Thread: How I got addicted, in 100 words or less.

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Sorry, everyone. I can't do anything in a hundred words or less. I even left out half the story...!

Like many of you, my first exposure to the hobby was an issue of Hot Rod Magazine borrowed from a friend in High School. I was blown away by the cars, and when I reached 16 bought my first car, a 48 Chevy coupe. When the babit bearings went (wouldn't take any reving at all,) I replaced the old 216 with a GMC six. Later got into sporty cars with an MG and later a Sunbeam Tiger (Ford V8) but then came marriage, kids, etc. and 4 doors. I have always retained an interest in the sport, but the responsibilities of life have put it on the back burner until lately.
I now have a slightly warmed up supercharged 1940 Graham and am currently "restoring" a 1958 MGA into which I am installing a Ford V6 and five speed. I love this forum.

Wow, lots of great stories here.

I started back in the 60's when the local airstrip would get turned into an 1/8 mile dragstrip on the weekends. Would ride a horse as close as they would get to all that noise and then walk the rest of the way. Later we gave up on the horses and used bikes to get us to the drags. I kept attending the races and getting pit passes, oh the smell of alchohol and nitro! The sound of those top fuel guys! Yippppeeeeee!

Helped my friend's cousin get his T-bucket down to Cottage Grove one weekend and had a great time riding shotgun!

Then I found Hot Rod magazine! From there on it was all over. My first car was a '64 MGB that I tore apart within a week of getting it. Positive ground just blew me away.

Sports cars and then muscle cars, what a great bunch of decades. Now I'm still into muscle cars and am starting to think about a true Hot Rod.

I can remember my much older cousins on dad's side talking about the family drag strip.
The 300 C Mopar with out the radio and heater.
The 327 in the old Corvette's.
I grew up less than 45 min. from Knoxville Iowa home of the sprint car nationals.
On mom's side we had two uncle's that ran midgets for many years.
The first car I ever owned was an old Ford Torino which came with a 302.
Out came the 302 and in went the 460.
Out came the 3.08 gear in went the 3.73 gear.
That was in 1983.
I had part of Dad's shop torn up for about a month doing that.
I can talk about all the other cars but you said in less than 100 words so I will end it there.

You are like me JR........someone asks me what time it is, and I end up telling them how to build a watch!!


Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

................... and I end up telling them how to build a watch!!


Don

And then going WAAAAAAYYYYYY over budget building it!!!!

I know my own story has many more chapters,.......like people who fed my addiction,....... and experiences that pushed me in different directions.

What I didn't want to do was bore you with lengthy discussions of dropping a bolt into the intake of a fresh engine, and figuring out how to retrieve it.....or throwing wrenches that bounced back and dented the car,..... or the time (after an impressive "exhibition of speed & power") I opened the hood of my 409 Chevy to let friends listen to the nasty "lope" of the Z-11 cam, only to hear a bearing spin, and lock the motor up right in front of them! :-).

hotrodpaint:

A classic victim of "watch this"......haha.

Mine goes from doing donuts in the school parking lot...resulting in a week of detention in the principal's office,
Explaining to dad how the muffler fell off....it was oval on the ends and round in the middle.

A little later explaining how the generator windings came apart on the 56 Ford.

Then how the transmission began slipping on the 53 chev.

Why the 57 Turnpike cruiser smelled of burnt rubber.

and it goes on.

Bought my first issue of R&C May '64 (I still have it) at the corner drug store (remember them?). Taught myself to braze using an old Midway buzz box at age 12, and used it to build go-karts, minibikes, and motorbikes. Built and raced a lot of slot cars in the mid-60's, also customized a few motorcycles. Continued to follow the hobby, customizing VWs in the 70's because they were cheap and we could still shoot lacquer in the driveway. Rebuilt the car pictured in '92, which was someone's earlier build from '85.

When I was in Junior High and High School there were two groups of guys......Jocks who loved sports and gearheads who ate, drank and slept cars. Guess which one I was in? We would go from class to class making these stupid squealing tire sounds and shifting gears. Dumb, I know , but it was fun then.

If we got a glimpse of some hot car or actually got invited to ride in one we were on cloud nine. Like many of you I had tablet after tablet of hot rods I drew, planning the hot rod I was going to actually own some day. The little hot rod magazines that sold for 25 cents fit really well into an English or Math book which is why I still can't speak properly today or add 2 and 2.

And, like some of us older guys on here, I am so grateful that I got to grow up in the 50's and 60's. Things carwise were really starting to happen and the world was just a cool place to be back then.

Don

Easy for me, it was love at first sight.
I have 2 uncles 10-15 years older than me, so at a very young age I was exposed to hot rodding. My uncles we into all the 60's era cars they grew up around, which thankfully rubbed off on me.

Dad owned a Speed Shop and a Body Shop in the 50's and 60's,
guess that kinda hooked me for life.

Two words, My Dad!

Keith

I'm learning that our stories are similar. There seems to be the influence of a friend or family member who was already addicted ...and the sounds, smells, and sights of the cars!

...and I haven't even mentioned how the car becomes an extension of your personality due to the feeling of power, and the attention of others! I'll never forget giving up my '61 Vette for a Plymouth sedan family car, then felt "incomplete".

...until I bought a '69 Camaro SS ragtop with a 350 4-speed and was mysteriously cured! :-)~

I don't know how I missed this thread way back in '07, and didn't tell my life's story; I usually like to expound on that, it seems. Now, someone has resurrected it, so I'll make a contribution.

I consider myself to be a "pre-boomer"; I was hatched in '42, not too long after that small Asian nation attacked Pearl Harbor. By '48, or so, I was being influenced, even at that young age, by a couple of "big kids" who were neighbors; one was just an all around tinkerer and messed with anything that flew, rolled, sparked, or other such. The other, the older of the two by a couple of years, had "bikes" - regular pedal types, Whizzers, Mustangs, and Cushmans, and was always "improving" them some way or another. I was the almost constant shadow of one or the other of them.

I guess I have some sort of recessive gene in my makeup that predisposes me to things manual, because my Dad was not mechanical at all; I don't think he could even hang a towel bar without help (some early memory, no doubt), but both of my Grandfathers were relatively self sufficient, and experts in their own fields, one a lineman, electrician, and millwright (I followed in his footsteps in my career), and the other was, what today would be called an enterpreneur - he was a wholesale/retail milk distributor, ran a retail door to door route three days a week, and wholesale accounts the other two or three days; Sunday was for church, no exceptions.

At any rate, my mechanical adventures started at a very early age; roller skates and bicycles for starters at about age five. In about 1950, my Dad bought a new power mower; within about three months, I had the B & S one lunger bolted onto my "Li'l Red Wagon", and it was some hot rod. Of course, when my Dad found out what I had done, I got my butt thrashed, then had to put the mower back together. In years following, I wrenched or hammered on anything I could get my hands on; and, I learned a lot of hard lessons along the way. When I got into high school, shop class called me very loudly, and I started taking every shop class I could get; metal, electrical, and wood shop at first, and when they would allow it, I started into auto shop. Since I didn't have a car, I worked on other guys stuff and shop projects, and the learning continued. I did not get my own car until after I graduated from high school, got a real job on a power line construction gang - as if swamping for a block mason, digging ditches by hand, and swamping on moving vans weren't real - and saved enough money for the down payment on a car; I put two hundred down on a $500 '51 Ford 2 door sedan, and payed it off to the dealer at 25 (or more) a month.

Since then it has been one form of "rod" or another all through the years. In addition to cars, I played with motorcycles in the early sixties, but a couple of wrecks, common sense yelling very loudly in the back of my head, and a new Bride who was adamantly against me being on only two wheels caused me to abandon them and more or less focus on things with four or more wheels, and engines - and transmissions - and transfer cases, and - and - and -----. In addition, I play with wood, things that go bang, a dabble or two in RC stuff, archery, and when I want to look like I am fishing, I go hang a weight on the end of a line, toss it in the water, and sit under a tree and nap.

So, that's my long winded story. There's a lot more to it, details and all, but they are boring.