Art & Inspiration The most important thing of all....

One thing stands out for me after all these years, but What's the most important thing that being a rodder, customizer, or car enthusiast has taught you?

I ask because I was inspired by another thread, in which was posted:

I was not well liked in high school in 1969. I was an egghead and all the other kids knew it, plus I was a year younger than the class. I'd lived in Calif and Arizona, but was now in podunk Minnesota, so they all thought I talked funny. I dressed like a California mod dude too, while the look there was still pretty much still 1959, with pegged levis and penny loafers.

These kids were in the sticks, and most didn't even get American TV. It was like a time warp for me, and I was lost as hell right out of the gate. Fortunately I met the soon-to-be valedectorian, dated her, and found her dad taught the shop and welding classes.

The kids freaked a bit when I took the welding class with the ag boys and did tech inspection for the county fair tractor pull, but things warmed slowly.

Of course they had no real idea that I'd worked on car bodies and engine swaps and various mechanical stuff with Dad since I was 6 years old. I was a natch at it, but I wasn't really accepted, though, until they saw me re-building a rusty Ford coupe in the driveway. The whole world seemed to change then, and I leaned something that has served me well in the passing years...

It taught me that things people love, like old cars, can bridge cultural gaps which otherwise we as humans would never cross casually. It was like a ticket to a better life for me. One with fewer boundaries and a million potential friends, many of whom had dirty nails, but clean visions for their machines.

I'd be working on mine today, but I've been down with a flu bug. Yet the vision is working on me every time I look out the window.

 

Any two parts can be made to fit together if you can see a reason to do so.

 

Gravity and magnetism sucks,If you drop a socket it will roll to the farthest distance from where you are working. HRP

 

1. To persevere - anybody can quit. 2. To have a plan, a vision before you start. (this helps with #1). 3. Always buy the best (parts, tools, car, etc.) you can afford.

 

Crossmembers, I agree completely.

 

big projects are just a bunch of small projects

 

PATIENCE.......

 

If you do not enjoy the build you have missed the one the reasons for haveing a Hot Rod.

 

Patience, perseverance, and kindness... Oh ya this stuff can cost ya a dime!

 

To never allow myself to be told "you can't do that"...

 

"When it stops being fun, stop." Bobby Knighton, Old Texas hot rodder/drag racer

 

Build to please yourself, not the crowd at the car show

 

If it's not cool don't do it.

 

Be VERY careful, about who you ask for advice.

 

Some really good ones there but I'd have to say that TFeverFred hit one point that I would have understood 40 years ago working on my first real hot rod projects and didn't figure out for 25 years. I spent way too many years busting my butt to get one of the cars done enough to be able to drive it to an event and wore myself out to the point where I wasn't enjoyable for others to be around and I was too tired to enjoy myself.
Patience, an absolute must when building a hot rod or custom, not having it will cost way more time and money in the end.

Have a plan and stay with it. I full and well know that I spent more money on parts for the 48 that I then decided not to use for one reason or another than I actually have tied up in the truck. `

 

"Don't stick your dick in the toaster".... it may have been an Idiom, i don't know. it's served me well.
Also "If it was easy, everybody would do it".

 

OR -- dead center UNDER the car!

 

I agree completely.

 

From a great guy and my hot rod mentor, the late Buzz Magnuson:
“You shouldn’t own anything you couldn’t fix yourself"

 

Anytime someone says "It is good enough, nobody will ever see it", you will remember that area, and most likely everyone else will see it and bring the build down to that level. Bob

 

Sounds like me. When the guys at work complain about a difficult engineering problem, I tell them, "If this shit was easy, then nobody would need us."

 

Whoooo... unless we restrict the discussion to cars, that would be a tough one to live up to. How many among us are gonna fix a cell phone?

Still I always subscribed to Robt. Heinlein's view, that people should be versatile and that specialization is for insects.

 

Bump for Bored HAMBers...

 

it might be annoying to put on those goggles but it will be MORE ANNOYING goin through life with
a seeing eye dog.

 

If you can't see it, don't be it.

Or in other words, know what you're really all about, and do that instead of trying to do things you cannot commit to. It only results in burnout and disappointment otherwise.

I just like cars, but I don't enjoy owning them. I enjoy the hustle of acquiring and building them then selling them and starting the whole process all over again. Maybe it's just because I've never truly fallen in love with a car, but I doubt it.

I am capable of doing or learning to do pretty much anything required to build a car from scratch, but I know the things I just do not want to do. That comes from doing. When I look at a project, I look at the breadth of it and look at what I am willing to do and what I can afford to pay someone else to do what I'm not. This way my projects never become a burden and I enjoy the heck out of the whole process. Then when it's done, and I'm already bored with it, I start looking for the next deal.

 

Drop another one and watch where it goes. It will go find the other one.. I promise...

 

...unless you already have the floor boards out.

In that case it will simply vanish, never to reappear.

In the year 2064, some bored bodyman will find it wedged up inside the inner cowl gusset, where it bounced back in 2014.

 

True. I'm sure there is a special place where some things go that will never be found.

 

The Langalores get them.

 

"A"If its not safe,fix it,// "B"If its going to be uncomfrible to drive don't do it that way, "C" if it don't start with "A" N "B" right fix it,no matter how good you think it looks,it's not cool if you can't drive it.