Hot Rodding is Dead!

This is a great short film by Eric Darby, found on the HAMB. It's well worth the 4 min investment of your time.

Utah's Son of Speed

Utah's Son of Speed or Ab Jenkins & The Mormon Meteor III



This Spanish Fork country boy played a huge part in putting the Bonneville Salt Flats on the world map. He set most of the world's automobile endurance records while promoting automobile safety. His land speed records stood for nearly 50 years before finally being broken in 1989. He also became the Mayor of Salt Lake in 1939 without making a single campaign speech or spending a single nickle of his own money. He died in August of 1956 while attending a baseball game. In honor of Ab, General Motors named the 1957 Pontiac Bonneville in his honor.

Currently a documentary is in the works on Ab and the Meteor III. I highly recommend watching the video trailer.

http://pricemuseumofspeed.org/video.html

You can read the full article from the Utah History site here.

Petty Ford

This is the Petty Ford dealership which used to be on 2100 South and 9th East in Sugarhouse. Of course it no longer exists and now sadly a Walgreen's stands in its place. My grandpa got a job working for Petty Ford after returning from his Merchant Marine service during WWII. He worked for the Petty's for nearly 18 years before purchasing his first service station which would later become the Glover Oil Co.

After several years of working at the Ford dealership he was asked by old man Petty to manage their newest lot down on 6th South and Main St. This was the Salt Lake Sports Car Center and was a dealership for MG, Austin Healy and Morris Minor. This is also where my Dad got a lot of his automobile education against the wishes of my Grandpa. My dad says that all the mechanics at the shop were threatened with their jobs if he found any of them showing my dad how to work on anything. My Grandpa had higher hopes for my dad than to be a mechanic.

The best story is the day my dad turned 16 and got his drivers lisence and was so excited he showed up to the shop to let everyone know. When the manager heard this his jaw dropped to the floor as my dad had been driving and delivering cars for the dealership for over a year, all without a lisence.

So far I haven't been able to find any other pictures of these places but I'm still on the hunt. It's pretty sad that much of this great Salt Lake history is all but gone now.

'32 Ford Pickup Chop

Here's a quick and dirty chop of a '32 Ford pickup that I thought could use a little chop and section.

Before:

After:

Bright Colors For a Dull Day

Just found this Ironlak paint from Austrialia. Comes in 64 bold high pigment colors. Ever since Krylon changed to a new valve system which is totally useless, it's been a difficult search for any decent paint.

Triumph

I really really like vintage Triumph custom motorcycles and hope to be able to build one someday. Here's a few examples of my favorite custom Triumphs.

Dodge Dart

Another photoshop chop for a HAMB'er. This one is for a guy named Mike. Mike got this 1968 Dodge Dart from his great Aunt who bought the car brand new in 1968. I like these kind of car stories.

Here's the original picture of the dart as Mike sent it.



He wanted to see what it would look like with some Dodge Rallye wheels and some old skool Firestone Wide Oval bias ply tires. Ok I can do that.




But I think we can do better than that. :) What if Richard Petty had driven for Dodge instead of Plymouth?




Lets see what she'll do.




And one for kids to take home after a day at the track.

VLV

What happens when one friend spends all night drinking at VLV, and your other friend is a sober EMT. Hotel room IV's to cure a hangover...Priceless.

Some PS Chops

Here's a few photoshop chops I've done for fellow HAMB'ers just for the fun of it. Most people request a wheel and tire change but why stop there.


Before:


After:

I wanna see faces turn to backs of heads and slowly get smaller...

Reverse Graffiti

While on one of my daily virtual strolls through the interweb I came across a reference to Paul Curtis and his reverse graffiti. Pretty awesome I think.

Graffiti House

I happened across this interesting house while driving around downtown yesterday. I actually saw it out of the corner of my eye and had to turn around and go back to investigate. It looked like people may actually live in the house although I'm not certain of it.

Death To The Tinman

I happened to be watching the Sundance Film movie channel the other night because the movie "The Puffy Chair" was on and the description was about a guy, his girlfriend and his brother take a road trip to pick up a chair they bought on eBay as a gift for his father for his birthday. It was decent and entertaining enough but what really got my attention was a short film they showed when this selection was over.

"Death to the Tinman" by Ray Tintori was in my opinion a brilliant and beautiful work. I haven't seen anything that was so exciting and inspiring as this short. It's only about 12 minutes long but it's well worth the investment to watch. Let me know what you think.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v12272529WMNAK6WW

Would you like that in a combo or a la cart?

So I had the chance to go Roy Brizio's open house this past weekend in South San Francisco. Wow what a treat. Brizio has an amazing shop and was working on some insanely cool cars. This is just a teaser as I'll be posting more from the trip shortly.

Poor Ford In The Rest Home

Here's the state the Ford has been in for the last few months. All alone in her cell. Hopefully things will start happening with her in the next few weeks. It pains me to see her this way.

New White Walls

So we just got the rims all trued and the new white walls put on so we started polishing up all the chrome work and giving the bike a once over. Still needs a few little details but its finally road worthy. I even took her around the block to test it out. Just need to finish up wiring the head light and install the batteries. Pretty sweet looking bike now. Bekah is pretty stoked on finally getting to ride her 60's Hawthorne.

Great Video

Bat For Lashes - Whats a Girl To Do

Daily Quotes From Jason

My brother Jason has been providing me daily quotes via instant message while we are both at work. I'm going to share these here.

Tis' healthy to be sick sometimes.- Henry David Thoreau.

There is no more fatal a blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. - Henry David Thoreau.

My only witness is the empty sky. - Jack Kerouac.

A Taste Of The Latest Acqusition

This is just a little tease of the latest addition to the garage collection. Pretty sweet craigslist find by Bekah. I'll be sharing more on this in the near future. I've been busy organizing the garage and putting up new shelves. Just about ready to start on the next phase of Lucy the Comet. I just finished up painting the battery tray and collecting all sorts of new parts including 2" lowering springs to get her a little closer to the ground. My Friend Brian came up with a brilliant battery hold down system this weekend and TIG welded the stainless steel to make it happen. Dude is talented. I'll post the project this week. I can't wait to get started on Lucy.

A Well Lit Path

Lexus doesn't have a thing on ford. If you've seen the commercials for the Lexus RX with active headlights that turn when you're going around a corner and think this is a wonderful new idea, think again. Recently I found this great aftermarket spot light manufactured by the General Automotive Products company of Chicago around 1950. The "Turn-a-beam" automatic spotlight which replaces the center grille bullet on the fords magically "turns with the wheels". I scored me a NOS kit that has never even been opened. Still brand spanking 1950 new in the box. I don't even know if I can bring myself to open the box to install it. I may put this one away for safe keeping and try and locate another to actually use. I also scored a vintage amber spot light which was manufactured by "Safe T Scope" but doesn't have the wonderful turning functionality. We'll see which actually gets used but either way some pretty neat stuff.

Future Elements

So I was browsing the artwork on one of the HAMB Friday Art Show posts and came across a piece by Dwayne of Future Elements design. It should be obvious why I was drawn to it. We'll I proceeded to contact Dwayne to see about how I might procure my own piece of this artwork. A deal was made and a few days later I was the proud owner of signed print #15/60. I'd post the actual picture if I had it but I already dropped it off for custom framing, I was too excited to wait. I also purchased 2 other prints by Dwayne which should be delivered early next week.

Sand Buggy - DP Custom Fab

I took these pics of Randy's Sand Buggy which my friend Dustin at DP Custom Fab is currently doing all the custom aluminum body panels. This guy is a real artist, his metal fab skills are incredible. These pics don't do this work justice. I'm hoping to get more pics once the metal work is complete and hope to be able to represent how remarkable this thing is.

Shoebox Update - '56 Ford

So earlier I mentioned that I wanted to add '56 Ford headlight rings to my '50. Ok I totally stole the idea from the model car but hey it looked great so why not. Well thanks to eBay I'm the proud owner of a decent set of 1956 Ford headlight rings. I love getting gifts in the mail. Hopefully Todd can help me actually make these work on the car.

Tony Ray-Jones

I was watching a series on the Ovation Network called "The Genius of Photography" as part of the episod "Paper Movies" they disucssed British photographer Tony Ray-Jones. Tony spent time in among many other famous street photographers in New York during the early and mid 1960's. As part of the story they showed some hand written notes Jones had made during his time in New York. I found the notes to be simple and probably obvious to most but I still found them to be the very things I need to work on and be thinking about. For some reason they just struck accord with me. I've shared the notes below but will be less dramatic than seeing the actual hand written notes from Jones himself. Hopefully they will inspire and motivate some aspect of your own life even if it has nothing to do with photography.

Tony Ray Jones - Photographer Notes NYC 1965?

-Be more aggressive
-Get more involved (talk to people)
-Stay with the subject matter (Be patient)
-Take simpler pictures
-See if everything in background relates to subject matter
-Vary composition
-Be more aware of composition
-Don't take boring pictures
-Get in closer
-Watch camera shake
-Don't shoot too much