The Greaser Garage

In this blog, I will guide you through a tour of the typical Hot-Rodder Greaser garage.  The tour will encompass the essential pieces of equipment that I feel should be present in a Greaser’s garage, in the order of importance.  My garage will be described.

Toolbox – First and foremost, every Greaser needs a toolbox.  Where the hell else are you going to store your ratchets, wrenches, screwdrivers, sockets, etc.?  A decent toolbox can be had for a great price at places like Harbor Freight.  For the ultimate in badassed-ness, get the stainless toolbox from Lowe’s with a speaker system and fridge built in (Lowe’s Item #112374.  If you own this, I fucking hate you because I want one).  My 3-tier red/black Craftsman has served me well for many years, and was just expanded with a side chest.  A side work tray holds the shit that I can’t figure out where to store.  Of course you gotta have the decals.  If decals aren’t your thing, at least slap an “Edelbrock” sticker on there somewhere.

For the love of god don’t use a fucking pegboard to store your tools.  To me, a pegboard is used by the yuppie owners of sports cars who don’t do a fucking thing to their cars, hence the fact that they only have one set of combo wrenches, a crescent wrench or two and a pair of pliers that can fit on a pegboard.  When I see a pegboard, this is the image that pops into mind: a yuppie with clean, pristine fingernails, wearing a denim jacket with a corvette logo (or insert your yuppie, in-the-goddamn-shop-all-the-time money pit car logo here), loose-fit faded jeans, boat shoes with no socks, topped-off with one of those elastic-band baseball caps with gray hair sprouting from underneath it.  Fuck a pegboard and the horse it rode in on (especially pegboards with shadows, fuck them to hell).   Greasers have toolboxes full of tools and know where every tool is without the use of labels.  Yuppies have pegboards. 

Stereo System and Beer Fridge – I hate working in silence.  I hate working on anything without beer.  In my garage, all jobs are started in this sequence: 1. Open garage door and turn on lights.  2. Turn on stereo, play Rockabilly music (Mr. Johnny Cash always kicks off the festivities).  3. Take a beer out of my fridge, place in beer cozy, open can/bottle.  4. Sit on my stool, stare at toolbox and/or project car while drinking beer.  5. Start work as soon as one beer is finished.  You need music.  You’ll be surprised at how well “Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom)” motivates you to work when this is played loud enough to be heard down the street.

Space Heater & Portable Evaporative Cooler – During wintertime, I like to close my garage door, kick on my electric space heater and wrench away.  This is almost essential, as it ensures your garage doesn’t go into hibernation.  Also, have you ever busted your knuckles when your hands are cold?  It fucking hurts.  Be careful not to let anything flammable fall into the heating elements. 

This summer I plan on buying a portable swamp cooler on craigslist.  I can wrench during the summer heat, but it takes a lot of effort.  I seem to take many more beer breaks in 100° weather.  These are expensive, but worth it.

Hydraulic Jack w/ Jackstands & Wheelchocks – You need these, since you will need to raise a car to get under it to work on it.  Don’t skimp on the Wheelchocks and Jackstands.  Being crushed to death by your ’32 Five-Window may seem like a cool way to go out, but how much would it suck to have your leg or foot chopped off by a rotor doing a brake job?  Or imagine taking on a side job and being amputated by an import car. 

If you want to be a badass, a two or four-post lift installed into your garage would help out big time.  Or you can invite your Greaser buddies over, get loaded, have them sit on the arms and turn the lift into a makeshift ride (I miss my days working at the tire shop).  I myself would love to have an in-ground lift installed, but for some reason my wife just doesn’t like the idea of a deep, gigantic hole in the ground with a giant hydraulic cylinder installed in it (something about re-sale value, but shit, wouldn’t that raise the value of our house???).

Workbench & Welding Table – So you have a carburetor to rebuild, or a set of heads to assemble.  Where you gonna do it?  Workbench space is the most precious commodity in a garage.  You will find with amazement at how fast a workbench will clutter up with beer cans, parts, tools and just general shit.  You can buy a workbench on the cheap if you look hard enough.  Even better is if you can build your workbench.  Inevitably, the workbench will double as a coffee table for the ashtray and beers.  Try to reserve a little space for this.  I have two workbenches – one for general purpose benchwork/teardown and one for clean benchwork/assembly.  And yes, when one isn’t being used the other fills with shit.  Last but not least, you'll need a good welding table.  I'm sorry, but welding shit on the ground sucks.  Don't be a pussy: design and fab up your own welding table.  The material alone will cost you more than a purchased one, but the experience you'll get is priceless.  You'll get experience designing, doing a layout, measuring, cutting and welding.  Besides, the fact that you can say "I built that table" is badass right there.  Also, most of your future welding projects will take place there. 

Stool – You need a place to sit while doing bench work.  Also, your buddies will need places to sit whilst drinking beer, talking shit and recovering from hangovers.  Get at least two.  An inverted bucket or creeper shall do as an improvised stool.

Vise – You must have one, or two or three mounted to your workbench.  My workbench is outfitted with a 6” and 3” vises at either end.  A good 6” vise is great for most jobs.  I regard this as one the first purchases any Greaser should do before turning a single wrench.  When not being used to hold parts to work on, you can crush shit with it.  See how flat you can compress a beer can if you get bored.

Organizing Trays – You will need some sort of organization system for all of the bolts, screws, nuts and various other shit that you will need for working on cars.  Trust me, trying to find a 10-32 x 1” screw in a box full of assorted screws can be a daunting task when inebriated.  God help you if you have metric fasteners in the mix.  My current system is small 4” x 6” cardboard boxes labeled with a sharpie for each type of fastener and each type of shit.  In the future I will upgrade to a plastic tray system mounted to the wall.  I am now going to reference an old article from Car Craft magazine.  The “magic bolt box” is a box full of assorted fasteners that get collected over time.  It’s called magic, because at the one point that you collect enough, when a situation arises that you need an emergency fastener, the box will “magically” have a bolt or screw that will get the job done.  It’s fine and dandy to start out with one, but do you a favor and invest the time and effort to have an organized system.  You’ll thank yourself.

Chemical Storage Cabinet – You’ll need a place to store all of your brake cleaner, oil, WD-40, etc.  You can also hide the good beer from everyone else there to enjoy when you’re by your lonesome.  Nobody touches my Newcastle.

Shop Rags & Can – Shop rags are a must.  You can get them almost anywhere.  Try to get a waste rag can to store used rags until you can wash them.  Having a few dirty rags lying around a garage looks cool until you cross that fine line where your shop looks like a shithole.  Oh, almost forgot: clean shop rags work well as a makeshift snot rag when wrenching on a cold day.  One more thing: try not to leave oily rags in your can too long.  Go down to the laundromat and wash them.

Drill Press – The drill press is one piece of equipment every garage should have.  When you have a need to drill clean, straight holes in something, the drill press is essential.  No, you can’t use a hand drill to make a straight hole, especially after downing a six-pack.  All you’ll end up with is drill walk marks, a half-assed misplaced angled hole and possibly “drill bite” on your fingers.  You can also do much more with it; the limit is your imagination.  Also, it looks badass, especially if you have a nice floor-standing model.  Be prepared to spend money on buying drill bits, countersink bits, etc.  It’s nice to collect them all.  The drill press is the first machine tool that most people who come in my garage see, and it never fails to impress.  I highly recommend buying a drill press X/Y cross slide vise.  Extra badass points there.

Grinding Wheel/Wire Wheel/Buffing Wheel – Another essential piece of equipment.  The need to grind something you are fabricating will always come up.  Also you can sharpen drill bits (don’t do this drunk.  I’ve ruined many a bit this way).  The ideal setup is to mount it to a stand, with an arbor to allow quick changes between a grinding wheel, wire wheel and buffing wheel.  I have a dedicated grinder with coarse/fine wheels mounted on a stand.  I also have another motor that uses a wire wheel, buffing wheel and deburring wheel.  All it takes to change the wheels out is to remove a nut, slide the desired wheel onto the arbor and there I go.  Greasers like to fabricate shit by cutting, welding and grinding till it fits.  Also, making sparks just fucking kicks ass.  Working on old hot rods will make you use a wire wheel to take off rust and paint from all kinds of shit.  Be warned, you will (not may) get wire wheel wires stuck into your clothes and hands.  The piece of wire that gets in between your nail and finger will sober you the fuck up and make you cry like a girl when it comes time to pull it out with tweezers.  A buffing wheel is nice to have to polish up valve covers, trim pieces, etc.  This will leave the adjacent area full of polish spatter (much like if Peter North just visited the area).  Lastly, a deburring wheel is expensive, but nice to have when knocking off burrs and sharp edges from newly machined edges.

On a related note, get yourself a 4.5" angle grinder.  There will be many times that you'll have a workpiece too big to take to the stationary grinder.  Plus, this tool is needed to dress up those drunken welds.  Be very careful when handling one while drunk.  An operating angle grinder that has been dropped on the ground is the mechanical equivalent of a pissed-off cat on the loose that wants blood.

Safety Glasses, Faceshield & Welding Mask – Seriously, get these and use them.  The proper way is to wear both [the safety glasses and faceshield] at the same time, so if a chunk of grinding wheel smashes through the faceshield, your safety glasses act as a second barrier to protect your eyes.  Don’t be a cheap-ass and skimp, because for less than the cost of a case of Pabst you can have both.  If you fuck up your eyes, then you won’t be able to look at boobies for the rest of your life.  Think about that.  Also, the welding mask is mandatory for welding.  You're all big boys so I won't even elaborate on this one.

Air Compressor – Ah yes, the piece of equipment that separates the wannabe garages from the real ones.  Once you get one, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.  For a typical garage, I feel that you should have a 25-gallon 120-volt compressor as a minimum.  With a 25-gallon you can run a lot of air tools, although some will be intermittent while you let the tank fill back up (sorry neighbors).  It’s best to have a dedicated outlet, since they draw quite a bit of juice.  When I got mine I ran it on the only outlet in the garage which shared a circuit with the kitchen and living room.  When it kicked on my wife complained about the lights dimming big time.  Problem solved as soon as I added outlets to my garage.  Ideally, a 60-gallon compressor would do well for any hot rod project you can come up with.  Or just buy an 80-gallon and then you can run a sandblast cabinet all day long.  The downside is you’ll have to run a 240-volt circuit to your garage if you don’t already have one.  But fuck it, you’re a Greaser.  Get your ass in the attic, lay down conduit and start pulling wires.  It ain’t that hard.  Find the time to plumb your garage with air lines.  Put some filter/regulator/hose reel stations around your garage and you’ll be sittin’ pretty.  I won’t even elaborate on what you can do with air tools.  Makes life so much easier.  What I will suggest is to invite your Greasy buddies over, drink a metric fuckton of Pabst, and then team-fabricate a blowoff tool-powered gun to shoot any squirrels that wander into your driveway.

Solvent Tank – You can be old-school and clean cruddy, greasy, oily parts in a coffee can full of diesel with a paintbrush.  Or you can get a solvent tank and do it the better way (although I have to admit the coffee can/diesel/paintbrush cleaner is fucking badass and old school as hell and holds a special place in my heart).  A 5-gallon solvent tank with pump usually costs less than $100 and is worth every penny.  You can spend more and get a 20-gallon tank which will make your garage look all the more badass.  What will kill you is filling that fucker up with your solvent of choice.  It gets expensive.  I use mineral spirits in mine (you can get it at places like Lowe’s or Home Depot, if you dare to venture to that shithole) and it cost about $40 to put in three gallons of mineral spirits in mine.  I have also heard you can use Stoddard solvent, commonly known as paint thinner, or in a pinch, diesel.  I chose mineral spirits as many people swear by it and I know it works from experience.  Don’t be a moron and put gasoline or some other highly volatile fluid in it.  Imagine if your Lucky Strike falls from your lips and into your tank full of gasoline.  You’ll find out real fast how flammable that brand of pomade in your hair is.  Try to set yours up near the entrance of your garage, so the vapors waft away from the inside of your shop.  Unless you buy a tank that heats the solvent, do not use those new “green”, pussy-ass water-based solvents.  You will be scrubbing parts until the wee hours trying to get the crud off.  Also, if you don’t agitate the [water-based] solvent daily, you will have a nice layer of bacterial scum form on the surface of the solvent that will smell like a pile of rotting assholes.  A 5-gallon tank is fine for the shop, but if you have the scratch to spare the 20-gallon is badass.  A solvent tank also gives you a nice buzz, since beer and solvent vapors give a one-two punch to your brain.

Welder – The quintessential piece of equipment that all hot-rodders must have.  The ability to join metal or add metal to something, when you’ve cut or ground off too much because you’ve had 16 cans of Pabst is invaluable.  There are four basic types: Gas, Arc, MIG & TIG.  Gas is cool for most things and cutting metal.  You can also braze non-ferrous metals.  The major downside is storage; you’ll need more room to store the oxygen and acetylene tanks.  Plus, you'll need to find a place to rent and refill tanks.  A major upside is being able to play with fire.  Also, a gas welding outfit is the preferred method of execution for any rogue black widow spiders that are found squatting in your hot rod’s undercarriage.  A good old-fashioned arc (stick) welder is good for thicker materials, like frame rails and motor mounts.  A 120-volt MIG welder is inexpensive and versatile.  A 240-volt MIG that can weld up to 3/8 inch thickness in a single pass and that can use either flux core or solid wire& gas is good for most automotive tasks.  Bonus points for the spoolgun with Al wire.  You can get away with flux-core wire if you're only welding steel, so you don’t have to store a big-ass bottle of CO2/argon.  Just don't use FCAW for bodywork.  TIG… if you got the $$$ then get it by all means.  Extra badass points if you also buy a plasma cutter.  Cutting out floorpans and body panels has never been so easy.  If you use any arc-welding process, be careful when welding around solvents (Brake Cleaner, etc.).  The weld spark’s UV rays make poison gas (phosgene) when they hit solvents.  Your lungs are already fucked up enough from breathing in Lucky Strikes, solvent vapors, paint fumes and brake dust.  Once you get your welder, fab a welding table.

I myself am cutting my teeth on a humble 120-volt 90-amp flux core wire welder.   I am looking at the Millermatic 211... it will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.  I’m also in the process of restoring a vintage 1950’s Craftsman stick welder I scored for $50.  Just need to run those 240V lines. 

Chop Saw or Band Saw – Another vital piece of equipment.  There will be times when you’ll need to cut a chunk of material, some tubing, plate, etc.  Fuck a hacksaw; you try making a straight cut after drinking 6 cans of Pabst.  Do you have ¼” plate or a chunk of 4”x4” bar stock to saw through?  I’ll leave you with a hacksaw and see you in six hours.  You need a power saw of some kind to cut through material without taking forever.  If you want to piss off your neighbors (especially if you need to cut some solid bar stock at midnight), get yourself a chop saw.  This has the advantage of a quick and dirty cut, but at the expense of a mess of metal, sparks and wheel dust every goddamn where, lots of heat and most of all, noise.  It doesn’t matter if your neighbors are cool; a chop saw operating past most people’s bedtime is not cool in their books.  Lastly, you’ll need two different blades to cut ferrous and non-ferrous metals (a quick amateur test: look for aluminum clogging on someone’s grinding wheel or abrasive blade).  For extra badass points, get yourself a band saw.  The 4x6 import jobber sold at Harbor Freight works okay, once you give it the “Harbor Freight Treatment”.  In this case, you’ll need to chuck the stand and build a sturdy one.  A band saw is relatively quiet, makes beautiful cuts and one blade can cut ferrous and non-ferrous metals.  I will say that a blade change must be done sober.  Do not attempt to change out a band saw blade while drunk.  You will end up looking like a cut-up emo.

Lathe/Mill or Combo Machine – If you want to look like the ultimate badass, as well as have a bitchin’ looking garage, get a lathe and mill or one of those lathe/mill combos.  As of now I am saving up for the lathe/mill combo machine from Smithy.  I just don’t have the space available for a separate lathe and mill.  Also, the combo unit’s capacity is adequate for most automotive fabrication.  Lastly both motors that power the unit are 120-volts, and I have the outlets to support it.  A separate mill like a Bridgeport would require 240-volt 3-phase (time to make a phase converter!).  The 240-volt connection that I’ll need to install is already reserved for my 60-gallon compressor.  With a lathe and mill, you can fabricate almost anything you desire.  If anything else, it just looks fucking badass to have them in your garage.

So there you have it, the items I think are essential in a garage.  Yes, all of these items will fit in a standard 2-car garage.  They do in mine.  For the items I haven’t obtained yet as of now, there is space set aside for them.  Happy wrenching.

What Got Me Into Cars

I have been turning wrenches since I was 5 years old.  My old man, being a mechanic his whole life, got me into it.  I remember going out to the garage at my grandparent’s house, seeing my young father working on one of his projects.  I would always ask him, “Dad, are you going to get your hands dirty?”.  To my little 5 year-old ass, getting my hands greasy and washing them with gojo was fucking awesome.  Of course, my dad, not missing an opportunity to pass off the grunt-work, had me clean parts.  My job was to hand him tools and clean parts.  My reward for helping out was letting me play with the air hose and nozzle.  Whatever was left in the compressor tank, I got to blow dirt and leaves and shit around the garage and driveway till the air an out.  Good enough compensation for a kid.

            I must not fail to mention the numerous times I would fuck around and get yelled at and sent into the house, bawling.  Kids naturally fuck around at the worst times, and a garage is no place for kid fucking-arounding.  I know damn well I’ll be sending my son into the house crying when he fucks around.  Can’t wait till that day!  But… it never kept me from wanting to help my dad out.

            My first safety lesson was when I was about 7.  I learned to respect a floor jack.  My dad was working on my grandfather’s Cutlass Supreme (which is now mine) and had to go underneath it.  I was out there helping, and I laid my eyes on the jack handle.  My dad pulled me to the side and told me, “Son, see this handle.  Don’t touch it.  If you do, no more Dad.”  Every time I work on a car now and raise it with my floor jack, I always repeat that line in my head.

            One of my first technical lessons was how to use a [click-style] torque wrench, when I was 12.  My dad told me that when I was done using it, I should always turn the torque setting to its lowest.  When I asked why, he put me into a headlock, squeezed hard and asked me, “Could you sleep if I had you like this?”.  Of course I said “no”.  Then he loosened his grip on me and asked me the same question, to which I replied “yes”.  Again, every time I put a torque wrench away, I think of that lesson.

            My dad has taken me to numerous car shows throughout the years: Pomona, Long Beach, Hot August Nights, Moorpark-High Street and Simi Valley-Metro link Station to name a few.  I was hooked on cars from the first time I went to one.  Seeing car after car made me want to grow up fast and get my own.  Also, let’s not forget to mention the NHRA drag races.  Nitro methane fumes, burnt rubber smoke and the noise made it the experience of a lifetime. 

            It was around this time that the transmission on my dad’s ’85 El Camino SS took a shit, leaving us stranded on the way to Sears to do our weekly tool shopping spree.  I helped my dad rebuild the tranny and watched him try to install the torque converter.  This is where I learned to kick shit across the garage when something doesn’t want to be installed, and to call parts “mother-fuckers”, “bitches”, etc. when they don’t cooperate.  But, we got it, albeit with tranny fluid every goddamned where.

           

            When I was 18 and in my senior year of high school, my grandfather gave me his old 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.  I’ll never forget getting my driver’s license and going down to his house to go pick it up.  It was a Saturday, so that meant I had another few days to get it ready to drive it to school.  Once I got the call that it was insured, I drove it.  It was that following Friday well after school.  I just got in with one of my friends and drove around town.  No particular place to go.  Just out.  I drove it to school that next Monday.  My “misadventures” as a teenager with a V8-powered old car will be saved for another blog.

            From then on started my real adventure of wrenching on my own car.  I went through a lowrider phase, just wanting to cruise slowly and play oldies.  Well, that got old real fast as soon as my dad taught me how to rebuild the Rochester Quadrabog (sorry, I hate those things.  It’s all about the Holley).  As soon as I bolted it back on, I did my first burnout.  Never has a surge of adrenalin felt so good.  I decided right then and there that hot-rodding was for me.  No more of this low & slow shit.  I traded in the wifebeaters for white t-shirts.  The ironed khakis for Levi 501’s.  The Always-clean white canvas shoes for black hi-top Chucks.  I became known for the “car guy who always wears blue jeans and white t-shirts".

            My challenge though lay in getting familiar with my car.  Trial and error is how you learn.  Thanks dad for bailing me out of the jams I got into.  Also, I made a group of friends and we all had old cars.  We spent many a Friday nights turning wrenches and drinking beer.  They are also the ones who exposed me to Rockabilly.  Because of them, I made my final transformation from white t-shirt/jeans/muscle car guy to Greaser.  I put classic rock on the back shelf (don’t get me wrong, I still like it) and put Rockabilly front and center, and haven’t’ looked back since.  All of my “trial & error” can be seen by the coolant/oil/tranny fluid/gear lube stains on the driveway at my parent’s house. 

            While I was in college, my dad walked me through rebuilding my first engine.  I replaced the tired old 305 smallblock with a 350.  The real technical lessons were learned: how to use Plastigage, measure cylinder bore size, how to assemble the rotating assembly, and how to assemble the heads.  I took it upon myself to port the heads, making my dad’s compressor work overtime and trip the circuit breaker a few times, not to mention covering half the garage with iron dust.  To those who R&R engines, please remember to put coolant in the radiator before you fire it up.

            So there, to sum it up, I have my dad to thank first and foremost for my interest in cars.  My old friends: Nate, Mark & Newt, you guys know who you are.  Thanks for the Friday nights we shared wrenching and drinking beer.  But my old friend Nate, I have to especially thank for teaching me how to do burnouts (responsibly), how to do doughnuts, to use bailing wire/zip ties and various other automotive tomfoolery a bunch of Greasers can cause. 

            And now, I have my own garage to work in.  No longer will I have to navigate the “trails” between mountains of car parts and shit in my dad’s garage.  I will now be able to really work on my Olds, build a Harley and work on the 1961 GMC that my dad and I will co-own and work together on (I see a Paul Sr./Paul Jr. situation brewing there) to get ready for Viva Las Vegas 15.  My wife also wants me to fix up a ’63 Falcon for her, so looks my hands will be full of weekends drinking beer and busting knuckles.

            I think this sentimental moment calls for a beer.  Right now, I feel like an ice-cold Bass Ale.  Salud!