Quote Originally Posted by Itoldyouso
Welcome aboard. I'm glad to see another rodder coming into the fold, however, your intro leaves me with some questions about how long you will find hot rods attractive. Please understand I am not being critical, just asking some questions I think you need to ask yourself before you commit.

Hot rodders are a special lot. We are willing to put up with many obstacles and solve many problems along the way, and even once the car is running we accept the shortcomings and idiosyncracies of our rods. Regardless of how we all say our rods "drive like a Cadillac", in reality they do not. Oh sure, with modern IFS and IRS systems you can get a rod to ride in a very decent manner, but the envelope is still basically 80 year old technology and not designed to match the comfort level of newer stuff.

I would suggest you actually get to know some rodders and see if you can con one of them into letting you sit in or maybe even drive their car a little. While these things are fun, they don't come without issues. Lots of people look at a hot rod and think it would be fantastic to own one, but in the real world people buy and then sell them quite often because they find out they are not willing to put up with the aforementioned issues.

But as jyardgirl said, we are here to help in any way we can to get you to your goals.

Don
First off, thanks to you both for the offers to help.

Don, that's exactly why I'm here. Although I have very very little experience with rods, I do have a lot of experience with old cars. Now I've never driven a '33 Ford, but I've driven 1920s Bentley speed six, 1930's Hispano Suiza, a couple of 1930s Duesenbergs (roadster, phaeton, landaulet), and so on. So I'm not completely oblivious to what it's like to drive something with no power steering, power brakes, a/c, heck no top at all, and a gas pedal in the middle for that matter.

As for goals, something I've always wanted to do is build my own car. Another thing is restoring a car. I figure rodding or building a custom is pretty much a mix of the two things in a way. I don't have what it takes to build a car from scratch (a Simpson's episode where Homer's long lost brother tasks him to do it comes to mind), so rodding is neat because you start of with a template so to speak and then take it from there.

What I'd love to do is find a 41 Caddilac or something along those lines. Again, haven't looked into things as much as I'd like yet so I'm just going by interesting cars I've seen. A beat up old car that I won't feel bad tearing to bits to make it into whatever I want.

No, there is no guarantee that I'll fall in love with rods and never look back, but I'll never know if I don't look at least.