I Love Street Rods

Posted on 09/09/2025 by Grumpa Joe

After I win the Mega Millions lottery, I am going to buy a new car. It won’t be an Coupe-de-ville, but rather a custom built street rod. I will begin with an older U.S.built car from the 1934 through 1959 period.  I will have it designed and built to my specs. It will be as stylish as anything from today’s car makers. The reliability will rival my current 2006 Avalon. The design will include all the modern technology that makes a 2025 car what it is: Electronic ignition, fuel injection, four wheel power disc brakes, automatic transmission with overdrive, power steering, and more. The cabin amenities will include air conditioning, power windows, keyless ignition, heated leather power seats, and more. In other words, it will be a 2025 car with a slightly used and reconditioned body.

Today’s street rods are an offshoot of the hot rods that are made for speed and drag racing.  Street rods are totally drivable.  I am amazed at the design ingenuity of hot-rodders that build their own cars. I once met a man who had customized a 1939 Buick (shown below). He’s been building and redesigning the same car for twenty years.

Why does it take so long? Well, one reason is money. The builders usually have a day job with limited money to spend. A second reason is time. Most of these guys are family men and spend time on their cars after family and work obligations are met. Some of them run body shops, so they can work on their cars when business is slow.

The hobby of custom hot rod building is a huge business in America. There are many organizations dedicated to supporting  the builders. The  National Hot Rod Association, Good Guys, National Street Rod Association are a few of them. One of my most popular weblogs is  I Prefer Hot Rods With Fenders. This simple report keeps my BLOG alive with viewers.  Hopefully this post will be enjoyed as well. I photographed the cars at the Tinley Park, Illinois Cruise Night on a Friday in August, and found the 1939 Buick. This is the same model year as the car I learned to drive on.

All of these cars were saved from the junk yard. They all look pretty and go like hell! ENJOY.

After this post, I may even buy a lottery ticket.

1939 Buick Coupe Street Rod

Filed under: Characters I knew, Hot Rods, Manufacturing, Sports, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

One Hundred Years From Today

Posted on 10/01/2024 by Grumpa Joe

One of my favorite things to consider is what the world will look like in a hundred years I would love to live long enough to see it for myself. Of course, I’m only a few years away from what a hundred-year picture will look like for me. If the next hundred years of change are like the past, the picture will be one none of us can recognize. What is more challenging to fathom is what it would look like if we went backward in time instead of forward. I won’t go there, but I will move forward.

Today, my solar panels are covered in snow, and it got me thinking about what will happen in the future when we have successfully electrified the country and a snowstorm stops us from getting electricity. I must have seen a magazine or something that prompted me to see the Indianapolis 500 car race, and I asked myself what that would look like when gasoline is no longer the energy source for cars.

Some things came to mind immediately:

1. The race starter will no longer be able to begin the race with “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

2. The race would be silent or maybe just whiny.

3. Pit stops may take eight hours to get a fresh charge.

4. There will not be any competition between automakers for the best engine.

5. Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler will be replaced by who knows what.

6. There will not be anymore fiery crashes.

7. There will not be any gears to shift to

8. No more spilled gas in the pits.

9. Battery explosions and fires will predominate.

10. Drivers may be replaced by AI Robotic driverless cars.

11. Races may be limited to: One lap, a few laps, or the most laps in the least amount of time

The entire car racing industry will evolve into something we won’t be able to envision. All forms of racing will be affected: Twenty-four hours of LeMans, Baja 500, Daytona 500, Nascar Series, Drag racing, you name it, and it will be different. Some forms of car racing will cease to exist, but man’s ingenuity will drive them to invent new ways to compete using electricity.

As I thought about one of the biggest impediments to electric cars, which is a source of charging stations for power, the name of Henry Ford came to mind. How did Ford overcome the impediment of not having gas stations and roads? He didn’t solve the problem; he only fostered it by selling more cars. Early drivers found gasoline in local drug stores. It was being sold as a spot remover. Then, it progressed to gasoline entrepreneurs who sold gasoline in bulk from tanks outside cities. Car owners filled buckets and cans to take home. From there, it progressed to the formation of gas stations and eventually evolved into the modern filling stations of today. Gasoline was already known as a fuel for internal combustion engines, and it was up to the car buyer to figure out how to get gas. They bought the car and then figured it out. This sounds like what we see today. People are buying electric cars and worrying about getting electricity as somebody else’s problem. As long as they can plug in at home, they are okay. Traveling long distances is still a problem, but slowly, it is evolving into an industry. Until charging stations become commonplace like gas stations are, we will keep using electric cars within 50 miles of home. It worked for Henry, and it will probably work for Elon too.

Filed under: Cars, economy, Hot Rods, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Work = Force x Distance

Posted on 07/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Today I explored several blogs from recently signed up followers. What amazes me is that most of them are selling something. Grumpajoesplace does not sell anything. My blog is a place where I can vent about almost anything or everything. For me writing is a cathartic drug. In times of grief writing allows me to express feelings I cannot express audibly. Writing relieves my stress when that is my issue. Writing allows me to communicate with bloggers who have become my friends over the internet, and whom I miss when they don’t comment or go missing.

I often thought about selling, but selling has never been my thing. In order to sell, I’d have to go back to work subscribing to blog sites for the simple reason of getting attention to my product. If I wanted a job, I would apply for one. Of course I am a hypocrite in this regard because I offer my books for sale on my site. In the twelve years I have done so I have sold two copies of my life story as told in games I played as a child. Today, if you actually click on the button that says “buy my book” it will lead you to Amazon Kindle books and the price is $0.00. So you will see that I can’t even give my book away, so why would I make a concerted effort (work) to subscribe to followers for the purpose of selling my free book?

On my to do list of big projects I have listed finishing a book I began writing when my wife Peggy was still alive and lucid about ten years ago. The working title is Space Rod. It is a story of a man who loses his wife and in his grief he buys an antique pick up truck which he intends to restore. Of course restoration is work, which he likes to avoid. He meets a man named Mort whose interest is also in street rods. They become friends, and before long Mort introduces the widower to Trey a man whose business it is to restore old cars. That is when the story finally gets interesting, and that is where I stopped writing to care for my wife full time. Peggy has been gone since 2019, and I am first now getting a tickle of an urge to finish this story. I picked up the manuscript a few months ago and read it to refresh my memory about the characters and the direction it was taking me. Throughout I kept mentally editing passages to clean up the grammar and to make it more readable. It occurred to me that this project is huge and will be considerable work. Do I really want to spend all that effort on something that no one will read?

Filed under: Biography, Cars, Fiction, grief, Hot Rods | Tagged: , , | 10 Comments »

Why Rock the Boat?

Posted on 06/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

One of the most amazing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime is the evolution of the automobile. I have memories galore about the difficulty my father went through to provide our family with transportation. I loved to listen to his stories about early adventures as a single man in a new country. One thing he did very early on was to buy automobiles the names of which have long disappeared, namely one he called a Hupmobile. His stories always entailed fixing problems on the side of the road with minimal tools and parts.
Summer Sunday afternoons was the best time to hear him describe the many adventures he had. Usually with a buddy who was also involved. Dad loosened up quite a bit when alcohol flowed freely through his system. Oh how he laughed when he told the story, especially when telling us how the Hupmobile threw a rod half way to the farm in Michigan and they wound up overhauling the engine on the sandy shoulder of the highway.

1929 Buick
1982 Chevy
1968 Ford
1959 Ford
1939 Buick
1954 Plymouth
1938 Plymouth
1928 Hupmobile

The car I remember from my early childhood was his 1929 Buick Century. Oh what a splendid tank it was. He owned that car from 1942 – 1952. One of his daunting tasks was to find tires and gasoline. World-War-Two put a damper on auto ownership, but Dad used his car as an part-time insurance salesman. I specifically remember him taking Mom shopping one evening, and she took the three os us with her. He dropped us off at a store, and continued on to his client meeting. When he returned we had a surprise waiting for us. The running board on the side of the car was gone, and the back door was dented. He had to hoist us up one at a time to get us in. He told us he was broadsided by a car that blew a red light. The other car had to be towed away, we drove home.

Dad’s string of cars after the ’29 were a 1939 Buick Special, followed by a 1938 Dodge, a 1954 Plymouth, a 1959 Ford, 1968 Ford, and last a1982 Chevy. all were used cars except for the last three. Each one had it’s share of problems which he continued to fix. His favorite phrase was “Ford, Fix Or Repair Daily.” Just about all of his cars were sold or traded when they reached fifty thousand miles.

My experience with cars is much the same, with one exception. I kept my rides for eighty thousand miles, except for the one I own now. The odometer has 181,000 miles on it and (knock on wood0 everything still works and the only major expenses have been for tires, brakes and batteries.

There is a gremlin in my head that keeps poking me in the ribs to buy a new car because this one is 16 years old and everything still works, the interior is still in fine condition, and there is no sign of rust any where. One day, I will walk home from the roadside, having abandoned a car that died. Or, I will be involved in a minor fender bender that will total the car and force me to send it to the junk yard. I lose sleep over having to spend a fortune on a new car, most likely my last one. Then, this morning while scrolling my phone I found an article that made my day, “These Cars Have the Longest Lifespans
Some cars last longer than others – a lot longer.”

https://apple.news/A5-M4pvjaQZ6yHaRLElSn0w

Inside the article is a list of ten long life vehicles:

1. Toyota Sequoia 296,509

2. Toyota Land Cruiser 280,236

3. Chevy Suburban 265,732

4. Toyota Tundra 256,022

5. GMC Yukon XL 252,630

6. Toyota Prius 250,601

7. Chevy Tahoe 250,338

8. Honda Ridgeline 248,669

9. Toyota Avalon 245,710

10. Toyota Highlander Hybrid 244,994

there, at number nine is my car.

Wow! My car might last for another sixty thousand miles. At the current rate of driving that could be six more years. By then, the State of Illinois will most likely tell me I’m too old to be driving. On the other hand, my brother is ninety-one and he still drives back and forth a hundred miles to his summer home in Michigan.

The prospect of buying an electric vehicle at a time when gasoline powered cars are enjoying the best reliability in history is scary, I think I’ll just buy a slightly newer model from the same company that made the one I drive now.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Cars, Hot Rods, Travel | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Just In Time = Almost Too Late

Posted on 24/10/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Today I am reminded of my training as an engineer in manufacturing about the Just In Time principle. What reminded me? A flower I planted from seed. I have planted this flower every year for the past ten years with good success, that is, until this year. Maybe the seeds were affected by COVID, but the end result didn’t happen as it should have. I planted the seeds in late May and within a few days they germinated and began to grow. They grew, and grew, and grew, but only the foliage. There was not a flower within sight for well over four months. I distinctly remember that the package stated seventy days from germination to flowers. It is now the third week in October and the damned plant finally began to show flowers. It is a simple Morning Glory. My recollection is that in prior years I enjoyed these blooms beginning in August. What happened this year is strange. All I know is that we are about two weeks away from a killing frost and there are still only a few blooms showing in a mass of foliage. Disappointing to say the least. At least the plant met the deadline of blooming before a the frost shuts it down, or Just in Time.

In the manufacturing world of the eighties and nineties Just in Time manufacturing was a system used by the Japanese car companies to streamline their assembly process. The company I worked for was steeped in the study of these concepts. Basically, just in time means that parts arrive at the assembly line minutes before they are needed to put into the unit. Why waste providing warehouse space to hold parts before they are needed. Put that together with the labor required to unload and stock the warehouse and then to unload it again when it is needed. The factory floor is less cluttered with inventory meaning a smaller factory is needed, and the company doesn’t pay for goods to sit around waiting for a time to be used. It works and does save money, but at the price of too many employees’ nervous systems overloading when a car is coming down the line and you still don’t have the next part needed. Therein, we coined the phrase “almost too late.” The Japanese system relies on parts manufacturers being located within a one day drive from the assembly plant. The vision is that raw materials flow from the ground to the steel mill, to the component manufacturer to the assembly plant in a smooth uninterrupted flow, just like water flowing through a pipe from the well into your glass.

Recent headlines during COVID citing the computer chip shortage are prime examples of a just in time system that failed. How any auto company allowed that to happen is beyond me. It is, however, easy to visualize happening when the chips are a part of a JIT system and the company making the chips suddenly has a huge shortage of manpower down with the virus, and it is non-stop for a year, meaning that the shortage continues as more and more employees get the virus as time marches on. Henry Ford’s original idea of building a process that was vertically integrated so that his company made every part of the car, without involving outside suppliers solves this problem. The trouble with vertical integration is that the factory becomes so frickin huge it is impossible to manage. It also means that one company has to be expert at making thousands of discreet components all of which require their own experts. Separate companies specializing in discreet components can become very adept at making starters, radiators, brakes, etc. Even body parts like fenders, and hoods require experts in stamping and processing large sheets of metal.

In a phone discussion with a Ford employee this morning I learned that at this time Ford has more cars to sell than any company on the planet, and Ford is building more cars than any other car company. I can testify that the Ford dealer in my town finally has new cars and trucks on the lot.

Filed under: Garden, Hot Rods, Manufacturing | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

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