Where did all the cool stuff go?

So, I told my wife I found my own facebook site to go to. I figure that facebook is a huge waste of time for a lot of people. I found a website that I could literally spend hours looking at, wasting my time so that's why I call it my facebook. On this site there is a post about a bunch of photos from the past and I find myself wishing I was around when these pictures were taken. They are all before my time but I can imagine what they would be like. I always said if I could choose a time to be born it would of been in the 40's. Pretty much when my Dad was born. I love this first picture. It shows an auto parts store back before there was autozone and o'reillys. In fact before there was computers. You could tell the guy you needed brakes for your impala and he didn't ask you if that was a Ford or Chevy or ask you what engine it had because that's the only way to look up brakes on the computer. Just check out all the cool stuff on display. You could spend a whole day just hanging out here. We had an auto parts store that I went to when I was younger and I guess that's about as close as I got to this one. It was called Prime Source Auto. The guy knew me and my Dad by name and always had or could get the parts we needed and they were good quality also. Nowadays you end up at autozone and wait in line to get the parts you need only after anyone who calls gets helped first. Then you are usually helped by someone who knows nothing about cars, the quality of the parts are crap but they carry a lifetime warranty (if you like to change them every year) and then you wait in another line to pay for the stuff. Give me a parts store that actually has great customer service and is knowledgeable and I will gladly pay 3 times as much.

 This picture actually looks like a modern day dealership service center back in the day. I would of  loved to work here. I wonder if the service was better back then than it is today? I think people back then took pride in their work. I could be wrong but in my daydreaming world they did!

 This picture reminds me of the movie American Graffiti when John Melnar was talking about the good old days when "It took a couple hours and a tank full of gas just to make one circuit!" What an awesome time it would of been to be here. Hot rods could be built fairly cheap and at home. Kids hung out and actually socialized instead of staying home and playing video games or tweeting. You actually wanted to get your drivers license and usually drove before you turned 16. Most kids I talk to today don't even have an interest in getting their drivers license at 16. In fact they did a poll and asked kids if they could get a car or a cell phone which one would they choose. 90 percent said the cell phone. AAARRRGGGG, whats the world coming too??????

 This next photo is just too cool. The drive in movie, an old airplane on the screen and an old super cool train in the back ground. I wish I could blow this up and print it. I would hang it on my garage wall.

 I love old gas stations. They intrigue me. They were usually full service and had a garage with them if you needed your car fixed. The attendants usually wore nice uniforms and gave you good service. I have a faint memory of full service stations but its a long ago memory and it was nothing like the one pictured here..

 I love this photo. I built a nova back when I was single and a buddy of mine was always over helping me. I have some pictures like this and maybe someday they will be put on a website and labeled vintage shots from days gone by. I bet when these 2 guys were getting this picture taken they didn't know there would be people envious of them. What a cool hot rod.

Another old garage photo. They are upper class with a crane and everything. This is really old, just check out the car.

 More parts store photos. Lots of oil cans. Cars used a lot more oil back then.

What a great shop!

 Here is an old speed shop photo. In speed shops you could get any high performance parts you needed and usually get them installed if you needed it. Awesome photo, I love it. The hubcaps are awesome.

 Here is another service station. If I didn't have to worry about money, I would open me a service station with full service and a garage just like the old days. I think some people would go for the full service nowadays and I think it would be a neat place to own and run.

I guess I was born too late. I don't really embrace technology like a lot of people do. I don't need a huge flat screen TV and the newest IPad on the market. I do own a cell phone and I enjoy surfing the net but I also enjoy driving to work listening only to my engine run and I love anything that's old and shows the awesome craftsmanship of yesteryear. I think I will always drive a 40 plus year old car everyday and love it. I guess I don't do a very good job keeping up with the Joneses. Oh well, It reminds me of a great song though. Enjoy!

Let the Christmas Season Begin!

So this weekend Dixie wasn't too impressed with the way I put the Christmas lights away last year. I like to use the zipper method to remove the lights. The zipper method is to get a hold of one end and just pull them off the rain gutter. It works really well. I guess I must of just balled them up and put them in the box. I tried telling Dixie that that is a current trend with lights this year and I even showed her this picture.

If you drive by my house you can see who won the argument. Dixie spent some time unsorting everything so I could hang the lights up like EVERYONE does and I suppose I will zipper them off the roof in January and do it all again next December. I guess the Christmas season has officially started at our house. The family has to talk/beg Dixie into putting up the tree every year. Isaac says that we are the last family to put up our tree and the first to take it down. He's right about that. That's the way we roll I guess. Trees are always fun to have in your house when a 2 year old is roaming/decking (literally) the halls. Especially an active, curious, girl like Ellie.

Isaac has been hounding me to put the annual Christmas song up on the blog so here it is: My favorite song of the season,

I hope everyone has a nice relaxing Christmas Season this year, (yeah right huh!) Stay safe and warm. I have a couple new projects for the garage I am almost ready to start on so the blog might get back to some mechanical stuff here in a little while.

5 Best Car Movies

So awhile back I listed my top 10 car songs. The garage has been a little slow so I decided to post up my top 5 favorite car movies. These are movies that I watched over and over as a kid and they must have helped fuel my love of cars. Some of the movies are really old and some had been made at the time I was growing up. Here they are in order of my favorites.

1: American Graffiti.  This is an old show that I absolutely loved. I could picture myself as John Melnar driving a deuce coupe around and getting in races. I own this movie and still watch it to this day and love it. I fast forward through the prom part of the movie because that's boring. I love watching it and seeing all the cool cars that are cruising up and down the streets in it. This is most likely the reason that a 32 Ford is my all time favorite car that I will have one day if I am able to.

2: My Science Project.   I remember the first time I saw this movie. We rented it from a store and at that time we rented the VCR also. They were expensive so the video stores would rent the machines. They were about the size of a Cadillac at the time and it was always fun trying to get them to work on your TV. I own this DVD and watch it when I feel nostalgic. I didn't really fit in with any group of people in High School. I played football but didn't really hang out with the jocks, I was around the stoners and cowboys a lot because I wanted to be in my car at lunchtime and they were always in their cars chewing or smoking and they also had all the shop classes I had but I wouldn't really say I fit in there either. I dated a girl that was in honors classes and music classes but didn't fit in with her friends too well. I would of called myself a motor head I guess. That's why I love this movie. I relate to Harlan (He's the one with the red GTO) and so I guess that's why I like it. I only watch it up to the point that it gets dumb and then I shut it off. It drives Dixie nuts but that's what I do.

3: The California Kid.  I actually didn't see this movie until I came home from my mission but it's just a super cool car movie. It has martin sheen in it and I actually like his character for once. I have a VHS copy of this one that I taped off the TV. I haven't ever seen it on DVD but if I could find it I would buy it.

4: Better Off Dead.  This isn't really a car show i guess but it has some hilarious parts in it. My favorite part is where he fixes his camaro with the foreign exchange student who is a girl. It's a really cool camaro and a pretty funny movie. This is another one that I have on VHS and it's a copy from another tape. It works for me though. I watched this a lot in my younger years.

5: Christine.  I had to include this one. I watched this when I was younger but since I have had kids, Dixie and I decided that we didn't want to watch movies that we wouldn't let our kids watch. That pretty much limits it to G ratings and some PG's It's funny because the language in this movie is horrible but I didn't remember hearing that when I was a kid. Not sure why but it sure makes me uncomfortable now. Anyways, I wouldn't recommend watching this one but it's got some cool cars in it and I like the music.

That's my car movie list. I know there are lots of other ones like vanishing point, 2 lane blacktop, cannonball run, gumball rally, the duel, maybe the blues brothers but these would be my top 5. I have never really seen any of the new ones out like the fast and the furious and others like it but they never really peaked my interest. You can see all these movies in there entirety on you tube. just type in their titles. I highly recommend the first 4 on my list. Let me know if you watch them and give my some names that you think I should of put on. I'm always up for a good car movie. Oh I just thought of one. Here it is.

Bullitt. This has the all time best chase scene in a movie that I've ever seen. This would actually rank around 3 on my list. I can't believe I forgot it until now.  Very cool movie, Check out the chase scene!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I figured I would post my favorite thanksgiving picture again this year. Thanksgiving is my all time favorite holiday of the year.

I hope everyone has a nice warm place to enjoy a good meal with family and friends this Thanksgiving. Remember to take some time today to think about the blessings in your life. Keep safe and Happy Thanksgiving from the Olson's

Modifying the modified exhaust.

So the other day it was super windy for a couple of days. I drove the baja on those days and coming home was not very fun. I had to shift down to 3rd at times just to keep up enough speed on the freeway. That's not very fun, especially when everyone is usually going 10 to 20 miles over the speed limit. I decided enough was enough. If you read my blog you know that I found some exhaust pipes off a victory motorcycle and adapted them so they would work on my baja. I was looking to quiet it down and to give the engine some back pressure in hopes that it would run stronger. What happened was I lost some power on the lower end and a lot of power at higher RPM's. The pipes ended up being really quiet though. Actually they were too quiet for my liking so I decided I needed to do some modifications. I went on some Victory forums and found that they were modifying the stock exhaust by either drilling out the inner baffle with a 1 inch hole saw or drilling 6 to 8 holes in the backing plate of the muffler. Most of them complained about messing up their controllers and needing their bikes to be re tuned because of the computer that controls them. I wasn't worried about a stupid computer so I decided to implement both of the modifications and see where that would get me.

So here you can see down the main pipe of the exhaust. This is where you drill out the baffle, It is about 18 inches down the tube. I rigged up some extensions and drilled out both pipes with a 1 inch hole saw.

I next drilled out 8 holes in the backing plate of the mufflers. I made a template so they would be uniform and not look like crap. I drilled them out to a final size of 19/64ths because that's the biggest drill that I had handy at the time. I painted the back plates with some high temp satin black paint for looks and took it for a test spin.

So here it is all the final product. They became a little bit louder but they really aren't that bad. I was surprised by the pleasant sound they have now but at the same time I'm not embarrassed to drive by my neighbors early in the morning. I was even more surprised by the performance increase I gained by doing this. It is a night and day difference. I have lots of power gains through all RPM's and I can go 85 MPH on the freeway again if I need to. I might not suggest doing this to your brand new Victory motorcycle but I highly suggest doing it to your bug that might for some reason have victory exhaust on it.

On a side note, my license plate either vibrated off my bug or was stolen. It may have been blown off by all the wind, who knows. Anyways if you see a plate on the side of the road, check to see if it's mine. They are due this month so I guess instead of registering it online, I will have to go visit my friends at the DMV. Joy, Joy for me.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Happy Halloween Everyone! This year I decided to carve a bus for my pumpkin. Heres the pics.

My camera stinks so I couldn't get a good night shot of it but it looks pretty cool all lit up. Hope everyone has a fun and safe halloween.

An Older Woman?

So we acquired another bug at our house much to the delight of Dixie of course. This was just too good of a deal to pass up on. It not much to look at but it's actually a hidden gem underneath for 1 really good reason. ITS RUST FREE!!!! OK actually it has very minor surface rust in spots but the heater channels and other problematic areas are in awesome shape. I have been looking long and hard for a rust free body for a good price. I was able to jump on this one quick enough to fight off the others that wanted it. I had to go up north to west point to pick it up. I swear there never is a good deal in Salt Lake. Here She is behind my truck. I needed to fill up on gas before the trip home.

 She arrives home. These tow bars work out awesome to haul bugs around. I have now towed all 3 of my bugs home. They have come from Logan, Tooele and West point and I have never had a problem with the tow bar. My harbor Freight tow lights came in handy again also. I'm pretty sure I got my 10 dollars out of them. Ellie and I actually went up to west point the day before with the tow bar ready to get it and tow it home that day but we ran into a snag. 3 of the wheels had only 3 lug nuts on them and 1 only had 2. I was willing to tow it if they all had 3 but I wasn't going to risk the one with 2. It's definitely not worth killing someone over so I picked up 9 lug nuts and went back the next day. Ellie was very upset that we didn't bring it home. In fact she was down right mad but I bought her some McDonald's fries on the way home and I reassured her I would get it the next day and she seemed OK with that.

 So a little info on it. It's a 1966 bug. That was a pretty unique year for the bug because there was some things that were only done that year. That makes it a little bit more rare but also makes some parts harder to get. I bought it from a guy who pulled it out of a barn in Wellsville. I guess that counts as a true barn find in my book. The front end has had a little tap so I will need to do some work on the front apron to get the hood to latch correctly. The wiring is a mess but the dash is unmolested and it has the original radio which is very cool. I got 2 more original front fenders. The interior is in decent shape for sitting in a barn for who knows how long. The doors are going to need some work. That's the only really crappy thing about it. I may end up just replacing them altogether. I need to look at them closer before I decide what to do.

Here's Ellie glad to see her friend again. She is so funny. I was laying on the ground looking at the underside of the bug and Ellie was right there under the car with me. I can see her having the hottest car in high school when she gets to be that age. She likes shoes, bows in her hair and changing her clothes so maybe she will be well rounded.

I parked it and it will most likely stay there for the winter before I am able to do much with it. I will probably clean it out and see what I'm in for but I guess we'll see. I am constantly tempted to just flip it because I got it for such a good price and it's in better shape than I thought for once. I really want to get fenders and bumpers for Ed. I guess I'll sleep on it for awhile and then decide.

 The family hasn't come up with a name yet but I'm sure they will. I figured this one has got to be a girl because we have Ed and Tugger already. It's time to have a girl name and by the way things are looking, Shes going to be high maintenance.