March, 2010

Featured Article

"Bad Business"

"Bad Business" by Tom Kiker

I never named a car I owned before.  A lot of folks name all their cars and they're usually feminine names.  For example, "Nadine" or, "This is "Tanya", etc.   Rod owners vary.  Some have female names for their rods and some assign names from experiences or . . . . for other reasons.  And some have no names.

But, regardless, most street rod owners assign, deep down, a feminine character to their car.  How can you otherwise explain the first sentence out of your mouth when your rod stalls and dies in the middle of an intersection?  "You B_ ___!"   But how do you give a Pro Street rod a feminine name?  So I settled on "Bad Business".   And the name coveys many meanings, including a veiled threat to my rod.

"It was Bad Business to buy it, Bad Business when the 1st builder failed but Manny Manchaca made "Bad Business" a reality.  The name also puts the rod, itself, on notice, that if it pushes me to the breaking point, I will have no emotion involved when I sell it since it was "bad business" all along.  Good Riddance.

I lie.  Meet 1950 Chevrolet Styleline Business Coupe, #1227 out of 20,984 produced that year.  It was a salesman's car with no back seat but also carried eggs to customers on wooden racks as one guy told me when the lady driving her's delivered their eggs to their house in Montana.  Since it was the end of her route, his Dad used to give her two shots of whiskey on top of the payment for the eggs.  Mine came with a rear seat out of a Nova which was being made into a drag car.  It fit with no modifications.

I bought the rod at a Rudy's car show in Austin.  I had read enough articles to know that you "let the other guy do the work and buy your rod at a cost that is far below building it yourself."  That only works if the seller is telling the truth and you can verify it.  I was, by far, too trusting a'buyer'.

I had to do a "frame off", saving only the body and frame.  Even after that discovery, I bit the bullet because I loved the car.  It was a tubbed car with a shortened Ford 9", a 350 engine "roller", a B&M supercharger and fat tires in the tubs.  I saved the block and sold the supercharger, the heads and the carb.  It was cross-dressed as a mild '50's custom with frenched headlights, '48 Ford tail lights (?), shaved, with 96 louvers punched in the hood and no door handles.  But, it had "Blown" embroidered on the door panels and that was cool.  I was a 'rube'.

I should have wondered why anyone would put laker pipes on a Pro Street set-up.   I gave the fake laker pipes back to the seller.  Maybe he mounted them on either side of the headboard of his bed.

To shorten the tale, I endured a year and a half of theft at the first builder's hands and finally moved it to Manny's.  It took another year and a half to complete the build it and another year to sort out most of the problems save the clutch.  This will be replaced in the next couple of months with a double disc McLeod ceramic capable of 1,000 horsepower.  I know I over-engineered the rod.  I always have and I always will when I discover a defective part.

I envy all of you who turn your own wrenches.  I still work on minor problems on the rod but I took the responsibility of doing the research in some of the areas of the building of the rod, discussed it with Manny, and then, whenever we had a choice, totally over-engineered the rod.  What started out as a "cruiser" with a "hotter motor" became "Bad Business".  I wanted to build it like an anvil and I think we succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

I did the research on the brake system, ordered it, specified stainless lines and fittings; we did away with the stock rear springs and set up the drive train and rear end right.  For a drag car that is.  Ladder bars, Ford 9" drag axle tube, big bearings, coil overs from a drag manufacture, nodular iron drag Strange pumpkin, Strange Pro Race axles, race axle pinion, driveshaft and light truck u-joint.

Performance, in spite of the piece of junk I had been originally sold became, in Manny's hands a real Pro Street rod and not the piece of junk I had bought originally which a stock '56 Olds Rocket 88 could have beaten through the quarter driving in reverse.  Er, to give you an idea of the state of the original rod, one side of the valve train had stock roller rockers and the other side had regular rockers when Manny tore the engine down.  The 1950 master cylinder had no residual pressure valves to hold 2 pounds of pressure to the front discs, so you had to pump the brakes to stop.  I was tired of being a "pretender" with a piece of junk and I specified as many parts as I could to make it a "real" hot rod with an element of performance built in.

Let me add that you folks in our club that have built your rods from scratch are the strong shoulders all of us stand on and you know who you are.  Thanks to each and every one of you who built your rods without the benefit of a professional builder.  But regardless of how we arrived at where we are, remember, as Robert wrote in his February President's message, that the friends we meet at shows that have done the same thing and built a rod, are just like us.  Try to meet some at the next event you take your rod to.  Brothers are Brothers.

Like Robert, I attended the "Lucky's Run" in Bryan.  It was 24 degrees when we left.  I have no heat or air.  My Lady & I bundled up and drove down to Bryan to meet some old Marine buddies who I grew up with in Bryan-College Station.  26 miles out of the destination, a really nice 60's Chevy pickup with gorgeous paint and custom wheels turned out of a side road and followed us in.  When we got to the show, a guy, the driver of the pickup, came up to me along with his son.  "With apologies to your age Sir, my son kept telling me to, 'Pass Grandpa'.  I said, I can't pass grandpa, he's doing 80!"  "Bad Business" smirked.  I apologize.  Do not exceed the speed limit.

Like Dan always says, "Drive Your Rod".  It keeps all of us young beyond our years and always will.

Submitted by, Tom Kiker