Thread: Young and looking for advice

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Well, first of all, we are mad at you for being young, and we aren't.

Welcome to the forum. I'm exactly like you (except you are young ) I like some of the "back to basics, raw, plain" elements of the rat rod cars. I have seen some that really stop me in my tracks and make me want to take a good look at them. The creativitiy some display is refreshing.

You are being very smart in your approach in wanting the car to be built well. The ill feelings many of us on here share about some rat rods is that the owners have built a piece of unsafe crap and don't give a darned about that fact. We simply can't condone building a car that represents all of us rodders that might hurt or kill someone, especially some innocent bystander.

Now to get back to your original question, how to go about it. That is a very tough question, especially when you enter into the mix that you are young. The reason for that is because building a car takes some experience, but also a fair amount of money and equipment. You may possess these, but most young people have not accumulated either of these elements yet. Another thing that complicates it is that the term rat rod has been attached to everything from fenderless model T's to 5 year old Buicks that are primered. I may be thinking fenderless hot rod, and you are thinking '56 Oldsmobile.

What is your ideal rat rod? That is something we have to know first. A great way to get started is to buy someone elses almost finished car and make some changes to it to make it your own. You stand a better chance of getting one on the road if you start with more than chalk marks on the garage floor.

Finally, there is no way this first rod will be your IDEAL car. It never is. All of us are already planning our next car, or the next 2 or 3 cars. What I am saying is compromise a little on this first one and use the experience to go on from there.

Good luck,

Don


PS: I just noticed the portion of your question about how it was done "back in the day." That seems to be what rat rodders feel they are capturing with their cars today. Some of the things they do are correct, and some never existed. I don't remember one car that had license plates for floorboards, although one car I bought, a '33 roadster, had rear radius rods made from water pipe. Not a good thing. Bottom line is that some of the stuff we did in the early days was good and some was pretty shoddy. Even when I look back at some of the articles in magazines back then, the workmanship they did in those articles was pretty crude. The best rat rod would be a blend of a car that looks like it just rolled in from the 1956 salt flats, yet used modern components to make it safe and dependable.


I really like it when youngsters come into this hobby. I especially like it that you seem to have your head screwed on straight as to how you want to do it the right way. That's terrific.