just chopped it 3.5" but I didn't lay the posts back, I added in a piece instead.
I also am using 34 chevy hood sides because they are just so damn cool. Plus, they were available. I also own a 33 ford hood and always admired the curved louvers but I'm using the chevy sides instead. It was great to see your car with the hood installed...gives me motivation to get mine finished.
Gonna run a "W motor" eh" Good choice, IMHO...T-man ran one in his pheaton [sp] and he liked it...I'm running a 57 Pontiac punched to 370 cubes with a 5 speed and big Winters quick change with full torsion bar suspension front and rear. The chop on your car loooks wonderful! Keep it up.

 

Santa brought me a new intake manifold, as well as 4 excelsior tires, new u bolts, door hinges and bear claw latches... I was a good boy, haha

 

new tires made it!

 

Ive got a Chev 34 5 window ive been trying to sell and nobody wants. Nice build I THINK im going to save this till spring and reevaluate my coupe.

 

These chevys are cool, the masters are alot bigger then the model a, and i dig the way they look. Keep it, build it, and love it in my opinion, hahaha

 

So today I went to work and sat down in my cubicle. My small little castle surrounded by other castles, fortified with coffee mugs around the desks like 12pound cannon turrets from the days of old. Small pictures of family members sit on the walls like stained glass windows in a mediaeval church, and the lady down the hall, 3 castles over from me has a blue haired troll doll on top of her computer looking like a small Napoleon, surveying his castle for the much anticipated galloping hordes of swine most certainly set on coming to usurp his thrown. The water cooler in the corner is like the only pure water source in the kingdom. Depending on your diplomatic relations with other lords of their cubicle castles, you have to plan when you can go to the water supply. When it is most safe. You see that guy Ramon from graphic design is always there, cracking jokes, but he&#8217;s an idiot, the kingdoms jester and everyone tunes him out, he&#8217;s no threat. But the secretary for the floor manager, the 46 year old lady who still uses curlers, she&#8217;s the one to avoid, she&#8217;s a tyrant. Its imperative to not meet her at the water cooler, especially on a bad day which is every day. She hurls ballista arrows 200 lbs heavy and 6 feet long at you every time she has to wait 2 seconds for you to fill up your ramen cup. Life is hell. Then again, there&#8217;s the girl from a floor up who always comes down to use our water cooler and not the one in her break room. Maybe the warlords on the 17<SUP>th</SUP> floor are ruthless, maybe she is looking for alliances outside her country, maybe there water supply is tarnished with the blood stained corpses of fallen comrades, maybe she just wastes time until its 5 and she can go home to her cat no doubt. The American dream has become an office desk. My America stretches from the end of my tissue box to the end of my desk phone. Which I add blinks all day reflecting to me that other people are on conference calls and dealing with people other humans out there in the real world, I digress. However the American dream has to be real in a greater form, I mean, if it didn&#8217;t exist how would we know about it? Just like darkness, if it didn&#8217;t exist we wouldn&#8217;t know it was there as an opposite to light. So if I take a minute and think about it, I would think when were we as people the most free. When were us Americans able to first take what we had and make something from it that was outside the boundaries of our structure? (And by Americans I don&#8217;t mean the 5% that own more then the other 95% but I mean open to everyone). Well I cant say art fits into this because art is its own worshiped article throughout time, all the way back to the earliest cave writing found in southern France. It would have to be something that existed as expression and perhaps became art later, im not sure. In the 18<SUP>th</SUP> century it was about travel and exploration, In the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century I would say it was about surviving, and not getting shot by anyone. In the 1900s I would say, it was about being educated. Education was the way in which one could express himself and keep himself entertained with his friends. Until the wars. World War 1 and 2 both defined a generation and was more then just something to do, but it was a consumption of the minds and unfortunately the bodies of thousands. At the end of the war, people had to create groups to identify with each other, however because the society wasn&#8217;t fighting in a fox hole in Belgium or manning a tail gunner slot over berlin, or stuck in 3 feet of mud on Iwo Jima like my grandpa, they were seen as outcasts and a &#8216;counter culture&#8217;. The truth is where else but with each other could they find the kind of tight nit friendships as they had with the men that they were dying with and for in the war. This is one of the most plain facts that lead to the birth of motorcycle clubs, and car clubs. The hot rod was built as a rebellion against structure, against laws, against speed limits, and against cubicle castles. The idea of a hot rod is simple best described as freedom from the intended structured way of things. Its each person with half a mind to do making some chaos out of something simple. Imagine the idea that each person could take the same template or pretty close and influence it in a way that is isolated and unique to that person. Four wheels and a motor were had by all hot rodders, but the similarities might as well of stopped there. Now what do we have? I tell you it&#8217;s a disgrace to see a 17,000 dollar paint job on a 70s mustang at a hot rod show. Or the idea of a digital dash in hot rod. I could go on. But I would just get more upset. The point is, if you feel like your life isn&#8217;t that exciting, if your tired of your cubicle warfare, then build something. It doesn&#8217;t have to be a hot rod like your dad built,( it should be) but it doesn&#8217;t have to. Just go out and do something in your garage or in your living room when everyone&#8217;s asleep and look at it and say that the way I wanted it to be, thats hot rodding. That&#8217;s being free.

 

Awesome ride

 

"time spent away from the castle becomes a premium, a gift not to be trivialized. it's why men go to war in the spring. stretch your horizons, breathe the new air, realize your dream, win your war."

YES! hahaha well said

 

Thinking, waiting, thinking, and more thinking, and listening for what was right... and then he spoke, and I mean the Baron, he said to me in a mental telepathic way, I mean he flat out told me; now I also think this came at this point because perhaps he had to trust me, and with those hours of sanding and cleaning, he felt that he could be honest with me, and he said, "I want to run fast again"...

I got chills when I read this. God speed.

 

Now that we are climbing towards Tolstoy's War & Peace as far as word count, let see some progress on the car!! This was about a Hot Rod I think but for some reason I have totally forgot what this thread is about. I'm going back to page one and I hope by the time I get back to page 5 we are going to have some more progress on the 348 or the chassis!!!

 

oh we got progress! new lowered cross member is in! pistons are out of the 348 and its getting bored at the engine shop, we just re sanded it back down to shiny steel, and the wheels are getting sandblasted, new pictures should be up tonight! dont you worry your little head! hahaha

 

Nice!!! I am stoked to see them. Projects take on a whole new look and feeling when sanded to bare metal. It's almost like you start to see the direction for the first time and rejuvenates you motivation.

 

Enjoy the writing and the buildup. looking forward to more to see where it goes.
I had a 34 Chev once myself.
Pic with p-shopped in wheels.VV