MAGAZINE

PERSONALITY

It's why car guys will often go from one project to the next, seemingly (to the unwashed) never finding satisfaction. Build it, sell it - or park it - and start another one. This is the method that our guys use to feed a need. To express themselves. To develop and hone skills, or maybe just to accomplish the acquisition of something that is wanted. Nothing wrong with that, eh?

Some of us are less shop-savvy than others, and balance our Hop Up lives by including dry lakes, donut shops, touring, car shows (really?), reading, studying, visiting other hairy-legged rod types, hill climbs.........you know.....but the shop still has to be part of it.......maybe in smaller doses for some than for others. It might be directly proportional to the talent you've got. If you don't weld (that's us) you can't take the next step on that project requiring a weld - without calling someone in or schlepping the parts to someone. That lack of total command of building skills, having some other fairly important issues like wives, kids, careers, other hobbies (naaaaw!) can make the SCOPE of a future project pretty foreboding all by itself. Small projects and the sub-elements of a big one are instant gratification types of things. A whole project just looks like so much WORK! So how do you psyche yourself up to start?

Discipline.

Ya gotta tell yourself, "I am a hot rod type of guy, and this thing needs done, and I'm not about to hire done what I can do myself and the parts are all right there in the barn and..................God! It sure looks like it's a long way off!"

So you pick a day on the calendar. Maybe you ask someone to come by and help you do the heavy part. That way you are obligated. Can't back out. And you are started, and now, once you've penetrated the maidenhead, that huge project can be broken down in to seven hundred small ones. That's the psyche. By now, you know who we are preaching to, don't you? Yeah.

Dougie. Disappearson. The Blonsky. The Blond Don.

He stole this nice deuce tudor from Bellman. Yeah. Shook him down. Ran off a potential buyer that had come in from Michigan or somewhere holdin' all cash...then squeezed a wholesale deal, drug the thing home, teased all the rest of us with the banger drivetrain and retailed the parts to Robbie. (But it's all stuck in the car at the moment!) .

He's already got the quickchange, '39 box and flathead built for it; he's got the rear crossmember and spring; he's got all the backing plates and drums, the Bell wheel.......he's got the stash, man. But he won't start on the project. It must just look too big. Too far away.

So we gave him the above speech. Got him to agree that it's all psychological, that you just have to broach that first rusty bolt, fill that first dumpster with discards. But he's not moving. Wasted breath, we guess. Maybe we'll go on to the next cause. The next crusade. Find another subject, another direction for our concern.

'Seems he's been doing a bunch of those Q n' D type projects like, buy a Merc and lower it and trim it and take it to the donut shop and turn it. Or take his woodie to Wavecrest and break the trans again and get it geared and park it again, or buy and sell one of something else.....or get one gussied up and take it to an auction to move it. You've seen him out there with those hand-made phone number tablets on the windshield. (Psssst! Next time you see one of his 'Classics' at Long Beach, tear off about 6 of those phone numbers!!! He'll be off lookin' for something to buy with all that money he's gonna make!).

Anywho, we don't know WHEN we're gonna see this deuce out at El Mirage, with Dougie strippin' fenders and headlights off the thing to make a pass,,,,fulfilling the dream........because he just won't get STARTED.

So we got nothing to talk about unless he gets goin' on it and all the fun and frustration kicks in and until we have THAT to report on................ next month we'll talk about R.Dub's T Touring project. Now, THAT'S one that's getting somewhere!

THIS JUST IN!!!

DRIP PAN

THIS COMPLETE ARDUN IS FOR SALE: $16000. CALL (909)784-0655

'VERT HAS LIVED WITH THE SAME CAT FOR ABOUT 40 YEARS

HERE IT IS TODAY

30's, 40's, 50's AT THE RATTLE CAN

THIS ONE LOOKS RELIABLE, DON'T IT, ALAN?

THIS IS ABOUT A CORRECT COUPE; NICE POSE