Thread: So.. How'd you Start?

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Thought this would be a fun thread;

Theres a whole lot of experience in this forum and I thought it would be interesting to learn how you guys got started!

To learn all of the auto/machine/metal/paint skills, did you go to school, teach yourself, or were you taught by a family member/friend?

For those of you who went to college, did you go for auto or something else? What did you go for?

For example:
I am trying to teach myself. I am trying to find some friends that do this kind of stuff so that I can learn from them too. Eventually I plan to take some classes in metal fabrication, and other auto stuff. I'm in college right now but I'm going for Business. I think it would be fun to get into the auto business.

These questions apply to both hobbiests and those in the business.

Have fun reminiscing!

Well okay Ill be the first.
I was 16 and bought a 1956 vw baja bug. As with most bugs it broke down all the time. After watching a man change out my clutch in about 45 minutes and demand $275.00 from me, I decided to do the repairs myself. I went nuts on that car and built it to the extreme. I fell in love with cars and went onto College for Auto body. Here I am 18 years later and I still love gettin up in the morning and beating on an old car for a living.

got most of my teaching when i attended the arkansas state correction facility .

I went to college for mechanical design, graduated in 65, and have been designing prototype machinery and industrial automation for 40 years as of July 2005. When I was a kid, I lived in northern Ontario, Canada and my dad was a lumberjack. We never had any money, but I loved anything mechanical. One of my uncles had a stripped down model A Ford, just an engine and frame with a seat on it, no body. He used it in the summer months for timber cruising (searching out new stands of timber to cut the next winter). He was killed in a logging accident when I was 15 years old, and the car was willed to me. I had another uncle who wasn't much good, never worked, just liked to drink whiskey, play the fiddle, and monkey around with old cars. Needless to say, he was my favourite uncle. He was actually quite brilliant with anything mechanical, and he helped get me started with my inherited model A Ford. I have been modifying cars, racing cars, and building hotrods ever since, but it is the mechanical design business that has put money in my pocket over my lifetime. I have my own business, work from my home office, and its really great. For 8 hours a day, I deal with the theoretical aspect of machinery, (engineering and mechanical design) on my computer, and then in the evening I can step out to my garage and work on my roadster pickup.

I took auto shop in High School and basically learned what I needed to learn to keep my 56 Chevy running. At the asme time I worked for free, in the body shop down the street from where I grew up when I was 15 or 16 years old and they taught me the basics of bodywork and painting. The body shop is where I fell in love with the 33 Ford Coupe that was the pride and joy of the shop owner.
I learned welding and fabrication skills in college as part of my Engineering degree.
I finally finished my own 33 Ford coupe and It's been all downhill from there.
Jerry...

I grew up in Iowa on a farm, so we did our own maintenance / fabricating out of necessity. I watched my Dad build stuff all the time and wanted to be like him I guess. My first car was a '52 Plymouth but that was an untitled beater for around the farm and way before I had a license. My first legal car was a '56 Chevy. Paid $75.00 for it and had to pull it home. Over the years I've had many jobs but the ones that helped me build cars were Engine assembly - Machinist for an engine remanufacturing plant, A certified welder for Winnebago Industries then a custom painter for Winnebago (Van division). Then I owned a body shop / mechanic shop. Pained bikes, street rods, pull trucks, drag cars, and a few plain ol' carz'. Then worked in an auto body shop in Illinois.
I just find it relaxing to build a part and see it work the way it was intended. I can spend all day on 1 small part to get it just the way I want it. I guess I'm easily entertained.

I grew up around dirt track stockcars in ky and tenn. when I was 12 my father wreaked real bad one night the next day I said that I would get thew car running again (the radiator was on top of the engine) My mom said don't mess with it and my father said go for it that I couldn't hurt it anymore. After 2 hours and replacing radiator dist. and carb. I went in the house and said the car was ready to come off the trailer. My mom said no way and my father said if it is get it off the trailer. after getting gas to the carb the engine fired but had a hard time reaching pedals to drive. After 22 years in the automotive field some people thought that I knew enough to teach it so now I'm at a vocational school training our future hot rodders

Well I am not there yet and there are some real experts on this Forum, but just in case you have some other talent maybe you should develop that, make some money and then keep the car building as a hobby. Some of the folks on this Forum are true practical geniuses of the type that if the times were different they could give Henry Ford good competition! But times are changing so maybe the car business is a pretty mature field and electronics, computer science and space technology should not be ignored. I started at about 9-10 helping my Dad rebuild engines in our gravel driveway back in the days when you could use a ridge reamer, replace the rings and bearings and hand lap the valves with the engine in the car and hopefully get it back together so it would run to drive to work on Monday morning. I was the guy who scraped the crud off the engine and washed the parts in gasoline using the pan for the wash basin. At 15 I bought a '31 A Fordor with paper route money for $100 and painted it with a brush after retrofitting sealed beams, dimmer switch and general fixup. When the rear of the A fell apart (literally) I bought a '47 Ford convert' for $200 and "dechromed" it by hand and bought a hammer and dolly kit from Pep Boys and hammered out all the dents pretty good. Then my uncle showed me how to use a simple gasoline blowtorch to heat a very large soldering iron that would hold heat for a long time and we leaded in all the body holes with the soldering iron followed by grinding and sanding. That was followed by '53-'56 Caddy Aztec Red paint with a tan top and wide whitewalls. Then came decision time for college or what? I started as a Mech. Eng. major and took a year of machine shop, mechanical drawing and various science courses. Along the way I got my best grades in Chemistry and I kept getting very high marks in math aptitude tests without even studying. Still my text was Hot Rod magazine. After wasting time as a Millwright Apprentice I went back to college to major in Chemistry since that was evidently what I was best at. You need to understand that back in the late '40s and mid '50s the word "ATOMIC" was huge and there was even "Atomic Bubble Gum" so when I got the chance for a full scholarship to a top Ivy League graduate school I went into the quantum mechanics of molecules and have written a few original papers in that area. ALong the way I chopped up a '40 Ford Tudor and put a '40 convert' body on it, finished a partially built Sand Rover VW dune buggy, supercharged a '66 VW, restored a '70 MG Midget and now am building a repro '29 Ford roadster from scratch (I have met my match!). The question is whether I would have been a better Quantum Chemist if I had not messed with cars or would I have been a quality mechanic? As it is I am struggeling with the roadster build and I did not win a Nobel prize, but I have a reasonable retirement and a nice family. The point is that you need to realize that the auto industry is a mature field past the stage of shade tree inventions, but that is still needed except the question now is how to pack hydrogen into a storage material and get it out when needed, ie material science. SO, listen to your aptitude test results and of course do what makes you happy, but maybe you should take as much science as your ability allows, for making a living in the 21st Century. I will say that while I too "enjoy" fabricating a piece which works, for me it really does not match the few times I solved a differential equation for a complicated problem and yes, strange me, I did get a lot of jollies from "beautiful math concepts", but the competition is from other bright people, some of whom literally work 24 hour shifts and are obsessed with trying to discover something. Science is great, but not easy; a '29 roadster with a Deuce radiator shell is beautiful but not quite the same thrill as deriving a clean mathematical solution to a complex problem. And then what about the joy of "thinking in Fortran" and the opportunities to do extremely complicated math on today's computers (I learned on a slide rule so computers are miraculous to me!). See what I am saying? Explore your options and then do what makes you happy as well as paying the bills! I guess for me "ATOMIC" beat out "V8 engine", but now that I am retired it's back to the V8. Oh yes during my career I had to build several spectrometers for research and I found that if I sketched engineering drawings they could be machined cheaply out of aluminum and I had to learn analog and digital electronics just by reading and burning up Radio Shack parts so I did make use of that training, but my values got brainwashed into believing that deriving a new mathematical relationship is a higher form of thinking and on a few occasions it was really better than sex (maybe)!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

I learned everything, or at least most of it from my dad and uncle. They were always working on their cars, I made sure to always be underfoot and try to help out.

Later on I pretty much buried my nose in as many early hot rod books as I could find. From there ive just been tinkering with old cars since I was little... Just always been around them and still am.

Well i'm starting so i will be learning. Hopefully i get to be as eperienced as some of the guys on CHR. It takes years and i am barely getting started. I have much respect for you guys.

Well I'll tell ya - grew up in So. Cal (Pomona) in the 50's bought my first car (49 bullet back chev when I was 15 with my paper route money for $80.00. The ole man won't let me drive it until 16 but I did anyway. Lived 3 blocks from LA County Fairgrounds and if you were not a gearhead in those days there was something wrong with you. Joined the Pomona Valley rods and roadsters when I was 17. Picked up a trashed 31 2 door sedan with a wipped olds and hydro and shredded it and started all over. Was not real good in school with all the prim and proper subjects my folks wanted me to take so I took Auto Shop when I was a junior and senior. My father knew the owner the Chev Dealership and told him to teach me something or kick my a### and so I started my apprentiseship (4) years. Completed 1 and half before I was enrolled in Univ of South Vietnam. Came back in one piece and served my apprentiseship and received my journyman's cert. Moved to Northern Cal with my new wife and landed a job in Oakland guess what? 2 miles from General Motors Training Center. Lived there almost and everyday when I could find time learning as much as I could from the instructors. Bunch of great ole guys. Wealth of knowledge. Went back to building Street Rods. Back then we could put a nice ride on the street for under $2000.00. 40 years later I'm helping a friend put a 56 Ford pickup back togeather. 15 yrs in storage and doing a frame up. Boy!!! its great spending someone else's money. 468 BB w/ TH400, gearvender, ladder/coil over, mustang 11 IFS, 9 inch ford Dana 60. Went to Sac Vintage Ford candy store!!! and picked up this and that and walked out with a $6101.00 bill. I liked to choked. Anyway any of you fellas ever get a chance to be in Sacramento be sure! to stop by Sacramento Vintage Ford Parts. It is awsome. Ok that's enough. When it is in your blood it's in your blood.