Has a lot of old school hot rodding been lost?

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HankRearden

HankRearden

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Full disclosure. I grew up in a family shop that had been building race cars and hot rods since the model A up hrough racing on the beach at daytona and drag cars in the 70's and hot tords in the 80's. It was old school (outdated) by the time I came along I was exposed to a lot of things people thought was nuts even in the lat 80's early 90's so my perspective is probably skewed.

But I was thinking about how a lot of the things that my grandad and great grandad did are lost due to a bunch of reasons.
I mean who re-arches leaf springs with an anvil and a hammer? Who builds slant sixes for a dirt track car? Who has factory crank counterweights machined down and knife edged anymore? Who modifies a chassis to use two different length torsion bars on a dirt car? Who the hell hotrods old Plymouth flatheads?
A lot of these practices are lost dues to better options now days and many due to it being more cost effective to just buy a crank or a cylinder head than spend the man hours or machine shop bill necessary.
But as I look around the world is changing. Things that were cheap and readily available a couple years ago are hard to come by and suspect quality now. I'm finding myself out of necessity dipping back into some of the things I learned as a kid. Hell Im planning to weld a carb flange into a jeep efi Intake. Something I never would have considered had I not seen it as kid.

Are any of you experiencing this? Or I am I just maybe overly nostalgic?
Are these kind of things being lost to time?
 
I feel the same way as you do. So many of my old time engine builder buddies are getting out of the hobby due to a number of reasons, mainly health in most cases and they talk the same about the things done in the past that are no longer done because the skill set died when Joe or Don or Bob passed away. All I can do is remember what they taught me and try to pass on a little bit their passion to friends of mine. I think nowadays the kids that I know don't seem to get all that fired up about the sport or take something and make it into something fast and different than what everybody else has. Their big thing is buy it from the dealer, put a tune in it and then go drifting around in circles at street intersections more than going street racing. I don't get it but it's their thing. The old days of build it yourself or run what you brung are disappearing along with the guys who made the sport cool! I'm old!
 
Am participating in a final clean out and crush of a local yard that operated from the fifties up until two years ago. Am trying to get some clean square body, and also some '88 to '00 truck parts out of there, before they are gone. The roundy round circuit certainly did consume a lot of good parts, that could have been "saved" and used for restoration projects. This has been a traditionally "poor" area, and yet, it seems literally everyone has to have a new truck, with wheels, and a new crossover or "suv" for the wife, also with wheels. I've been lucky, was able to buy an initial property, and then an additional piece of land, before the crazy price "run up". But am driving 30 to 45 year old stuff as daily drivers.
 
I totally agree with th OP. It is leaving fast. I am trying to find a younger guy to learn how to rebuild distributors, have one guy supposed to come by on Sundays to learn them, Not yet! I guess he is plugged into a OBD II port somwhere.
 
halifaxhops said:
I totally agree with th OP. It is leaving fast. I am trying to find a younger guy to learn how to rebuild distributors, have one guy supposed to come by on Sundays to learn them, Not yet! I guess he is plugged into a OBD II port somwhere.
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I actually saved an old distributor machine from my grandads shop. It is rusted to **** now and I don't know how to work it but I refuse to give it up because someday I may fix it and learn how to properly set up distributors.
 
Well Guys, we have to face the facts... Our days are numbered, Not just because of our age but because ICE are on their way out. At some time , hopefully not in the next 30 years or so I suspect there will no longer be gas stations and if we want to run our ICE cars we will have to distill our own alcohol.

I'm leaving my Dart to my daughter but my guess it will be more of a burden than a blessing. She can do work on cars and can learn but...

I suspect most of our cars will end up getting crushed by the next generation or 2 and some may end up in museums.


It makes me sad but it is inevitable!
 
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Most of those things have been lost to a degree simply because of the changes in what is available to work with.


I think hot-rodding has just taken on a different meaning to younger kids. They are in a computer adjusting a tune and trying to defeat emissions controls not doing machine work to eek out more horsepower.

By the way...I try to grab any old shop gear I can find...thus far a 1950s alignment system and a "on car" wheel balancer.
 
It is much easier to just "LS" it anymore, saw more than my share of LS SWAP t-shirts being worn at the PRI show this weekend. I guess you can still call it hot rodding, but it is more writing a check nowadays then grabbing a wrench...
 
You don't have to restore things now because you can buy everything new. Still
there are guys that like restoring and using original parts. I think they get more
out of the hobby.
 
Hell when I was young I didn't have the means to buy much of anything new. My buddies and I would restore what we had. We would read Hot Rod Magazine for ideas but rarely had the resources to build things that way. 65'
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I remember taking auto shop in high school, starting at 15 (way back in the late 70's). I had a 67 Charger with a 318 LA, I popped the distributor out and took it to school on my bicycle just to learn how the distributor testing machine worked, I think it was a Sun brand, no idea what model. We had a brand new shop with all new tools and equipment, including state of the art valve grinding machines, alignment rack, top of the line engine analyzer, etc.

I tried to soak up as much as I could from our instructor, he had been a dealership mechanic for decades, mainly Chrysler and Ford, and was also certified by the RCMP to do high speed "test runs of" their highway pursuit vehicles. So much of what he had to share was unfortunately curtailed by the school's curriculum though he did still manage to keep most of us interested in learning, he was one of the first to swap a 351 Ford V8 into an early 1980's Ford Ranger pickup.

We eventually got 2 more instructors, both were strongly GM oriented, which I think helped me gain an appreciation of all brands. I learned a great deal of what I know today, but as the OP stated, there has been a definite shift from the "run what ya brung and hope it's enough" that I grew up with to the "how deep are your pockets?" mentality. I still like the old stuff, I've had modern muscle, and while they are definitely fun and fast, the feeling is so much different when you built it yourself.

Just my .02
 
missing linc said:
I remember taking auto shop in high school, starting at 15 (way back in the late 70's). I had a 67 Charger with a 318 LA, I popped the distributor out and took it to school on my bicycle just to learn how the distributor testing machine worked, I think it was a Sun brand, no idea what model. We had a brand new shop with all new tools and equipment, including state of the art valve grinding machines, alignment rack, top of the line engine analyzer, etc.

I tried to soak up as much as I could from our instructor, he had been a dealership mechanic for decades, mainly Chrysler and Ford, and was also certified by the RCMP to do high speed "test runs of" their highway pursuit vehicles. So much of what he had to share was unfortunately curtailed by the school's curriculum though he did still manage to keep most of us interested in learning, he was one of the first to swap a 351 Ford V8 into an early 1980's Ford Ranger pickup.

We eventually got 2 more instructors, both were strongly GM oriented, which I think helped me gain an appreciation of all brands. I learned a great deal of what I know today, but as the OP stated, there has been a definite shift from the "run what ya brung and hope it's enough" that I grew up with to the "how deep are your pockets?" mentality. I still like the old stuff, I've had modern muscle, and while they are definitely fun and fast, the feeling is so much different when you built it yourself.

Just my .02
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You sound like me. I took Auto Shop for 2 years in High School and was curious about everything. We had tear down engines along with some new engines donated to the school from Ford and Chrysler. A 289, 240 truck motor and a 383 4barrel motor with a Torqueflite trans for winning the National Auto Shop Troubleshooting Contest in 1968 held at WMU. We built a rail car for the 383 and had a beer keg mounted on it for a gas tank. Drove it around the school grounds. It was a screamer. Great times.
 
abodyjoe said:
oh brother.. that time of year again huh.. the old they don't do things like we used to thread..
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You are probably right. I am probably being overly nostalgic. It sure is nice to be able to buy reproduction parts instead of scouring the world looking for original used pieces.
 
416stroker said:
You sound like me. I took Auto Shop for 2 years in High School and was curious about everything. We had tear down engines along with some new engines donated to the school from Ford and Chrysler. A 289, 240 truck motor and a 383 4barrel motor with a Torqueflite trans for winning the National Troubleshooting Contest in 1968 held at WMU. We built a rail car for the 383 and had a beer keg mounted on it for a gas tank. Drove it around the school grounds. It was a screamer. Great times.
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At one point we had a brand new Chevy C10 that had been damaged in transit donated to our shop. We learned a lot from disassembling and rebuilding that truck. The only caveat was that any parts that were removed had to be reinstalled. Nice to be able to work on a new vehicle, no rust or mountains of grease to deal with.
 
The fact is "it's mixed." the average guy is at some disadvantage, due to lack of suppliers. Yeh, we have jegs and summit, you ever tried to get REAL information out of either? REAL information about their products, either off the website or from some guy on a phone?

On the other hand there are some awesome cars being built. One of my favorite is the "worlds fastest leaf spring Dart" which for sure is not a backyard build.

Many of the guys building these cars are making real money doing whatever they do. It is for sure "mixed."

Laws and regulations don't help. Many states have a screwed up licensing attitute towards old cars. Many states still insist on smogging old cars in some way.

And some states like Maryland have ridiculous state "safety" inspections.
 
Best to share and teach a youth everything you know.
My dad and grandpa were patternmakers. Wood models and patterns for industry. Sand castings and duplicater models and the such. My grandpa ran the patternshop at mercury marine and my dad ran his own pattern shop from 1966 to 1998, my grandpa joined him shortly after retiring. Its a dead trade with the onset of cnc machining. Totally lost forever. The only place to find a patternmakers job is in a foundry doing gates, runners and overflow which is apprentice work. Matter of fact, my dads last apprentice went on to work in a shop glueing up wood stock which was shaped on a cnc. Then he got it back to sand it, add fillets and seal it with shellac. Apprentice work.
 
When friends or just random people I meet find out I'm retired and restore old cars there response is often "I wish I knew how to do that". I tell them they are always welcome I'm in the the shop almost every day and I'll teach you what I know. As of this date no one has taken me up on it.
 
Don K said:
When friends or just random people I meet find out I'm retired and restore old cars there response is often "I wish I knew how to do that". I tell them they are always welcome I'm in the the shop almost every day and I'll teach you what I know. As of this date no one has taken me up on it.
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I'm not always easy to get along with when I'm working in the garage, but if someone legitimately wants to learn, I will gladly teach them. I told my stepchildren all the same thing, "I'll help you fix it, and share my knowledge, tools, and experience so that you can learn to fix it yourself, but I will not fix for you".
Two of them did make some effort, which was great, the other two, not interested, which is fine as well, though it did cause some tension when their mother felt that I should fix their **** anyway, just because I could.
 
ch1ll said:
Today’s auto mechanics can’t really fix anything, they just replace parts.
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There are a few but you have to love electronics and chasing down the problems. But time costs money and that's the problem with dealerships you only get paid by the job and not to find and repair engineering screw ups let alone software/hardware issues or Chinese parts. Moma please don't let your babies grow up as mechanics or Heaven forbid any working person as it's always there fault and you don't get paid ****.
 
missing linc said:
I'm not always easy to get along with when I'm working in the garage, but if someone legitimately wants to learn, I will gladly teach them. I told my stepchildren all the same thing, "I'll help you fix it, and share my knowledge, tools, and experience so that you can learn to fix it yourself, but I will not fix for you".
Two of them did make some effort, which was great, the other two, not interested, which is fine as well, though it did cause some tension when their mother felt that I should fix their **** anyway, just because I could.
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Ya about the only one willing to learn anything is my 8-year-old granddaughter. This spring I'm going to teach her to lash valves.
 
And to answer the original question, yes. Only the people with money can afford this now. I guess I'm not getting no titanium rods for Christmas this year. lol
 
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