Whats the scariest thing youve seen on a rod?

crazy thread!

 

yikes!

 

That second one wasn't Mark Georgetts Fiat? I remember watching that. That Fiat and Datsfa's T were always the epitome of a hot rod to me.
Doc.

 

PS, I had this big chankra come up once on my rod, that was scary!
Well, not really but it would be scary. Had an Artillery guy come to me one day with a bush Tick dug in on his rod.
Doc.

 

Cars like the death trap piece of crap that Thrasher posted are going to hurt us all in the long run.This kind of RAT ROD is going too far . The public see's these cars and judges us all.I have heard all kinds of comments lately from joe public after seeing those kind of cars referring to hot rods as rolling junk.YIKES that hurts. Come on guys lets build safe cars.

 

It just makes me angry that anyone would call them 'Rods'
Bob

 

amazing!

 

just read this,,damn good laugh out of it.......

 

I saw a neighbor's '46 Plymouth years back, he had broken a rear leaf spring, jacked it up, removed the spring and laid in a piece of 4" x 4" fence post, dropped it down and kept driving it.

Bob

 

screwed up a perfectly good steel body...where are these clowns finding the good bodies at? Not if FL, I assure you.

 

Must be, because I'm from SoCal.


-Jason

 

slepe67,
A little O/T, but your avatar is scary. I worked on AC-130A & E models in Thailand in 73-74 and I know what they can do. The new U-models are even scarier.

 

Actually, it only looks bad to the unimformed on mechanical things, but it looks PLENTY STRONG. Dissing it is a good ploy to lead the uninformed down a judgmental avenue as well.

What's scary is that so-called "safety experts" don't recognize a solid hunk of metal as such, only for it's 'appearance'. I'll bet a NSRA safety inspector would 'thumbs down' that connection, just because he had never seen it used before!

Nope, it's not conventional, but don't look unsafe to me. Assuming the person that put it together was mechanically inclined he would have sweated the treads or pinned the joing to lock it all up.

For somebody that don't see the strength that I see in that joint, go ahead and test it. First, lock the wheels in straight-ahead configuration, and I'll lay odds that there ain't anybody that can take hold of the steering wheel and damage that connection.

Further, the weak link would be the woodruff key at the hub of the steering wheel, and I've NEVER seen one sheared off. On some late 20's, early 30's cars with the light switch and hand throttle controls in the middle of the horn button, where the rod that turned the mechanism down at the other end went down through, the entire steering shaft was 7/8" thinwall pipe, thinner wall than 3/4" standard pipe is. If put to a destructive test, it's likely in my mind that the 3/4" DD shaft might fail before the 3/4" pipe would.

It all comes down to, for those informed on mechanical things, to an 'opinion'
on what 'looks' good.................

 

Not a rod, by my kid and my ex bought a 74 El Camino--cause "he liked it".
The deal was-they buy something,and my kid and I (mostly me) keep it up.
Car runs like shit--get a few things fixed--like the rubber gas line to the carb is too long, and the engine fan is hitting it!
But I see the car's got no seat belts. I have an extra set,so I pull up the carpet to bolt them down.Swear to God--the mouth-breather P.O.bolted a couple pieces of PLYWOOD together to make a seat mount. Not TOO bad, but--the son-of-a-bitch WOODSCREWED the seat to the plywood! I grabbed the seat,and ripped it out with almost no problem.
The P.O. was a CAR SALESMAN!--so I took the plywood "mount" and threw it into the guy's showroom--all his buddies laughed so hard,I think one threw up.Last pic is new mount.

 

good to meet you, I'm a gunner on the U's...

 

As bad as all this stuff is, it's prolly not as bad as half the cars you meet after midnight on a Friday or Saturday. Sobering, isn't it?

 

I was living in Cincinnati several years ago and there was a police chase that ended across the river in KY. When the police got up to the window of the car it didn't have a steering wheel. The driver was using a pair of vice-grips clamped to the steering shaft. He was going pretty fast too.

 

This post is loaded with all kinds of engineering ideas!

When I was a kid and my buddy and I where building our first drag car some of the local car guys would come down and show us there cars. 3 of them I will never forget. The first one had wore out a tie rod and it fell off, so he gets it home and puts on his brand new tie rod end rite. He comes and tells us all about it and says the only problem I had was the bolt on the clamp that squeezed the threaded end of the tie rod broke,,, but he fixed it....... with a hose clamp.
Car guy #2 shows up one Friday night ready to go out and pick up some chicks with us in his car that he just got running. We jump in and look around to see a pair of vice grips being used as a steering wheel. Needless to say we didn't go get the chicks.
Car guy #3, He had a nice 69 camaro big block auto transmission drag car. So we go to the track with him and he starts talking about the problem he had getting a shifter. So he shows us the one he rigged up. It was a long piece of linkage rod sticking up through the floor board. First run he tries to shift it and throws it in reverse. I'd give a thousand dollars to post pics of those 3 idiots and there inventions.

 

The wooden suspension worked for my brothers friend.

I was with him getting parts for my car when the rear track arm broke between the spring and axle on his early 60's GMC panel truck. The track arm was forced into the ground and the tire was jammed in the wheelwell. We were around a blind curve so my job was to flag down oncoming traffic while he fixed it.

About an hour late it was "fixed" and we set off for the parts for my car. The track arm was tied up to the frame by rope and the coil spring was pried out and sitting in the van, there was a chunk of firewood between the housing and frame.
We made it the 40 miles back here and instead of getting another track arm he got a better block of 6 x 6" post and more rope.

He and my brother made it from Vancouver to Calgary (over the Rocky Mountains) with the rear end only falling off the block and cocking sideways a few times. It would take 10 minutes (usually in a busy untersection) to jack it up and tie the block back in. They drove it for several more weeks then left the panel truck in Calgary and took the bus home. That must have been about 25 years ago. If anybody there saw it... primer black with "Fabulous Freak Brothers" cartoons drawn all over it.

 

fugly is the word ,oh this thing made me throw up a little

 

My '59 Chevy pickup in high school. I pulled the motor by cutting the stand up motor mounts on the front, I had planned to change the mounts and put in a small block. Reality and a lack of money had me putting the straight six back in. I went ahead and sleeved the mounting struts with pipe and welded the whole mess back together.

Another death defying stunt I pulled was putting bias ply polyglas GT's on the front and giant radials on the back. She steered like a drunken eel. My girlfriend once asked me, "Why does your wheel wobble like that on the passenger side?" The wheel bearings were gone, one had three of the bearings and that much race left.

I fixed the cab mounts by welding big washers over the rusted out holes. I didn't fab them, I welded them OVER the mess. I wish someone would have taken the time to see what the heck I was doing back then...

 

Are you fucking joking? I don't want to come within 100 yards of anything YOU think is safe!!!

It's pipe fittings! Two right hand threaded pieces, meaning you turn it the other way and it gets loose. On top of having twice the inside diameter than what is needed so it's loose as fuck, and being held together by two 1/4" set screws!

You're a god damned moron.

 

probably a whole army of 'em trying lower the bar.

 

I won't go that far, but did you notice that the shaft from the column looks to be a DD, so how is it attached to the top pipe fitting? The angles are all slightly different too, so are the set screws acting as pivots also? There are no set screws from the fitting to the pipe between them either, the threads are the only thing holding this together, that doesn't seem like solid engineering for steering components...

 

The steering looks like something you would see in one of the "RAT ROD" mags. The worst I ever saw was a gasser wanta bee that sat high due to the shocks being welded in the extended position.

 

Here is one I saw a couple years back at a Rod Run on the Washington coast. He was from Vancouver WA and drove this with 3 friends over to Long Beach. A distance of about 100 miles. You will notice the low stance of the frame. The front and rear axles were welded solid to the frame. No floor in it at all and the passengers in the rear had a flat plate welded to the frame for each foot to rest on. The bottom of the pitman arm had asphalt ground into it. The tires were bias ply and the back ones were near bald. It was raining that week end and I bet the trip was wet. There was a real Shelby Cobra parked 20 feet from it and usually had 20-30 people checking it out. When this one pulled in the crowds we usually 50 plus checking it out. Personally I think they were there to check out the size of his balls! I have nothing against the rat rod movement. Matter of fact I think it is cool as long as they are built safe. I have seen many that I have been impressed with and would love to own or drive. But I'm sorry, this isn't it!

 

What is going to happen if someone unlatches the trailer hitches??

 

Yeah, I don't even pull a bike trailer without a hitch pin, this guy didn't even have the forethought for that, and it's his life we're talking about here!

 

The two scariest things I saw at Detroit Dragway. The first one was a mid-eighties fox chassic Mustang that a guy put a big block chevy in it with no frame connectors and when I put my hand on the back of the driver's bucket seat to check the rollbar, the seat moved. When I moved the carpet, the rear seat mounts were hanging in the air, because the floor was rotted out and the roll bar was plastic. The second was a 1978 Cutlass that the other tech man checked and let through. As it went down the track something was sparking. When it got to the ET shack, the starter looked under it and found a come-a-long holding the chassic together on the one side.
George