The way they "were".....for REAL.....

Wrong. We could have gone all day without it being said. A person putting down some 'rod that was running races before that person was an embyro, judging it because of it's "look", comes from the bottom of the food chain. What's more insulting as hell, to any person that has been driving 'rods, long before that person was even born, is that one can even think it's "busting balls".
"Most" H.A.M.B.rs don't try to "bust balls" anyhow, it's just a very few that, apparently, are antisocial. I suggest instead, that we listen to what people say about their cars without reacting, in an apparent fear, trying to fend off some imagined threat to our existence as 'rodders.

That all said,, just in case you're a speed reader and always read the last paragraph first. You don't need to go all the way to the front, here's the short version

Having a 30 year old 'rodder telling a 60 year old 'rodder that he is FNG or NEWBIE is just fine, but using the term as an insult, or insulting his ride, or insulting his taste, is thumb****ing behavoir.

 

Well, this post has stirred the juce a little -that is good.......

We all- young and old can learn from these cars posted here,take a look- reminisce- make new plans -go with it!.

Remember,just as a youngster can learn -us older guys who can't or won't, are just stupid.

 

Wannabes might. Hot Rodders wouldn't.

Mutt

 

I agree...I grew up in the 60's and those were the kinds of cars I remember. Looks good to me too...

 

Do you EAT the cheese first?

 

"Back in the Day", talking late fifties, early sixties when I started messing with cars, like the man said we all wanted finished shiny paint and chrome but no $$$$$. So we did what we could. Did you know that you can do a fairly decent paint job with a good brush. Painted a shoe box that way, not bad either. First car that I painted with a spray gun was in 1963, a '55 chev 2dr hardtop. A $19.95 Sears spray gun and a very small very old borrowed compressor the paint was lacquer International Harvester Turquoise a color that was on my dad's 1962 IH pickup. It wasn't great but it was painted and it was shiny. Never mind the orange peal texture. What did we know about color sanding then! To me the biggest thing was that I did all the work myself. Couldn't afford to have some "professional" do it, so if you wanted it done you did it yourself. No such thing as a credit card built rod then........

 

On the subject of painting ,"in the day" a popular way of painting your car other than the Vacuum sweeper method,was with a " Powder puff ".
You'd get a clean new one and actually "dab or blot" the paint on and after a couple-three applications ,you had a paint job.
Thankfully the old Dulux Alkalyd Enamel was very slow drying and usually flowed well even after a few days dry time.....But the end result was actually very decent looking![Plus no brush strokes] .
Another observation was the general lack of aftermarket wheels......and using steelies and or rims with hub caps.

 

I will never understand why someone will jump into a post and start that childish **** when we are just talking about old cars. Older guys were there through it all, from the beginning of the hobby, and are still interested and enjoying the hobby. How does it come about that someone can say what is correct or even traditional. Whatever the owner wants is his or her choice and in my opnion they are all welcome and I still enjoy the stories and information.

 

I don't think Jeepers meant anything serious by his remark, guys. If you look at the car in question & throw a set of radial tires on it, it would certainly have a typical "street rod" look to it. In my opinion, anyways. Its nothing to get wound up about.

 

back to the post....

Keep them coming. There's a lot of boys on other sites that think theses cars are supposed to be in primer and dare I say..."more ratty". I love the pictures posted so far.

 

At least 3 of those cars are CA. cars. The roadster is the infamous Bob McGee-**** Scritchfield "LA Roadster Logo Car" Take a good look @ that car, notice the lack of hinges, v-spreader bar by Hank Negly, outside exhaust,(although I think Scritch could've had Valley Custom or somebody duplicte the hood side so the originals would have been cut.) and how when SO-CAL restored the car they used the shock mounts & headlight stands for the PC3g New traditionalist line.

The Highland plating special (restored by Ron Weeks in the 60's) and I believe now running an Ardun has tons of history. The was a world wide thing back then just as it is now & impacts all that it touches.
Cars are cars wherever they may come from or live.

 

Picture this.
On our farm, during the mid to late 50s, my Dad had two Model A pickups, a ’30 and a ’31. Imagine having a couple of model A pickups only 25 years old! The ’31 was not used on the road, or to go to town. We used it like a tractor, to pull a light trailer and haul stuff; hay, fence fixing supplies, for utility around the farm. As it turned out, I took my driving test in the ’30 when I was 16. After about 9 years of experience, that driving test was a piece of cake.
Anyhow that summer, or the one before, Dad bought a 1946 John Deere from a man that had just been discharged from the Army. He had gotten the new tractor on priority because he was a Vet.
One day the battery went dead on the ’31. We pulled the pickup out in the windbreak under the trees, and hitched the fence fixing trailer up to the new tractor.
It was a routine for the entire family to go to town, on Saturday, about once a month. Our parents conducted business and went shopping, we kids hung out and loitered around on main street. I don’t think we had ever seen a stripped down Model A before. Our neighbor had a Model T without fenders, but we hadn’t gotten the ‘hot rod’ idea yet. One Saturday we came across a hot rod magazine in Duckwalls(I think, the drug-store anyhow). The pictures in that magazine got our attention.
Back on the farm, during the next few weeks, we stripped that pickup. It took us a while, because all we had was crescent wrench, fencing pliers, screw driver, hammer and chisel. Hood, fenders, bumpers, and boards came off. I can see to this day, as clear as if I had a picture, the faded and thinning blue paint on that truck, worn though in places, the red-lead primer showing through. We hung the light bar off the radiator cap with a piece of hay-wire, with future plans, that somehow never materialized, to mount them on motorcycle fenders bracketed off the front axle. Had that all figured out, just didn't have the material, tools, or expertise to do it. Oh yes!, we had plans for that truck!
That '31 never ran again, until after I left the farm at least, it's gone now. Before a couple of years had p***ed, the starter, water pump, ******, radiator, etc., had all been cannibalized to keep the ’30 going. I visited the farm a couple of years ago. The present occupant still has the hood and 'boards off that pickup. The hood, all four pieces still together, flattened out and being used to close off an opening between two hog sheds. I checked it to see if it was worth salvaging, but the hinges were all rusted rigid. The running boards are hanging on nails on the back of the garage.
In the minds of two farm kids, with that magazine as a motivational tool, our imaginations ran wild. In our minds, we had the best damned hot rod in the whole wide world.

 

Well I'm in my 30's and stand true to the painted aspect of finishing the car, but I fully agree with the money part is that you go as far as you can that the wallet will allow. I was fortunate enough when i was six years old to drive the Highland plating special on the same road that I bought my house on recently. It was in our family for about 15 years, the car is now restored to it's late 50's early 60's style with a full hood and a carbed flathead, it has white interior as well. The blower that was on the car is still intact and sits next to the car and it resides in NJ. I may be critical at times about period correctness but it's all I know, I was around the "Early Period" stuff my entire life and believe that the west coast is not the only place where cool stuff comes from, besides the east coast there were a ton of excellent cars that came out of the Kansas City area as well as Detroit and Chicago. I do have some great pics but still need to figure out how to shrink pictures which I am going to make myself learn so I can share them with the HAMB in the near future.

 

As the lead in to this thread pointed out, "we tend to lull ourselves..............."

Restored hot rods don't truly represent "real on the street hot rods". Yes they have their place. I admire them. I love them. But you were born about 20 years too late to truly be "around", as you say, the "Early Period" stuff. History is being "re-written" every day by youngsters coming onto the scene.

Hot rods, as most family cars were also, almost without exception, painted with either a brush or powder puff, because that's the way it was done. It was accepted. A body-shop spray job was for the upper cl***. Most real hot rods were built by individuals, not by custom shops. That's why its a bum rap anytime a person decides to "judge" whether a 'rod is authentic or not. Suggesing that a primer, or brush paint job is out of line is one of the most blatent, because primer is the most "traditional". "Primer" was red-lead, used in the same fasion as sanding-primer is used now.

Keep on trukin' and please don't be offended, but I'm older than you are, so I've been present during the last 60-some years of the "period".

 

b29Chevy, that is a great story. Thanks for sharing.

 

Was the Plymouth a Midwest car? Kind of recall it as powder blue and probably at Oswego, IL late 50's early 60's.

 

This talk about how cars were painted reminds me of a story that my dad (who is 70) tells about his dad painting a car in the late 1940's or early 1950's. He painted it maroon using a powder puff also. My dad said it looked great after being rubbed out. Gramps wasn't a hot rodder though, as he told my dad after he torched the springs on his 48 chevy convertible, "those engineers go to school for years to learn how to design suspensions, and you f***ed it all up in 20 minutes.

 

WHOA, man! You totally took that the wrong way! I was making a statement on the prevalent 'rockasilly' at***ude that has actually seemed to wane as of late and has never been much of a prob on the HAMB (think Ruffrodders or OSR). But I have seen new guys post on this very board with pix of their cars similair to this and the flamers always have a go at them. I NEVER jump on that bandwagon; as a social worker/teacher of at risk kids, I see WAY TOO MUCH of that **** at work to even think about it at home. Sorry if you took it the wrong way-I think the car rocks, personally!