Technical Drawing a line in the sand

me, i like all sorts of styles, up through the 70s van craze... but my interest is really in the mid 50s through mid 60s (and yeah, i know that's a big range).

i like sticking with gennies, points and eschew electronics for reasons that seem to confuse people: i like SIMPLICITY and the ability to repair on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with a minimum amount of tools.

points have never left me stranded.
generator has never left me stranded.
magneto (on my motorcycles) has never left me stranded.

i have no interest in the LS craze. i tested the waters of an EFI super technology forced induction build: made a sheeetload of power, but wasn't really for me. i like the soul of simplicity. i like routine maintenance. i like adjusting valves, points, monkeying with timing the old fashioned way and getting my hands on the machine rather than the keyboard.

i use MIG (and oxy/ace, which is my favorite), mud, rarely use repop parts (usually can't afford them)... i make more parts than i buy....

all that being said, if my car is laid up because the distributor is toast and what i can get my hands on is a modern hei or whatever: i'm grabbing it and driving the car. not going to forego enjoyment waiting on a part. i'll swap it whenever it gets here.

 

the only way I'd own an LS motor is if the car came with one from the factory.

if I had a flathead powered car other than a restored stocker it would have to have a 5-speed. an open motored flathead powered car would be the only thing I would have a generator on, anything else would have an altenator.

any full fender early car I would own could have disk brakes depending on other factors.

I have no problems with radials.

I wouldn't own a pre war Ford with MII.

if I were filthy rich I might buy someones "period correct" early HOT ROD, but I don't think I would go through the effort myself to find all the cool parts and build one.

I'm more of a "traditionally styled" kind of guy.... definitely not a fad of the moment guy.

 

Well if there was an abundance of Flathead, Nailhead, Olds Rocket, Pontiac, Hemi and any other popular motors, and the parts were readily available for as cheap as a SBC or SBF and available at the local parts store, then I am sure there would be a sea of bad ass motors on the road.

Affordability and technology are the obvious reasons why many of us use newer motors. I have a 1968 Chevy 250 in my shoebox because I just don’t care for SBC motors (because they are everywhere, and I am using the flathead for a future roadster project). I know that this motor doesn’t compliment the style of my car because I am building it as an early 50's kustom, but when I lift the hood it will be something different to look at. I am also running lowered rear spring and dropped spindles. The finished paint will be an Acrylic Enamel job.

In the past I have done some of the old traditional tricks such as flipping and switching front spindles, step notched the front A arms. I have also done a little leading. The bottom line is there are products out there that companies have developed that make car building a little easier; like dropped spindles, dropped leaf springs, motor and transmission kits and the list goes on. I think you can have a happy medium by using newer technology that is better, safer and less time consuming on the builder to get the same effect as all the old ways when you’re building a hot rod or kustom.

Gas welding, leading, lacquer paint jobs, old motor swaps and all the old tricks from the little books are still way awesome, but many people don’t have the skills or the big $$$ to build traditional cars this way. Maybe it’s because there aren’t as many masters doing this work anymore and the ones that are, are getting big dollars or are booked.

The one thing that I will never understand though is how a guy can go to full lengths to build a period correct 40's or 50's hot rod and then run an open hood with a 350/350 combo. If you have that much dough, then I don’t understand not building a period motor/trans to compliment you ride.

.............and the van craze. That shit is NOT traditional.

 

Kind of funny, but I find myself digging out original stuff that I threw in my "scrap pile" because it was too far gone and trying to rehab it instead of going with newer or reproduction parts now days. There's still room in my world for new parts that make "MORE POWER" though.

 

I say if it "looks" the part it's fair game, even as far as the Buick-style Socal disc setups. Vintage looking modern parts exist for a reason - they give us the feel of an early part with the modern performance, reliability and safety of something new. I say that is the most important thing and if you can build it safely while looking like the old, unsafe and unreliable stuff then I think that's okay.

 

100% pre 1948. PERIOD.

 

Well P&B I guess I'll have to put my 2cts in this, I'm just a young un at 69 or so and I distinctly remember building my 32 with my dads 55 chev trans and rear that I "borrowed from him" to put under the 32, with parallel leafs in the back and If it would have been available to me in 66 I would have used a MII in the front, a full load flattie in front of the Chev 3 speed, all parts for the job were made by me as nothing was available then, well actually some was available but I couldn't afford it, my own swinging pedal assy and IH dual MC for the clutch and brakes, Oxy-Acty the frame boxing and mounts ect as I couldn't even afford a buzz box for a coupla more years. That was many moons ago and many projects ago and I still give a big thumbs up to those who do it their own way, because that is the way we used to do it, from reversing rims in auto shop in the late 50's on my buddy's cars to doing everything we could to make our 125 dollar rollers into something we could drive and every once in a while let er rip on the great hiway or Brotherhood way, guess what I'm trying to say is traditional is in the eye of the beholder and my eyes are somewhat jaded about "how it used to be" all depends on your point of view. And if someone looks down their nose at my 36PU with a blown Flattie, four bar 9" rear and MII front they can kiss my ass.............

Humm maybe I don't belong here...........

 

Everyday rodders from the "traditional" era used whatever gave them the most bang for the buck. To me, that same idea is OK now. Radial tires are an example. If you can get more miles out of them and get them cheaper, it's a no brainer on a driven car.

Some things I won't use are:
Air bags
Aluminum radiators
Cross flow radiators
Electric fans
Modern motors
Some pretty stout cars ran fine without these things back in the day and I don't see a need for them now.

Blue

 

I've been into hotrods, customs, high performance or anything cool with an engine. I was about 6/7 and a neighbor had a 40 Plymouth gasser. I loved that thing. That is the earliest I can remember. In the late 60's early 70's hotrods/street rods where around but not like now. This is the time I grew up, so that is what I like. Like music, it's what you grew up with. We also had the customs but we called the Kemps.

My point being, I am building two cars right now. A 57 Chevy truck that is nether hot-rod or street rod but some where in the middle. It has flat black sealer and El-cheapo black wheels. I was going to stick a SBC in it but went with the 235 six instead. I left a lot of original stuff but put power disc brakes on it. It still has the straight axle. I'm building it for ME. The other is my 40 Chevy I'm making a tail dragger out of. It will be in the form of an old tradition but has a Mustang ll frontend with disc brakes and SBC.

Both cars are mine in my style. I'm too old, too tired and too broke to care. I love the HAMB and have since I found it. Do I really fit, no. Just my take.

p.s. Beaner we need to have a beer someday. I work in Raytown.

 

formulating opinion... watch this space

 

A friend of mine, Tony DeCosta from Hot Rod and Custom Suppy, made an interesting comment one time about this subject. He said " I may build old timey hot rods and flatheads, but I also realize this isn't 1950 any more." That is kind of the way I feel.

While I respect a person's right to build a car with 100% authentic parts and style, I want to move ahead into 2014 and substitute parts and technology that make the car a better driver and more dependable than what we had back then. I like the car to have some essence of cars from that era, but not be a clone of what we would have been able to build in those days.

And as much as I like looking at a well dressed out flathead, I have no desire to own one. I didn't want one in 1957 and I don't want one in 2014.


Don

 

Heres the question -

All that said, for my enlightenment and that of my fellow HAMBers the question of the day is this, where do you draw the line when it comes to how traditional your builds are. Do you for instance think that an LS engine is OK, or perhaps you would use a MIG welder but not a TIG when you are building or mud instead of lead, repop parts are OK or you must only buld with Gennie old parts. You catch my drift, right?

How much of your car fits this "100% pre 1948 -period "

 

Since as far as I can recall, nobody much ever bothered to rod a P15 in the old days, there's little possibility of me building a period correct rod from mine. WTH would it be? I don't recall ever seeing these cars in a Hot Rod mag & I don't have the foggiest idea of what mods would really be "correct". I feel that real hot rodders form those years would have looked at a hopped up Mopar 6 as a lame joke.

I don't have any illusions about having the kind of money needed to play this game successfully. I mostly come here because there's more mechanical, fab, & body experience available here than any 10 other websites.

But I can't see myself having the bucks to chase antique parts mostly suitable for museum cars. I'm building a driver, and it's gotta be safe, reliable, economical, insurable, and attractive to me. More than that it must be affordable or it'll never get finished.

You're all welcome to tell me how abominable it is when I get done.

 

There were some postwar MoPar customs...and the 49's-50's did pretty well on the NASCAR circuit during it's first few seasons.

 

I think alchemy and HellsHotRods pretty well hit the nail on the head and I agree with about 99% of what they say.
My 32 coupe is very close to be traditional but I cut a couple of corners, power gen alt, radials, new Stewart Warner gauges and electric fan. I am really considering getting rid of these items and going 100% as close as I can get to traditional.
My 36 coupe flathead, mechanical brakes and lowered that's about it, mechanical brakes are fine when they are adjusted correctly, and you drive within there limits you know how quick you can stop when you have to, keep your distance from the car in front.
Building a 32 roadster at the moment, trying to use all period correct parts, it not easy parts are hard to find and expensive, but it can be done.

 

For me it all depends on what's available to me. I'd use new generation parts If I had to so long as they could be swapped out when I found what I was looking for. Best case scenario though, A traditional hot rod would be built LIKE you started with a mint condition original unmodified car, and built it up from there. That said, I really don't care if the parts were made in 1928 or 2008, if they have the correct shape and function then they a go. Don't know if I feel the same way when it comes to building an "old" car 100% from new parts (body included), I mean the car has to have a little soul to it right?

 

Well it's a '47 P15, which is completely different from the shoebox style of the '49 and later and AFAIK had zero history in racing of any kind except maybe demolition derby. Did anyone run these things at hardtop races? Probably unsuccessfully if at all, as IMO they were just too heavy to compete without prohibitive amounts of work.

I have seen some Kemps built from P15s, but as they were originally cheap cars and considered to have archaic styling even in their day, they were never popular to customize.

I think that without major and radical kustomwork, the body is most suitable for a 'shine runner style, I doubt they were used much for that in the day. BUT I don't know about that. Perhaps the stealth factor of running contraband in a boring grocery-getter was a big plus? Frankly, I doubt that too.

I think my only hope of being really Hambworthy lies in building a full fendered Kemp with radical body work, and hiding the powertrain mods completely. Just doing a stock-ly resto-rod ain't gonna cut it with this cat.

 

Yet nobody ever did that. Hot rods were built of old cars. If you were rich you'd mod a brand new mint car . . . by paying someone else to do it.

If you weren't rich, you rolled yer own, it was from used iron, and often very well used.

So please don't be horribly offended, but to me a traditional hot rod is built the way I built my first car: from a cheap junker with a busted oil pump. First thing done was to swap in the best v-8 you could afford. After that, the road was wide open.

 

See, I think the whole concept has a problem; "drawing a line in the sand". Sand is always shifting. But sand is much nicer to stand in than concrete.

 

I drive the wheels off of everything I own. Everything must be easily field serviceable, without special order. Starting, steering, stopping, etc. must all be at, or near modern standards. The wife must be comfortable. None of that is negotiable. Everything else can be period-correct.

 

I build KUSTOMS, really don't care much about hot rods, in general.
As long as they look right, traditional, I am not fussy as to what is underneath, and I usually don't pop the hood on my car, or open the doors or truck at car shows, though my stuff, esp. underhood, is usually very clean and detailed. Well...actually maybe I AM fussy! I like the drive the wheels off my cars. So I'm a fan of updating everything I can to keep it running well, steering and stopping as good as most modern cars, and as Gimpy said, "field serviceable". Not a lot of guys have as many miles on their cars as I used to put on mine, either, so you bar-to-bar driving guys, keep quiet!
I have built totally trad cars (even the Kopper Kart) for guys, as well as perfectly stock rare muscle cars, so I CAN do it, just don't want to for my own car.

 

This is actually a pretty good thread. After reading all the posts I can't say that I disagree with what anyone has posted. Now my line is even more wavy.

 

Just FYI - I sold my '46 to a guy in the early 80's. I remember he wanted to build it just like one he built in the 1950s. What that build style was, I don't recall, but I thought I would mention it. There were probably some running around as hot rods or customs even if they didn't make the magazines back in the day. There was some speed equipment available for the Mopar flathead sixes. Although it seems to be pretty rare, someone must have thought there was enough demand to warrant producing it. Just sayin'.

 

I'm not going to run say a set of 520's just because. .I'll take my vortec head over that any day of the week. My line is curvy...like my pinstriping..lol gathering up parts for my 28 Rpu....and will probably end up using a 5.3 in it. Just a more efficient source of HP . like the vintage look and style but also like practicality. Simplicity is another thing

 

Funny, no one who's responded to this thread has said that they're building 100% traditional except Fred, but I don't really see how his T backs up that proclamation (so I think he's joking). Where are all the hard core traditionalists? When they do show up, I'd like to ask what their stance is on wiring, inner tubes, tires, brake linings, brake lines, fuel lines, bulbs, internal engine and transmission components, gaskets, fasteners, etc. There's no right answer to this debate, just opinions.

 

Most of the critical replies were probably deleted. I know mine was. I even received an email explaining why. I had described the "Trad Police" in a derrogatory manner. Maybe that wasn't the best description but it was the first description that came to my mind. I'm sorry for putting it in print but .....

 

I don't have a line and I don't belong here! I started playing with cars in 1948 ( I'm 73, I was 8 at the time) when I moved down the street from a junk yard and body shop. I was friends with the owners kids, anything we could get running we could drive in the fields. We siphoned gas out of cars, robbed parts and anything else we needed, When a new wreck came in we scrounged what we could. If it were today we would be doing the same. I build and drive what I like and don't tell others what to like and never will. If I don't like it I keep my mouth shut !! All that said this is still a very informative site.

 

I like the look and style of what the HAMB is about. My feeling is, if you cant see it, I don't care what's hiding under the skin. I think the only exception I would make is tires on a full fendered ride, radials are ok with me.

 

I am real wavy here. The part has to fit the scheme of the build I am doing and the current build the motif is functionality with comfort, next one could be period correct 50's never know until I get to that point.

 

I build to a vision in my head,
I imagine it's more flexible, more like art than a scientific formula.

Describes me also