Customs Where to draw the line... (Customs Only!!)

Sounds like I jumped the gun...sorry. And I do agree with you on the Traditional Kustom movement. If you want to call it traditional, then by definition its gotta be right. The question is, what is right? When these cars were being built (Both Miss Elegance Cars as an Example) they were "ahead of their time." They incorporated features that were not seen on cars before they were added to these two Kustoms. So, if I build a traditional Kustom do I "copy" what they did, or do I interpret what they did. Part of the answer may lie in what Mark M. did when he got the 2nd Miss Elegance. He asked for the original in-dash television so he could restore the car to it's original form, even though the builder had updated the car himself, and excluded the T.V. Thats restoration, and "Cloning" falls into the same line of thinking. All I was saying is that "traditional" as a descriptor means different things to different people. To some, it is traditional to adorn your car with features ONLY from cars later in year model for example. I just think giving a nod to tradition doesn't have to mean "Period Perfect." On the other hand, it can mean just that. It's a matter of choice, not a requirement.

 

When your name is on the title you no longer have to be a "yes man". Questions like this are hard for me to reply to in a respectful fashion. It's like asking another man to come into your bedroom and show you how to have sex with your wife. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

 

I don't think anyone who has posted in this thread has in any way disputed an owner's right to build his car as he sees fit. I don't think it's about rules, about being allowed or not allowed to do anything. I think the question is about getting clarity on what exactly we mean by "traditional".

The philosopher Edmund Husserl called it eidetic reduction, and how it works is you keep on changing particulars about your idea of something, until it no longer is that thing. For instance, you consider a table. You change wooden legs to metal legs, four legs to three legs, wooden top to glass top, make it higher or lower, bigger or smaller, round, square, triangular; it's still a table. But turn the top vertical? All of a sudden you wonder if it makes sense to keep calling it a table. You realize that the idea "table" has something to do with it having a top surface on which you can put things. And the process continues. By stages you get a better and better idea of what you mean, i.e. "Where to draw the line..." It's got nothing to do with forcing or forbidding anyone anything.

 

I used to go 100% and was a radial tire and disc brake hater. Then I got some kids.

 

this is the song that never ends , when it's done we'll sing it again, this is the song that never ends, when it done we'll sing it again, this is the song that never ends, when it's done we'll sing it again, this is the song that never ends, when it's done we'll sing it again, this is the song...

 

I think traditional is cool. Bias tires, drum brakes, stock suspension are all cool and worked fine in the 50s and 60s. The problem is we have to drive on the same streets as all the newer cars that have better suspension and brakes. You have to stop your car in the same distance as the idiot in front of you. It all comes back to that safty thing.
The vehicle also has to be functional. If it's so low you can't drive over a speed bump or one of our Michigan pot holes, it's no longer fuctional. This is all just my opinion.

 

i kept the original wonderbar radio in the dash but because i love my music so much i use an underdash unit (with the usb drive on the face) and use the original dash and rear speaker mounts (for left and right channels) and my 16g usb thumb drive plays non stop music with no skips (unlike my old cd changer which would skip sometimes).. IMO modern stereo equipment is OK if it's done right... I don't like seeing twin Pioneer speakers on the rear shelf of a '62 Impala..

 

I would never tackle doing a show car or a concours restoration, so the only other rules I MUST follow are those of the DMV.

At this stage any car I would build would more than likely be a daily driver, so safety and reliability would play a big role...That means good brakes, and things like stopping distances and inclement weather handling when choosing tires.

The there are my health required things...automatic transmission, power or very light steering, in most vehicles tilt wheel, and being handicapped hand control friendly.

Finally I have a few personal preferences like sticking with the same make engine when possible....or one historically related. I also cringe at cutting into a classic car that is in reasonably restorabil condition.

After all the above, if I was aiming for being able to represent the car as a classic custom, I would try to keep it as historically correct as possible.

 

I agree with you 100%. That was a nice condensed reply that I would bet most folks agree with.

 

isn't it really about what your vision is for your car? Who cares what some other mook thinks.

 

Just go with whatever your comfortable with, granted, you may get some s#!t talked to you, but only YOU decide what goes into your project, your true friends and club members will understand your situation and accept it no-matter what.

the metric system? never heard of it.......

 

....says the guy with independent front suspension on a 32 (?) Roadster for an avatar.

 

keep a ford a ford and so on ! but in the end its your ride so what makes you happy might not make us all happy but we werent trying to please everyone now were we!

 

That and bringing back up a 4 year old debate that's been debated to death.

 

You obviously missed the home page and that avatar "car" is wrong on so many levels.

All true, but the car won't be HAMB PRE 1964 TRADITIONAL and this site is about HAMB PRE 1964 TRADITIONAL. I guess if you live and breath the HAMB, then that's important. If not, it's still a cool place to check out.

It's VERY hard to build a traditional anything, but that's what separates the flock. What makes me cringe are the people who twist and distort the criteria to fit what they built. So, build whatever the hell you want, any way you want. But don't bend the rules to fit into where it doesn't belong.

If you're in a club that doesn't care what your car is or what it looks like, that's not a club.

 

You can do whatever you want. If you own a 56 buick but use parts off vehicles that were never in the early 60's down, you will never get full hamb recognition from some of these folks. Traditional is a term that is to broad in definition. I personally have always liked the term period correct over traditional

 

i love this thread. i feel the same way. ill be looking at a nice mercury or some other traditional kustom(which i now look over quite extensively for out of place stuff) taillight are good, its got bags, but it aint layin frame, all looks good. UNTIL..... i take a peak in the interior, and its got buckets seats and a friggin digital deck. drives me up the damn wall.

now bags are fine with me, think of it this way, you wanna drive your car everywhere, huh? lets think about this for a second, say you gotta run to the wal mart, now its a nice day, so you decide to rip the carson off of your shoebox and take it out to do a bit of shopping. what could it hurt? well things go great until you get to the parking lot. there's about a 7 inch lip in the concrete at the entrance. now, if youre smart, you flip open some little hidden panel and bring it on up a few inches, then youre go. but if you went for the traditional way, i got bad news, youre leaving without your rocker panels, because theyre coming off.

new radios are fine, whats a good drive without music? as long as theyre HIDDEN PROPERLY, its cool.

power steering is a sign that there is a god and he loves us very much. so there's no shame in throwing the front end of a mustang II down there to use that beautiful thing..

to me, anything that improves your old car to make it safer and easier to drive is fine by me, but for gods sake if theres one thing outta line in the way of 'non traditional' im done.

but then again opinions are like assholes, we all have one and they all stink.

 

Dont forget the tilt columns. Thats a major interior staple for a lot of fellas.

 

Yeah, that's for us FAT guy's

BB

 

FYI, bucket seats were around prior to 1949....
If you want to see a great example of an accurate "Traditional Custom", check out JeffSled's here on the HAMB...

 

Since an FNG picked this scab and made it bleed, I thought I would post a link to a closed thread that may help define...Ryan's posts clearly show what TRADITIONAL customs look like.

What is Kustom? Definition please.

 

Okay. That's one opinion.

 

no, THESE kind of bucket seats... in a MERCURY...



this was the actual car i was talking about, other than this, it was actually a pretty nice merc, little mainstream for a traditional merc, but im fine with that. just these seats... ew.

 

i have plenty more pics of this kind of stuff, lemme know if you want to see more.

 

Steelies. Yea, it was bothering me and it's not even a word.

 

What did he say? ^^^^^^^^

 

Glad we had this conversation. I've decided that my 49 Packard will keep its straight 8 drive train. With period correct performance parts; supercharger, insane intake set up that I'm still dreaming up. Because that car was the last of it kind and is loved !!!

 

I'm way, way, WAY over the line.

Brian