Good Art for Bad Eggs. Marc Nischan .com presents lowbrow art from the trenches of pop culture.
V-8 NIGHTMARE: Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
Finally this car was starting to come together! Maybe I'll finish this thing after all! I was going over to Jeffro's one night a week and putting parts on the engine. But before I stuffed in the drivetrain, I wanted to fix up the hole in the floor. While I was at it, I figured that I might as well do the whole front floorpan because it looked like swiss cheese.
From a Tarantulas gig I had met this old
guy that did customs in the ghetto down in Detroit. I bought a
front clip off of him because my passenger side fender is all
crunched up.
"Hundred Twenty Five", he said.
"Well," I said "I only need the fender. How much
for that?"
"Hundred Twenty Five. You can take the fender, or you can take the whole thing.
Up to you. Either way, it's a Hundred Twenty Five."
Later in the year, he calls me and wants to do a trade. He needs a flyer design, so I traded him for some fabricated floor pans and a trans hump. I made some paper templates and went over to his shop.
Viola! Now all I had to do was cut and weld, and, since I had been watching Monster Garage a lot, I knew it would be a snap. So I commenced to cuttin' and a-fittin'.
Jeez, that took all afternoon. Now all I had left to do was weld this baby in. After an hour of melting the crap out of everything, enough molten slag had formed on the remains to bond them together. Later in the week I would survey some of my gearhead buddies about their welding experiences. The consensus was that sheetmetal was really hard to weld, and that I needed to practice. Now, that can't be right. First of all, the guy that sold me the welder said it was easy. And practice!?! I don't have time to practice! I need to be a hot rod rockabilly kustom-culture guru NOW! I mean c'mon! It's already been three years since I got the idea to build this stupid car, and by the time it's done I'll be too old to be the envy of all my peers.
