Gone, But Never Forgotten

I haven’t written in a while, since my last blog was written a few weeks prior to my son’s premature birth.  I’ve been wrapped up with fatherhood and work.  I have several blogs in-progress, but haven’t had much of chance to work on them.

 However, this past month, my Dad passed away from complications of pneumonia.  He was 56, much too young.  It was a shock to the family, him being so young.  I don’t want to dwell on it in, but rather on the good memories we shared. 

 

I’ve mentioned previously a few stories of my Dad when I was young (see What Got Me Into Cars) and us turning wrenches.  Up until I was about in my late 20’s, I was mostly in the learning phase.  I gained a lot of confidence upon completing my Mechanical Engineering degree.   I lost most of my inhibitions when trying to tackle a car problem.  I took all of what my Dad taught me and ran with it.  I researched myself and dove in.  Most of the time I succeeded on my own, but more often than not, my Dad helped me out of a jam, or just wanted to spend some time together. 

I have many fond memories as a kid, helping out in the garage.  I usually got yelled at and sent into the house crying for misbehaving.  But, that never discouraged me from coming back for more.  Eventually I kept my mouth shut and ears open and learned as much as I could.

 

 As a teenager and into my early twenties, I matured and focused on working and learning with my Dad.  I picked up a few habits, like cussing and throwing shit.  One of the funniest stories was when my Dad tried to grab a bottle of polishing compound and it slipped from his fingers, falling to the ground and breaking the cap, spilling wax all over the floor.  My Dad yelled out, “Goddamned pussy wax!”   After a few seconds of silence, we both started to laugh under our breaths. 

As I got my first tool chest for my 16^th birthday (a Craftsman rolling lower cabinet), I started to buy my own tools.  Never mind the fact that my Dad had a set he would let me borrow, I wanted my own!  We would go at least once a week to Sears, Lowes, etc. to look at and buy tools.  It was a sort of arms race.  If we found a set of special wrenches on sale, we both bought our own sets.  If one of us found a deal on tools, we would call each other to see if one wanted a set.  I sure am going to miss those random calls and texts of some tool deal my Dad found. 

 

When I bought my house and outfitted my own shop, my Dad and I would usually be in the shop while the girls were inside yakking away.  We just sat, had beers, smoked cigars and talked about cars and bikes.   In the last five years I’ve acquired a fair bit of my own wrenching experience and enjoyed working with my Dad not as a master/apprentice, but as two partners.   We talked often of starting a shop, building classic trucks. 

 The last major job we did together was a cylinder head swap on my ’05 Colorado.  We spent a good part of the summer of 2013 hitting it every weekend.  My Dad let me take the lead, while he only helped.  He pretty much told me, “It’s your garage, I’m here to help.  You tell me what to do.”  At the time, I didn’t think about it, but now that I do, he wanted to confirm his creation.  All of the years of grooming now led to this.  I think I held my own well.  We completed it with no disagreements.  We ran into a major roadblock, but he convinced me to finish it up and persevere.  The very last portion of the job involved recharging my air conditioning system.  I had learned how to from my Dad’s coworker when I swapped the compressor on my wife’s car.  I bought my own vacuum pump and manifold set.  Now, here I was, teaching my Dad something.  A strange feeling, indeed.

With my son now almost two years old, I see many things coming full circle.  I remember riding in my Dad’s truck as a little kid, listening to good music and singing along and being happy.  A few weeks ago, I was driving my truck and my son was in the back, singing along (in his best two-year old babble) with me to some Rockabilly, with a giant smile on his face.  I couldn’t help crying, thereby putting an immediate damper on my impromptu karaoke session in my truck. 

Now that my son is running around climbing on shit and getting into everything, he likes to run around my shop grabbing stuff.  He particularly likes to grab the chrome on my Harley and to poke into the saddlebags.  I sat him on one of my shop stools and he proceeded to grab every tool in my service cart and play with it.  He also grabbed my DVOM and tried to play it like a game.  The same exact shit I used to do at his age.  I know this stuff is in our blood.  I know he’ll be a gearhead just like his daddy and grandpa is.  The only problem is that I will have to fill the shoes of grandpa, which I know I never can.  I don’t have the wisdom acquired that only grandparents have.  I sure as hell can tell him all of the good funny stories that daddy and grandpa shared.  

In closing, I’m glad I had the privilege to learn and immerse myself in our world of turning wrenches.  I took it a step further with the greasiness, which I hope my son follows.   I will spend every damn moment I can with my son in the garage teaching him our craft, and letting him experience our world of hot rods, Harleys, beer and greasiness.   I know my Dad will be proud and will be smiling from above seeing his grandson turn his first wrenches, getting his hands dirty, losing tools, using a screwdriver as a chisel, arcing a Matco wrench on the battery, breaking in a cam with no coolant in the engine, getting oil stains on the driveway and all of the other stupid crap we do as we learn.   Dad, we will keep our craft alive through the generations.

 R.I.P Javier Gomez Arias

1959-2016

“Gone, but never forgotten”

Cheap Ass Tools

Disclaimer: this blog was written for the weekend hobbyist guys.  You professional mechanics that buy the good shit from the start can have a laugh at this one (and at us). 

 

When the day comes that you decide to be a hot-rodding, greasy fuck and turn wrenches, you’re gonna need some tools.  Whether you are a teenager, young adult or middle-aged, you’ll go through the ritual that is picking your first tool set and toolbox.  It’s overwhelming, but we all went through it.  We all also go through the sticker shock of new tool prices. 

 

…And here we go with the temptation of buying cheap ass tools.  It is with this sticker shock is where the temptation comes from.  Don’t feel bad, we’ve all succumbed to the siren-like song of places such as Harbor Freight, with its slogan, “Quality Tools at Ridiculous Prices!”  Sure, the tools look shiny and offer a lifetime warranty, but damn if they work correctly.  Swap meets and flea markets also offer no-name brand tools fresh off the boat from China or Taiwan.  I have a cheap tool set in my daily driver truck toolbox that consists of a bastardized set of Harbor Freight and swap-meet tools.  The wrenches fit sloppily on fasteners and the ratchets skip teeth, but they’ll do in a roadside emergency.  If my toolbox gets broken into or if I lose a tool on the side of the road, I won’t lose sleep over it.  

 

I’ve been lucky with a few cheap tools in my main toolbox at home, where I keep my good shit.  My best cheap ones are Popular Mechanics brand offset box wrenches.  They’ve held up to some pretty good torque, I must say.  Other times, I’ve had numerous tools fail on me.  The most recent event was a cheap ass three-jaw puller from Harbor Freight.  I was trying to remove the crank pulley/balancer from my daily driver, and the thing literally snapped apart and also bent the bolts that came with it.  Pathetic.

 

If you are starting out and ready to stock your new, shiny toolbox, you will fall for the cheap tools.  The experienced will tell you to wait and invest in the good stuff, but you will eat the apple.  I’ve gone through my cheap tool phase, but mind you, I’ve been buying tools since I was 16.  How they hell am I going to afford good tools as a teen?  I made do with swap meet and Harbor Freight shit to work on my first car in high school, but more often than not I mostly used my dad’s tools.  I still feel bad to this day when I used one of my dad’s Mac open end wrench to remove the battery terminals from my car.  Stupid me, removes the + lead first and I arc his wrench.  Sorry dad!

 

Eventually, after your cheap wrench slips off a bolt or your ratchet jumps a tooth and you skin the ever loving shit out of your knuckles, you’ll buck down and start investing in quality tools.  Get a credit card, because you’re gonna need it!  See, this is why young car guys are always broke.  Between buying parts for your project car and buying good tools, you’ll only be able to afford ramen. 

 

There’ll come a point in time when you’ll be ready to start buying shop equipment and metal fab tools, such as a sander, drill press, band saw, sheet metal brake etc.  Again, here’s where the allure to places like Harbor Freight come in.   Why spend thousands for a piece of equipment when Harbor Freight has it for a quarter of the price?  You’ll rethink your decision real fast when the motor fries or the tool just doesn’t live up to your expectations.  Yes, I’m guilty of buying Harbor Freight shop tools, but I spent a lot of time “fixing” them to get them to work decently. 

 

If you wrench for a living, then high-quality tools are a must.  My dad is a mechanic and as such he has all Snap-On, Matco and Mac tools to make a living with.  But for the hobbyist like me, we’ll just have to slum it with the mid-grade stuff, with a few Chinese tools thrown in.  My last biggest disappointment was my Husky air compressor.  Six months old and the motor took a shit.  Luckily it was still under warranty, but I had to drop my compressor off at a repair facility for a month.  Let me tell you, a shop without a compressor is like losing your right arm and leg.  Sure enough, it gets fixed with another motor like the one that failed.  If it shits again I’ll just buy a new US-made motor. 

 

Summing it up, damn near every beginner gearhead goes through the ritual of buying cheap tools, getting frustrated with them and then buying the good stuff a bit at a time.  It happens.  Till next time, try not a skin a knuckle on your shitty Harbor Freight ratchet!

Why Must I Be A Teenager With A V8?

My first car was a 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.  I got it in May of 1999.  It has a V8.  It was old and needed lots of work.  I was still in high school.

 

When I first brought my car home, I gave it a good wash.  Once insured, I took it to school the following Monday morning.  It got me to school okay for the first few times.  But, old cars will give you shit as they are wont to do.

 

Ah yes, the joys of putting it in neutral and feathering the gas to keep it from stalling at every red light.  And yes, stalling out in front of the school, in front of a group of cuties.  But fuck it; I had the 3^rd oldest car at school, and an American one to boot.  You can keep your plastic import POS.  Also, I had no working stereo, so I borrowed my dad’s portable stereo to play music while it sat in the passenger’s seat (all the while consuming D cells by the package).  Lastly, I kept a full 5-gallon gas can in the trunk because the gas gauge didn’t work worth a damn.  Just keep this gas can in mind as you read this.

 

            Let me tell you, driving a V8-powered machine will show its ugly side when you go to the gas pump.  At the time I was making money doing auto repair side jobs.  I can remember that gas at that time cost around $1.75 a gallon.  Filling up my 17-gallon tank cost $25 – 30.  My car could get around 12 MPG.  Guess where all my money went?  In that fucking gas tank.  It was so bad that I made the girlfriend I had at the time pay her way for movies, food, etc.  Hey, I’m old school like that, where I believe that a man should pay for everything.  Luckily she was cool with it, since she knew my gas tank sucked my wallet dry.  It got to the point where I was scrounging couch change to put gas in my tank.  This is what taught me budgeting, the Greasy Hot-Rodder way.

 

            Now for the gas tank…One day after driving around with my girlfriend at the time, my friend and his girlfriend, I took a hard right turn and skidded around a corner, just for the hell of it.  A few minutes later, the whole car started smelling like gas.  Turns out, the hard turn I took toppled the gas can  in the trunk over and for some reason, the cap came off (thanks Dad for giving me a gas can with a fucked up cap).  Luckily I realized it and pulled over quickly, so only about a gallon spilled out into the trunk.  It wasn’t fun trying to mop up spilled gasoline in a trunk.  For the rest of that night, my car smelled like gasoline to the point where it got you high.  I saw my imbecile friend about to light a cigarette in my rear view mirror and I yelled at him “NO!”  Damn to think he could have killed us all.  Never again did I carry a gas can in my trunk.  This would come back to bite me in the ass later. 

 

            The following summer, I got my first steady job at Home Depot as a cart boy.  I was then in college at the time.  Having already built and dropped in a 350 smallblock, I was tweaking that thing all the time.  And, my gas gauge still wasn’t working.  The result of my gas gauge not working caused me to get stranded with an empty tank many times.  Also, the fussy 350 left me on the side of the road quite a few times as well.  My parents booted me off of their AAA membership and made me get my own since I used up all three tows in a month.  I remember one time while waiting to get towed home (after my MSD 6A ignition box took a shit), some guy with a flatbed truck stopped across the freeway and asked me if I wanted a tow.  I asked him how much and he says $80.  I told him all I have is $20.  Then he took off.  Asshole.  Nice to see you help out a young kid broken down on the side of the freeway. 

 

            My first year of college saw me again spending lots of dough on gas.  I was commuting 20 miles one way to school.  I filled my tank twice a week.  On top of that, I spent a lot of money on parts for the engine.  Thank god my parents helped me out with some of my school expenses.  Also, I was in for a rude awakening when I found out that no modern girls get turned on by a guy re-jetting his carburetor in the college parking lot.  Talking to girls about camshaft profiles, porting heads, rear-end gear ratios and how much I hate import cars got me no play.  This wasn’t like back in the day where the car guys had the cute girls.  Even worse was when I changed my major to the sausage-fest known as Mechanical Engineering.  Eventually, one girl did come around and didn’t mind when I got gas on one of our first dates and I left her in the car for about ten minutes while I popped the hood and talked to some random guy who asked about my engine.  She was around for a few years until she turned psycho.

 

            I drove my Cutlass until my final two years of college, where I bought a new truck with an inline-5 cylinder engine that gets 20 MPG.  What a difference!  I still drove my Cutlass on weekends and I was now able to modify it and take my time, as anyone with a project car as a daily driver can attest, you have to get your car running as soon as possible or else you ain’t got no wheels.

 

            Now, at 33 years old, I look back at all of my experiences being a “car guy”.  Once you’re out of college and living the adult life, shit changes and now women love a guy who’s handy.  My oh my, how the tables have turned.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen guys with a flat tire on the side of the road waiting for AAA to come rescue them.  Might as well leave your manhood on the side of the road, too.

 

            My wife loves the fact that I keep the cars running and loves to ride in my ’61 GMC hot rod.  She loves the whole Greaser/Hot Rod culture, and comes to hang out in my shop while I’m wrenching to keep me company.  I wouldn’t go back to change anything about my college years.  I had my car and tools to keep me busy.  Besides, a girlfriend with no interest in cars would’ve led to some awkward silent moments and a diversion of money for car parts to shoes or some shit. 

 

Time to take the wife tool shopping (after she buys shoes, of course)!

 

Shop Zen

A Greasy Hot Rodder’s natural habitat is a garage/shop.  Those of us fortunate enough to own a house and have our own shop will tell you: We spend most of our time there.  If we have an understanding girlfriend or wife, they know where we are and what we’re doing.  We’re not out gallivanting at some bar or blowing our paychecks at some titty bar.  They put up with it because their cars are always running and shit around the house gets fixed!

 

As I’ve described in my previous blogs, I turned my two-car garage at my house into a service/repair/fab shop.  Besides wrenching on my ’61 GMC hot rod, I take on side jobs and perform repairs on our daily drivers and families and friend’s cars.  As I write this blog, I have my mother-in-law’s Rav4 on jack stands in my shop.  Her car needs the steering rack removed and resealed.  As much as I loathe modern import cars, I have to say I admire Japanese design with their packaging.  The lack of room to work, not so much.  Nevertheless, I kind of do enjoy working on them (shhhhh don’t tell no one!)

 

Us gearheads can tell you, there is a Zen associated with a shop.  Every other Friday night that’s not a date night with the wife, I come home after work, pour some whiskey and just go to my shop to drink and have some alone time.  Even I just put on some tunes (Rockabilly of course!) and sit at my workbench just to stare at my shop, it calms me down.  All of the stress from dealing with the dickheads and morons at work just seems to float away.   Even thinking of the smell of my shop is enough to get me through a shitty week at work when I’m stuck at my desk cranking out a report for some asshole customer with no sense of realistic scheduling. 

 

As much as we cuss and throw tools when shit gets rough, we really do enjoy what we do.  There’s no better feeling than firing up the car you’ve been working on and taking it for a successful test drive.  This is when it’s time to break out the extra-special dark beer or whiskey and to clean and put away your tools, while letting the endorphins flood your brain.  The feeling of the “First Ride” on a project car is just like sex with a new woman: Excitement and Nervousness rolled into one, followed by triumph.  Eventually, your wrenching skills reach a point where routine preventative maintenance and simple R&R jobs can be done blindfolded.  This is when you crank the tunes, crack an ice cold beer and get to wrenching.  To a non-car person, us Gearheads doing our thing is mystifying; their broken-down car is in good hands and will run again soon.  Chicks dig that shit.  It’s also very satisfying taking any non-car appliance or object and fixing it in your shop.  Again, the endorphins mixed with beer in your bloodstream makes you feel good when it’s fixed.

 

A few weeks ago I had a three-day weekend for Memorial Day.  I hadn’t started on my Mother-In-Law’s Rav4 yet.  Saturday and Sunday were spent running errands and spending time with my parents and wife.  On Monday during the day, I started on her car.  After opening an ice-cold Pabst and putting on some Kim Lenz and cranking the volume, I put her car on jackstands and started to remove the steering rack.  Even though I had power steering fluid running down my arms and dripping onto my face, I still felt the Zen of working with my hands and using my tools.  I got to use my brand new IR impact gun my wife got me for my birthday and my new crow’s feet wrenches she got me for Xmas.  Using new tools always feels good.  I had to stop since my parents came over for BBQ.  I seriously didn’t want to stop.  I could’ve easily wrenched into the night.  It’s okay, beer and steak was just as good as well as smoking cigars and drinking black & tans with Dad.  Point being, I waited until Monday to work on it, while getting errands done the previous two days.  Two days away from work dropped my stress level, and the Monday spent wrenching was the icing on the cake.  I was ready to return to work Tuesday, fully recharged. 

 

The only thing that can break the Zen of a shop is worrying about where you’re going to place new tools and equipment or when a tool breaks or goes missing.  Re-organizing and cleaning a shop brings the Zen back, knowing that you’ll have a fresh start when the next job starts. 

 

On a last note, my wife is expecting our son this August.  The cycle will begin anew where I will let my son help me in the shop, he fucks around and I send him in the house crying, just like my Dad did with me.  Needless to say, the Zen will be unbalanced for a while.  Once my son is old enough, it’ll be “Son, go grab us both a beer!”  The Zen shall then be restored.

 

So, there you have it.  Now you know why Greasers like to hang out at shops.  There’s ALWAYS beer, good tunes, hot rods and metal fab equipment, sitting there looking badass.  So, let’s blast the Rockabilly, drink some fucking beers and turn some fucking wrenches!  Cheers!

 

The Rockabilly, Greasy Hot Rodder's Way

I may offend some people with this blog/rant, but the 1^st amendment allows me to speak my mind and piss you off.  If you take offense please do the following: go fuck yourself, take your elastic-jean, loafer-wearing ass to a shop and let guys like me bone you in the wallet.

I’ll go back to a bit of my background.  I am currently working as a white-collar Test/Reliability Engineer in the Aerospace industry.  Hey, I gotta pay them bills, white-collar work be damned!  But before this, I was blue-collar all the way.  My first two jobs were fetching shopping carts all summer at Home Depot and Costco.  Then I worked in the tire shop at Coscto for six years (fuck I miss those days) until I graduated college and work where I do now.  The transition to white-collar work was hard to say the least.  I’ve been here for five years and still find myself going into “shop-mode” a lot, i.e. kicking my computer when it freezes up, dropping f-bombs when tests go wrong, etc.  It’s hard not to swear when talking to my co-workers.  Office folk don’t seem to understand the Greaser shit.  Casual Fridays sees me wearing blue Dickie’s pants, a black t-shirt and my black Dickie’s jacket (to cover the tattoos).  My wallet chain and pomp top it off.  I stopped wearing my cuffed Levi’s since the comments of “hey rebel” got on my fucking nerves.  Point is, I can never leave my blue-collar roots and my Greasy ways.  I’m a Hot Rodder Greaser all the way, I spend all of my money on tools and car parts and I fucking love beer.  I make a decent amount of money; my bills are paid and I have enough left over to take my wife and daughter out to dinner when we feel like it.  I can barely afford new billet street rod parts.  Forget about paying someone to paint my shit, upholster it or do any work on my projects.  I could probably budget for it, but that shit ain’t gonna happen on my clock.

I carry this attitude over to my projects.  My old man is a mechanic by trade and taught me most of my wrenching skills.  My favorite saying from my dad is, “If man built it, I can fix it”.  This mantra allows me to tackle any repair project that I come across, be it on my cars or my house.  Also I’m not afraid to tackle a fab job.  I’ll give it my best shot, and if I fuck it up then I’ve learned something.  If I succeed, then I’ve learned something.  It’s a win-win.  Greasers that turn wrenches have this attitude.  We won’t throw in the towel on our project and pay to have shit done while we sit by with our thumb up our ass.  If we get stuck, we’ll get help and get it done. 

           

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that people want to own old cars and not want to learn to work on them.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to buy an old car and wanting to learn how to work on it.  That’s how we all started.  But the guys who just open up their checkbooks and buy a classic and won’t even attempt to work on them just pisses me off.  I guess the only thing those people are good for is keeping shops in business.  I’ve made my fair share of cash on side jobs. 

What pisses me off the most is people with large checkbooks and pussy hands (no grease under the fingernails or knuckle-buster scars) entering a car show and winning without having turned a single goddamned bolt on the thing.  As they say, “There’s no substitute for cubic dollars”.  They need to have car shows where rich yuppie fucks can compete with their trailer queens to see who got shafted the most.  Real car shows are for guys like us who performed all fab or at least attempted to.  I suck ass at upholstering, but I’ll give it my best shot.  At least I can say I did it myself and I would take pride in it.  Never mind my first carpet job on my Olds.  Looks like shit but at least I did it myself with only a box cutter knife.  When I attend car shows, I always check out the owners of the high-dollar cars.  First thing I look at is their hands.  If you have pussy hands, then I know all you got is a fat checkbook.  You don’t impress me.  I admire the guys who build their cars. The Barrett Jackson auction astounds the shit out of me.  People paying upwards of hundreds of thousands for a car that begs to be driven.  And you know that those cars are just going into some display case.  Jay Leno may collect cars and have lots of cash, but at least he drives them and wrenches on them.  That kicks ass in my book.

Another style where my dad and I diverge on our tastes is Street Rods.  Sorry, but all of the billet, crate engines and high-dollar paint jobs do not impress me.  While we’re on the subject, crate engines to me are cheating.  It’s not that fucking hard to build an engine.  If you take your time and invest in a good torque wrench and micrometer tool set, it can be done.  The machine shop does all of the hard work for you.  Whatever.  I love the spirit that Hot Rodders have, being low-budget and making shit work with what you have.  Can’t afford a spray-gun paint job?  Rattle-can that shit.  Get a pair of glass packs and weld those fuckers in yourself.  Bonus if you install cut-outs. 

To wrap this up, I just want to say that we as Hot Rodding Greasers love to work on our stuff.  We’ll tackle any repair job without hesitation.  You’ll never catch us dead with our rods in a shop.  I am reminded of a guy I once saw at the Sears auto repair shop with his ’55 Chevy getting the battery replaced.  Fucking made me sick to my stomach.  Didn’t deserve that car.  As long as I’m old enough to wrench, I’ll be working on my projects.  I won’t be buying billet parts or paying thousands for a paint job.  I’ll be making brackets out of steel on my lathe/mill machine and rattle-canning it.  My gas and stick welders will lead the way with my drill press, chop saw and angle/die grinders.  Just like the Hot Rodding cats of the 50’s built their machines, so will I.  And that’s the Rockabilly, Greasy Hot Rodder’s way.

The Garage Beer Fridge and BAE

Ask any Greaser who turns wrenches, beer and garages go together like a horse and carriage.  You can’t have one without the other (sorry about the Married With Children theme song reference).  For reasons unknown, beer must be consumed while working in the garage.  I myself cannot start working on anything until I make a beeline for my beer fridge, crack one open and down one. 

Before, I had a small Kenmore dorm-sized mini fridge in my garage that I scored on craigslist for $40.  I picked it up in Sherman Oaks, a yuppie neighborhood.  It was funny scaring all of the yuppies with my Chevy truck, greasy pomp, tattoos and Rockabilly music a-blarin’.  Anyways, as soon as I got it into my garage, I whipped out my Craftsman DVOM and attached the temp probe, and placed it in the fridge.  I adjusted the temp control on the fridge to 36°F, right before the point that beer turns to slush.  Any lower and the fridge runs constantly.  I always get compliments on how cold my beer is when I offer one to people.  Warm beer fucking blows.  Yes I’m talking to you Europeans. 

What I liked about my little fridge is that I can fit a case of bottles in there.  The door interior has a dispenser-rack that held about 10 cans (only Pabst cans were allowed in that rack).  It had a nice gash on the front of the fridge, but a large “Summit Racing” and “Hawleywood’s Pomade” stickers took care of that.  The fridge sat on an old IKEA computer table.  Readily accessible are two bottle openers courtesy of my mother-in-law and a Harley-Davidson bottle opener mounted to a stud on my garage wall.  Finally the table has about 6 beer cozies (my favorite being the one that has a pic of the late Mr. Johnny Cash flipping the bird at the San Quentin concert). 

Now I inherited our apartment-sized fridge after my wife and I bought a bigger brand new fridge for the house.  Now my beers are in the “shop fridge” as I call it.  The mother fucker looks like a frat-house fridge upon opening.  All my beers in one place!  And, the handle is all greasy, just like a true shop fridge.

My fridge has its own dedicated outlet.  When I added electrical outlets to my garage, I installed the end-of-the-run single outlet in the corner of my garage, knowing this is where my beer fridge would go.  Up until that time, I was relegated to going inside to the main shop fridge every time I needed a fresh cold one.  My wife got tired of me leaving greasy fingerprints all over the handle and also making space for my beer.  Now with my own fridge, I’m out in the garage for hours at a time.

 Here’s a few beers that I normally keep in the shop fridge with my opinions on them:

Pabst Blue Ribbon – the old classic and the perfect garage beer.  This beer is smooth, with the “American pale lager” taste.  The reason I call it the perfect garage beer is that it tastes good cold and at close to room temp.  There are times that I get so into a job that I forget about the beer for a while and it gets warm.  Not to mention that it’s inexpensive and sold nearly everywhere.  The Greaser has no excuse to run out of Pabst.  And fuck you Hipsters, this is NOT your beer.  Go drink O’Doul’s ironically and be retarded.

Stella Artois, Moosehead, Molson & St. Pauli Girl – These beers are similar in taste to me (crisp, lager taste).  Really good tasty, light beers that I drink while doing small-scale garage shit.  Similar to Pabst in that it tastes good cold and near room temp. 

Newcastle – My favorite import beer.  I always save it for the end of a job well done.  Don’t let this one get warm.  It’ll taste like shit.

Sam Adams Boston Lager – my favorite domestic beer next to Pabst.  Also got to keep this one cold, as it tastes rancid when warm.  For some reason, I love to drink Sam Adams while stick or flux-core welding.  Don’t ask why.  Maybe the flux smoke complements the taste.

Guinness – Yum, love to drink when I get hungry.  Since it’s filling, it’s basically lunch in a bottle.  Typically have this when I didn’t eat breakfast.

Michelob Amber Bock & Budweiser Select – A couple of tasty American lagers with a crisp taste.  Basically the equivalent of the imported Stella and company mentioned above.

Fat Tire & Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – Some good shit right there.  I love the hoppy-taste.  Also love to drink while smelling welding flux smoke.

Dos Equis Amber & Pacifico – My two favorite Mexican beers.  Light lagers for general work.

Whiskey - Not beer, but reserved for when I get a hair up my ass for a good stiff drink.  I usually drink whiskey on Friday night after work when I go unwind in my garage.  Regular Jack Daniel’s on the rocks is my standard.  If I’ve had a particularly rough week dealing with the chucklefucks at work, I mix myself a Three Wise Men drink.  One of these and the stress floats away.  If I drink one of those, I usually just do mickey-mouse shit around the garage, like re-organize and clean up or just blast some Rockabilly and clean my tools with a shop rag & WD-40.  I like to have Gentleman Jack at room temp with a good cigar when it’s raining outside with the space heater going.  Whiskey is not the best thing to drink while working or fabbing, because of the results.  About 90% of my knucklebusters are due to this swill.  Although I have to admit, when I have to wrench on my wife’s Nissan Altima, whiskey makes me forget that I ‘m working on an import car with no goddamned room to swing a wrench in.  So yes, whiskey is my “beer goggles” equivalent on working on imported crap. 

Now for…BAE (Beer Assisted Engineering).  As a Mechanical Engineer, some design ideas come to me better with a good buzz.  I think what is, is the loss of inhibition when you have ideas for a design that you would hesitate to carry out sober since you’ll think that it may not work.  I have to stress that you should exercise caution while drinking since it’s all too easy to grind off a portion of your finger, chop off a finger on the chop saw or some other stupid injury. 

BAE also contributes to the crap that looks good whilst drunk.  A while back I was helping a friend work on his ’61 Impala.  We got the wild idea to do some pin striping after consuming a case of beer.  How crappy it looked the next day sober, and in the daylight. 

But… BAE can assist in creativity and confidence in tackling any project with no doubts. 

On a non-car related aside, a while back I installed a PVC drain line for my house’s evaporative cooler.  I had just installed a purge pump, so I needed to install a drain line so the purge water could drain into one of my gutters.  I went to Lowe’s and purchased 20 feet of PVC pipe and a shitload of 90° & 45° fittings.  When I got home, I drank about 3 beers and stared at my roof and cooler, while the gears in my head ground (waited for the buzz to take effect).  Seriously, I had the line routed in one try.  No scrap pieces.  Everything came together in one shot, with no errors, all thanks to beer.  In hindsight, this was stupid since alcohol and working on the roof do not mix.  I did slip and stumble a few times, so I now institute a 2-beer max policy for roof jobs.

Metal fab while drunk is a whole subject unto itself.  I highly advise against trying to handle an angle grinder while shnockered.  I’ve had the unfortunate experience of dropping one while it was on.  I was grinding some angle iron and the grinding disc caught and wrenched it out of my drunk hands.  The fucking thing fell to the ground and went crazy like a bloodthirsty cat.  Luckily I still had enough soberness to jump out of the way and yank the plug out.  Lesson learned: 3-beer max policy when using the angle grinder. 

Bottom line is that BAE can bring out the creativity that would otherwise be hiding in your sober mind.  When you get stumped on your project, don’t be afraid to crack open a cold one and let your mind work.  Just be careful around that angle grinder.  Cheers!

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.