MAGAZINE

MORT'S SHORTS

The hot in hot rod isn't just....... hot-lookin'.

The whole mess got started when they wanted cars to go better. Right after that - and as a secondary goal - they wanted them to look better. Or different. Different and better would be better. Different for different's sake isn't usually the nuts, as we have seen in "Mauled Mercs" (Diehards Magazine).

We tend to take the less traveled path here - keeps us from becoming a threat to the Biggies - and that path causes us to preach racing and performance issues quite a bit, although that's not a thread that runs through our own background. Up until a few years ago, actually lighting a car and making a pass on the drag strip or hill was new to us. We're compelled to pursue that some more, though, along with some dry lakes work, in our own search for hot rod truth. (Ya might also note that tech advice is sought here, not offered.)

In a telephone chat with Commander Stroupe, he expressed his own conviction that racing was integral to the foundings of the hobby and that he was wrangling with the optional ways he could seek his own fulfillment there, too. We reasoned that touring had been our surrogate activity for a long time, where equipment failure risks, and weather risks, and all the contingent hazards of long travel in old iron were the challenges that heretofore had made hair prosper on our legs.

At very least we hadn't been parking lot posers our whole lives.

For most of us, the experience has been satisfied visually and audibly with polished manifolds, scoopish aircleaners and mufflers that sound like gravel running through a drum; the potential to do something spunky. Posing. Now, everybody does the onramp boogie, and loves to blow by some Philistine and bang it into 5th right at the guys door, but we mean really go out there and do something. A heckuva lot of you have earned serious stripes in drag racing all kinds of stuff and some lakes acts, but have 'retired' to street hot rods. We aren't talking about you, we're talking about us. The ones who have not. And we aren't admonishing anybody to do what we're doing, we're just saying, "We think we need to do more of this".

Some of 'em are sccratchin' away at the Hardtop Itch.

Down here there's a dandy 1/8th mile setup at Irwindale Raceway where on-season you can run 1st and 3rd Thursdays. Run what you brung. Casual tech inspection. A natural. We found our way out there and saw lots of door slammers but.........only one hot rod. Must be typical , because the announcer looked at that '36 coupe and said, "What is that, a '34?"

So where were all the 3500 cars that made the last "Get Together?". Probably same place we were last time. Somewhere else. Has every-damn-body out there rolled over? Quit adventuring?

Maybe for some of us the racing bug is born of cats doing it the same ol' way for so dang many years. However cool the same old routine is, the search for purity, nirvana, peace and all, seems to require....searching. Exploring. Finding what you may have missed. Doncha just want to do everything that you ever thought looked fun? Did you ever wonder if you could translate the intellect you have for driving a race car to your eyes, hands and feet?

We plan to gather some bangers and such together and go out there and terrorize the 1/8th, then change the gear and go to Elmo and then the salt. We think a dude just might find truth out there somewhere by those big red balloons.

Besides....we wanna get one o' them Free T Shirts.......................................

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