Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Speedzzter-Says-BangShifting-International-Style-is-Fun.html

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

That's interesting to see that they write about junkyard and hardware store parts to modify your car. Subjects left to the unpublished forums.

[38P]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

Randal,

Your spot-on comment reminded me of something a rather strange but colorful poster once put in the legendary "So Were not rich but we arent stupid" [sic] turbo thread over on the Car Craft board.

"'Think! How long would it take to fab up all that tubing and #$% ya need fo a turbo? You really think some Cali writer's got time fo all that? And with all that free swag they get from Edelbrock and all, why are they going to stress over some hacked-together JY turbo garbage? No freebies from the junk man, Doc. He don't buy no ads, 'foo!'"

http://forums.carcraft.com/70/668919...pid/page4.html

BTW, that thread's been going since 2003 and has nearly 91,000 page views . . . and Car Craft still hasn't done a home-brewed turbo build, so I guess there is something to the widely-believed theory that editorial coverage in rodding magazines is strongly driven by advertising.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

The group hounding that thread I wonder about. My big deal with that thread is "If it's soooo easy, why haven't the poster's done it AND posted about it"?? (and if I'm wrong about that, tell me!)

Now guys like Dieselgeek and a few others I'm sure know people who have, but I generally ignore the thread after I asked about their turbo projects since it was so easy and got the run around.


Not to take away from your point though, I think it's correct, I just personally think that thread is a bad example.

[38P]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

I guess CCMAG ignores it too.

I've always thought the thread was about getting a homebuilt, real-world turbo build story into the magazine, and not to brag on obscure, unpublished projects.

And a few of the more prolific posters have complained about "life" getting in the way of their projects. There have been a few build pics posted in the early days of the thread. One guy that comes to mind is a guy from Australia who's building a turbocharged OZ Falcon 6 with a crossflow OHV head.

I'm just amazed that it's lasted over six years. That's a long time for a thread with such a narrow focus. And I thought it was an applicable example for the point about how American magazines tend not to cover "hacks" and home-brewed how-tos anymore.

A few days ago, I ran across a dusty box of old "Science and Mechanics" and "Mechanix Illustrated" magazines from the 1950 and early 1960s. I was amazed at the kind of homemade how-tos that our grandfathers used to read about and maybe even try. Crazy stuff that would totally flip out the lawyers now, such as building your own "submarine" (more like an underwater SCUBA jet ski). And those magazines were jam-packed with classified ads for all sorts of "build it at home plans." (Maybe that's why they had so many crazy builds).

To a certain extent, that's the sort of "cut and try" do-it-yourself philosophy that's been lost in this day of buying everything out of a catalog, building for resale, and building only vehicles that the magazines have ordained as "cool."

The thing is, if any of the hot rod magazines ran stories now about hopping up an old rental-car Taurus or a Lincoln Town Car, or even whacking together a mid-engined buggy powered by the cheapest FWD engine and transaxle in the JY, half of the readers and a good portion of the advertisers would probably be calling for somebody's head.

That's sad.

Apparently down under, "hooning" isn't so perfectionistic that AutoSpeed can only run stories on building V8 Holdens or FPV Falcons or whatever the elite factory-designed street machines are.

Now I would say that some of the rat rodders seem to be thinking outside of the box (even if the engineering and aesthetics are often a bit dodgy). Too bad more of that irreverent "rebel" sprirt and creativity aren't seen in late model rodding. As Freiburger once famously wrote, we seem to be "cooking the same meat" over and over again.

In that "dare to be different" vein, I hope Brian keeps us posted on his "Jolly Green Giant" pickup build. Sure, it's not another '69 Camaro that you can build out of catalogs, and it won't ever be the "fastest car in the valley," but it's plenty interesting nonetheless.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

On the homebuilt turbo front. You guys may remember the feature I wrote for Hot Rod about the dude I know who built the twin turbo Mustang out of John Deere tractor parts, exhaust tubing, and sheer wits and gumption. The car ran high 10's with a bone stock Mercury Mountaineer short block and GTP heads.

It was a proud moment for me personally because I thought it was a car most every greasy handed hot rodder would love.

About a year later I was sitting in a meeting of staffers and contributors to Hot Rod and was soundly chewed out by a guy I have looked up to for a very long time about writing the story and "glorifying that piece of shit."

Not my happiest memory.

Brian

[Scott Liggett]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

Jeff Smith isn't a fan of weird and unusual. Definitely, not DF or King.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

Definitely not Jeff.

[Scott Liggett]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

Definitely not Jeff.

Just send some fun poking his way.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

That sucks Brian.

DIY things are going the way of the Soapbox derby :-\

[realsteelfreak]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

On the homebuilt turbo front. You guys may remember the feature I wrote for Hot Rod about the dude I know who built the twin turbo Mustang out of John Deere tractor parts, exhaust tubing, and sheer wits and gumption. The car ran high 10's with a bone stock Mercury Mountaineer short block and GTP heads.

It was a proud moment for me personally because I thought it was a car most every greasy handed hot rodder would love.

About a year later I was sitting in a meeting of staffers and contributors to Hot Rod and was soundly chewed out by a guy I have looked up to for a very long time about writing the story and "glorifying that piece of shit."

Not my happiest memory.

Brian

I remember that story and I think I still have the rag, I was quite impressed with the car and the story. It seems to me specialty sites like a slant6 or a 4cyl Ford has stories on turbos or superchargers on the cheap, but its been a while since I have searched stuff out.

[tiresmoke!]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

On the homebuilt turbo front. You guys may remember the feature I wrote for Hot Rod about the dude I know who built the twin turbo Mustang out of John Deere tractor parts, exhaust tubing, and sheer wits and gumption. The car ran high 10's with a bone stock Mercury Mountaineer short block and GTP heads.

It was a proud moment for me personally because I thought it was a car most every greasy handed hot rodder would love.

About a year later I was sitting in a meeting of staffers and contributors to Hot Rod and was soundly chewed out by a guy I have looked up to for a very long time about writing the story and "glorifying that piece of shit."

Not my happiest memory.

Brian

That's a damned shame, Brian.

Those "glorified pieces of shit" are infinitely more interesting to a guy like me than the giga-buck museum showpieces that'll never turn a wheel in anger.....makes me wonder how much heat Freiburger caught when he helmed Car Craft?

Gimme the cars/guys that start with a pile of junk and builds something insane..."wallet rods" do nothing for me.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

makes me wonder how much heat Freiburger caught when he helmed Car Craft?

Bingo! I always thought those stories were overblown, but after my encounter, I think they were 100% spot on.

Brian

[38P]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

On the homebuilt turbo front. You guys may remember the feature I wrote for Hot Rod about the dude I know who built the twin turbo Mustang out of John Deere tractor parts, exhaust tubing, and sheer wits and gumption. The car ran high 10's with a bone stock Mercury Mountaineer short block and GTP heads.

It was a proud moment for me personally because I thought it was a car most every greasy handed hot rodder would love.

About a year later I was sitting in a meeting of staffers and contributors to Hot Rod and was soundly chewed out by a guy I have looked up to for a very long time about writing the story and "glorifying that piece of shit."

Not my happiest memory.

Brian

DUDE! I forgot you wrote that story! I thought that was one of the best features I'd read in HRM in YEARS! Definitely a top-ten article during the past decade.

I know exactly where one of my copies of it is . . . In my massive turbo technology file . . . right next to my printouts on Mike Sitar's budget twin turbo Thunderbird. (http://www.toohighpsi.com/BudgetTT/tt351W.htm)

(That story was so good . . . along with the Twin Turbo Trans-Am and PGD turbo Rambler stories that were also in that issue of HRM . . . that I bought a newsstand copy of HRM that month even though I already had one as a subscriber -- Just to do my part to make that "turbo" issue was a sales success!)

I still can't believe that guy got so much out of a JY engine (he's more gutsy that I am). And that hard line/tractor hydraulic distribution manifold plumbing scheme was pure low-buck genius. The bang-for-the-buck on that dented Mustang was off-the- chart! That's real Yankee ingenuity, I guess.

I think I speak for the hundreds of thousands of Bangshifters who'd rather read about something "off the chain" and "real world" like that beat-up twin-turbo Mustang instead of another "perfect" (yawn) over-billeted "Boydster" show rod (not that I have anything against the late Boyd Coddington . . . other than he built way too many blingy, boring single four barrel "crate motor" type "smoothsters" )

The elitist who chewed you out . . . he's simply out-of-touch with the values that made hot rodding great. I suspect that sort of thinking has hurt circulation.

While I understand that the magazines need to serve the advertisers, there really should be a balance. When the magazines turn into nothing more than a catalog for hugely expensive, pro-built, flawless "checkbook" rods and machines, I think it discourages too many people with more time, creativity and skill than money.

The reason underground movements like H.A.M.B. and Billetproof are successful is that there are a lot of people who want to reclaim the "soul" of hot rodding from the "lawnchair" rodders trailering around their $100,000.00 clone rods, the obsessive/compulsive"date code" purists, the ISCA perfectionists, and the tacky import tuners (who seem to need to cover their winged weedwhackers with hundred of "sponsors").

Some say that Barrett-Jackson has hurt the hobby by escalating prices on '60s muscle. But I say that closed-minded magazine types like the guy who chewed you out have hurt it immeasurably more.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Speedzzter Says: BangShifting International Style is Fun

PS (I also wrote the Trans-Am story)

Two of my favorite cars ever.

The owners were complete opposites. Mike, the kid with the Mustang is a very smart guy, an engineer trained at one of the best schools in the area the fun thing about him is that he combines that education with a subversive junkyard scrounging mind-set.

The owner of the TA is also an engineer and has the level of fit and finish/attention to detail that lots of those guys have. We shot the photos for both cars at the same time so the two guys got to hang out and interact. It was fascinating to watch. The best moment was when the owner of the TA saw the hydraulic distribution block/oiling distribution block for the turbos and nearly passed out.

They both dug each others cars, but both admitted that they wouldn't trade one for the other.

That was a fun day.

Brian