Police Run-Ins | F_cking Cars Podcast Ep. 2

We're back in business.

My favorite car meme popped up on Instagram the other day, and no matter how many times I

see it, I just love it every time.

It says, imagine having to text your girl, I'm here, because your car is not loud enough

for her to know.

Yeah, I think I seen something the other day where like cars used to save a lot of marriages

because you could hear when they, like the cheating people could hear when they pulled

in and shit.

I don't know how the saying goes, but it was, I don't know, something like that.

But yeah, I feel you.

I don't know that I love that idea.

Yeah, I know, I don't love that idea, but it was just funny, I don't know, something

me and the wife were just laughing about what we saw.

When I saw it, I realized like everybody always knows when, up until lately, my truck's pretty

quiet, but I has always known when I'm pulling up because all the cars were always loud or

even my beater civics got quite an exhaust note on it.

Yeah, we just got rid of the 79, but the neighbors knew every time we were, even

the fuel pump turned on and they were like, oh, yep, they're, they're ready to turn the

key.

And it had headers on them.

Our houses are pretty close and yeah, it was, I'm glad it's gone.

It was super loud, like louder than, it's like louder than it was fast.

So like, wasn't even that cool, you know?

Yeah, that's kind of how it goes a lot, I think, especially like a lot of my earlier

cars, they were definitely making more noise than doing anything else.

Yes, yeah, I remember you couldn't even drive through Marshfield as a kid, like just getting

your license.

If you had like a cherry bomb or something, if it was like even visibly from the side

aftermarket, they would just pull you over because it wasn't stock and it was a little

bit louder.

But yeah, everybody had just like stock vehicle loudest they could possibly be.

Even now there's a bunch of people in town that still do it.

It's not dead.

People are still just making random stuff loud as hell.

As long as they're having some fun.

Yeah, I mean, it's not really hurting anybody unless they're driving past my house at four

o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, I suppose.

What was the early project cars for you?

The biggest early project car I had was probably my S10.

I kind of started on it when I was, I think I bought it when I was like 17 or 18 somewhere

in there.

It was just a 94, I think a 4-3 in it automatic.

It was a, I was into mini trucks a lot, so it would definitely fit the, it was the

right truck.

Didn't have any real rust on it at all.

So I lowered it right away, put some different rims and tires on it and then I went through

auto body tech, I shaved the door handles, shaved the tail lights with LEDs in the

roll pan, painted it a bunch or just painted it with the stock color, sorry, but it looked

really good.

And then I eventually put air ride on it, but I guess the car before that, I did have a

car project car before that and it was a 94 sunbird, real nice, something real nice,

Clark.

Did you think it was fast?

My first car was a four door.

The project car was a two door.

It was not fast.

So fully cylinder five speed, the only thing that saved it was a five speed and it had a

sunroof.

So I mean, it looked a little cooler, but I mean, it's still a sunbird.

Yeah.

Pretty rough nowadays.

I just seen one on Marketplace that was like a bundle of money, which it was like,

I would show my wife like, you believe this shit?

It's like five grand or something.

That's crazy.

Did they have the Ram air on it?

I think it was a Trans Am.

No, it was just like completely stock that people, some people just really dig.

I don't know.

People just have these time capsules sitting around and I call it a time capsule.

But sometimes when you see a really 90s vehicle, you're like, damn, look at how nice

that thing is.

I remember that in high school and it was rusted out back then.

But yeah, I don't know.

There's still just 90s vehicles.

What are you going to do?

Yeah.

There's a couple of Leros and like grand damn GTs around here.

And I got to say, I do enjoy seeing them just because it takes me back.

Yeah.

You see a Cherry Grand Am and you're like, damn, for me, when I was 15, I off off of auto car

trader or auto trader, I bought a $400 1979 Camaro Berlinetta with a 305.

That's the first car.

It was pretty awesome.

It was like completely Swiss cheese, took a bit to get it running.

Yeah.

All right.

All the urethane bumpers like sagged in the middle.

But over time, I did like doors, trunk, fenders, bumper, hood, you know, every bolt on thing.

So then like it looked mostly solid, but like the rest of the car, like rockers

were still trash, quarters had stuff hanging up, you know, big holes on it.

But and then I put, you know, subwoofers in the back, so it like slowly shook all the rust

out of the chassis.

You got to have subs in it.

My first car.

Hell yeah.

You got to throw as much stereo in it as you can, right?

All right.

Yeah.

Listening to young jock in the 70s Camaro.

Oh, baby.

Yeah.

Meet me at the mall.

It's going to go down.

Teriyaki chicken, baby.

But that was a, it was like a really fun project car and my parents were pretty cool with letting

me get it.

Like my parents paid to get it towed to my house.

They like just, my cousin towed it on his trailer, but they paid for the gas and everything

because I barely had $400 saved up to buy the actual car.

And they figured for 400 bucks is like as good of a classroom as you can get.

It'll keep me out of trouble.

And even if it never ran, it was worth just having something for me to work on.

Yeah.

It's worth, but the dream was worth it.

The dream was worth it.

I had to like source Berlinetta sales ads from the, from 1979 and have them hanging in my

bedroom and everything, you know, it was a lifestyle at that point.

Oh yeah.

It quickly does turn into a lifestyle.

Like you start, you get your life, you don't even see, you don't even have your

license yet and you're like, you see what's, what's available to you when you do get your

license.

It's, it's almost like a drug you can't have yet kind of.

And then when, you know, once you turn 16, you get your license, something you can

have.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It's like a little taste of freedom.

And you know, it's like just in reach.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

I know that's what you're, the first cars, I mean, I've never really thought

they were the coolest car in the world, but man, they were everything at the, at that time,

you know, they're everything.

Yeah.

I definitely like met a lot of my better friends because I was working in the cars and you

know, when I think I was 16 or 17, one guy that I met just because I had the Camaro

and he had Camaros, we ended up renting a 36 by 60 pole building out in the middle

of nowhere.

I can't believe the guy rented a big building to like a 16 year old and a 17 year old.

But I think the rent on that back then was $375 a month.

Wow.

Look at you.

So we had like, and then we, every, every, you know, they didn't have marketplace

back then, but like every deal we'd find driving past an old car in a field for

sale or like Craigslist, we'd buy them up and we were just filling this building with

them and hacking stuff together and spending all of our free time out there.

Man, Craigslist.

They definitely helped us like cut our teeth with a lot of that stuff.

Right.

That is cool.

That's really cool.

So you have any like, uh, get pulled over with your first car, like have some crazy

stories at all there?

Like, I don't know that I got pulled over in the Camaro ever, honestly.

Really?

There's a lot of close calls over.

I didn't get pulled over in that.

So I always had the Camaro is like my more dedicated project car because it's V8 and

I shave the heads on it and shop class and headers and intake man like every bolt

on I could put on it.

So it was like always kind of in process.

And then I'd have another car that was like a toy daily driver and that's generally where

I got into my main trouble.

I think it was a couple of months after I got my license, I was still at my first

job and I get told, Hey, there's a police officer waiting for you in the lobby.

And I go, Uh, okay.

So I walk up there and he's like, Hey, I'm here to talk to you about the burnout

you did on such and such road.

And he goes, Um, did you really do that with that little Nissan you've got out there?

And it was a 90, 1990, I think Nissan 240 sx pretty much stock, but uh, he's like, You

really did that burnout with that?

And I said, Yeah, he goes, Well, I'm going to do you a favor.

I went to your house to, to, because I somebody called in your license plate.

I went to your house and your mother told me you worked here and sent told me that I

should go to your work and talk to you there.

Cause apparently she thought that'd be funny.

And uh, so he's like, he's like, normally I would charge you by the foot and he

goes, but I don't think you want to do that.

Cause I think it was like two black lines, 50 feet long and they charge

you like a hundred bucks a foot.

So he's like, Yeah, cause it's a, it's public.

It's like destruction of public property.

Cause I vandalized it basically with rubber lines.

And so they'll charge you by the foot, like if it's graffiti

road tattoos.

Yeah.

But, uh, he's like, I'm going to do you a favor.

And he gave me a disorderly conduct with a motor vehicle after only having

my license for a couple of weeks.

Nice.

And then butter trap.

And then like two, two weeks later, he found me coming out of that

same road as he was pulling by and he pulls me over immediately.

He goes, tell me you weren't out back there doing burnouts.

And I said, no, I was visiting a friend's house.

That's the reason I was doing burnouts there in the first place.

She's in rice.

What about you?

Did you get pulled over pretty early?

Yeah.

With my S.

Well, not super.

Well, I definitely got pulled over in the sunbird for a lot of exhaust.

Cause I think I just like slept a cherry bomb on that thing.

And it was a four cylinder and it sounded kind of like the other important

town because they were definitely way faster because it was so slow.

But yeah, with my S10, I definitely got a fair share of cop experiences.

We, I went to a racetrack just out of town, Marshfield Speedway.

There was a bunch of people out there.

I can't remember if it was the Eva destruction or something like that.

You know, where they're banging cars around the track all night long.

I took the truck out there and there's this dance club that's like right in front of it.

It's out of town, but it's like right before the racetrack.

There's this dance club.

And there's always like, it was just where we stopped going there.

Like we were just getting older where we stopped going there.

But there's still people everywhere, you know.

So I was on air ride.

I laid it out, had blocks on the bottom and laid it out.

There's sparks flying everywhere.

Just at the very last car at the end of all of these cars is a cop.

He's standing out there and he just like.

Like doesn't know what to do.

Doesn't even know what he's seeing.

Comes flying out.

I pull into the racetrack.

I pop it up right away because I seen it was a cop pulling to the racetrack

because it was like right there.

This guy's got his lights on.

Comes flying up behind me.

What the hell are you doing?

What the hell is this thing?

And I'm just like, I just laid it out

because there's a bunch of people out there.

Like I was just being really honest, like be as easy on me as you can.

You know, I was just trying to be honest.

And it's like, well, never do that again.

Can you show me how it does that?

And the next time I pulled the tonneau cover back and I'm showing him

and he's like, should never do that again.

And he took off and never gave me any ticket for anything but that time.

But I also used to go to Dropfest in Appleton.

That was kind of a big thing at the time is imports, mini trucks.

There was hot rods there too, but very minimal.

It was very mixed crowd at the Yang Yang Twins played there once.

It was actually like a really big thing.

But all of I want to leave the show.

Did you really?

What do you remember what year it was at all?

Yeah.

I'd have to look, but I would guess it was somewhere like

two thousand.

Eleven, twelve, somewhere in there.

Probably one of the OK, that makes sense.

Yeah, OK, that's got to be around the same time.

But I would you couldn't even pull out of the show without getting pulled over

by a state trooper like they caught on to all the these highly,

highly customized cars that were driving around this area.

I mean, there's cars that had like fully

I mean, my truck had shaped tail lights too and they had their own tail lights.

So I mean, if it's not stock in Wisconsin, it's technically not road.

Well, back then, I don't know if it's still the same now.

But I didn't have hobbyist place.

Nobody really did.

You know, they just customized their vehicles to whatever played on at the head.

But yeah, I got pulled over leaving

and I got a laundry list.

I got like eight things like I had the wiper spun off for the show

and I had these like billet things on.

So I mean, I got a ticket for not having wipers, tail lights, door handles,

shaved. It was it was like I thought it was eight things.

I don't remember all of it.

But so we just get down the road

to College Ave and I get pulled over again.

So at this point, I'm like, I don't even know it.

Like I'm going to get towed, I thought.

And they're all state troopers.

So this guy pulls me over.

He's like giving me the hassle about all the same stuff.

The last guy did.

And so he's like, OK, I'm just trying to get my hotel.

It's just at the other end of College Ave.

So we get back, you know, he's like, OK, just go, just get to your parking lot.

Like that's what I'm trying to do.

So I know more than get two blocks down the road

and I get pulled over again by a different state trooper.

At this point, I'm just like tickets out the window before the guy even shows up like.

Quit fucking around and just let me get back to the goddamn hotel.

You know, it was just so infuriating.

But I ended up taking the.

Taking the registration off the vehicle

to get all the charges dropped to say I took the vehicle off the road.

And then you just re-register it when you're ready to.

It was simple, but maybe it was my loophole

that probably is not a secret anymore, I guess.

I'm not sure that was long time ago.

Yeah, it's kind of like pay to play.

For sure.

You got to pay to play.

That's a heavy model around here, for sure.

All right, so the S10 got you pulled over.

Was there somebody that got you like into these cars?

Or was it just happenstance?

Like you just bought a car and slowly just fell in love.

There's like a lot.

I think I can't really pinpoint it to one specific vehicle.

I did when I when I was super young, I was in the Boy Scouts

and they had a car show in my hometown every year.

And it was actually a really big car show,

which is it was really cool because it had everything divided out.

It was like 60s cars, 70s cars, hot rods.

It was like it wasn't all mixed together.

It was all separated.

So if you wanted to look at 60s cars, you want to get 50s cars

that were like had their own section or whatever.

And that was like really eye opening to just everything.

You're seeing custom built cars with like, you know,

plexiglass on the valve covers.

You can see the oil on the shit splashing around.

It's really cool to me as a kid.

There's just all kinds of different stuff there.

And it was just being exposed to that.

And my my dad has been a mechanic his whole life.

So we've been around cars and in and out of, you know, car shows

and stuff my whole life.

So seeing all that stuff, I mean, but seeing like the level of

ring, like the ring brother stuff.

When you see that stuff in person, like now this stuff is like

absolutely fantastic to see a car at that level is.

It's almost like it crushes you a little bit this year.

Man, am I ever going to be good?

Like, holy shit.

You're all, you know, their body work and, you know,

they got all the rubbers in the car and the doors and stuff

when their body work and it's everything's like laser straight.

They're blocking the clear out with, you know,

like four, six hundred or something like that.

So it's flat, flat, flat.

It's nuts.

And it's a lot of work and it's hard to find a client

that wants to take a car to that level, too, you know.

Yeah.

You said Boy Scouts had like a car club or a car meet.

Well, they used to like we used to be like the hamburger stand

at the car show that was. Oh, gotcha.

Well, that's pretty fun.

Well, was that like an Iowa type of deal?

It was just like a one day car show that I mean, it was it was

a big car show at the time just because it was it was in a big grassy area.

It was really, really pretty cool.

They had a great DJ there that was like, I mean, now I think back.

I don't think it was a pretty good DJ, but as a kid,

it was like the car show DJs playing all the oldies and stuff, you know,

it was really, really cool at the time.

Yeah, any time I get to hear like Dionne and the bell mounts and everything,

I just like just takes me right to car show times.

Oh, yeah.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, I, uh, yeah, I remember like every single car show

during the summer, we would try to hit like every swap meet every car show

just because like you just want to go and see all these things

that these guys that have been working on forever

kind of got done on their cars and like inspire you for what to do

for your rusty crappy car at home and just like give you some of the dream towards.

Oh, hell yeah.

There's like there's always something cooler out there.

Like you can have a car that you think is done

and then you see somebody else's car and like, oh, shit, I can't do that.

Like that's pretty rad.

But I mean, it doesn't even really matter what it is.

It's could be some small interior piece or something.

There's always something that can be like, I don't know.

I don't think the cars are ever done done unless you look at a ring brother's car.

Like the last one they just released was like looks like AI.

It's oh my God.

Things fantastic.

I was just enjoying watching the video.

I think I sent to you that one that Hagrid he did on their car

and just like the sound when they would close the door and the trunk to me.

It was like so crisp and solid for like a carbon door to just sound

like so luxury when it closed.

Yeah, it sounds expensive. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's funny to trip out over lashes and door seals.

That's cool. I mean, that's the cool stuff, though.

You can have a you can have the car shiny on the outside

and it door shuts like shit, doesn't seal wind noise like it's a big deal

to have a car that doesn't have all that, you know,

and it still looks looks a one on the outside

and everything in between is good, too.

Yeah, it only takes, according to them, 18,000 man hours to get something like that.

That's it. That's just that.

It only take me, I don't know how many years to find myself.

So if you work 40 hours a week, that's 2000 and 80 hours a year.

So it'd be nine years of eight hours a day.

Wow, that's insane.

Yeah, I imagine they've got a huge crew on it.

Oh, I don't think their crew is.

I mean, I seen a picture of their crew when they had when they released that car

and it was quite a bit of people, but I don't I don't know how many people

they actually have that work on the cars. I'm not sure.

Ring Brothers is in Wisconsin, right?

Yeah, Spring Green.

It's actually when you drive past, it doesn't look like they have a collision shop there, too.

So it looks more like a collision shop when you drive past,

because I think that's where their, you know, their town clientele is.

But I haven't always been make I wanted to make a trip down there for their

tours. I thought they did like Thursdays, but this was that was when I asked them

a long time, I don't know if they still do tours on Thursdays.

But I want to do that sometime.

I don't know what you all get to see, you know, I'm sure there's stuff

that's like confidential, semi confidential, as far as like where the build is at

and stuff. I'm not sure. Oh, I'm sure. I want to.

I saw that they said that they learn a lot for their custom builds

by doing like the collision work.

They'll go, Oh, this latch here is a really compact size

and it uses this style of catch like they use a lot of that knowledge

they get from, you know, newer cars to bring into their old builds.

Oh, I'm sure somebody has a door skin off a car and they're just like,

Oh, what's inside here? What kind of?

Let's order this part. Let's order this part.

I'm sure that makes sense.

If somebody's already making it, it's so easy to just grab it in

and evolve it to the earth, you know, put it into the car, make it work.

For me, when I like I grew up, my dad was a car guy, but he had already

kind of like I was a third kid and he was 40 or almost 40 when I was born.

So like he didn't have his toy cars anymore.

So I just kind of grew up on stories of them.

And like every time I had a question,

he'd always like explained to me how an automatic transmission works

when I was like 11, you know what I mean?

Like so he always like made time to like tell me how everything did and like.

Automatic transmissions, I just I don't want to dig in that stuff.

That's just I'll bolt it in for you.

Yeah, I don't really want to rebuild one either.

But like it's just cool to like understand what happens

between you hitting your foot down and like the wheels turning.

So like I just like always made time to explain to me everything that went on.

He had like a couple cool pictures of, you know, his 67 fastback that he built.

And then like he had a daily driver, seventy five trans am.

So like I was just always hearing stories of these and his his Mustang

was a two eighty nine, but it was like all aluminum heads intake,

you know, full internals, stuff like that.

Co-bridge at Shaker on a sixty seven fastback.

So it was like kind of different, but looked factory.

It was like a modernizing, but back in 1970.

But you know, torque, torque thrusts in the rear

and then stock wheels with hubcaps in the front, stripped out interior,

all that cool stuff like, yeah.

So like I'd really love to be able to like replicate that car someday

when the circumstances are right, but it's not like sixty seven fastbacks

or all too available anymore, especially for just like a project build, you know.

On like top of my dad's Mustang and all that, there's also like a little bit

of family heritage with like car building and stuff like that.

That also inspired me.

I don't even know if I ever told you this, but like.

I think starting in the forties, my great grandpa had a couple of standard oil gas stations.

And then he actually had a race.

He had a race team where he had two midgets and one Indy car.

What? Yeah.

Here's like you can tell it's a good photo.

It's completely girl.

So here's one of the midgets.

That's all great grandpa there.

And then, you know, one of the big four cylinder often house their cars.

And then his. So cool.

So I kind of like, wow, knew that there was like this race car heritage in us.

And like, I've got another picture of his push truck because he had

like his gas station truck, but he had like the push bar on it.

And he actually you'd push those cars around in the pits and all that stuff.

That's so. And then he was dead before I was born.

But we would go to my, you know, his house

where my great grandma lived and visit her and sometimes going on in the basement

and like see where he tinkered on stuff and all that.

And it was just like super cool.

And like the crazier thing is, is my dad,

like genetic wise, takes after that his grandpa,

like he doesn't really look like the, you know, our last name, Spender.

But this is the Starwicks side.

And he like looks like my great grandpa and I look just like my dad.

And we all have like this super analytical take things apart

in our head all the time brain.

And that's like, it's almost like passed down generation to generation.

It's just like super cool to think about.

I got like, I've got the first dollar bill that he made at his first gas station and all that.

It's like, wow, that's really cool.

Yeah, I've been digging into trying to find like even when we went to

Indianapolis for my friend's wedding, we went to the IndyCar Museum

and we were trying to find information on my grandpa's cars,

like how they placed and stuff like that when he was at Indy.

I've been digging into it.

It's hard because he was sponsored by Bartol,

which was like an old school oil company.

So I think the team name would have been under just Bartol,

which I found a few cars.

But without knowing like his race car number, I can't.

It's hard to nail down exactly what

cars drivers. Yeah.

And if you look at it, like the Bartol cars from year to year,

because the Indy has like records of everything, like all the cars that finished

and all that stuff each race each year.

And I'm looking at it and like his push truck is a 1960 or a 1961 Chevy K10

or K30 or whatever.

And so I'm trying to look around those years.

And there's like Bartol cars.

You know, where the Bartol is the race team.

And it says the driver name, but it doesn't really say, you know,

it says they got an often house or engine in them or whatever,

which were like these huge, my dad would tell me he was going

sitting all the race cars when he was a little kid back in like the early 60s.

And when they were tearing the motors apart, he said they were four cylinder

engines, but the pistons were the size of a coffee can.

And they only moved like this far.

So they'd like, you know, they just go a ton of RPMs.

They had like a ton of displacement for a four cylinder.

And it was just really like a really cool.

I don't know why we don't do too much of that anymore.

Maybe it wasn't efficient.

And you know, we're just like completely on the end of the spectrum now.

But yeah, super, super short stroke.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I've always kind of like had this.

Like engineering and like this, this fabrication and building mindset

just like cool to trace it back to like some family.

So it's like, I don't know, I think about it a lot.

And I've been trying to use chat GPT to dig into the history

and see if it can find something I can't.

But oh, yeah, I thought of that.

Yeah, because you're such a person.

I had it like looking at all the like newspaper articles and stuff like that.

Anything archives from that time.

Like, yeah, that's cool.

I guess the more it creates, the better it gets at it.

Yeah, it's super cool because like that one picture I was showing you

that was him and his driver and the drivers holding the big trophies.

So they obviously won some race.

And so it was like looking at newspaper articles from about that time

and it found like the trophy manufacturer, like because it says

like the name of the trophy company on the top of it.

And it's like all cool old stuff from Milwaukee.

I don't know. It's like exciting to dig into.

That is really cool.

But so where was he originally racing?

Where like the race tracks he was going to, do you know that at all?

So he was based out of Milwaukee.

His gas stations were in Milwaukee.

And then so I guess around that time they had the Milwaukee mile.

My dad said he went to Indy with him before back when it was the brickyard.

Like my dad's like remembers watching on solid brick track in the early 60s as a kid.

That's really cool.

Yeah, I don't think I ever really brought it up when we had, you know,

worked together years ago.

No, yeah, how many we worked together?

Like four, like eight months or nine months or something like that.

A little under a year, I think.

But yeah, so like I was designing stickers for the truck

and I wanted to put like a little like a one spot.

I wanted to put like a race number on a trophy truck.

And I put the name of it in the number plate.

I put Starwick Super service, which was the name of his gas station

and had it on like his push truck.

And then I took the number out of his race cars for it.

Just like little car makes a little personal.

Nobody would ever really know, except you and maybe some family members

or something potentially, but absolutely cool.

Everybody that has like a real memory of all that stuff back then,

like that would maybe remember drivers names or car numbers or whatever.

They're all pretty much gone.

So it just makes it like hard to really find any information on it.

Mm hmm.

My brother ended up with the actual like Bartol race jacket

from like the 1950s. Really?

That's pretty cool.

I had it in my closet for a long time, but then he asked for it

and I was like, well, whatever.

So hopefully one day it'll come back home.

Right. Wow.

That's got to be something.

Does it still smell like oil and armpit?

Not so much armpit.

I think that that that bacteria must die off over time.

It is funny because it's like it's like silky black on the outside

and the inside's all gold.

And then like the patches are like really poor, poorly hand stitched on.

So it's like kind of interesting.

So real crude just had to look at from that's all right.

Yeah, when you're in the pit and they were in the stands, it looked good.

Yeah, you don't have that.

Do you have how long did you have that Camaro you were a kid?

I had it until I went to college.

So I got it when I was 15 and then I sold it.

Yeah. So I had it like three, three and a half years.

And I sold it to a friend and I was like, sure, I was going to buy it back.

You know how it is when you get attached to a car.

You're like, if you sell this, you let me know and I'll buy it back.

Yeah. But I got back from college and he had like

taken the engine out and started doing bodywork on it.

And like, even though he didn't really do anything wrong,

it just like kind of killed me inside of it.

And then actually for sure, I forgot about it.

But he's so he sold it to like a girlfriend

and then him and the girl broke up and perfect.

I don't know the whole story, but we ended up finding my wife was at.

She's in the National Guard and she was at a drill weekend

and this girl was talking about her Camaro.

She was working on with her with her new boyfriend and all this stuff.

And she's like, my wife's kind of she's been around cars forever.

Her stepdad was a car guy and then she was always like that shop I had.

She was always just sitting in there when we were dating.

Sure. And like just chilling out on the shop couch

while I was working on stuff.

So she's just like kind of numb to it.

And when somebody's talking cool about cars,

it doesn't really know what they're talking about.

She just can see it.

And she's like, she's like, oh, this girl thinks she's so cool

talking about her Camaro.

And then she heard her talking about it was a 79 Camaro.

And then she heard her kind of she's like, where'd you get this Camaro?

And then she found out who she got the Camaro from

and it ended up being my buddy's name.

And my wife's like, no way.

So she comes back from from the National Guard drill and she's like, hey.

This girl was talking about the car and I was kind of like shut up, you know.

But then I found out she's like that I found out

and I ended up asking for a picture and she's like, I found your car.

And that's super.

I guess right away, she was like, are you actually working on this thing?

Or is it just sitting around and you think you're going to work on it?

Well, then I guess this girl's.

I don't know if her boyfriend or her split up or whatever.

They something happened and they the cars are sitting there.

And my wife's like, how much do you want for it?

So we bought it back for six hundred dollars.

And right right before my kid turned one year old.

So we were going to buy it back and fix it up with him.

But it just kind of sat around the the motor was gone.

The transmission was gone.

The upholstery was gone.

It was like just this shell.

Funny thing is, is that was it was actually still titled in my name,

even though it had been gone for, you know, through two people's hands.

And it had that's crazy.

So it was a it was around for quite a while.

And then it just sat there.

And then when we moved to Florida, I decided that I just got to clear out

because I had a backyard full of cars and I was trying to move across the country

and make a change.

And I was like, am I going to drag these rusty things

across, you know, fifteen hundred miles to a place where the cars aren't rusty?

So I kind of made the call.

And I stripped like all the good.

Yeah, all the good parts off of it.

I found new homes for I didn't get much money for them.

But I'm like, it's hard to find clean, second gen fenders and doors and hoods.

And so I sold them all to people that were building cars.

And I had a seventy three Camaro in the backyard.

But I kind of worked the deal with a friend of mine

and got it back to him.

And I think he actually has it sitting in somebody's backyard still.

But I dumped off that stuff.

I had a Fair Lady Z like a 1974 Datsun that was actually a Japanese import.

It was a right hand drive, Fair Lady Z had the Japan only two liter straight six

in it and stuff. That was a project of mine.

And I sold that when I moved to and I kind of like let the car guy shut down.

I think I remember you working on that at that point.

I think I'm not sure.

I think I would have had the Datsun when we were working together.

I painted a I saw that I saw the Datsun on Craigslist and I reached out to the guy

because it was like in this crappy, dark, dingy picture.

And I was like, Fair Lady Z, what are the chances?

And the guy had it up for like six hundred dollars or something

because no title or anything like that.

And I reached out to him and it turned out he was in Nolten,

which you know where that is. But it's like, yeah, I don't know.

Well, it's about half an hour from my house.

Yeah. So I go out there to the address to meet the guy because I said,

hey, you know, I don't I don't know how much the car is worth.

But I do paint and bodywork.

So maybe I say you got some other cars in the background in the picture.

Can I come check it out?

And maybe we could work out a trade deal.

And I went down there and in an 1800s cheese factory that he had bought

or the family owned or something like that, like they were using it as a

storage building. There was this 1974 Japanese import.

Super rusty, of course, because it's Wisconsin, but in Japan.

And those Datsun's just rusted from the showroom until forever.

But I went there and I was looking at it.

And I was like, I kind of have to have this car.

It's sweet, right hand drive manuals in on six sporty car.

You don't see a lot of them.

And I know painting in six 1961 Austin Healy Bug Eye Sprite.

And he gave me he gave me 15 $1,500 in the Datsun,

which probably wasn't near enough because I did like a full,

you know, all the metal work and everything on that car.

But whatever. Sure.

But it was super neat, like you go on Craigslist, dark picture

and you end up in like a 200 year old cheese factory picking out cars.

Yeah, that's but that's really nuts.

So I think that was about the time we were working together,

like 12 years ago or something.

And I kept that one for a long time, but I bought like two or three

other parts cars when I was doing that one and like hacked it off at the firewall

and took a 240 Z donor car front end.

And I slugged all the unibody frame rails and, you know,

welded it all the way around the seam and plug welded the sleeves inside

and put a whole front end on it, replace the rails in the bottom.

And while I was at it, I like old race car stuff.

I stitched all the seams, you know, one inch stitch weld, one inch cap,

one inch stitch weld and then painted it red with three different kinds

of big like bass boat flake in the engine bay and stuff.

Nice. But I sold it to a guy

when I was moving for not enough money.

But it was interesting.

He really it was like the guy showed up.

He had one arm, but I think it was his left arm.

So he would be able to shift that car.

So he kind of really wanted the right hand drive car.

So and he was super excited.

So I sold that when I moved and then just kind of like

let the car guy shut down for a couple of years

while I moved to Florida and tried to not have a yard full of garbage.

And it didn't last year.

You know, as it goes, now my kid's 13 and he's getting into cars

and, you know, we're like flying to Tennessee to paint an engine bay

and a GTR and going to big YouTubers shops and doing tours

and like helping a buddy with the rest of my shop, put a roll cage

in his 69 Roadrunner and we're just hitting the racetrack.

And it's all it's all reigniting and getting getting bad again.

The kid's not going to help any of these into cars, man.

It's going to start accumulating a lot.

Yeah, he says now cars is part of his personality.

Well, we all know that fucking cars.

You got that right.

But what have you been working on this week, Brookville Roadster or something?

Yeah, doing the getting the Brookville Roadster welded together.

I finally had all the everything welded together where the doors are

fitting and everything and the doors would actually latch and stuff.

Because prior to coming to me, it was like the nothing fit there.

Like the gaps are like overlapping on top and inch wide at the bottom.

And it was pretty terrible.

So I got all the plug welds drilled and welded up and finished off.

And yeah, it's I got the spring perch cover made for the back

because when you lower it, the perch comes up and you got to have a floor around it.

So made a little video that'll be dropping on YouTube

or should be on YouTube by now.

Yeah, it's got all that finished up and next week, I think we'll be back

on the 66 Mustang or maybe making I got some parts that came in for the front break venting.

I'm going to get the tubes ran, get the the basically the sheet metal

plumbing connector connected to the plumbing under behind the grill and stuff.

Race car stuff, I don't know. Race car stuff.

It's kind of fun.

So is Brookfield like a company that remanufactures the 32 Ford or was it like a model of 32 Ford?

I think there are some liberties in it.

I think I thought I heard their hoods were a little bit longer.

It had an extra loop or something.

I can't remember exactly.

That was the customer telling me that I don't really know.

I have never really had one side by side, you know, what is the real difference?

They're pretty pretty close to what I think they should be.

But I mean, when you buy one in pieces, it's still it's like aftermarket parts,

you know, they they have a guy there that that jigs them together

and is bumping panels around to make sure everything lines up.

I actually got to talk to one of those guys to help me put this one together,

because usually when you buy one, they're done.

You don't usually it's not a regular thing where a customer would like

or somebody would buy them in pieces and then put them together.

I mean, that's pretty rare thing, I think.

That's pretty sweet. It's all fitting together.

Now we I just got to put the front and build the front floor in it.

Some company sells one.

So I have to talk to the customer and see if he wants to wants me to build one.

Just as far as like the Bolton areas, if he wants a Bolton transmission tunnel,

you still need the Bolton panel for the brakes to access the brakes and stuff like that.

So it's just a matter of what the customer wants and what's available or make it.

So is that like a real Ford 32 frame?

Or is it there is like an aftermarket frame as it's all aftermarket

the aftermarket frame?

It does have a real flathead in it.

It's I mean, it's been built.

So everything on top of the block or out of the block inside the block is aftermarket.

But yeah, but I think the block is really the only thing that would be like

Ford Ford, everything else seems like seemingly.

Yeah, it's got to be pretty much everything aftermarket,

which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It just doesn't necessarily have like a soul of an old car.

Like, I don't know.

That's also owners know.

Like, I don't know.

That's not my year.

They're not there for me.

It's I did watch your your YouTube video you put up on the Hungry Hollow Channel.

And I had a thought when I was watching it that it'd be really cool.

Because one, there's not a ton of people doing what you do.

But two, I think if you wanted to go no commentary on it,

it'd be really cool to do just like a ASMR hot rod or, you know, building

where it's just the sounds of the power hammer, just the sounds of the shear.

Sure, like it's I think like it'd be like a, you know, soothing thing to watch,

even though the power hammer is going bang, bang, bang.

But like, if you could set up microphone,

if you got like a little Bluetooth microphone and like put it by each tool

you're working on, so it picked up like just those shop sounds like

I think it'd be a really cool no music background.

I don't think you need a microphone.

It's it's pretty loud in here when we're cranking in the day.

Yeah, it's the audio for the the audio for the shear

and everything was like really clear on it.

But I almost think like I know, like in our heads, when we edit something,

we think we got to have like background music and things to keep people interested.

But I think almost the like just the raw sounds like the wheel

when you're wheeling something and going back and forth, the bead roller roll in it.

Like if you could get crisp audio on all that, I think it would be really sweet.

And I've kind of got a philosophy for like YouTube is film it as

to make it as easy as possible when you're editing.

So like because then you'll do it more, you'll get more content out to people.

They'll get to see more and enjoy more.

If you can if you can make it as easy on yourself as possible

where you just load stuff in, you just you just, you know, trim everything.

So it's just like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, kind of, you know,

set the audio to all be about the same volume.

So the power hammer is not like way up here.

And then when you're doing something, it's real quiet.

But yeah, that's new.

Yeah, but I think you could do a little bit of editing just on that.

And then I don't know, I just feel like it'd be super interesting

to have like just a raw audio of the, you know, those those sheet metal

forming tools, like even the welder, like all of it.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I guess I get that because it's hard to it's anybody

could put music on top of anything, you know, really, and cover up anything with music.

So I guess the stuff you're covering up is probably the stuff people want to hear.

Or see and hear.

It's a different experience than you're getting

from like other channels that are doing like how to do this or whatever.

Like you're just like showing and it's going to make it easier

because you're running a business and you're trying to get work done.

If you can just like literally just show things getting done, like.

Yeah, I see videos like people have like it'll be like one hour of drifting

to go to sleep to and it's just like drift cars with like they have like a low five

beat or something behind it, but like it's just like this smooth, relaxing thing.

Somebody could watch you like just, you know, it was a nice, nice suit,

like mellow thing in the background.

You just like form and some sheet metal like it's been done for the last 100 years.

Yeah.

Well, they've been doing power hammers have been like electric power hammers

have been around for like 100 years, but in Asia power, like water powered hammers

have been around for thousands of years.

Like it's the lineage of power hammers is a lot bigger than people think it is.

And it's not just 100 years.

It's when you look back at the water powered power hammers, like the boat,

like the water wheel pass and yeah, yeah, with the water wheel, it come pass

and it comes down and I mean, that's how the yeah, it's super cool.

I mean, that's how they made all the like intricate metal shaping

stuff that they did like way, way back.

And I don't know, like, I don't know, way back in Asia days.

I don't know what I imagine you could probably make some sweet

Damascus with a power hammer back in, you know, 1500.

Oh, yeah.

It's like just a gigantic rock coming down and smashing metal.

And it's really, really cool.

That's pretty cool.

Mm hmm.

Oh, I think I got a few more panels I got to make on that Mustang

as far as some of the behind the grill pieces out of sheet metal.

So I was going to try and do a little video with that and I don't know.

We'll see.

I'm new to the YouTube stuff and filming myself.

This is all new to me.

Well, I think the good news is like you're doing you're actually doing

something and you're doing something that not everybody's doing.

Like, I'm sure there's other hot rod shops and there's other sheet

metal forming and restyling shops out there.

But like, if you just kind of I think there's more people willing

to watch than there is content of the stuff, if you know what I mean.

So I think it could work out.

Yeah, I guess I make some.

You just film what you're doing and like find like, you know,

make a playlist for Mustang stuff, make a playlist for 32

Roadster stuff or sheet metal stuff.

Sure.

And you can do like talkover stuff where you got like a voiceover on it,

where you're explaining what you do or you talk to you like some of those.

But I think I'd end up being like.

It's not going to be like, oh, this is a 32 or we're working on.

This is going to be like, I don't know.

I can't do that.

Yeah, it's weird.

Well, guys, until next time, just keep fucking with cars.

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Police Run-Ins | F_cking Cars Podcast Ep. 2

Honda Civic

Chevrolet Camaro

Toyota A90

Nissan 240 Sx

Ford Mustang

Cupra Born

Nissan Gtr

Plymouth Roadrunner

About this episode

Original notes