WHY do people insist on hiding car parts on CARS?

The difference with "hiding" things like door handles and stereo and wires under the carpet is that they are items that would otherwise be seen during normal use of the car. Hiding stuff in the engine compartment is hiding stuff that's (in most cases) already hidden by the hood.

 

Like my wife always says....JUST KEEPIN IT KLEAN HONEY.

 

I can certainly appreciate the planning, effort and talent to do this but it does not look real to me. I want my hotrods to look real. Of course I would not call this a hotrod so that might be part of the disconnect?

 

That's the idea I think opine away my friend.

Actually groucho I think the master cylinder under the dash is an old sprint/midget thing. I mean hell if it worked for them it must be the hot setup.

I'm more of a form follows function guy so it should be clean and usable. I don't thik a car needs a fin or a scoop it didn't come with if it doesn't serve some functional purpose. But I suppose that is why I'm a rodder and not a custom type.

 

It is a matter of taste. But the idea that it takes more "skill" or "effort" to hide the stuff,as compared to leaving the plumbing and wiring exposed, but done in such a way that it adds to, rather than detracts from the look of the engine compartment is a pile of crap. Cars are mechanical, as much as that seems to offend some people nowadays. It takes more skill and effort to run neatly layed out hard lines and electrical that it does to hide it inside frame rails and fenderwells. I LOVE mechanical things, thats why I am a car guy. Look at stuff (cars, trucks, ships, planes, doesnt matter) that were built in the '20s-'30s, when skilled craftsmanship was still valued and respected. EVERYTHING is exposed, AND neatly done. As far as the master cylinder thing, well, they were under the floor on a lot of theses cars when they left the factory, and I think Groucho was just throwing that out there as an example.

 

No he didnt........just followed the trend.........

 

Rodders and kustom guys aren't going to always see eye-to-eye on this topic. Us kustom guys like things to be smooth and neat. Rodders often like to enhance that mechanical aspect. I like both, but there a time and place for both, and neither is right or wrong

 

Buttera started it. And as nice as his stuff was in terms of engineering and build quality, that trend, more than any other turned me off the "rod scene", and on to sixties cars, for several decades. In a way, Boyd Coddington is probably indirectly responsible for the "hot rod" rennaissance, and the very existance of HAMB. The build style that he made so popular, that was really an anti-hot rod style, turned so many guys off of what was at that time, the mainstream "street rod" movement, and spawned a "back to basics" groundswell. It also spawned the whole r*t rod thing.

 

Here ya go, not much to see really. The tubing runs from near the firewall to the front of the motor. A bend at the front of the motor takes the tube down to the oil sender. I drilled a small hole for the water temp sender wire. The tubing is held in place with tubing clamps attached to the valve cover bolts.

The motor is a GenV 454.

 

neat idea, actually, I like that. Lots of vintage engines ran the plug wires through tubing, Allisons spring to mind. Think Harry Miller did that too. Wouldn't want to do that with a modern box, you would be asking for inductive cross-fire.

 

gave me an excuse to post a pic of a miller. Maybe he shoulda made up a plastic cover to hide the plumbing...

 

I wish engines were transparent.

 

I'm in the exposed-but-neat camp.

But this stuff isn't a matter of mere arbitrary taste; it's a matter of ideology, and that is subject both to rational argument and moral implication. It's not about liking one look or another look; it's about whether or not it's important that people understand the workings of the world they live in. It's about whether the truth of anything lies in its substance or in its surface. It's about whether I have the right of determining the mechanism or the privilege of assuming that there will be a nameless corps of unseen technicians dealing with it. It's about whether I approach life like a craftsman or a hotel guest. It's about whether I'd risk my life for liberty or luxury.

I encounter minimalism in architecture and I don't hold with it. It is argued that minimalism represents a desire for simplicity, but there are two senses in which one can understand the term simplicity, depending on whether one's life-view is oriented to appearance or substance.

Take the example of a table. We might agree that a nine-legged table is unduly complex, and we can go on conceptually removing legs. When we reach four legs we find a fairly simple table. Depending on the shape and size of the table we can even go to three legs: even simpler, and self-stabilizing to boot. Now, we can do two legs if we make those legs more complex in themselves, i.e. articulating them as inverted T's. Is that simpler or more complex than a three-legged table? Or we could have a single leg, with a sort of spider at its bottom end. Is that simple? The answer depends on whether the simplicity we want is in terms of what we see or what is there.

Take the extreme: a table with no legs, a table-top floating in thin air. How would we do it? Air jets? Magnets? Mirrors? Either way the apparent simplicity of no legs becomes hellishly complex to pull off.

Aesthetic minimalism is no quest for monastic simplicity. It is rather an ultimate expression of conspicuous consumption, for its implication is that things can be obtained with ease at a moment's notice and summarily disposed of immediately after use. That is not how real people live. Real people hoard stuff.

In that sense the clean look - automotive aesthetic minimalism - is a temptation to be resisted.

Instead of hiding wires I'd rather like to figure out how to do wiring in a way that will stay neat, while allowing wiring to be traced, wiring faults to be corrected, individual wires to be replaced, components to be added or removed, etc. easily. The typical taped loom doesn't do the job. Any ideas?

 

OH, at first I thought you were talking about the guys who have old cars in the yard with trunks and back seats full of parts.

When I subframed the 48 in it's second or third go around I hung the mastercylinder and booster on the firewall. Every time I opened the hood there was the ugly assed setup right there in the big middle of things right where it didn't belong.

This time I'm not going for the slicker than snot look but the mastercylinder will be under the floor where Chevy put it in 1948 and while the wires will be run as neat as I can run them they won't be hidden away out of sight.

But I do think a lot of guys get all too caught up in the show car look with no wires or other stuff showing and everything hidden.

 

Good post. You just said pretty much the same thing the pic of the Miller said, and it took somewhat less than 1000 words.

 

For the traditional police who seem to know it all..........

I've been building cars since the late 50's. I was welding up & smoothing out all the un-used holes & such on my firewalls in early 60's- long before it was a street rod fad. I was hiding wiring in the early 60's- usually inside polished copper tubing. I wasn't following some trend or copying something I saw on a website or in a book- I did it because I thought it was cool.

 

I love the look of that engine compartment, very "mechanical" looking.

The main reason I ran my wires in the tubing was to keep from running split-loom or something similar across the intake. I used the same type brake line for fuel, I'll add another picture tomorrow, it's dark again. LOL.

 

I'm wid ya.
If it ain't SANO it's a rat!

 

Here's a traditional word from the past to describe a clean engine bay...............

Sanitary!

 

Same reason we change engines or wheels or chop tops or (insert changed item), To clean things to be different to personalize ..........

 

It was "different" when Buttera did it in the late seventies. It sure isnt different anymore, its the norm.

 

SANO is the derivative.

 

I too fall in the exposed but neat camp.

Did you ever ask yourself, "why NOT hide that part?" Some things are easily stashed up under the dash instead of just hanging out there in the middle of nowhere when we know that once they are in place, they will never need touched again. For Example, why would you really need to see solenoid hanging out on a firewall, or a vaccum canister, when you couldve just put it up under the dash? Along the same lines, some of those holes in the firewall just dont need to be there.

Yeah, I got it, there are some things you need to access, such as the M/C, and the coil needs to be close to the distributor.....but putting stuff on the inner fenders just because its easy seems lazy to me. I dont go out of my way specifically to hide stuff in the engine bay, but I dont just randomly place parts about the vehicle because its easy either. I like the middle ground here: I clean up things I can, and put those things that need to be there, well, where they need to be.

That'll be two cents please.

 

I guess it depends on the car...most 30s-40s cars don't have much there to begin with, and looming the wires neatly, and using polished lines and fittings (or at least new stuff) looks nice enough. I habitually hide wiring, and as much of the plumbing as possible, because even though I use good materials (stainless lines, loom on all the wiring, etc) most cars look far better without it showing. Plus, if I get a leak in a brake component, I'd rather have it up under the car than on the firewall where it might leak on, and ruin, the paint. I don't use silicone fluid, so this is a good way to prevent extra work. Plus, in my opinion it looks far better. All that crap detracts from the engine (no matter how much chrome you throw at it), which should be the focal point under the hood.

MY question is why don't people neatly route their wiring and plumbing? Usually the ones who complain about some "show car" are the same hacks that have 30 feet of red wire snaking all over their engine compartments, and rusty master cylinders and amateurish "custom" bent hardlines, with loops in it for no reason other than they don't own a flaring tool.

That said, WGAF? Build your car the way you want to, and don't get your panties in a wad because someone else has a different vision. This isn't restoration, its hot rodding. There are no rules.

 

Have you ever seen the wiring under the hood of a Nash Metropolitan? To me its grouse.
Fuse block & wires every where.

I have been working on fitting a Pinto engine in the Met with an automatic trans. Taking the time not to cut into the unibody for motor mounts. All that done I looked at the wiring, it looked bad like the job was only half done.

I installed a painless kit, but not without a few problems.
First problem was hiding the fuse box under the dash. The dash is so shallow you can see the box. Had to get a mini fuse panel. Problem solved.
Second problem, I wanted to keep the pull switch for the starter. Two cables came from the switch, one from the battery behind the seat, the other to the started. Looked like hell under the hood.
Not only that but, if I wired the started switch to the Neutral saftey switch, the Neutral saftey switch would not take the amp draw the started demanded.
To resolve that problem I ran 1 #14 wire from the starter switch to the Neutral Saftey Switch to a Ford Solenoid in the battery box along with the voltage regulator. Now all the wire are hidden.

Seems to be a big hassle doing all that work. In the end it pays off. Lift the hood, all you see is a real clean engine compartment.
Shows that the builder has payed close attention to details, but still has to think about future repairs & getting to the parts.

Taking time with your project is Taking Pride in what you do.

 

X2---exactly.

 

After working in the aircraft industry for the past 25 years, I am used to seeing wiring routed cleanly, tubes routed and clamped correctly, and components put in reasonable places. Until recently, auto manufacturers did not spend much effort to ensure that the underhood appearance of the engine bay was sanitary. Items were routed all over the top of the engine, and to me, it looked sloppy. I am by trade an aircraft electrician, and to me, the factory wiring appearance is horrendous.

If I'm putting a car together, I want to address this appearance by getting wiring lengths consistent and correct, combing out the harnesses so the wiring bundles looks nice, hiding them when possible, and looming them 100% of the time. I will bend my tubes to be parallel with other parallel surfaces, have nice radiuses, and route cleanly. Hoses will be the same, and have evenly spaced clamps, all set in the same direction. If I'm building a car from the ground-up, I will never put a master cylinder and booster on the firewall, unless it's a restoration. I think they look like shit, personally. I will put the battery in the trunk for the same reason as the master cylinder.

If I am going to do a bunch of effort on the outside of the car, why not put the same effort under the hood as well? I like popping the hood at the shows, personally.

 

On cars I just like to keep things clean and sanitary on custom rigging I build my own harness and brackets I try to hide the wiring but make it serviceable I build brackets to mount my ignition box fuel system all accessories on the engine and mirror them on twins. My harnesses are all solder and sealed to handle the abuse.

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there are rules but customizing can cross a line of sensibility. If you were at a car show and saw a car where the master cylinder was not mounted on the firewall nor on the frame below the floor but, instead, mounted in the glove compartment, would your reaction be... huh, that's clever... or would it be.. huh, what was this guy thinking?

 

Damn..I never thought of that...instead I put my stereo in the glove box...Left it in there for 7 years...Finally I built the console just for the stereo...Now I have a place to put my PB Booster.
Thanks Herbert99 for the idea.