40+ year old cars can have a lot of gunk built up in those hard to reach places. Many many washes of missed detail work really shows up when you’ve cleaned and polished nearby areas. Take this backup lense for instance. I’ve polished around all the letters but you can see the grunge left behind where even a finger won’t fit. The inside of the letters may only be a bit over 1/8″ which a cotton swab might only fit.

The letters look like they were installed through pre-drilled holes into the lense and then melted on the back side for a permanent installation. I thought about attempting to remove them but I didn’t want to break the original pieces and have to replace them. So I went for the detail route. I’m going to have to clean these letters eventually when it’s on the car so why not now?

I ordered a package of Mothers detail brushes. They seem a bit softer than a tooth brush with longer bristles that are designed to get into tight places without damaging any material.

You can see that it looks like the bristles were pre-worn sort of like new-old jeans. In this case, it looks to make the brush a bit softer and safer. I’m not convinced I will want to use these brushes around emblems and on paint. I think I’ll keep looking for another product for that.

I started by applying some quick-detail spray on an individual letter to loosen up the dirt.

I then scrubbed to remove the dirt. This was done a couple times per letter to fully get the dirt off the lense.

I couldn’t really get a towel into the tight spot so a blast of air did the trick.

You can see the big difference between the ‘O’ on the left and the ‘D’ on the right.

Now that all the letters are cleaned up and the lense polished again, it’s time for re-assembly. All the letters took a vast improvement over their original condition.

Here it is re-assembled into the freshly polished/painted trim and reflector.

Doesn’t it look good installed? It’s been too long since those lights have been on that body. I’m really happy how they turned out.

The brushes worked pretty well and I’ll probably use them some more but I’m not going to trust them to paint yet. There’s a couple of detail brushes available from Griot’s Garage that I still want to try.

I was finished with cleaning up and re-assembling my tail lights and noticed the attaching nuts didn’t look so good. I could run each of them on the wire wheel to clean them up but that would take a while. I recently got my blasting cabinet up and working and thought that would be a better and faster choice. I’ll talk more about that adventure later. The next problem was how to do the deed without losing the nuts in the media.

I looked around the shop for something relatively durable that I could put the nuts in. I didn’t really want to hold them in my hand and risk damaging the gloves. This is what I found. It’s a little magnetic tray that is intended for holding your various hardware while working on the car. I don’t think I’ve actually ever used it. I saw it hanging as a fixture on the side of my roll-away and knew that was the right tool.

The best part of it is that it’s magnetic. I was able to easily clean all the nuts without them flying all over the inside of the cabinet. As you can see, they turned out pretty good.

I think this image might have been a bit too geeky and for that, I apologize. I usually like clever uses of visuals and comments but they’re only good if they make sense. I guess it’s sort of like reading a customized license plate and having no idea what the message was intended to be.

Not only was this geeky, it was a combination of geeky references that seemed to go well together but may have fallen flat. First, we’ll take the image. It’s a Tatra T87 which was made by the Czechoslovakia manufacturer Tatra. They made cars from 1918-1992 though I had no idea it was that late until I looked it up. The T87 was built from 1936-1950 and I chose this particular image because of the rear shark fin that makes this car more identifiable as a Tatra. Tatra made very high quality vehicles that had incredible performance for their time. They were equipped with a rear mounted V8 engine that was air cooled.

As the story goes, Hitler had loved riding in these cars and said it was the car for his roads (or something to that effect). The most notable piece of history is that Ferdinand Porsche said that he had occasionally looked over the shoulder of the designer of the Tatra. It seems that he looked over the shoulder quite a lot since VW and Porsche became well known for air-cooled rear-engined vehicles. This was so much the case that a lawsuit was settled out of court by VW where Tatra was suing for infringement of their designs. It’s fairly clear that the VW and Porsche designs came from the Tatra. The name of the Tatra designer was Hans Ledwinka. This is the first clue.

Next we have the slogan. This is related to the original 1977 movie Star Wars. We first meet Han Solo in that movie in the bar where another unfortunate bounty hunter is killed by Han’s blaster. If you view any current DVD, the bounty hunter attempted to draw on Han and Solo came out on top. There is a fair amount of evidence that in the original theatrical version of the movie, Han simply killed the bounty hunter outright. Thus comes the online debate and accusations of revisionist history to put Solo in a better light. I don’t particularly care what really happened but this is the situation that generated the fairly well known (among certain communities) phrase “Han Shot First”. I also chose the font since it is somewhat reminiscent of Porsche lettering.

With these two bits of information, it’s not too much of a stretch to see the humor. Unfortunately if it needs to be explained, it may not have been that good in the first place. Oh well, I still like it and my kids thought it was funny after the explanation. Maybe I’ll make a tee-shirt with it someday.

I was working with my father-in-law a couple years ago and he was doing some detailing on his intake manifold. I watched his technique and I was amazed. It was amazing partly because what he did made so much sense and partly because I felt so dumb that the technique never occurred to me. In case there may be others out there that haven’t done this, I’ll continue to explain.

His engine is a blue-green color and there was some missing paint and discoloration on the manifold near the carburetor. The engine had originally been detailed and painted while on a stand prior to installation. My assumption was that he’d need to tape off or remove the components that shouldn’t be sprayed.

He told me that it was much easier than that and he’d been doing this since he was building models as a kid. Spray the proper color paint into the lid or any other appropriate container and use a brush to paint it on the needed areas. Well duh, that makes sense. The color matches perfectly and there’s no taping required.

I’ve been doing this since. I recently installed my steering column and though all the components had been painted separately, the installation caused a few nicks/scratches. A little spray, a few brush strokes, and the problem areas disappear.

Of course there will be times when the touch-up won’t be appropriate and you will need to tape off when the brush strokes would be obvious on an otherwise sprayed component. In that case, you’ll know what to do.

Cody is my Cuda-Challenger forum friend who helped me get my dash frame media blasted and painted. It looks beautiful now and much better than I had expected I’d be able to do. Well, he’s the president of the Automotive Restoration Club and really knows his stuff.

I just finished rebuilding and installing my steering column based on a photo procedure that he put together a number of years ago. I’ll post my process sometime later. Today we’ve got a few videos that Cody has put together about repairing dents and scratches in stainless trim and polishing it to a mirror finish.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Yeah, yeah, it’s been a long time. The end of summer came far too fast and I had too many (non-car related) projects to complete. It’s really easy for me to get out of the writing habit and it didn’t take long to start focusing on other things and not want to start at all. The thought of picking of the pen (so to speak) wasn’t that interesting for a while but a new year has started and I feel like I’m gaining some momentum.

The biggest change around here since we last met is that I’ve set a hard deadline of getting the Challenger back on the road this year. I was talking with my wonderful wife about my self-imposed pressure of completing the car. It’s a project that I’ve wanted to work on with my sons and then enjoy in the summer cruising to shows, to the beach, or to ice cream. My sons are getting older and in a flash won’t be at home anymore. I’ve been working hard on my book and any other project that would allow me to scrape funds together to get back on the road. I was working so hard and was so focused that it had almost become a nuisance when the family got in the way. All of this focus was in anticipation of spending some fun times with my family. That’s not a healthy way to think.

It was pretty clear that the budget wouldn’t really allow a reasonable time frame if I stayed on the same path. Now this is when my wonderful wife asked me how much it would cost to finish. I took the question as one of curiosity when she really was thinking as the visionary she is. I came up with a ball-park number and she asked “what if we took it from retirement?”. Oh, the humanity. How could we do something like that? That’s the untouchable money. So we talked about it many more times. I came up with a more accurate budget and we eventually decided to pull the trigger.

To be clear, this isn’t the best financial maneuver and it wasn’t even on my list of possibilities but there’s a lot to learn for two boys when building a car and this is that important, at least to me. When I made the call to my account manager, I explained what we had planned and felt a little embarrassed by what we were about to do. His first words were “I totally understand, you’ve got to live life.”

So there we are and that was another reason I had stopped writing, I started ordering parts. Oh man, that’s fun. I love stuff showing up all the time. Now I’m making some serious headway in turning the car from a painted steel shell into a real vehicle.

By the way, the deadline is the week following labor day. That’s for the Cruise to the End of the World in Long Beach WA. I’d really like to have it before then but that’s the hard date. We’ll see how productive I can be.

Next up, finish steering column assembly.

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I love this story. I hope I’m still able to change oil and spark plugs at 101. I guess that would mean I have at least another whole life to live from now and I’m only a couple years older than my car. Such a beautiful car and so well maintained. Get out there and enjoy the cars for what they’re made to do… Drive.

As you probably already know, the key piece of growing the popularity of a book is having good reviews from readers in places where lots of people will see them. Unless you’re already a well known author, this comes by sharing copies with those who will promote your title.

I’d like to give away a few copies of my book in return for those reviews. I’d like some posted to Amazon as well as other automotive/hot rod/muscle/show car related sites. Simply comment on this post and let me know why you should receive a copy. Bonus points for good writing and/or a large audience.

If you have an automotive blog/news/magazine site or have contact with one and can set up a review, that would be worth a copy too.

Re-posting, re-tweeting, re-sharing, and re-whatever are all appreciated. Spread the word, all the way to Kevin Bacon etc.

Part 2 has been too long in coming. Summertime makes it very difficult to want to be working on the computer when I could be outside.

Who would build a tower without first calculating the cost? Like any project, a car show costs money. Unless you’re simply getting some folks to meet at a parking lot for an impromptu evening of car talk, the money has lots of places to go. From fliers to signs to food to raffle prizes to trophies to permits to porta-potties to rent of a location, there are plenty of things you can spend the money on. The question is, where will the money come from?

There are a number of likely sources:

Out of pocket. This may be the most difficult option especially if you or your group doesn’t have any money. Besides that, why would you want to crow-bar your wallet open for all the work? There are a number of reasons. You may be blessed with a large amount of disposable income and want to host a show for the sheer fun of holding the event. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of gear-heads in my neighborhood and I’ve toyed with the idea of hosting a small neighborhood show/get-together to get to know them better. You may have a business that would benefit from the advertising and additional traffic/sales during the event. Aside from the fun of all the cars and meeting potentially new customers, it could be part of your company marketing/advertising budget and may be deductible at the end of the year. You may have a church that holds a show to reach out and get to know your local community. Whatever the reason for the show, the biggest advantage of the out of pocket funding route is that you hold ultimate control of what is involved and how the show is run. As you know, free money isn’t free and with it usually comes strings in terms of some kind of reciprocity.

Self-sustaining. Since the show will likely have a fair amount of people involved either attending or participating, share the pain a little by having some of them kick in some money. This is very common and can be done in a number of ways. Charge an entrance fee or possibly an admission fee. The challenge with charging fees like this is that you have to make the show worth the price of admission, but that’s what this is all about. You could allocate an area that is dedicated to vendors or a swap meet area. Once again, you need a show that will draw the crowds and make the people and merchants want to come. When starting out, this can be difficult. It’s somewhat like growing a credit score. It takes a while for folks to recognize you have a show worth attending.

Sponsored. A potentially large source of funds can come from sponsors. Sponsors may provide everything from money, to banners, to food, to raffle prizes, to plastic bags. The provisions are as many and varied are there are companies. The challenge with sponsors is all the footwork needed to contact the right people and make the sale. Yes, it’s a sales job. You need to convince the prospective sponsor that your show will be beneficial enough for their company or organization to make a donation. Not only that but you have to keep in contact with the prospects and really drive toward an answer. There are a lot of places for  companies to put their money and if you’re not the squeaky wheel (don’t be a nuisance) they’re not likely to track you down to give you anything. The potential downside is that many times free money comes with strings attached. Who knows what requirements organizations might place on your event. With sponsorship you may lose some element of control. Another point of sensitivity dealing with sponsors can be who your other sponsors are. It can be problematic if some sponsors are listed side by side on a flier or the like who are direct competitors. This is a scenario that may get you to lose both for the next event. The main question that a sponsor will want to know is what’s in it for them. Be sure to have that answer clear.

Hybrid. In reality, most shows are probably some combinations of all the above. Whatever your funding source(s), make sure you’ve planned well enough so you don’t run out of money. You don’t want to be forced into the ‘out of pocket’ situation if you’ve over spent.

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