Hot Rods Teenage Hot Rodder's Cheap Tricks in the 60's

When I was 16 (in 1960) I often street raced my '34 Ford pickup in local street drags.
I fashioned some "quick cap/uncap" lakes style plugs, to open my exhaust, from a pair of
gas tank fill pipes welded into the header pipes ahead of the mufflers. Using the stock
chrome gas tank filler caps I could quickly cap the exhaust when the cops showed up.
You can see a chrome filler cap under the front edge of the running board.

 

AWESOME!

 

Bad ass lil' pick up Rite there! Very Kool..

 

Too poor and nowhere to buy wider wheels. So I would knock out the rivets on Chevy wheels and buick wheels. Use the Chevy centers and Buick outers reversing them. Trued them up my dad's lathe and arc welded them up. Had to get under the car to check the air, because the valve stem was on the inside after reversing the rim. Got some 7 inch wheels that way. Could buy rims at the junkyard for a buck a piece.

 

What a cool truck, where did you get the chromed rear wheels back then?

 

The chrome reversed rims on my pickup also had the valve stems on the back side. In those days "service" stations actually provided service, like checking the tire pressure if you asked. I had many laughs at my dad's favorite Enco
station getting the attendants to check my rear tire pressure :>) They were always good sports about checking them.

 

In the early 60's I had a '58 Bell Aire with a 409. I welded a piece of threaded galvanized pipe to the exhaust pipes just behind the wheel well. A standard cap was screwed on to the pipe. On the cap I welded a piece of rebar about 8" or 10" long. I used a hammer to knock the caps off because they were too hot. Worked great.

 

I had a 56 Plymouth with a 354 hemi. Got a 4:10 third member at the junk yard out of a pickup and put it in the Plymouth. It was a $25 upgrade.

 

On my 34 1/2 ton, I solved the problem by using Buick reversed rims on the Olds rear end. I had 48 Ford backing plates and wheels on the front, and didn't have the money, but I was going to put Buick rims on the front as well.
I did finally put chrome reversed rims on my 1947 Chev coupe. I had a Buick rear end in the back, and I changed the front to 53 American Pontiac, which had the same bolt pattern as the Buick.

 

Nice truck!

Welded spider gears, torched springs, flipped air cleaner lid, light advance springs, screw in the linkage for manual secondaries...

 

I had 14" wheels all around but I wanted to run some big, fat, 15" Mickey Thompsons in back. I was too poor for fancy alloy wheels so I bought a pair of steel Corvette wheels that had the "right" bolt pattern and were wide enough. (I believe most other stock type, steel 15" wheels were the "wrong" bolt pattern back then.) They came in black paint which was not the thing to have in those days. But they had these kidney shape holes that were sort of cool. I masked the holes about a 1/4" extra width and spray painted the rest silver for my poor boy, custom rims.

 

blackrat40 - tough truck - tough dude

 

You were a crafty bunch O hoodlums......and you probably still are. Thanks for sharing the stories and tech.

 

Still got your Hotrod Truck @blackrat40?

I also read you were trying to figure out how to post pictures and looks as if you have succeeded...cool

 

I only had one pair of chrome reversed wheels so I bolted both of them to the driver's side of my mom's old olds after I bought it. Clicked the photo and put both chromies on the front again. I was po. Car was only 10 years old in this photo.

 

My second car in high school was a 57 BelAir 283/4speed/411's.
After the headers, Holley swap and Cragars I was broke, but I felt I just couldn't be seen on the streets without a set of Lakewood traction bars. Studied all the cars and ads in Hot Rod, Car Craft, etc and with a friends left over rect. tubing and his welding help I had the most beatiful set of traction bars, really looked like Lakewoods.
Bought a pair of rubber snubbers at the hardware store and painted the bars yellow, even cut out a couple logos from Lakewood ads in magazines and glued them on.
The other big cheapout was the fiberglass "Grump Lump" hood scoop that another (older) friend helped me pop off a store bought scoop, was extra careful with tape and plenty of release agent so I could return the scoop to the speed shop for a full refund.
I do recall using up quite a few sabre saw blades getting the hole cut out of the steel hood though. The same friend helped glass the scoop in then I rattle can primered it and did the flame job myself.
Not too bad for a 17 year old huh.

 

When I bought my 57 bel air it had traction bars made from old bumper jacks! Tacky to the extreme.

 

My high school car in 1956 was a 34 sedan. It had no radio and that was uncool in 1956. A friend gave me a 38 Buick radio that was as big as a shoe box. I fabricated a bracket to mount it to the left side of the steering column, rigged an antenna, and wired it up but it didn't work. Discovered that Buick was negative ground whereas Ford was positive ground. Took it out and did a bench test with radio power wire on positive terminal of battery and grounded the case to negative terminal. Radio played fine - (speaker was in radio case. ) So I insulated my bracket from steering column by wrapping friction tape around the column. I connected radio power wire to car ground and a 6v wire to the radio case. So the radio case was hot all the time! (Aarrgh!) Radio played fine. So a few weeks later I'm cruising and listening to my radio when there came forth from under the dash great billowing clouds of smoke, sparks, and smell. My friction tape insulation job had failed. This fiasco was enabled by my unfamiliarity with the concept of fuses.

 

I had a 63 1/2 Falcon Sprint in 1966 that was pretty quick thanks to Gene Cromer helping me, with little cash (65 bucks) I went to Gene and he gave me way more bang for the buck than I paid for,but that's the kind of guy Gene was and still is.

He installed a set of heads on the 260 that turned my little Falcon into a giant killer. HRP

 

Nice Falcon HRP! I have always had a soft spot for those as I had a 64 sprint and my brother had a 63 sprint convertible.

 

Back it those days used hot rod parts were available pretty cheap because only about 5% of guys were into
hot rodding. Everyone made them, like "southcross2631" said above, by chiseling the rivets off, flipping the centers
over and welding them in. Then sending them to a bumper re-chroming shop (bumpers were all metal and chrome then). Plating was pretty cheap in the days before the EPA saved us. I think I paid $25 for both rims.

 

When I was a teenager the first thing you did to your car was use a hacksaw to cut the head pipe before the "Y" and install a couple Thrush mufflers. They were $9.99 each and a clamp held it together on each side. We never used hangers. Once and a while you had to go around the block and pick up the muffler that fell off. Only happened when somebody was watching you do something stupid. They rattled and banged against the floor/trany cross member all the time. Price to pay for being cool. Between the Thrush mufflers and Cal Custom air cleaner we probably added 150HP (at least in our pea brained minds).

 

Don't have the truck anymore. I traded it for my first '40 Ford coupe. I put a '52 Olds 303 in it and ran B/G on
Saturday nights at Circle Dragstrip in Dallas and drove it to school weekdays. Currently working on my 4th '40
Ford coupe. A revisit to my high school creation. It has a '56 Olds 324 w/3-2's, Schnider cam and Mallory dist.,and
has a '67 chromed Firebird Posi.It is in black primer (..."BlackRat40"). Figured out the picture posting :>)

 

Boss '57!!

 

Love it!...Looks like Corvette wheels?

 

back in 61 I needed wider rim for my SBC powered '47 Ford tudor. "58 Imperial wheels fit and had holes around the outside of the center which looked cool to my young eyes, couple of whitewall takeoffs from a late '50s Chrysler from the Mobil station where I worked gave the car a nice rake with stock front wheels/tires. Ah the good ol' days.

 

In 1966 I had a 53 4 door Ford that I bought for $35. Took a model T vibrator ignition coil and mounted it in the trunk. Put a spark plug about a foot from the end of the tail pipe and connected the two together. When going down a hill with someone tailgating me, I would pull out the choke, turn the engine off and pump the gas. I would then flip on the T coil (had a switch under the dash). I would get 6 feet of flame out of the end of the tail pipe. Same car, I hinged the back seat so we could keep beer in the trunk and have access to it from inside the car.

 

So you traded and I'd say very well at that. You've had some cool Hotrods. You were also fortunate to have a strip you could run at.

You have a very good eye for Hotrod Blackrat. That vintage 40 coupe you were running really looks the part...and no doubt performed as well.

Glad you can post pics now...please do tell and share. There coupe your working on now is on the Hotrod way to I see.
Good Stuff...

 

Thanks for the compliments stogy! Here's a couple more pic's you might like. I painted the truck's dash with a paint spray attachment on the exhaust side of my mom's Kenmore vacuum cleaner. The rear view pic shows my "upgrade" mill (a '51 Merc) in the bed of the truck. Was running a '48 Merc. w/3-2's.