Could today's teenagers build a hot rod ?...

[dogtag]

I'm joking of course by even posing the question.
I grew up in the fifties which maybe some of you here did too.
Best decade ever - at least in my opinion. The War was in the
rear view mirror, Ike was President, US veterans home from
the war were adapting war dept motorbikes into hogs,
teenagers were getting a good education, the economy was
if not roaring, was getting there Those teens were building
hot rods, cruising around looking for girls and sipping sodas.
In contrast, the latest crop of youths get their kicks by looting,
burning businesses and breaking windows. How times change.
Maybe Santa will bring me a time machine.

[Tuna]

Are you kidding????? 75% of kids today if not more, have no idea what a lug wrench is for. Oil??? what for??? You mean it has to be changed now and then??? Man it's hard to own a car. You have to remember what side the filler for the gas tank is on. Now if they need air in a tire well that's a hard thing for them to figure out as they have no clue. Well it's all down hill from here.

[togor]

When money gets a little tight and they learn they can save $400 in parts and labor doing their own brake job, then wrenching gets more interesting. Some of them have no one to show them how. A few figure it out on their own.

[lyman]

English hot rods in the 50's?? BL didn't buy the Buick V8 till the 60's

MG's
Healey's (lovely, they are)
Coopers's



as far as today,,,

hmm, none of the young guys I know do much wrenching, but the modern stuff is all about looks, stereo and if you can chip it

[m1ashooter]

Most of them and their dads couldn't but they can hook up your WIFI.

[Major Tom]

In the early '60s, my friends and I built cars for street legal drag racing. We built the motors (Chevy 283), put'em in model A's and a 1955 Chevy 2 door sedan was our race track only car which we towed to the strip. Today's bunch of kids install loud mufflers, chips for the computer and anything that makes their car (usually a 4 cylinder foreign car) look like it can go 100 mph. My neighbors kid didn't know how to change a flat tire, so he drove it 5 miles to get home. Shredded the tire and ruined the steel wheel.

[Tuna]

I can remember a number of us decided to fix a friends old junk Jeep. Pulled out the L head engine and then installed an adapter plate to the transmission for a Ford 260 V-8. From a dead stop it would do zero to 45 mph in a second and a half and a quarter mile in about 10 minutes with a top speed of...45 mph. It was just a tire burner as it was in constant 4 wheel drive. The kid that owned it thought it was so cool to be burning all four wheels at one time. Those were good times and great memories.