Now For Some RAT FINK!

I know... it has been like MONTHS AND MONTHS since I posted anything on here. Not sure why, I guess the dog days of saving money for a car I might never get is weighing on me. Lucky for you Dr. Morbius (from our many many podcasts) can't stand watching the tumbleweeds roll by on this slowly dying blog. He sent me these awesome Ed Roth RAT FINK comics... ENJOY!

You can’t see the forest for the trees

Not gonna lie, it's been hard to focus on things since the passing of my father. Hard to see the future, hard to make a decisive plan, hard to care. The good thing is my hot rod fund is set to automatically pull money from each check into it without my intervention which is a plus because I have been in a funk. I try to visit sites and keep reading about Roth and the monthly hotrod magazine but I haven't wrenched on anything for a few months. I know I have to get off my lazy ass and get back to what I love but it is hard. I know it will come, it isn't something that can be forced.

I was reading a long thread on a different site that posed "what is a hotrod" and being the internet the answers ranged from Troll bait to logical. I have to admit I never thought about it, my child eyes vision of a "hotrod" is anything that has been modified to be faster or "hotrodded." The vast majority seem to say any supped up car that is Pre-WWII is a "real hotrod." Not quite sure where or why that would be the determining factor but most of the clan nodded and said yup that's the real truth.

This does bring up a flaw in my conscious or personality, I never ever care about the sub-genre within a genre. To me metal music is metal music, don't need the 78 million sub-genre of Norwegian scream core... metal is metal. So when posed with the "what is a hotrod" topic I was like anything faster than stock. Boy am I naive, to a fault. Long story short when you are reading this blog please know that my definition of a Hotrod is pretty much any car made faster. In my world pretty much anything can be hotrodded if you invest stupid amounts of money for no reason other than to say "mine is faster" then it's a hotrod.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T... find out what it means to me?

 

Respect

So, as I have discussed before the reason for my hotrod lust re-awakening is my current car. A few years ago I got a Honda S2000 and my "need for speed" has since multiplied a million fold. One of the things that has completely changed is my outlook about hotrods and what makes a "fast car." Growing up in the 70s and 80s meant that the only cars that truly got respect were muscle cars. Big loud heavy chunks of glorious steel. So when the tuner craze hit I pretty much laughed it off and gave it no respect. My opinion has changed dramatically as I now more a "tuner" than I am a "hotrodder."

when I bought my S2000 I did not even realize it was a fast car. I liked the convertible top and since riding a motorcycle in Florida is the same as drunkenly playing Russian roulette I grabbed the next best thing. As I learned how to drive the car and realized the power it has at the higher revving end of the tach I realized what all the Tuner hoopla was all about. Then I fell in love!

For those reading and wondering to themselves... what in the blue hell is this fool talking about? Let me explain. Tuners (for the most part) live in the high revving part of the spectrum to best get maximum power. Where a big block chevy or ford can slap gears in the 5500 range and be flying little light tuner cars like my S2k shoot like a bullet around the 6500 - 8000 range. When I drive it shifting in the normal 3500 to 4500 range it is just a nimble little honda. When i let it scream it is hard to beat.

On my average drive to and from work I am just a regular jerk driving my Honda. About 3 - 4 times per week I am messed with either by another tuner or by a hotrod trying to show off. To be sure I have gotten blasted from time to time and sometimes I am too damn tired and just let it go. More often than not I smash the other car, especially if it is a hotrod. They are just too damn heavy to keep up. Perfect example a couple days ago, a early to mid-eighties malibu with loud pipes starts getting twitchy at a light. I can hear it is a 305 chevy small block from the pipes so i know this guy has no chance if I run him. I let it go until he spins his tires then it is on... I rip thought 1st and 2nd but going light RPM to give the poor chump false hope, then I drop the hammer and rip by him in 4th gear. I still had 2 gears left as his headlights dimmed in the rear view mirror.

That is when I realized I had better build one hell of a hotrod otherwise I will get NO R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

Old = Indestructible

In the world of true hotrodding old detroit steel reigns supreme. That is good, and bad... but mostly good.

At this point you might be wondering why the hell is there a picture of a phone up there with a hyper link to a disturbed song called Indestructible. No, I haven’t completely lost my mind. That image represents everything about modern times and how I see the world. At THIS point you might be thinking okay, he obviously HAS lost his mind and just doesn’t know it yet. Bare with me gentle readers and allow me to expand upon my hypothesis.

See, earlier this morning I dropped my modern smart phone. Upon dropping my phone it broke the screen into a million pieces and became unusable in that it didn’t even have a picture anymore. I had to take the battery out of it to make it stop playing the song I was listening to. The song was Dead Kennedys “Trust Your Mechanic” in case you were wondering. Very solid song by a great old school punk band. It made me think of a time before phones were expensive pieces of glass that had the computing power of god and fit into the palm of everyones hands.
For you younger readers phones used to be heavy black things that sat on a stand or sometimes hung on a wall. They were made of space hardened moon lava and could kill a bear in the event of an attack and they never ever ever stopped being a phone. I would hazard a guess if you went out into the desert just beside where Atari buried all those ET cartridges and dug up where good old Ma Bell buried all of those old black phones they would still work. They were bullet proof, they were indestructible.

Does that make them better than current smart phones? No but yes… so maybe. New smart phones are glorious in that they contain all the answers to everything. You need to quickly establish the firing order of an engine you yanked out of a junk yard it is there. You need to find out what some random idiot thinks about what color you painted your anvil it is there. If you want it to be dependable and durable not so much. New technology is built light and smart but it sacrifices a lot to get there. New phones are a fashion statement and a fad, the cool hip phone you shelled out a crap ton of money to buy will be mocked as junk within 4 months. And as stated above, they are flimsy as hell… weak as a new born fawn.

Phones are like hotrods in that if you want to build up a bad ass hunk of detroit iron it might not be as super smart, slick and light as a new fangled computer driven hellcat. BUT, purchasers of the new hellcat or camaro that is a billion horsepower beware! New cars are plastic shells controlled by computer. Computers fail at just about every turn. Just like a new shiny phone people will drool all over them then toss them aside when the NEW AND IMPROVED BEST THING EVER comes out so too will the new cool cars of today. They are junk. New cars are fast sleek beautiful pieces of disposable shit. That is the way of the world now. Cars can’t be fixed, just replaced.

If you are like me and value things that are made of glass and metal and wood then you don’t have much time for the newest gadget filled plastic boring car of today. They are not useless but they are not going to be there through the thick and thin. They are the same as a disposable razor,used up and tossed away. New things are not built to withstand the test of time, they are there to drive consumerism and stupidity. SO, much like the old black phone that you can dial day in and day out from until the end of time (or until they force you to convert) give me an old metal and steel chunk of detroit cool. It won’t be as smart as a new hellcat, it won’t attract car and drivers top rated blah blah blah of the year. Know what it will do, it will go though hell and back without missing a beat with me. That is worth more to me than words can express… it is priceless.

JESUS BUILT MY HOTROD!

Hotrods they are a'changing! I have a modest little Honda S2000 daily driver that is pushing around 265 HP. It is my every day drive to work car. It is fast, not like break your back fast but damn fast. It was made in 2005... way back when 265 horsepower sounded impressive. Since then I have seen the average horse power of consumer cars climb and climb. There are freakin' boring ass family cars running 300 HP from the factory. Now, would they beat mine in an honest street race? Probably not as there are about a billion and one things that contribute to who crosses the finish line first and most family cars ain't got em. BUT, with the new technology pushing the boundaries more and more every day hotrods have to be absolute monsters to even get noticed anymore. It is not uncommon for a hotrod to hit 600 - 800 or more horsepower to seem respectable. Hell, my friend Murder Stang is shooting for above 1000 horsepower on his vintage mustang. It is no wonder, Hellcats come stock with 707 hp from the factory and every other major car company is racing (literally) to beat that number.

Hotrods with outrageous horsepower are not surprising as the true hotrod culture has always taken the lightest and fastest and made it part of their car. Some of the purists out there bitch and complain if you bolt anything new on an old car but the harsh reality is hotrodders increase power and speed any way possible. You can keep your "Pre-blah blah blah or nothing" bullshit along with numbers matching and patina. With the modern horsepower war ramping up from all sides how will the garage tree mechanic or wannabe hotrodder keep up? I guess the same way we always have, run what ya brought until you can beg borrow and steal the next performance part. 

So, if you are sitting at the light next to a goofball 4 door accord don't laugh too hard as the kid driving it tachs the engine and cranks up his Skrillex CD. It just might make a fool of you unless you put the pedal all the way to the metal and ride out every gear. In traditional Wannabe fashion I will continue to dream and scheme all the ways my car WILL be the fastest... that is until I own my hotrod and it isn't. Till next time keep the rubber side down and rev it loud.

Some Inspirational Pictures from Big Daddy Don Garlits

Click Picture for Inspirational Music

We took a trip to the Famous Don Garlits Museum a few months ago. Rather than overwhelm with a million pictures I will just be dropping a couple in from time to time to inspire and highlight some of the wicked cool collection they have rocking over there. if you have never been there and live in Florida I would suggest it. Here is a link to the Museum - http://www.garlits.com/

- and yes, that is the wannabe hotrodders big melon in the way of the awesome car in the 3rd shot.
just DROOLING!