From Dorian:
Contrary to common misconception Rat Rods are anything but hastily assembled junkers, nor are they always painted in basic primer with shot-out upholstery. They come in many varieties from those looking like rusting buckets that would fall apart if you tried to drive them to being almost indistinguishable from the “Classic Hot Rod’s” of the 40′s and 50′s.
What typically signifies the distinction of Rat Rod’s is the meticulous attention to detail in the cars construction, oh and the term Rat Rod can pretty much be attributed to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth who was a custom car pin-stripper and painter out here in California during the 60′s and 70′s. The engines have thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in them and are nearly as customs as the car bodies. The bodies and suspensions are cut, slammed, raked and assembled to fit specific Rat Rod profiles.
The following are pictures of one of my partners 1937 Ford Pick-up, and yes, it has been cut, chopped, slammed and raked. The truck is called “Lucky 13″ it’s my partners 13th vehicle he has made. Eventually I will get around to posting pictures of the other vehicles that “Flat Ass Broke Racing” is working on.
Terms:
Cut: means to cut the vehicles frame adding and subtracting tubing to change it’s physical geometry.
Chopped: means to lower the roof height and put smaller widows in it.
Slammed: means to lower the suspension so that the vehicles body is closer to the ground.
Raked: means to stretch the vehicles body length.
Tags: Doriangrey, project car, ratrod
Is the drivers door an Original Bonnie and Clyde ambush edition. How many bullet holes are there???? I’d paint it flat black and leave them in it… just for character
Hey CW, I enjoyed my first (and 3rd)cup of Russian Caravan today!
Well, some rat rods are poorly built, but it isn’t, and shouldn’t be a defining characteristic.
One thing that is, IMHO, a defining characteristic of the rat road movement, is the back-to-basics ethic, of cars built by their owners to the best of their abilities.
Rat rodding is a reaction against the streetrod movement, characterized by high-dollar pro-built cars, with nearly every part sourced out of a catalog.
There is an amazing resemblance between Alfred E Neuman, the Mad Magazine cover kid, and Ahmet Davetoglu, the Turkish foreign minister. In fact, the two have never been seen in the same room together….
Neuman: http://www.leconcombre.com/alfred/img2/alfred_e_neuman_1.jpg
Davetoglu: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://medya.todayszaman.com/todayszaman/2011/02/07/ahmet-davutoglu.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.todayszaman.com/news-234737-davutoglu-change-in-egypt-may-have-domino-effect.html&h=307&w=614&sz=19&tbnid=H-32K4hip-zHSM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=182&zoom=1&docid=MWnqHaHzugHBhM&sa=X&ei=psQ1T8apA9Su0AH8p42kAg&ved=0CEIQ9QEwCA&dur=7432
“Davetoglu” <- is it just me, or is the Turkish language about the most hideous and brutish-sounding language Eurasia ever produced north of Arabia?
Vietnamese is a bit hard on my ear and I have never been able to pronounce Welsh words, but a name like "Davetoglu" sounds like a caveman's grunts.
Moe Katz wrote:
Yes… but have you seen Alfred E. Obama?
@ Moe Katz:
No It’s not the Turkish guy
It’s this guy
@ huckfunn:
@ eaglesoars:
In a couple of the photos, definitely. We should have an Alfred E Neuman lookalike contest.
Moe Katz wrote:
We’d have to include Prince Charles and Ted Koppel!
@ Macker:
Here’s a start.
@ Macker:
Paulian lineage.
@ Macker:
And Ron Paul.
Moe Katz wrote:
One of my brothers was a dead ringer for him. Big ears, gapped tooth, goofy smile….Except he had a thinner face.
I am the red headed stepchild of the OOT.
Good evening and good night.
OK, I’m going to post this one more time before I go to bed
Andrew Breitbart Drops BOMB on Team Obama: “I Got Video of Obama From College”
nite
So, ms tfk and mr tfk out and about to retain freedom and the constitution.
In Dallas for a bit tonight.
In a Outback Steak House in East Dallas on the way home,
waiter is a kid who has spent the last four years waiting talbles to get a degree and he has joined the U.S. Marines because his great unlcle deied in VN in 1966.
One of the tables near us, ms tfk and I, this 4 year old 1/2 american viet girl. Very precoucious, very smart, very cute, she came over to our table, looked up at ms tfk, said, your so nice and your guy he is so mean looking, why you stay with him…
ms tfk says, Your free because of him and Sgt. Jerry Michael Shriver and you will make the difference soon in your life of freedom.
NEVER FORGET THAT YOUNG LADY.
there is going to be violence shortly.
wow, am i pissed off. i just got a comment deleted on my own blog
@ coldwarrior:
OMG! LOL!
Seriously, I needed a good belly roll today.
In my world, it’s been Friday the 13th all day.
And, you just brightened an otherwise bleak day for me.
‘Twernt me who did it.
Calo wrote:
furious
tachy…
@ Calo:
Why you having a bad day? Do you need me to kick someone’s ass for ya? I can always come to Texas and straighten things out for ya…I am sure I can find a place to stay
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
@ coldwarrior:
And in other news, Barbie ornaments at Hallmark will be no more after 2012.
How’s that for some worthless trivia?
And, my cat has hepatolipidosis and keeps vomiting up his NG tube to feed him and I might have to put him down soon.
*oooh look, a shiny object*
Calo wrote:
stop fucking around.
9mm in the brainstem for the cat.
@ Calo:
Sad times for kitty. {Calo}
@ coldwarrior:
It’s my daughter’s cat.
I’m going to just ignore that comment since I an already 2 grand in the hole with the kitty she adores.
@ coldwarrior:
That is just outright mean! Calo, what does that mean..hepotolipidosis> Is kitty suffering?
@ Calo:
maybe barbie can cure her
NoThreat2U wrote:
maybe barbie can explain it
Calo wrote:
Night everyone.
Sleep well.
yinz too!
Goodnight Calo.
for sale.
my share in this blog.
Someone sounds pissed off and it aint Barbie.
NoThreat2U wrote:
nope. it aint barbie
red hot moon
the best tune…do check it out
for calo…
i’m sorry, tough day.
@ coldwarrior:
There will always be tough days…… hang in there. Please post some photos of the twins on facebook….Shannon wants to see them but we wont come to the house since yinz are probably both tired most of time.
@ NoThreat2U:
come over! gimme a holla! (we are up north till monday)
Oh no… “ShockWave Plugin crashed”! What do I do?
@ coldwarrior:
How does next Friday sound? We are dying to see the babies!
NoThreat2U wrote:
date!
yinzers, unite!
all non-yinzers…this is a great tune, check it out
a good pgh tune
my peeps
for bagua
@ Calo:
I’m so sorry to hear your daughter’s kitty. It’s hard to see them suffering.
What a way to wake up at 1am. Brakes/tires screeching and a nice *crunch*. Look out the window, there’s a car over the curb at our corner, blocking our drive. At least 3-4 people arguing & shouting at each other. Call the cops, by the time they get here the people are gone but the car’s still here. At least there’s no damage to either of our cars. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some booze involved though.
Last time we called, back in Sep or so, it was someone trying to break in the house at 6 on Saturday morning, wanting ‘some shit’. If I’d been thinking, I could have handed him some of the presents the cats have left us.
Need sleep.
No disrespect, but I just don’t get the whole ‘hot rod’ schtick. I mean, I thought they were ‘cool’ when I was a kid, but I pretty much got over that by 14 or so. And to take anything from the 30s reasonably in one piece these days and whack it up into some wannabe 50s rod is just nuts. Try restoring it to showroom new. Hell, whacking up something from the 50s is pretty much crazy today.
And ‘chopping’ cars and trucks so they have smaller windows and it’s harder to see out of them is just plain stupid. Somebody should send Chrysler/Dodge a memo on that.
Morning rant off.
Mike C. wrote:
Old guitars likewise. Let them be what they were intended to be.
@ coldwarrior:
Ha! Now you know how it feels to be censored. Bet you won’t do it to someone else any time soon!
@ Moe Katz:
Guitars, banjos, mandolins – any stringed instrument. Like those vehicles from the 30s, they’re often quite valuable as is or restored.
@ coldwarrior:
Please do sell it!
@ Calo:
I’m sorry about your daughter’s cat. Is that her in your avatar?
@ coldwarrior:
Stop being rude to Calo. She is about to lose a cat and that’s your only response? Get lost!
@ NoThreat2U:
I wish it had been me but no such luck.
Mike C. wrote:
You aged quickly. Me? I only pretend to be an adult
waldensianspirit wrote:
Nah. We lived close in to the city, where there were even neater cars. Jags and Porsches, Austin-Healeys and Triumphs, Sunbeams and Lotuses, Alfas and MGs – rare, exotic, unusual stuff. Grew up wanting one, never had one. Did spend my fair share of time under the hood/frame of a couple of BL products, and have personally pushed an XJ6 blocks down Westheimer in Houston during rush hour – twice (that cured me of ever wanting a Jag.)
@ Mike C.:
They had a car show at Arifjan a couple weeks ago. Kuwaitis love their American muscle cars (not that they actually build them, of course…they buy them in the US and have them shipped over).
Someone had a 7 series BMW with a blown Chevy V-8 stuffed into it.
Mike C. wrote:
ROTFLMAO… No disrespect or offense taken… I’ll post the before pictures this truck one of days, this was not a “in reasonably one piece’ 37 pick-up. Somebody shot it with a cannon, it’s was full of bullet holes (you can still see some of the bullet holes in the driver side door), and it had been wrecked.
That aside the whole thing behind building these vehicles is kind of a neo-luddite kind of thing. It’s an assertion of the individual’s mastery of pre-computer mechanical engineering level technology. It’s the thrill of building something very powerful and being able to say, yes, I built this myself.
To quote AOP from up-thread…
This is totally dead on the money.
Oh, and sorry for not being here to comment on my own thread last night, I was at one of my partners birthday parties…
@ mtc:
@ mtc:
@ mtc:
is your only function to harass and whine about certain people here? i apologized to calo and she was giving as good as she got, no blood no foul, but you, you of course just had to predictably chime in. you contribute nothing to this blog save for boorish constant whining and complaining, but only against me, rodan, and 1389. frankly, if you at least contributed something meaningful to the discussion i wouldn’t mind this irritating, childish, and useless behavior. i will refrain from saying what i really want to say to you, so have a nice day.