When did we all become restorers?

People jump on you here if you use new parts on your hot rod (such as a steering box out of a 1995 Lexus or sometimes even radial tires). Most of the people that commit such sins have gone on to other, more "evil" websites. That's what happens when you spread a gospel. You convert some and others you drive away.

There's not a lot that hasn't already been done with our antique hot rods and customs over the years, so hot rod and custom restorers (or imitators) are mostly all we can be if we are to stay true to "the gospel."




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When I build a car , it depends what I start with to determine the outcome, I am currently restoring to original a 53 Cad Coupe DeVille , also have a chop top 48 Ford and a 33 Fordor which I cut in little pieces and built a one of a kind C400 Victoria ,a restored 29 Ford coupe and a 31 Roadster also a 29 Ford pickup Hotrod. if you start with a decent original , why not restore it ? if it's a tattered turd then it'll be a hotrod for me

 

I've always liked walking on both sides of the fence, but the HAMB friendly cars really are restorations of cars that did exist pre 1965 or ones we would have built if we could back then. Bob

 

Everyone of the "style police" on here can kiss my ass. Most were not around back in the day anyway and most from what I can tell tend to be keyboard bullies.
None of my cars were ever built to make any one happy but me.
I look at it this way..... if everyone only liked vanilla ice cream it would be a damn dull world.

 

We are not restorers as much as rebuilders or recyclers. We take an old body, and rebuild it to our taste, weather it be back to original with an updated set of chrome wheels, or a modified engine. I've got a t-shirt that I bought well over 10 years ago. It says hot rodders were America's first recyclers.

 

My dad, a long time gear head always said to me that "your best bet is to keep it stock. It's always easier in every way. Easier to RESTORE, easier to fix and maintain, any mechanic will work on any problem & it will be easier to sell. But if you just can't keep it stock you'd better get damn good at making parts and figuring out custom problems."

Now I first heard that as a kid, it even makes more sense now than it did back then. Not every car guy can make custom parts. Not everyone can afford to pay someone else to make custom parts. Not everyone paid attention in 8th grade science class so they don't remember the physics. Not everyone can diagnose a no start let alone figure out a really fucked up custom problem. So what do they do? They restore something. They probably look on google for a auto related question and every page has a few hits that lead the to the "jalopy journal.com hamb forum". They check it out and see how great the place is and join up. They post some questions then they post their opinions or what they know. Now Some times what they know is first hand info of historical shit we love, sometimes all they know is the bullshit they heard from their neighbor who heard it regurgitated from another schmuck and every kind of person in between.

So, that leaves us dealing with guys who know that you can't build your own frame, who know you can't rebuild your own engine, who know you can't weld suspension parts, who know you can't make your own patches or panels or entire body, who know you can weld without a hood or gloves and do that in flip flops, who know copper lines are great for brakes, who know that every engine problem is timing, who know that every no start is the distributor 180 off, who know that everything doable has been done, who know how to make room in a chopped and channeled car, who know that they built dibiasis goofy shit 34 coupe, who know that they can pull of what others dream about, who know that they can help others think things thru, who know what looks good, who know what went wrong, who know how to pull off something original and are willing to share. There's all kinds of people in the world and the majority are not innovators or are at least not even trying to innovate yet.

 

I like original boobies...not so much the hot rod versions

does that make me a restorer?

 

I'm not restoring anything

 

Only if you bring hotroded sweater stuffers back to their original boobieness.

 

Restoring cars are to hard. Who wants to deal with correct nuts and bolts. I take path of least resistance and modify them.

 

As a kid growing up in 70s and 80s New Zealand, our motto was,
Restoring is boring.

 

I see your point and thought that was where you were going in your lead post. In that respect we often do as a group get caught in the "built just like the_________ ________ was" syndrome without putting much original thought into the build. We see that weekly and although there isn't a thing wrong with it there may be a HAMB event someday where all of the shiny black 32 roadsters with moon tanks in front of the radiator have to line up in one row while all of the chopped Model A coupes on 32 rails have to line up in the row behind that and don't forget the Grafitti clones which all have to be over in their own lineup to see which yellow coupe comes the closest to the movie car.

I get it that building rods and customs "they they used to be" is the premiss of the board but do think that sometimes we get caught up in the "how they used to be" to the point that we are building them more the same rather than different from each other. Then again there have been a number of cars built that are totally original and still look like they just popped up in the "little books" of the 50's or early 60's. Royalshifter's shoebox is one example. The car clones nothing in the past but it holds it's own with the best of the past when parked beside them. Custom car guys may have a bit more freedom of expression in that respect than 32/34 Ford hot rod guys do though.

As for my own rigs, my truck will be a "could have been built by a bodyman/customizer in the mid 50's for his personal driver type rig. It will be a radical custom but still look like what it is without arguements. No wild headlight or fender or grill treatments or fender changes but lots of modifications that hopefully blend together well.

The "boat tail roadster" that hopefully rolls out as a driver at the end of next summer is a take on a mid 20's early 30's two seat race car but clones nothing and is built from scrap or donated parts and hopefully will not display that fact when it shows up at it's first event. The premiss of the build being for the first guy who sees it show up comments "where the hell did they find that old race car?"

The model A Vic will no doubt look a bit too much of a resto rod for many but even though it is a pile of rust now that even Jim Sibley might cringe at the idea is to have folks think I took a decently restored Model A and made a hot rod out of it. It's still not going to look like anything anyone else on here has though.

 

I do have respect for a fine restoration, But also find them boring to a point. I can not honestly say I have ever RESTORED a car. More like chopped,cut hammerd twisted,smacked,bent, and MODIFIED!

 

I had that same view in my Henry J when I got it.

 

I like all of them, restored, modified, resto-mod, clone, you name it. To look at a 100% restoration is to look back in time, to see how it was done back then. Look at a modified car, and you see a car that the owner thought was good, but not quiet good enough, so they added to what they thought was already good. A clone of a famous car or style is just appreciation for the past, you appreciate what and how it was done back then. A resto-mod kinda fits all the above, you make it look like it could have been built way back years ago, but hide modern upgrades and mods to make it safer and more reliable.

My car? If I had to put it in a category, I'd have to say it's a resto-mod. Stock sheet metal, later running gear, a few creature comforts. Comfortable to drive, spirited enough for a high speed sprint, yet simple enough that you look at it and wonder what is stock and what's not. No crazy custom paint or tweed interior, but a subtle color outside with a semi- factory looking inside. I like it, and that's all that matters......

 

I've had similar thoughts as the OP while following threads on here. Interesting discussion. The phrase " you buy your youth" kind of fits, as members either still have or have acquired those cars. The builds or rebuilds are captured memories. That is where the restoration concept applies, I think. JMO

 

Well in Australia and i imagine Nz and parts of Europe,before buying on the Internet , Almost everything we found or had to build had to be restored to
a degree before we could hot rod / customise it. Unless you had money to pay for someone else's import. Our environment was harsh on the small volume of cars sold here . Johnny, but there out there

 

Or is his point that we are building our cars like they were done in the past? We arnt going our own way and creating our own style... one guys 30 years from now might think was the coolest period and try to emulate?

 

To each their own. I'm really making an effort yo build my 49 Chevy as an early 60's street/strip machine and it has been an amazing mental journey for me...

It has taught me patience. It made me appreciate getting there more than the destination.

I think when a car is built according to the gospel, it meshes in a way that is hard to quantify.

Its the small details that originate from manufacturing practices of a certain time period. Materials used. Finishes...

It all coexists on a frequency that makes sense on a subconscious level.

It makes sense to the "eye"

No more eggnog for me...

 

What about the "survivors": vehicles that were/are in daily use & maintained, often on a 'shoestring', as a means of making a living without any sense of 'keeping it original', but rather 'keeping it on the road as cheaply as possible because I can't afford a new one' that have managed to make it into the present : do we 'gig' them for non-originality, or praise them for managing to still be here? I know that I appreciate the displays of "homespun engineering & ingenuity", even if the fit & finish is a little rough, way more than I do a whole show field of "cookie-cutter-billet-clones"!

 

When I started my build, I kept the thought that ''it could be put back to stock''. Once I let go of that idea and started cutting, things began to take shape

 

Jeez,..and I thought it was only me who thought like that. I have recently been ill and to while away the time I trawl the net and devour magazines looking at nothing but rods and customs. It is staggering the amount of cars that look exactly the same,..on the surface. Especially when you see them all at once. I'm sure there is a bolt or a mex blanket pattern or engine that is different somewhere, but you and the guy who started the thread are dead right. Someday there will be an event that everyone just goes Whoa! look at all them shoebox's that are lowered to below ground level with white walls and radir mags all painted flat black with variations of flaked roof/scallops/pinstriped bootlids.,..and as for all them black 32's!. Just as plentiful are the modern hi-boy versions. Gloss black or popsickle colors, tan upholstery, full louvered hood with chrome cut-off exhausts and big meats on polished Hali's. These cars have always been around, and probably just as plentiful, but with the explosion of the net, instant uploading of every event in the world, ever, you get to see them all at once. All of them are wonderful cars, and individual expressions built to how the owners want them, but on the face of it, there is becoming less variation in what is out there
I often think that 'Back in the day' is an overused and over rated phrase. Yes, the preservation of the past is extremely important and clones that are complete down to the last bolt that was even bought at the same shop Mr.Originalbuild bought it from in '57, are fantastic and deserve all the ink they get, but I have never 'got' the pulling a barn find out to just put gas in it and leave it as it was. You are just driving, or sitting looking at someone else's car. Driving in shitty upholstery or not being able to drive it because the tires are too bad, but we can't change it, 'cause it's history or it's a shame to spoil this old car that some guy, name lost in time..built back in that day.
Screw that, I want to drive my own car. It might be one that was started by someone else, it might be one that is finished by someone else, since my engineering skills are at present slightly above zero. But it would be a car built how I want,....probably with dual wheels and painted metalfake lemon!...now there's a thought. The Lil' deuce coupe would look good in flake lemon, wonder if they would take an offer for it!

 

I feel the same way about my 1941 Buick special , keep it the way it is to show the younger generation of car enthusiast that it doesn't have to be a $30,000 cost attached to the automobile to be appreciated , also to show the things that used to be done in the past as in the case of my Buick has white house paint on the roof and trunk area done by the previous owner in the late 50's . I turtle wax my baby twice a summer .

 

Very interesting read - and I read the whole thread. I think all the opinions on here matter and encapsulate the diversity that is possible even on a 'traditional' site that preaches 'the gospel'. We don't really have a 'book' that has all the rules written down - we're just a gang of folks that appreciates a well thought out design, the styling and 'art' that went into many cars of the past and the creativity/imagination/talent of countless builders of all eras.

How we each apply our personal take on a car - that is up to us. Lots of times we're looking for input, for help on something tough, to seek out other opinions, even thoughts like 'does this look right?' . . . so the HAMB is like a fortune teller --> keep what you want, throw the rest out. In the end, if it makes you happy . . . awesome.

 

Well said bored and stroked

 

I consider my 37 Chevy p/u restored from a POS nobody in the family wanted to a truck I can drive in modern traffic,it does not have all original parts and could not be shown in original clubs shows but I like it. Most old car clubs mission are to restore and preserve which I can say I restored it and preserved it from becoming washing machines in the 70s.

 

Yep I agree. I love old cars that why I hang around !!

 

Neapolitan, whatever the wind blows. Build it to suit yourself and kick yourself when it does not sell when you are done......

 

Ryan
ADMINISTRATOR
from Austin, TX
Staff Member

.......................The HAMB is dedicated to spreading the gospel of traditional hot rods and kustoms to hoodlums world wide. That's right; TRADITIONAL. If you've come here to discuss anything other than Hot Rods or Customs built in a style representative of 1965 or before, you've come to the wrong forum...................................