T n' A
T ‘n A
TEEN-A-OLOGY: THE STUDY OF THE ORIGINAL GOWJOBS
Even some of our own don’t get T’s; stockers, we mean. Talk about being transported back? Yeah, Buddy. Drive one…oh yeah, maybe you can’t. It’s not just an early A. It has three pedals but the throttle is on the steering quadrant. Ya push a pedal to go backwards, and you push the clutch in to drive in low range. The brake pedal works conventionally, so there’s some solace there.
It performs like a farm implement, dependably and modestly, and you can do every thing to it that you do to your ‘streeter’ today: lower, wheels, performance parts, chop, spots, gook…yeah there was some gook going on in the early days. And they’ll just about stop. Contact patch is, like, the size of a quarter… so it ain’t the mechanical brakes’ fault: it’s the skins.
DO HORNS QUALIFY AS GOOK? WE GOT ‘EM!!!
Take this and drive; backwards transport, it is, into another era where guys figured that the fun of the run was a testament to their own shennanigans with tools and innovation. Their hard-scrabble efforts rubbed off, were handed down, assimilated by those around them who had the gene - dormant until exposed to the right stimuli - that allowed them to appreciate what they saw, and crave to do it themselves.
The Archive section in Hop Up Annuals tends to do that to us today; the reader digests the images and tales and yearns to experience the craft like those sepia greyboys in the pictures did. It seems a greater accomplishment to get from A to C in that way - in their environment of isolation, little communication and real austerity, than to go from A to Z with a checkbook, cell phone and the Big Monthly Catalogue.
I guess Brass falls in to T n’ A, too, don’t it? We been itchin’ for Brass for a long time; the real cognocenti get Brass, and we want to feel it, too. We’re finally developing a kind of eye for them; some were swoopy and elegant in a leviathan kinda way..others just plain clunky. Our job is to study and internalize all available info so that we know which is which. If you got the jones for the internal combustion chingo, then, Ma Mang, ya gotta get brass, too.
We recently reran the story (cable TV) of Horation Nelson Jackson, the first cat to drive a car (Winton) coast to coast..in 1903. Lots of broken parts and no kinda roads, but it marks how good the cars already were, in an industry about 7 years old. Took him 73 days or so. (They’ll tell similar stories about how hard it was with primitive computers in the 1960’s some day, we’ll betcha. Ed).
An’ we can go there ourselves, if we’re only philosophical about breakdown and delay. If it’s part of the deal then what’s the risk? Today’s tool box only has a cell phone and an Auto Club Card in it anyway, right?
Ya just gotta take ‘em out and try to break ‘em on your own time, not on theirs , before the big run or tour.
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R.I.P. J.H.
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It’s bitchin how many HAMBERS are in to bangers; it may be the seemingly lower ‘pony up’ or relative simplicity, but we think it’s cuz that bunch of believer-maniacs have got it right. Even we get it kinda, and we have the bonus of generous mentors who share their experience….. thus giving us a crash-course in things 4 cylinder….... and making it fun all ‘round.
We were in a shop recently and an engine builder of horsepower-exponential-ferral-fire-breathin’ V8’s
happened in, an’ we wuz looking in the engine compartment of a banger Bonneville car. The hep engine guy spent 10 minutes studyin’ the rig and asking questions because he knows that the challenge is the challenge: get the most outa what ya got: he was quite interested in the purpose-built model T car….conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition of taking someone’s chonies away!!!!!
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IMMORTALS TWIST ANEW
This in from Yucaipa: The famous Immortals (Rockabilly Boogie) have up an’ started a new car…while Bonneville was already in sight…and the damned thing is a rear-engined model scheduled to go faaaaaast…but FIRST? They’re puttin’ the banger in it to win the glorious Hop Up Chonies.
Now that, my greasy-nailed cousins, is class.
Look for ‘em near the Hop Up Balloon in the pits.
STAND BACK, BOYS, AND LET ‘EM WORK.
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TUB, TUBS, TUBS. AIN’T THEY GRAND?
READ HOPUPLAND, DRIP PAN AND MORT’S SHORTS (UP ON THE RIGHT, SELECT ONE)
