I was wondering how everyone got addicted to carcrafting.

For me and my friends it was out of necessity.  We all bought pieces of junk to drive when we got our licences and relied on ourselves and some books to keep them running.  Now at the age of 23 I have a 05 mustang gt, a 85 monte carlo with a 383 I built from scratch and a 70 chevelle (a friend and I bought together) with a 396 and a roll cage.  The friend i bought the chevelle with, who is 22, has a 72 cutlass with a 350, a 70 nova which is torn down to the frame awaiting a roll cage and drivetrain, and a 87 monte ss.  Another friend, who is 22, has a 78 internatinal scout with a 304 we rebuilt, and a 67 mustang with a 289 that we replaced the front shock tower and part of the frame by ourselves and we rebuilt the entire suspension. 

Just wanted people to know that their are young car crafters who enjoy the fun and aggrivation that comes with true american muscle and cant stand the ricers with their fart can exhaust. 

Chris

I am glad to hear that.

My addiction started when I was about 7-8 years old. My Older brother had a 67 Pontiac and used to help him work on it. You know hand him tools and stuff. My next door neighbor had a 1970 442 and when he fired that puppy up in the morning it was music to my ears. Then when I bought my first car,a 1974 Olds Omega, .....well you know!

started out with a 64 chevy when I was 10, ran, but never got anywhere. got a 69 cst10 when I was 15, added headers, duals, ingniton upgrades. I blew the radiator up when I was 16, and instead of replacing it, I put the 350 in a 71 nova that had a smoking 307 in it. Ran ok till I blew the intake gasket out trying to see how far past the 120 mark i could make it. Simple fix, just pull the motor and drop in the 454 that was supposed to go into the 69. Much faster, but still needed more speed parts. Headers, valve upgrade, intake, ignition, carb, exhaust, shift kit, electric water pump and fan, cam, removed a/c, 2 in cowl hood and k&n filter. just to have it spin a bearing on race day (which ended up getting rained out). havent had the money to fix it since, but plan on it. I wanna go fast.  

My story isn't nearly as exciting.  My first car was inherited from my uncle, a '77 Skylark with 3.8L V6 that needed a set of lifters, being 15 and my Dad a mechanic he insisted I do all the work. That car needed a set of lifters every other year til we rebuilt the engine (or rather freshened all the gaskets, bearings and rings).  That car had a lot of odd problems I had to fix over the years. Eventually bought a '69 Firebird 400, it was a mess.  Fixed it up, painted it, put a 700R4 behind it (built by the tranny guy at the GM dealership I worked at).  In relation to another post that car got up 28mpg on the highway but usually got 25mpg highway, 18mpg around town.  I had just bought another Pontiac 400 to rebuild and give it some real Oomph, but before I started that engine some unlicensed, uninsured bastard ran a light and totalled it.  Luckily no one wanted to buy a '77 Skylark (now with a 200R4) so I fell back to it.  Picked up a '72 Buick Centurion with a blown motor since I had a Buick 455 in the machine shop for the Skylark it ended up going into the Centurion.  Since there is no drag strip around here and it is 250 miles to the nearest big city mpg is my focus on the Skylark so I can build for power on my other cars. My latest car is a '67 T-bird with the 10.5:1 compression 428 that lives nicely on regular at 6500'+.  

I used to live down the street from Doug Nash (yes that one) when I was a kid.  He had a Mercury Comet he used to run at the local tracks (Detroit Dragway and Motor City Dragway) for Stu Evans Lincoln Mercury.  This was around 1966 as I recall.  I was a 12 year old wet behind the ears kid and I used to go down to his house and "help" him work on the car. Really I just kind of hung out and watched him and another guy whose name I don't think I ever knew work on the car and drink Miller High Life beer.  I was hooked and have never really tried to cure myself.  

believe it or not, my addiction started when i picked up my first car craft mag about when i was 9. My dad read them too, so every new mag that came in the mail, i would read it after he did. I knew i wanted a muscle car as a first car, but my family ain't rich. At the time i was in 4-H selling market steers, and i used that money to buy a basket case 75 trans am for 600 bucks. I almost bought the 79 the guy had because it was complete except for the motor. But I liked the way the 75 looked alot better. So we trailered it home and it sat there for about 2 months before we touched it. Since then its been about 3.5 years and its still only about half way done.

At this point, i just wanna drive the son of a ***  

It wasn't overnight. 

As an infant, I dreamed of dashed white lines zipping past my car window.

In 1964, Dad brought home a new two-door Chevrolet Biscayne.  He took me for the first ride in it (even before mom got to see it).

About the same time, Granddad had a 1961 Rambler Classic Cross-Country (wagon) with no radio (he believed radios were a driving distraction).  He hunched over the huge wheel and rowed the three-on-the-tree while I sat "shotgun."  Driving sure looked fun (despite how serious Granddad always looked).

Dad inherited the Rambler. 

In 1967, he was adjusting the mechanical valvetrain on the 196-cube Kenosha inliner.  He let me watch. It was my first peek into the mysteries of internal combustion.  I was amazed by the "fast and furious" movement of the oily rocker arms, push rods and valves in perfect synchronization.

I've got to learn more about this "internal combustion" thing.

Then I read in one of Dad's Mechanix Illustrated magazines a story by the greatest automotive writer of all time--Tom McCahill--about a mysterious "Turbo-supercharger" fitted to a 1966 Dodge Dart 273.  He made the little Dodge out to be a wild, giant killing rocket ship.

I started dreaming about turbocharged engines . . . .

But the streets were already packed back then with "rocket ships."  A kid at my school was picked up everyday by someone with a black-over-red Plymouth Superbird.  Everybody had a brother or a mom or a dad with a Mustang, or a GTO or a Super Sport or a Corvette.  Muscle was everywhere. It was ordinary. Expected.

Once, while in the Biscayne, Dad and I came upon a huge crowd blocking the road.  A new Stingray was stopped in the right lane and a bigger, jacked-up car sat in the left.  "What are they doing?" I asked.   Suddenly both cars rocketed away in a cacaphony of engine noise and wisps of smoke.  "Racing," Dad said.

It sure didn't look like the kind of televised racing we watched on Memorial Day (Indianapolis 500--tape delayed). 

Racing in ordinary cars! Now that was something to think about . . . .

The teachers made you buy paperback books from ads in the Weekly Reader.   Most of the tomes looked boring.  But one of the books was a guide to stock car racing.  Hmm? I jumped on it.  The photos of how Cotton Owens turned a 1964 Dodge into a "stock car" and reading of Richard Petty, David Pearson, Junior Johnson, Ned Jarrett, Joe Weatherly, Curtis Turner and the Allison Brothers captured my imagination.

What if I could have a "stock car" on the street?  With a turbocharged 409!

Later, I was riding my bike near the main road.  A couple of long-haired kids with paisley pants and peace signs were at the curb, talking to another guy sitting in an orange Plymouth Road Runner.  The hood badge said "H-e-m-i"   I've read about that in my stock car book!  A race car!

Sensing the interested audience, one of the "hippies" yelled to the driver "Get on it, Man!"  The Hemi exploded in a wall of genuine race-car sound just before the driver dumped the clutch. The Road Runner rocked and jerked.  Its skinny bias-ply tires ignited into a smoky haze.    The Hemi left a block-long trail of "peel out" marks that stayed on the pavement for weeks.

That sure wasn't a Rambler!

Then one day, a kid was hiding a magazine in the school library.  He guarded it like it contained President Nixon's secret plan for Vietnam.  He wouldn't let anyone even touch it.  On the cover it said "Hot Rod."  And inside were wildly modified muscle cars.  Even cars with THREE CARBURETORS!

I never looked at Mechanix Illustrated the same way again.

(After that followed the usual All-American  story about cobbling together junk and pretending it was fast,  getting blown away riding in friends cars that really were fast (for that day),  wrenching, trading, scraping and saving . . . burning junkyard tires down to the rusty rims . . . learning how to "fly" cars . . . learning bootleg turns, power slides and Rockfords . . . learning how long it took to fix my junk after flying, bootleg turns, power slides and Rockfords . . . . etc.)

I had a brother 10yrs. older who sometimes unwisely left his model cars and such out for me to destroy...he's fifty-something now and still doesn't trust me around his stuff...so I was introduced to that sort of thing pretty young.  Like as a toddler.  I loved it and had stolen his copy of Hot Rod with a feature on the Little Red Wagon before I could even properly read the words, then by the time I was ten I had been to San Fernando Drag Strip a couple of times and my sister's husband brought over a brand-new '70 Hemi GTX... With bicycles and Hot Wheels and old lawn-mower engines to play with I just don't ever remember not being a machine (and specifically car) nut.  Through grade-school I built a car model every few weeks, coinciding with my budgetary situation.  The brother-in-law had me in the captain's seat of his boat once before deciding I was dangerous, and also piloting (a generous term in my case) a Mooney aircraft before coming to the same conclusion before I reached twelve.  Hey, I just wanted to see what happened when you turned the wheel 'way over.  Anyhow when dad put me in the seat of a go-kart, with no up-and-down-in-the-sky function and no possibility of drowning, I was finally in my element.  I later spent many many happy hours blasting around the L.A. area canyons in little road-racers and now am pretty-much content to screw around out in the garage with a small collection of big-engined cars.  

    My addiction started early.. just before I was old enough to drive at the age of 15. It was 1980 and I lived in South Florida at the time, near Ft. Lauderdale. It was actually one of my sisters boyfriends that got me started.. He had an old 69 Camaro, built 350, 3 speed stick (**LOL**), etc. This was back when there was no Florida state inspection, so open headers, slick wide tires and no hood was the norm. Needless to say there were street races and cruising the Strip... He also took the time to teach me the fundamentals of cars and hopping them up. I helped him work on it and I learned a great deal... My sister eventually broke up with him, but we remained friends.

    From there I bought a Camaro of my own and remained mostly a chevy guy. Moved to York Pennsylvania.. (not too far from old Route 30 Drag Way..). There were other cars though, a pair of V-8 Gremlins, 79 Cutlass with 455 dropped in.. etc. So many cars.. projects and the like.. all fun to do, custom engine swaps.. To my latest fancy.. big Caprices (from 77-94...)  The motor oil has never really left my blood after all these years, and I am pleased to see my 17 year old sons is interested in cars too. Just picked up a great deal an old 89 LX hatch 302 auto... for him to start out on. I guess this is where his car crafting journey will begin. A passing of the torch, so to speak...

When I was very young (10 or so) I had an older friend that always read car magazines. That only primed the pump. What really got me going was my sister's friend (a female) that had a tube axled '59 Chevy with a 327 in it that she frequently raced at NY 'Connecting Highway". It was actually part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Anyway, almost every Friday or Saturday she'd be out in the street with 1 of her boyfriends tuniing the car up. I remember seeing her leave the neighborhood around 4 or 5 PM and then being awakened around 1 or 2 AM as she drove on home past ny house. I'd always stop by & watch her work on the car & hear stories of the street racing that went on & the many street racers that'd show up in almost anything. When I got older & me & my friends had our own cars we'd go there too, but by then she had moved on to other things so I never had a chance to her street race. Thanks, Diane!  

My dad had a 67 camaro RS with a 350/4 speed from a 68 SS.  He also robbed the SS hood off of it (turns out now, he wishes he would have fixed the SS instead of the RS...but at the time, 1980, these cars weren't worth much).  He had the car for a long time...including after I was born.  There is actually a picture of me sitting in that car when I was about 1.  

Dad sold the car shortly after and managed to buy my current project (a 1985 Delta 88...it was an upscale car at the time, 1986-7...and the camaro was plagued by rust).  After that my parents bought a 91 RS.  When I was 13 I was handed a $300 running and complete 69 Olds Cutlass...which morphed into the 68 I currently have when we sandblasted away the floors in the 69 (there wasn't a whole lot left...and the 68 had a rust free body).  Took 5 years a whole lot of work at burger king...and an affair with my 88 IROC (she wasn't nice...kept breaking on me...and when there was finally no sensors, or computers to go bad...the tires started cracking along the tread...B&*&^!)...to get that Cutlass done.  With my parents influence, its been life long.

Well, my first car, in 84, was a 1963 Chevy BelAir I bought from a used car lot for $257.00 including TT&L.  As you can imagine it needed lots of work, but it ran and drove.  Being a poor sailor making about $257.00 each two weeks I couldn't afford a mechanic and I couldn't afford new parts.  So I learned to adapt and overcome.  That got me hooked on building cars.

Steve

As a toddler I was always fascinated by tractors.  So the motor portion was always there.  I can still remember the first day I saw a corvette.  The gas station is still there.  I'd never seen anything like it, my parents always drove boring cars and so did their friends.  From there it went away somewhat, then was rekindled when the new Gone in 60 Seconds came out.  The screaming v8, the tires burning, powershifting,and the beautiful car.  Since then I've been an addict.  It took me almost 2 years to talk my parents in to letting me buy a project.  I had a lot of ambition, but not a lot of money, time, or skill.  I bought a rusty '81 camaro when I was 16.  Almost 5 years later, and I'm almost finished with it.  Here's a little visual of what I started with, and the finished project.



The only original parts on the car are the roof, trunk, floor, and hood.  The only work I haven't done was the paint, and the engine machining.  

The first car I can ever remember thinking was cool was my dad's '67 Mustang fastback,red of course.I was barely 4.He didn't have it long when somebody ran into it and pushed it into a tree,destroying it.A short time later I was riding with my maternal grandparents and as we were pulling into their driveway,my dad was standing there with this big,dark green car that was unlike any other car I'd ever seen.We got down the street and dad turned the corner,and slammed the column shifter down and mashed the gas.I had never heard a car that sounded like that before! He clicked it into second and let off.He turned to me and said "this is a road runner." I was in awe as I looked at the dash nameplate and the black and white bird decal.It was a '68 with a 383.The face was a little busted up,but he had just paid $300 for it (this was 1979)My mom told me that when my Dad got his Road Runner I changed.I was a musclecar freak! Dad bought a red '69 bird for parts (4 speed swap and front end) I cried as he and his buddies tore it apart in the driveway.Then he traded off the road runner for a '70 Charger R/T.At this time my uncle Doug bought a sunfire yellow '69 383 Road Runner,then a '72 'Cuda 340 4 speed (metalflake blue with flames).And at the time it seemed like everybody they knew had some kind of musclecar.To a lot of people they were just cars,and I couldn't understand how they didn't think they were the best thing in the world! I still can't.

1962.  I was in the 9th grade.  Went to Lions and saw Stone, Woods, & Cook against John Mazmanian.  I was hooked.