Is Hotrodding dead?
I don't think it's dead. I was out of the hobby for close to 30 years before I built my Demon. It was a matter of making sure the family was taken care of first. During that 30 years I always told the wife that one of these years I was going to build a 72 Demon. The day finally arrived when I could afford to do it. Now I am building a new 340 blower engine for it and doing it the hotrodding way, on the cheap, and trying to make a mechanical fuel injector work on the street.
Jack
I went through much of the same process. I stopped the hobby for a while, raised 3 kids, and put them all through college. My youngest is now 27 years old, so the past few years has been more about my wife and I.
I'm in it again, and I think I'm enjoying it even more now than I did as a kid. for one thing money isn't an issue, and I don't have the urgency I had as a kid to get and keep the car on the road.
For me the target car is a 70-72 Swinger. I like all the "A" bodies, but the the 70-72 really catches my eye for some reason. Of those there I prefer the 1971 Swinger. It has the grill I prefer over the 72 grill, it has the rear bumper/tail lights I prefer over the 70, and it has the flush side marker lights I prefer to the 72 and later surface mounted lenses. I also prefer the square nose to the "beak" noses and the vent windows to the the lack of vent windows on the 73 and later Swinger.
Back to the topic:
When I think of "Hot Rodding" I don't envision all the high tech shops and equipment available today. You mentioned working on a mechanical fuel injector system for your blower motor,
THAT'S "hot rodding".
My first car was a 57 Ford Fairlane with an inline 6. It had a 1 Bbl carb. I wanted two of them, so I built an intake manifold out of old plumbing fittings (galvanized pipe, nipples, flanges, elbows, and such), bought an extra 1 Bbl carb from a junk yard (I believe I paid $1.50 for it), and made linkage out of threaded rod, and and gaskets out of oak-tag, and the darned thing worked! Not well, but it worked, and the car was pretty fast with that contraption on it. Not quick by any stretch of the imagination, though. I was 16 years old, and hooked!
"Hot Rodding" is more than just buying bolt ons. It's a state of mind, and an
"I can do it differently and better" attitude.
Parts swapping isn't Hot Rodding".
Innovation is Hot Rodding.
Just my 2ยข.
