An Open Question

[enjenjo]

I was thinking today, I have a lot of time for that since I am RETIRED  Most of us have been through several motor sports, Drag racing, Snowmobiles, Motorcycles, Drag Racing, Circle Track racing, Midgets, Sprints, Dune Buggys, Lawn Mower racing, ect, ect, ect. What draws us to do this? What makes us stop?

In my case, I quit circle track racing, because I got tired of financing a car for someone else to tear up every week, and I wasn't good enough to do it myself. Most of the others I quit because I was priced out of winning.  In some cases it was my fault, I would find a combo that would win, but in a few weeks, or months, it was no longer competitive, I don't like competing if there is no chance of winning, and I wasn't willing to make the additional investment. I also get bored with racing where all the cars are the same, modern NASCAR for instance. So I tend to get into a new series, or new type of racing, and get out when there is only one combo that will win.

I have been fooling with hot rods/street rods, for a long time, because I could compete against myself, trying to make each one better. And I could drive it myself.

Any thoughts? Beuler? Anyone?

[Dave]

I was thinking today, I have a lot of time for that since I am RETIRED  Most of us have been throought several motor sports, Drag racing, Snowmobiles, Motorcycles, Drag Racing, Circle Track racing, Midgets, Sprints, Dune Buggys, Lawn Mower racing, ect, ect, ect. What draws us to do this? What makes us stop?

In my case, I quit circle track racing, because I got tired of financing a car for someone else to tear up every week, and I wasn't good enough to do it myself. Most of the others I quit because I was priced out of winning.  In some cases it was my fault, I would find a combo that would win, but in a few weeks, or months, it was no longer competitive, I don't like competing if there is no chance of winning, and I wasn't willing to make the additional investment. I also get bored with racing where all the cars are the same, modern NASCAR for instance. So I tend to get into a new series, or new type of racing, and get out when there is only one combo that will win.

I have been fooling with hot rods/street rods, for a long time, because I could compete against myself, trying to make each one better. And I could drive it myself.


Yup you got free time i can tell!
Any thoughts? Beuler? Anyone?

I did the circle track thing the drag racing thing  the snowmobile thing but ya know the hot rod thing came about 75 or sumpin like that for me and it never left. Im not sure about the competing against your self thing Frank. Think of it in terms of the friends youve made in the hobby and the new friends you will make. Ive been a long time playing with cars to get the hot rod i always wanted and now ive got it. It looks great runs great but now im done?
Now i  look forward to the meetings with the good friends of the rrt and just looking at the latest magazines to see whats new and different.
Now its getting to be more of a fun thing with out the late hours and lots of work to get er finished and driveable..
I do wish I had your free time though.
Dave

[Sean]

I tend to jump from one interest to another, then back again all the time. I have a very low tolerance for boredom and as soon as I get tired of messing with something I drop it and go to something different. 6 months or a year later, I'll pick up where I left off until I get tired of messing with it again.

Money is also a deciding factor as to what hobby I happen to be into at any given time. Having three Daughters and a stay at home Wife doesn't exactly leave me with an excess of money.  Any time you guys see me posting about working on my F100, it usually means that I have just worked a couple of 80 hour weeks in a row and have overtime money to spend. That, or I just got my income Tax return...

[EMSjunkie]

This all sounds very familiar. started out with a dirt bike, graduated to "bomber" stock car, street stock, super stock, got lucky and fell into a complete sprint car minus engine. that was about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on!!  right up to the nasty cartwheel down the front straightaway. hurt like all get out. the Mrs. told me I wouldn't have enough money left after the divorce to build another sprint car, so I decided to build a street rod. always been interested in rodding. my high school counceler had a 56 f-100 that was black and *'
thats my story. :?


Vance

_____________________________________________________________

No Kitty!!!  Thats MY POT PIE!   NO!!   BAD KITTY!!

[parklane]

Frank  Did it hurt when you were thinking? just curious. I've  been into hot rods/street rods/cruisers forever. When I couldn't afford to own one, I was working on some one elses which was the norm. About the only thing that will stop me is 6' of dirt.  
John

[Jokester]

This thread reminds me of the guy that was a natural athlete.  Over the years he tried every sport....until he became good at it.  Baseball, basketball, football, racketball, tennis.  Played them until he became proficient, then got bored and quit.  Then he took up golf.  After 20 years he's still perfecting his game.

Much the same with rods.  Even as you finish one, you are thinking of how you could make the next one better, faster, shinier, more unique.  Even when you do your very best, you always think you could have done it better.  Why else would we all buy more cars than we could finish in the balance of our lifetimes.  

My 2 cents.  and I do accept checks.

.bjb

[Charlie Chops 1940]

I got hooked on hotrods when I was just barely a teenager. One of the big influences were the Heny Gregor Felsen books. I have read them many times and they still have the ability to make me a kid again.

I bought my first hot rod in 1962, an unfinished '32 pickup with an olds motor, 39 trans, light channell, bobbed box and rear fenders. Drove it once and tore it apart to "fix it up". Like a lot of young guys back then my ambitions far outstripped my capabilities. I stuck with late model stuff into the early 70's by which time I had learned how to learn. I did a little drag racing, alway built model cars, at least until about 1970, HO scale railroading until the 70's and then 1:1 cars took the forefront. I got into Yamaha dirt bikes for 5 or 6 years in the 70's and started building street rods in about 1973. Been at it ever since...and still learning new stuff, and forgetting old stuff.

Have had my '40 for 26 years and 135,000 miles this March. Looking forward to driving the track roadster pickup this summer and starting on the '32 roadster.

Ain't retirement grand, Frank? I'm having more fun now than any time in my life

Charlie

[58Apache]

I never got into most of that racing stuff, unless you include some crazy teen stuff in fast cars. I grew up in the muscle car era. My second car was a 65 GTO with a 389 and 4 speed. Man I am glad my dad never found out most of the stuff I did in that thing. I'm probably lucky to be alive and never put in jail.

During my 6 years in the Air Force, I tried to get back to muscle with a 55 chevy, although a 4 door, that I bought in Ogden Utah. With help I converted the tranny from a powerglide to a Muncie 4 speed. The engine ran so-so with overheat problems. I sold it without being able to put many improvements into it, although it was my daily driver for a couple years.

I had done most maintenance and repairs on all of my cars. If I didn't, they didn't get fixed. So I had some experience, but just enough to get into trouble sometimes.

I once read a guy's theory that you get a car later in life just like the car you couldn't get or were denied when young. That blew me away at the possibilities as the car I am building now, I remember us going to look at when I was a teen after the GTO got sold. My dad said no because it needed a clutch replaced, and I wasn't making enough money to buy it on my own.

As for speed, I thought long and hard about it. I finally figured out two things:

1. No matter how much money I put into an engine and drive train, there's always going to be someone who can out spend me.

2. I am putting so much time and money into this car that if I cracked it up on a race track, I would never forgive myself. Let's face it, unless it's a kit car, most of our cars can't easily be replaced, there were only so many made and so many not yet crushed.

I have NEVER put this much time or money into a car before. Luckliy I don't need it for a daily driver and can take my time to do it the way I want.

I put way too much money into houses, raising a child, and just monthly bills. My daughter is married and only partially has her hand in my wallet still. I was a good dad, a good husband, a good provider, and now it's time for ME and what I want for a change. Thanks to rodding buddies and sites like this one and others I got the confidense to try to build one like what I always wanted. It will be the first big block that I have ever owned.

                                          Steve

[phat rat]

Well mine isn't a story about my time in motorsports but time away. From the time I was about 10 yrs old I've enjoyed hot rods and customs. Grew up poor but I finally  bought a 40 Ford cpe in  63 drove it one summer and tore it down to make it better. Never did get it done sold it in 73. Drag raced, ran coon and bear hounds. Then I had a farm and raised and showed Appaloosa horses. Always in the back of my mind was a hot rod. Got divorced in 87, bought a Vette in 88, a 54 Ford ht in 90, my 41 cpe in 92 and I  finally had my hot rod

[phat rat]

Frank, how about deleting my previous post on this topic and I'll start a different one rather than getting off topic on yours.

[btrc]

I drag raced for about 17 years.  Mostly NHRA legal stuff.  The last couple years was a B/EA Corvette.  We were pretty succesful with it,  won several local races, made a lot of rounds at Natinal events, never won one but was runner up at the Mile Highs in Denver one year.  I had a partner in the car who was a great motor man and who contributed probably 60% of the capital needed.  One day he calls me up and tells me he was having some tax problems and sold the trailer to a friend, but we could still use it for the year.  Then a couple of dys later he said he was through but I could keep runnig the car just no money from him.  There was no way I could keep it up (we had 3 engines and rebuilt them every couple of races) so I went to one last points race and quit.  I qualified 2nd at that race but had a fluke mech. problem first round and lost.  That was 18 years ago and after running at hundreds of races I think I have only been to the drags to watch about 4 times since then.
 I got into Autocross for a while, which is a blast but buying a set of tires that only lasts 2 weeks and racing only for trophies just didn't make sense to me.


Bob

[alchevy]

I grew up liking cars. When I was a teenager, I went to several local car shows. Went through several types of cameras over those years trying to get one that would take good pictures indoors because most of those car shows were indoors back then. Always dreamed of one day having a car of my own in one of those shows. I guess I got most of my likings of cars from my Dad. He had a '59 Corvette from '59 'til '62 and I was born in '65. That has been my favorite car. Being a Chevy fan, I started looking for a Chevy to be my street rod when after going to the Street Rod Nats in Louisville in '99, I got bit by the street rod bug. My friends told me that since Chevy stopped using wood inside the cars in '37 to start looking from there on. So I decided on from '37 to '39. Went over to Alabama with some friends to look at one that was for sale, even hauled a trailer over there. Did not buy it though. This after hearing one friend say that if you haul an empty trailer to go look at a car, you will come back with the car! I broke that myth. I then saw a '40 Chevy on the internet up in Chicago and bought it just by looking at two pictures of it and talking to the guy on the phone a few times. A friend of mine had just gotten a '36 Plymouth hauled down from Wisconsin by a guy out of Missouri and so I used the same guy to bring my '40 home from Chicago. As he was backing the car out of his trailer, a PT Cruiser that lived in my neighborhood came driving by real slow. Now that was awesome since the PT Cruiser is supposed to represent the fat-fendored cars of the '30s-'40s! It was an original car and over three years, my car club friends helped me transform it into a street rod. In July 2003, we got it on the road and I drove it around town for two weeks and then took off in it to Louisville to the 2003 Nats. Made the trip fine and did it again in 2004. It now has over 11,000 miles on it! In 2004, I put it in an indoor car show in that same place that I used to go to car shows and even though it is unfinished, needs paint & interior, it got a lot of thumbs up at the show. While I was at that show, a young teenage boy and his Dad came up to look at my car and I could see a lot of myself at that age in the teenager.
AL

[purplepickup]

I've written some of this before but here it is again.

I've always been a "jack of all trades but a master of none" kind of guy.   My grandpa always had something going on in his shop and one of my earliest memories is of a time he let me hold a blow torch (the gasoline kind) for him.  I can't remember what he was doing but holding that torch was a huge thrill.  From hanging out with him, I started to see the connection between using tools and fixing or making things.  Until I was 8 years old a family of pretty hardcore bikers lived down the road and they had kids my age.  When I'd go down to their house to play there were always Harleys torn apart all over the house with pans full of nuts, bolts, and oil everywhere.  Everybody there was always happy too.  I'm sure that helped influence my life.

I tore a lot of things apart when I was real young but my first full-blown project was rebuilding and painting a Harley Hummer when I was 13.  I had the service manual and did most of the engine work myself.  A bike mechanic we knew checked clearances and stuff like that for me.  I painted it myself with my mom's vacuum sweeper that had a spray attachment that screwed onto a pint mason jar.  I used the bike for a 7-mile paper route so I built some plywood saddlebags to put my stuff in.  I copied the shape of the traditional Harley dresser fiberglass bags.  I put a very large Alfred E Neuman decal on the top of the tank.  I was one proud kid.  

When I was old enough to get a car I had saved enough to buy a 57 Chevy sedan delivery.  Over the years I rebuilt the 283 (later put in a '68 Z28 302), put in a 4 speed, and changed many rear ends.  Being around farm equipment and maintaining it gave me some basic knowledge but nothing very refined.  I had the attitude that if it ran...run it.  Safety and perfection weren't my priorities then.  A buddy and I built a wrecked '57 Corvette into a drag car that we sold after it blew up the first year.  Girls were more becoming more important about then.

Anyway, ever since then I've been a cobbler in lots of different areas.  I raced snowmobiles a little, cut a VW bus in half and took 2 feet out of the middle then welded it back together, rode and raced dirt bikes, built my log cabin from trees that grew where it stands, ran a trap line, hunted, trained bird dogs, fished, built a few Harleys in the '70s, did a couple hippy van conversions, and generally dabbled in whatever came along.  I've never been very good at anything in particular because I usually move on to another interest when the wind blows from a different direction.  I've always wanted to see what's around the next turn.  I was single until I was 45 so my life was whatever I wanted it to be.

The exception to that restless nature has been my last 15 years of rodding.  It isn't that I'm honing any skills (although I might be a little), but it's the people that have kept me interested for so long.  A person couldn't ask for a better group of people to hang out with than the ones I've met thru this hobby.

That's my story in a nutshell.

[kb426]

Very similar stories for most. I raced 20 years, always with a dragster and most years with a blown alky car. As long as I'm busy and creative, I'm pretty happy. Now that it's too cold to heat the garage, I'm bored to tears. The computer and internet have helped with the winter blahs alot.

[rooster]

For me it first started with some fun drag racing at about 17, witch I thought was ok at the
time. I used the hang around with some guys at a local gas station that had a stock car, a
53 chevy! The owner got drafted into the Army and left me with the chevy, that was in
68. I ran the 53 about 5 times, it was more fun than dragging.
The apartment owners where I lived had the car towed to the junk yard during the winter.
While living at the apartments I got to know the owners better and actually went to work
for the them on the days I was rained out working construction. Knowing my way around
the apartment complex better I soon learned that there were 2 junk cars that were also
going to be towed to the junk yard. One of the car was a 57 Desoto with a Hemi , had a
push button auto trans in it. The apartment owners let me keep the cars, but I had to park
them in the connor of the lot by the trash dumpsters. We made the Desoto a junker stock
car! Back then many of the gas stations had these type of cars, nothing serious, just fun!
Me and some guys at the apartments got it running and took it to the standard station up
the street and asked them if they would sponsor us, they agreeded and provided used tiers,
points ,plugs, wires , gas ,ect! That one was a ton of fun. It lasted one season and it was
my turn for the Army.
I drove the car to Murphys junk yard to get rid of it, while I was there I spotted a 39 ford
2/d sedan  for sale  and made a deal with the guy, made a concrete pad for him with left
over concrete and a few hundred bucks. The apartments let me store the Ford in there
parking lot until I got home.
That started a different interest involving cars other than racing! Im Happy and learning
more every day! I think what stops us from contuing racing  is probly the playing of a
better game. For me the racing was mostly for the moment! I couldn't wait for Sunday
night  to load the car up with beer and my buddies and head for the track. About 6 hours
and it was all over until next week. These were all good times but I would never trade for
what Im doing now with cars, even though it can get aggravating at times, thats just part
of the game. Winning can be more than just a race!