Traditionally "bad" ideas...

I was thinking, on my way home on the turnpike today about innovation, tradition, and necessity...
And I have a question for those who were THERE. I mean the old timers, who remember early hot rodding.
This may have been asked before, but, I have not seen anything about it, so:

We know that ideas, that are good ones, get implemented, and continue to be used until they become a particular era's common "answer" to a given problem, but...what about the early "bad" ideas? The ones that maybe even caught on, for a bit, or were popular with certain folks...or certain types of cars, but were considered "poor" or "tasteless" or "dangerous" at that time?

How many of these ideas are emulated today as "traditional"?
I would love to hear what was scoffed at by different folks at the time...and how, if any things have changed, regarding those early beliefs, or...if they have stayed traditionally: BAD IDEAS!
Thanks to anyone who has a story they wanna share...

 

I got my license in 1956, that is where my contact with cars began.

"Poor" would be rust, emulated today as "traditional"
"tasteless" would be mudflaps, foxtails, blackwalls on customs.
"dangerous" would be mechanical brakes, lack of seat belts, emulated today as "traditional". We, as club members installed seat belts because we wanted to be safe and maintain a correct image.

Calling ourselves "thugs, or hoodlums", never happened, but is emulated today as "traditional"

Almost never saw tattoos,emulated today as "traditional"

In fact, we went out of our way to maintain a correct public image. Now having said that, we did quite a few things that we hoped we wouldn't be caught doing, but as the start of National Hot Rod Association, and the organized hotrod movement, we tried to maintain that good image.
Sounds kinda corny now, but that was the way it was.
Those were simpler times.
That's my contribution.

 

I qualify as an "old timer", and one of the hot tickets in about 1957 or 1958 were great big ugly God damned chrome hood ornaments. For example big chrome swans with pink day-glo plastic wings!!! For a few years, it seemed that the bigger and uglier your frickin hood ornament was, the "better" your car was.

 

One thing I hated in the 70's (I think) was long shackles on the rear to jack the back up. Looked fecking stoopid, and was as unsafe as hell.

 

Yeah...I agree...rust is the traditional ENEMY of cars!
I, for one, am usually trying to find the NICEST body I can find/afford.

Thanks for the replies, I thought this might make for an interesting conversation...
I know around here, a friend's father, who used to run a 283 powered f.e.d., his son told me the guy's all ran open diff's...it was thought that a locked/posi rear would be a death sentence, in the event of an axle breaking...now...you'll have a hard time finding a car at the drags without one.

 

I'm not an old timer....but I'd say that the one thing that has changed the most is that the cars of yesterday were, for the most part, homebuilt with simple tools. Be it a street driven rod or a dragster or track racer...they were simple and realatively inexpensive.

Maybe there would be more younger enthusiasts getting involved in rods other than "rats" if the overwhelming cost wasn't so evident when checking out the majority of the rides these days.

I'm not saying that a big-dollar car was, or is, a bad idea...just that they were not the norm back in the day, but they are today.

 

Yeah, I think it's funny how the rock-a-billy culture thing is thought of as traditional. I wasn't there, but my dad was. He said very few hot rod guys looked like Fonzie, many more looked like Potsy-LOL. And if you look in the old R&C and HRMs and little mags of the day, most of them were wearing button down collared short sleeve shirts and penny loafers or Chuck Taylors.

To add to the bad ideas, I think the straight pipes bent up to your ear level is one of those things of the late 50's that didn't last too long.

 

I have to agree with hotrod 1940. We wanted our rides to be smooth and shinny. If you drove a rusty car it was considered a p.o.s.

 

Looking through old mags from the early sixties I see one thing that I have never understood.

Upholstery in the wheel wells.

It looks weird and I can't imagine hitting a mud puddle with white carpet inside the fender.

 

I'm not quite an old timer, but I can say the guys back then did pretty much what the kids of today are doing. Buying a car as cheap as they can and modifiying and working to make thier own "hotrod" that they can afford and enjoy. The only difference is we use wrenches and they use computers! lol

 

That brings up a VERY good point- back in the sixties people really cared about keeping things clean- and that showed it off among other things with the upholstered wheel wells.
I saw SO MANY dirty cars and filthy white walls at Paso I got sick of it. People take pride in these filthy white walls and I saw one car with a tone of nice fresh metal work and a brand new set of white walls with that blue crap still on them- that stuff SCRUBS OFF- but somehow they didn't find time to wash the tires.

 

I like clean cars, top and bottom. But, white wheel wells just seem like a lot of extra hassle. I do appreciate the fact that guys in the 60's took the time to put forth their best for the magazines. Not just in their cars but there personal presentation.

It is kind of funny to look at them and think "nothing says 'I've got a bitchen Hemi-A' like a pair of penny loafers and white socks"

 

I like the tuck n roll wheel wells, I thinks its awesome, but Im not the guy that would do it to my cars because theyd be brown in a week. But when I own a painted car I try my best to keep it clean and make sure the whitewalls arent dirty. My merc at first I tryed to keep it clean but since it was in grey prime and then realized no matter how many times I cleaned it still looked like shit so basically kept the tires and windows clean and hosed of the bird shit when it got shat on

 

How about the gas can, water can and oil can painted and striped to match the car? Along with the chrome lug wrench and other trunk goodies that usually got displayed next to the car in the shows...some guys really did go the extra mile with details like that.

 

Dropping the early Ford transverse spring by torching a big kink in the spring on either side several inches from the spring eye, thus crippling the spring and eliminating its action.

 

i rember back in the 70s when our hotrods got renamed streetrods in order to present a more positive immage to the towns we were trying to get to host our runs.back then all those cars were built in the hotrod tradition. almost without fail they were owner built,being put together from what ever could be scavanged from this car and that.paint and interior was included in those modifications.the cars were ever changing as money was available. i do love the simplicity and style of a traditional rod. all my projects have been a work in progress,driven in primer with the running and drivability being most important,body work here and there as i went along , but i can honestly say that rust was not once ever considered as a finish.i dont get the fake patina thing.

 

i remember when i was in high school in order to make my astro supremes stand out more,spending countless hours up in the wheel wells of my 57 chevy low rider scraping away at dirt ,under coating and crud and spraying white paint un those wheel wells.only to have the white paint soak into those glops i either missed or couldnt scrape off .and

 

]
I'll add to those facts from my late 50's early 60's rodden day's,all rust and holes got fixed,perimer(flat paint)was only tempery tell the shiny went on,the floors had no holes and did have rugs,seats were nice and padded and ground clear was so you could drive it and chops was low enough to look cool but high enough to see out AOK.

 

back in 1991, my old pal "Video" Bob who was around in the '50s, torched the front springs of my '59 Ford to get it about 3" lower. It's a fast and easy method of lowering that was often done in the '50s but the ride afterwards was poor... downright scary if you hit a pothole on the highway.

 

I graduated from high school in 1966, but I started buying and reading car magazines in the late fifties. There's almost nothing traditional about today's "traditional" rods. I think there may be more flathead powered cars today than there was in the '60s. A small block Chevy in a hot rod was cutting edge stuff back then. Even Buick and Olds powered cars were getting changed over to Chevys because they were lighter and made just as much power.

The upholstered wheel well thing was pretty much just on show cars. A lot of them attached with snaps so they were easy to remove for driving, then just snap 'em back in for the show

And in those days the only guys who had tatoos were sailors and convicts. Never on girls.

 

I wasn't there "in the day" , but Traditional Hot Rodding has always meant one thing to me: Recognizing a "defect" and IMPROVING it.
If we determined that our cars were too slow - we made them go faster. AS we went faster we soon realized we need better brakes. Cars looked "too boxy" so we chopped them, stretched them, sectioned them -painted them - whatever it took to "correct" the "defect" at hand. If parts were impossible to find we swapped over to more easily attainable stuff. The true essence of Hot Rodding has always been this same thing to me and it can be applied to near anything. Reminds me about the post the other day - where the fella was helping out the dude in the wheel chair. The guy in the wheel chair was handing wrenchs - now BOTH those guys have the Hot Rodding spirit. You do what you can to be involved.

 

I guy wearing Dickies with 6" cuffs was immediately identified as a dork in the mid-fifties.... .Lowering cars with a "flame wrench" happened every weekend. That is until we discovered that handling was important.....As a paperboy in 1955, I made $30.00 a month and hustled lawn jobs for another $30....But, every used car lot had a back line of $50-$99 cars and if your dad signed off, the used car dealer carried the paper....Finally, we had Earl Schieb to paint our cars for $19.95! Scallops covered a lot of flaws!

 

It seems alot of new "rat rodders" are going over to nicer cars now. Around me there making there cars the "old way" & painting them old colors, dark blues, black, maroon, yada.
One thing is that theres using all old parts, nothing after say 1960.
As a kid( i'm 58 now) i only remember 1 POS in my neighborhood in yonkers, guys where very proud of there rides, NO RUST!!lol
JimV

 

stupid thing my dad told me...filling up the trunk with cinder blocks to get it extra low for a night...bondo used with cardboard to create fins/headlight mods, everthing rusting out.

 

Boy, the more things change the more they stay the same. Almost sounds like a kid now taking his Mom's Honda Civic with 250,000 miles on it, putting a new intake, exhaust, and computer chip, some wheels and a paint job from Maaco. We talk about how slow the ricers are but then again how fast was the average rod back in the 40's and 50's? Just think in 30 or 40 years we'll be looking for that perfect vintage wing to put on the trunk Sorry to get a little off topic, just my 2cents

 

HOT ROD 1940 hit the nail on the head for me that is how it was in SoCal when I grew up in the fifties and sixties, and I thank you for that man. Take care, Rags

 

Traditionally "bad" ideas...

copper tubing for brake lines.

wadded up newspaper in the rocker panels and 1/4 panels to work as backing for the PEP Boys bondo sold by the quart. nobody liked rust holes.

Brazing rod to fill trim holes in the hood and deck lid so that the mud would pop off 6 mos. later.

Rattle can primer of that era used to cover all the shady repairs made above.

Rattle can lacquer touch up paint to wrinkle all the enamel primer on those shady repairs.

Adding too many J C Whitney chrome add on doo dads like door edge guards. filler neck bezels, chrome door handle scuff pads, vent window silencers, swan hood ornaments and of course bolt on Cadillac tail fins.

But for me the ultimate bad idea was decorating your ride with water slide pin stripping decals. They sold a million of 'em. god they look cheesy

For you guys that use the little books to determine what it really was like back in the day, will the rodders of 2049 use todays Street rodder and Hot Rod to determine what we are actually driving today? Rolled and pleated wheel wells? Only on the high end show rods of the day. The cars in those mags were state of the art at that time. They represented what we were striving for but few of us ever got there. As soon as we got close somebody else would built a nicer ride upping the ante. Sound familiar?

 

Quick and dirty was frowned upon.
We learned early on that the good stuff took some time as well as $$.

Today's interest in running straight pipes and damaging glasspacks so they'd be louder wasn't done.
Straight pipes on a street running car with stock engine just sounded broken.

When we heard a sweet sounding car that was similar to ours in the engine dept., we made a point to ask what muffler was being used.

Sweet is the key word here, we were looking for good sounds.
It wasn't about noise, it was about internal combustion music.

Totally primered cars happened, but it was usually just for a short while and on the way to a 'good' paint job.

Remember the plastic butterfly shaped hood mounted bug deflectors?
They worked, but most were used on long trips by non-hot rodders.
After a while that pink or bright yellow butterfly got to you and they'd come off when the owners got home.

Generally speaking, a car from the late 50's would be a 40's to 50's sedan or coupe.
They were nosed and decked many times, lowered a reasonable amount, some were shod with big and littles depending if you were a hot rodder or custom guy.
Nice paint, set of duals, good running engine and a full-on Tijuana Tuck & Roll job would do it for most.

For the rest of us it was multiple carburetion and engine swaps.

Then, the Power Pack dual quad 56 Chevy came to town and the handwriting was on the wall.
Guys realized a payment book was a helluva lot easier than lying on a cold garage floor and doing the final touches to an engine swap.

Worse yet was when the little Chevy's cleaned your clock.

I don't run SBC, only did once - and it was a great little engine - but I have a heckuva lot of respect for them.
Today, they're just a power source for many and they come in a box straight from the factory, but back in the day they were modified like all the rest of the popular engines.

A good learning experience as well.
Guys learned you really did need a good ignition system to run at the elevated RPMs the little Chevy's ran.

They learned about metallurgy to boot.

There was just something about seeing a 'windowed' small block that had a rod let go at 8200 RPM +....