Technical So what was your first mod?

I was in a local auto parts store today and overheard these 3 young guys talking, they must've been about 16. They were trying to find some some blue LEDs because they wanted to replace some in their door somewhere to make it look 'sick'!

Obviously not a Hotrod discussion but the enthusiasm in their voices got me thinking about the first mod I did on my car. I was 16, working at Target on Saturday mornings and I'd just saved enough to buy my first car, a GTR Torana. To those in the US, these were small coupes powered by a straight six. Pretty potent little cars over here back in the seventies.

Anyway, mine had a 350 Holley on it with a stock looking air cleaner. So the first mod I ever did was save up and replace it with a Lynx Ram Flo foam filter like the one in the pic. The big selling point was that it made a 'sucking' sound when you put your foot down hard. I was stoked and spent half the next day at school with the hood up showing off my shiny new bit! The next mod was a sports steering wheel. I couldn't find a suitable boss but my Tech teacher was a rev head. He let me turn up an aluminum boss as my class project instead of an ash tray like the rest of the class.

So what were your first car mods?

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A 'rev' head, I like it! First mod after cleaning and painting wheels was a set of baby moons on my '62 Comet. If you look at my avatar pic, you'll see the same thing ( but those cost a whole lot more than the first set)!

 

When I was 16 I put a Hurst Syncro-Loc shifter on my 61 Impalas' 3 speed (first car).

 

Too much water under the bridge, but was probably putting in a Realistic {Radio Shack} under dash 8 track player and speakers. The old surface mount speakers like a wedge.

 

Driving my 1963 Dodge Polara more door, 383 two barrel down Woodward Avenue one night, a red, two door hardtop '63 Polara pulled up next to me. We started talking and the guy in the red Polara asks if I knew where to get a two-barrel and manifold for his 383. He wanted better mileage. I asked him if he wanted to trade carbs and manifolds. We went right to the local parts store and got two gasket sets, went to my house and switched carbs and manifolds in my driveway. We were BOTH very happy and I was able to burn rubber for at least 5 more feet than before the switch! We were both very happy with my first modification.

 

After taking off the wheel covers, spray painting the wheels black and scrubbing the white walls on my 55 Buick the muffler got replaced with a straight pipe(with lots of muffler clamps) then a piece of an old y pipe and flex pipe(a bunch more muffler clamps) to split it into duals out the back. I had the coolest Buick in the school parking lot. Come to think of it, I had the only Buick in the school parking lot!

That reminds me of the story my cousin Larry tells of back in the day. He had a 56 Ford Victoria that he cammed up a little and it had 3X2s on the 312. A daddys boy rich kid in town had a new 57 T-Bred and wanted to race Larry and the bird lost pretty bad. After all his excuses ran out they went again and he lost worse than the first time. He offered to trade his carb and manifold for the 3x2s and he gave Larry a$100.00 boot if he done the work. The birdman wanted to get his money back so he wanted to run for the $100.00 after the change over. Larry ended up with $100.00 in his pocket, got rid of the leaky 97s, sold the original 4 barrel and manifold to another Y-Block guy and lived happily ever after.

 

My first car was a 56 Ford Fairlane. After some hub cap changes and painting here and there I guess my first real modification to it was putting a screw in the secondaries slotted lever so that the secondaries kicked in manually instead of by vacuum. Then my big mod was swapping out the old automatic for a 3 speed in the floor setup. Got help from my older cousin who had been a mechanic in the Army and just got out. Ah, memories......

 

My first modification was replacing the main bearings and shortly after I replaced the engine that I blew up in my '54 Ford sedan,size 12 foot attached to a lanky 16 year old teenager didn't bode well for a car that had been lovingly cared for since the day it was purchased by the elderly gentleman who previously owned it.

With help from my granddads older teenage neighbor I installed a 390 CI engine from a Mercury in the car,it ran like Jack the Bear and had a lot more power than brakes,but that's a different story. HRP

 

I installed a Realistic under dash graphic equalizer. The cool factor of the red/orange/green LEDs moving to the music was too much to resist.

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Not sure which was first

Tape deck in my OT car didn't work properly and couldn't hear any music anyway at highway speeds.
Yanked that and the speakers, probably ~20lbs I didn't need. Those Ford steelies flexed quite a bit around corners. Rallyeing around the backroads I would always get passed by a full cover. Yanked them off scrubbed the steelies clean, used AJAX to clean the whitewalls.

 

Yep-too much water..... But my thing was air shocks, and trying to get an L-50 under the car............. Had to go to the "place"=tire store 35 miles away......I did the shocks=first timer. Then after the first time on the freeway far away....=pucker. But- the place was known for the after installment burn out.
I laid my one stripe down like the others, and had a justified grin.
I was someone at that moment! And I had a Kraco(spl?) stereo that I put in.....
Days gone by for sure...........Will never forget that day/times.

 

I shaved the rubber knee pads off the gas tank on my Honda 175 scrambler. Pried off the steel mounting flange and filed off its locating tabs, hoping that I wouldn't file a hole through . It worked and I still wonder how thin the tank is there.

 

Turbo Muffler after blowing up stock one due to turning ignition off, pumping the gas pedal, turning ignition back on.

 

I knew a guy that had a Torino that put homemade shackles on it that twisted the first trip through town. The next step was air shocks and a pair of N-50s and air shocks. He found out real quick he should not have held up the plastic air shock lines with zip ties to the tail pipes! Ruined the tires and his rear quarter panels as soon as the tail pipes warmed up,

 

A used Bassani on my old CT2

 

I just keep thinking of other stupid "modifications" we done as kids. My neighbor kid had a 57 Chevy 4 door with a 235 and powerglide. We all hung out at a little country store, every one would burn as much rubber as they could when they left the parking lot. The 57 couldn't even squeak a tire but he always tried any way. One day when no one was watching I greased the right rear tire and didn't tell him. There was about 6 or 8 guys outside when he left, quite a show!

 

I put a 53 303” Olds into a 40 Pontiac Coupe.
No small feat for a 14 year old with no money.
My first mod was spraying the engine red and second was installing clear red plug wires and fuel line
I thought it was the bomb.


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LOL Ever do it in a tunnel? you get the bang, and the flash!

 

Milled the head on the '52 REO lawnmower engine on my homemade go-cart with a large flat file and then laid a piece of sandpaper face up on my Dad's cast iron table saw to get it really flat. First time I bolted it on the valves hit the head so I did some relief work with a grindstone chucked in the drill. Now we're hotroddin'. It worked so well that when I tried to start it the extra compression blew the spark out. Now we're REALLY hotroddin'. I put a stock head back on it, got it warmed up and put the modified head back on it and bada-bing, except every time I wanted to start it I had to do the head swap thing until the motor got used to the idea after a while and decided to cooperate but we never really discussed it. It also had a small curved cast aluminum intake manifold that got hogged out. There just wasn't a lot of aftermarket support back then. High-test gas, a little more static advance and a curved zoomie and it revved well enough to break the connecting rod in half. I'd call that a success.

 

In 1957, I used my newly acquired drivers license to drive my car the 30 miles to Lake Street in Minneapolis, at that time the home of the only two speed shops in the Twin Cities, "The Big Wheel" and "Champion Auto Parts". "The Big Wheel" was a much better place with a larger selection, so it was there that I bought a Mallory dual point conversion kit for my '51 Ford V8. I installed it and the car still ran, so I considered it a rousing success. One good thing about it was that the second set of points took up the space the stock condenser usually occupied, so the kit came with one of those big brass condesers that Mallory had in those days. Since it mounted on the outside of the distributor, it was something you could point it out to your car buddies with pride. It wasn't nearly as impressive as a set of dual carbs or some finned aluminum heads, but it was something that you could actually see.

 

Yep!

 

My best childhood buddy and I painted my first car when I was 15 years old. It was 1962 VW bug and we used his dad's leftover oil based exterior enamels and a 1" brush.

After a couple of quaaludes and a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry hill we got to work.

We didn't paint sections or nothing like that, we painted blotches bigger than a softball and smaller than a basketball. Not just one or two colors we had red,yellow,green,blue, orange, and purple. When we finished up I can remember I ruined one of my favorite bell bottom jeans. I had a picture of it I'll try to find and post.



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A set of cheap Tri-Y headers on my 1968 Mercury Cougar, simultaneously, I learned the hard way about the value of safety glasses when working under a car at 16 years old. Also, I learned that open headers are loud AF and are awesome.

 

Do I really have to admit to this????

First car when I turned 16 (1974, car was a 1969 AMC Rebel, 290 auto). Pulled the car so the right side tires were up on the curb and crawled underneath. Hack sawed the head pipe beside the tranny on each side before they came together. Also had to cut the pipe up over the axle to get it out. Just finished making 3 cuts thru floppy exhaust pipes and was worn out. It was then I learned that you could buy mufflers in different pipe diameters. Easily slid my new Thrush mufflers over the much smaller head pipes. Tightened the muffler clamps until I couldn't turn them any more. Mufflers flopped up and down, easily. Went back in the house and got 2 wire coat hangers out of the closet and unwound them. Wrapped them over the tranny crossmember and under the mufflers. Pulled them tight against the tranny crossmember. Started it up, sounded great!

Decided to take a quick test drive. Hit the open highway about a mile north of my house and hammered it. Both mufflers shot out from under the car and slid down the road behind me. Turned around, collected my new, scratched up mufflers and went back home. A couple more hangers were sacrificed and the mufflers were now wired in place nicely. Went out cruising, sounded great to me (massive leaks and all), dad was pissed, older guys laughed at me.

It was a great day....

SPark

 

My first car modification was flipping the lid on Dad's 64 Olds with the 394, the first day I was able to drive it myself. That 4bbl really howled with the lid flipped! Nothing any of my buddies had at the time could touch the big 4 door Olds. Gene

 

My classmate sold me his four barrel setup for $15...went on my 53 merc motor in my 50 ford crestliner. I just turned 16.

 

A miserably failed attempt at installing exhaust cut outs.

 

Being a young buck I had a 64 Lincoln continental and I shaved the door handles, gas tank door and antenna. should of kept the door handles but I was happy.

 

Very first mod? Well, I'll only include my first street-legal, actually licensed car that I bought with my own money... I'd already had two old Fords that I killed 'racing' around a stump pile firebreak on our property.

After I turned 16, I saved up some money and watched the want ads (remember those?) for something I could afford that wasn't a complete POS, which given my budget severely narrowed my choices. Being a hard-core Ford guy, I only looked at Fords or Mercs. So I noticed that a local car dealer had a '58 Ford Anglia that had been advertised for $500 suddenly marked it down to $75 as a 'mechanic's special'. Fancying myself as a mechanic (boy did I have a lot to learn! LOLOL!), I talked my mom into taking me down to look at it Sat morning. Didn't know squat about these, but it was a Ford...

So we get there and look at the car. It's actually in pretty nice shape. Not beat up at all, decent paint, nice interior, ok tires, flat 4 with a 3-on-the-floor. Definitely not a hot rod, and had full approval from my mom. I figure it should be easy on gas, a consideration. So what's wrong with it? The salesman starts it up, and it's got a gawd-awful loud knock and a miss. In my ignorance, I figure a rod bearing, how hard is that to fix? We do the deal.... I can't get the car right away as it was an out-of-state trade-in. Tuesday we get a call, I can come get the car so we go down after my mom is off work. Do the paperwork, the salesman says 'I'll drive around to you'. I'm out front, quivering in excitement and I hear him start it. Still knockin'... By the time he gets around front, the knock has disappeared! It now sounds like a large sewing machine motor! No knock, running smooth! The salesman gets out, scratches his head and says 'Looks like you got a deal kid'. We figured later it was a stuck valve that freed itself up.

First mod? The very next day at home after driving it to school, I whacked about a foot off the shift lever (this had a long one, like a pre-war Ford) so I could 'speed shift' it... LOL. Of course, the OEM knob no longer fit so I went to the parts house and bought my very first custom part, a Hurst universal shift knob. I was on my way....

I don't have space here to recount all the 'adventures' I had with that car, but there were many. You could steal it with a gum wrapper, it would fit places 'normal' cars couldn't, and with used 7.00-13 tires off my brother-in-laws Dodge Dart in place of the unobtainium OEM 5.60-13s, had a pretty good off-road capability....

I eventually killed the motor (took it to the drags one night and knocked almost all the compression rings out of it; it got to smoking so bad I got a 'air pollution' ticket with it.... in 1967!) but lucked out and found a parts car with a good motor. Sold it for what I had in it once I got my hopped-up 352-powered '58 Ford going.

 

Long spring shackles to add neg caster , increase roll oversteer and raise the rear CGH [I didn't have the painting skills for a Starsky and Hutch stripe]
It really helped me hone my opposite lock driving skills [and white knuckle reactions]

This was way better than my mates "dashboard cam" [pull the "C" knob out and the car goes "rump rump"]