Cool McCool's Garage

Well, here we are.  I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the blogosphere, by my son Craig and half a dozen friends and relatives, in order to answer the question, “What did Brian do today?”

Today, the answer is, “Brian logged into ‘WordPress’, muddled through starting up a blog, figureing how to post pictures and video, and tried to think of something to say.”  Hopefully, that’s not ALL I’ll get done today, but since I usually waste an hour or so on the ‘net at various Hot Rodding sites, I guess now I’ll (hopefully) inspire others setting around in sweats, drinking coffee to keep up with something REALLY interesting.  If  whomever is reading this is into building hot rods, customs, street rods, vintage travel trailers, leaky old wooden boats,  cutting up cars, designing cars, thinking about, reading about, or talking about cars, it may well be interesting.  Or not, we’ll see.

Just this month, our ’36 “Fordillac” (that’s what I call it in my head, Bill McGuire, from HOT ROD magazine called it a “Trunk Speedster”, which is OK, but doesn’t really grab me) was featured in “HOT ROD” magazine.  Very surreal.   When I was a little kid, going to the store with Mom meant standing at the magazine rack, reading “HOT ROD”, “Rod&Custom” my two favorites, both 45 years ago, and today.  To have my car the subject of a 4 page feature in THE Bible of hot rodding, “HOT ROD” magazine, is a life long goal fulfilled, something I’ve secretly wanted to see since I was a ten year old kid standing in the grocery store coveting the cool California roadsters, and latest Gene Winfield custom on those magazine pages.  Now, I’m one of those guys.  Wow.

I get emails from guys all over the country, saying they now know what to do with that old sedan body dug out of a creek bed, upside down for decades, and want to know how much I cut out, what bits did I use, and what do I think of this or that idea.  Guys who are highly regarded desingers and builders have contacted me to congratulate me, with kind words, and invitations to “…call me if you’re ever in LA…”.   Like I said, very surreal.

The question now is, “Now what?”  Several of my friends have said just that.  As in, “Now that you’re published, what’re you gonna do to get on the cover?”  I guess I have to admit that I’ve thought that same thing.  One thing about being recognized in this way, and having, I guess, some sort of reputation, is that I have to live up to it.  I think maybe the best thing to come out of this is, that it REALLY has been an inspiration to me to do better work, to think about the whole project, not take shortcuts or “settle”.  So, I’m my own muse, I guess. 

To that end, I’ll share what’s going on with the current project, the ’47 Diamond T model 201, one ton pickup.  Thanks to Kims enthusiasm for this build, being done to pull our ’46 Spartan trailer, last week I ditched the tired old 350 TBI Chev, and bought a 6.0 LS1 engine and 4L60E trans.  I have that mocked up in the frame and will get the motor mounts made today.  I’d made a quite beautiful stainless steel gauge panel, in the style of the original, deluxe cab panel, with an engine turned finish, and have it temporarily mounted on the dash. 

That made the late model Chev van steering column look horrible (actually, it looked horrible in the cab before that, but I’m not “settling” now, remember?), so yesterdays project was to modify the trucks original steering column with parts from the vans, and it’s now mounted.  It looks much, much better.  More era appropriate, fits the cab, matches the gauges, and, I have to admit, what I should have done in the first place.

So, that’s where I’m heading.  Out to the shop, try to get this thing done in a reasonable amount of time, using what’s available, in the best way I can.  More updates as they happen…