MAGAZINE

HOP UP 2000

Just look at the cover.....like you’re gonna pass this up?

en hopup veritas.

2001 Cover

HOP UP 2001 - THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY

Order Form (Specify Volume II).

For Europe, OZ, and N.Z., contact :

Still barely available at $12.95. Over 128 pages, oozin' cool rods and customs and the pre-historic (and other) cats that wheel 'em. Freight is still paid in continental U.S.

PAT CASTLE HAS RUN THIS A-BONE FOR `15 YEARS

AND IT’S RUNNIN’ COMPANY PLATES!!

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

How should WE know? We stayed home all of August...no Bonneville...no Pebble Beach...no Pleasanton...... but for a just cause.. We had to put in hours on a hot rod project. If we had been scheming ways to get away from work for extended weekends and all, why, we’d just not have had time to do what we had to do to get this one to the guys that are going to slap the shit out of the top. Chassis had to be done for this to work out, ya see? We have to do dashboard, seat, deck lid (louvers), etc., while it’s away and THAT way, all we really have to do after it gets back is get it wired and start squallin’ tars. At least that’s how it reads in the "If Everything Works Out and the Mistakes You Made Already Don’t Cost You Too Much Time " chapter of "How To Build a Hot Rod.."

That’s what we were doing after lunch (no comment, Jess?) and before, and evenings and weekends. More on this stage in "Hop Up 2001".

WHO IS (OR WAS) THE DRINKING DRIVER?

RATTLE CAN NATIONALS

September 16 at HRI, where rubbed-through, or rattle-canned, or just worn out paint jobs are de riguer. This will be the third version of the no-agenda meeting of scrappers. Well, no agenda except for 4:30 Snocker Practice, and the obvious: getting in your hot iron and taking a spin simply because that’s what these guys do. You can only sit and look at ‘em for so long. Then ya have to hear them and feel them and appreciate what it is you have accomplished in the way of ballin’ up some V-8 Clubber’s dream car.

As we have said, this is only a little bit more important than Billet Proof, and we’ll not let it go to our heads. After all, we have chosen prob’ly the hottest day of the year in Cali’s Central Valley. and that makes the ‘vine a percolation test for all of them especially the flatties and bangers. The Northern guys have some hot terain to travel through, themselves, and they will come in, smugly telling us what we missed, but isn’t that territoriality part of it?*

So if you want to be part of a real small group of hard core rod guys with no dusters and no shot at making the magazines............couldn’t possibly be more that 30 cars......y’all come.(If you do, bring a few appropriate parts to trade; not a truckload, just a few ‘qualifiers’.)

It’ll last most of the day, and you’ll have just been part of a pointless "turnaround", and you will have added as much as 500 hot miles to your hot iron and........you will be determined to do it again. Stripes. Invisible stripes. And that’s the truth.

"I been to Kansas City, girl.......an’ everything is really alright...." Howlin’ Wolf

GIZMO

Talking to Vern Tardel recently, we mused that there ought to be a ‘gizmo’ that stops the rear-gear oil in your banjo rear end from running through the torque tube all the way into the transmission and leaking all over the barn floor.. Everybody laughs and says, "I always drain my trans and refill the rear end with the stuff."

A couple of days later, a little cardboard box showed up an in it was the tubing-derived thingy below.

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR BASIC PROBLEMS?

Instructions were penned on the box: drive this in to the tube, align the drain hole with the one in the tube, silicone around (here), re-assemble.

It is now in the 5 Window torque tube and in a couple of months we’ll be parking in your driveway without fear of permanently imprinting it with old dinosaur juice.

ALIGN HOLES, SILICONE AROUND END

"Would you make them for Hop Up Guys?"

"Sure".

"How much should we tell ‘em?"

"$45 + $3 shipping".

Fax him at (707) 838-6065

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