Ettore Bugatti: Type 37A engine block.

Art Himsl: Zeppelin Hot Rod RV.

Posie's Inc. Extremeliner

btinternet.com: Brass German desk set in Art Deco style.

The Victorian Fireplace.com: Art nouveau cast-iron coal basket.

3-wheelers.com

allacart.com: 1958 Buick Super

Conley 1/4-scale V8 engine.

Jim: You know, Frank, to the uninitiated looking at one of our projects, it might seem that these are incredibly expensive things we build, as they have a level of detailing more commonly associated with Rolls-Royces, English shotguns, and other high-end luxo toys of the rich and famous. However, I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to parting with cash, and you're actually notorious for it- people don't call you "$5 Frank" because you're a big tipper, do they? Frank: Actually it's exactly the opposite and I got that name by someone who really doesn't know me at all.   I generally spare no expense when it comes to doing it right but, like having your car painted at a shop, the supplies are only about 10% of the total cost: the rest being labor. And as I am my own shop, I do almost 100% of my own labor. I may send something out to get powder coated or chromed once in a while but I do all of the "grunt work" such as stripping it all down to bare metal, polishing the parts, painting, etc. Additionally, in the VW aftermarket, there are a large number of very affordable chrome plated goodies available and it's possible to put together a show quality motor for a couple of hundred bucks with a little ingenuity and some scrounged-up stuff like spare paint, used carbs you rebuild yourself and stuff from swap meets and your parts bin. Again, the main thing is the labor and since you are doing it yourself... . While we are talking about paint I should mention a couple of things the average guy should know. One is that a lot of paint stores may have a gallon or two of paint that they mixed up for one of their larger commercial customers and it was slightly off compared to what they needed to match it to so it is just sitting on a shelf in the back of the store, waiting to go bad. After you have gotten to know the guys at your local paint shop, ask them if that happens to them and you will be surprised by what they say and how little they are willing to let it go for. There's nothing wrong with it and if all you know is that you want a certain color and are doing the whole project at once, not trying to match another color, you can pick it up for pennies on the dollar. The other thing to know is that you can tint not only primer (an old hot rodder's trick) but paint as well. Wes the Welder once bought a couple of gallons of Caterpillar Yellow at a yard sale for $2, added a little tint to make green out of it and painted a Bug with less than half of it after thinning it considerably, then tinted the rest and painted another, larger car brown. Total cost: less than $10 for enough paint to do 2 cars and still have leftover paint for touch ups, etc. How I got the name is a fun story, however. As I said before, I spare no expense when I am doing a project. I'll do as much of the work as is possible but I don't believe in cutting corners if it at all affects the quality of the outcome and step up and pay the money (of course I've taught myself to polish and paint and will soon buy one of those do it yourself powder coat outfits). And, as an almost 30 year VW hobbyist, you eventually build up a rather substantial parts inventory, almost as large as a local shop would have, prepared for almost any contingency. I should also point out that you will, at some point, become almost modular in your approach as you can yank a motor with problems and slap another spare one in, when all of this stuff gains an almost critical mass. Additionally, you develop relationships with parts suppliers and know where to find the cheapest prices, you can also do business by mail order, you can order almost anything online nowadays and you always take full advantage of vendor sales at car shows and swap meets. In short, you have it all, sometimes with several spares as well. A friend we have known almost 25 years had started working at a local VW shop. When I walked in to buy a few things one day, the owner pointed at me (not knowing we knew each other) and whispered to him "That's Five Dollar Frank; that cheap son of a bitch comes in here all the time and never buys anything over $5..." He didn't know that my garage was probably almost as well equipped as his and that I only bought from him when I absolutely had to have it as his prices in this small town are almost double what I would pay anywhere else in the Bay Area. My buddy couldn't wait to get over here after work and tell me what the guy had said and we all had a big laugh over the absurdity of it. After I told the story to a number of friends, one pointed out that I had just acquired my hot rodder's nickname and that frugality is an admired trait in that circle and in a perverse sort of way, it was a compliment, even if that wasn't how he intended it. Fine, call me Five Dollar Frank (I've been called a lot worse)... Jim: Oh, right! I forgot about the story about how you got that alias. I, for one, come from a long line of cheap sons of bitches, and I'm proud that I'm carrying on the family tradition. Just about every detail in 2much!!! is made from scrap, and that's a pattern that extends through almost everything that I do. My motto is "Any damned idiot can walk into a store with a pile of money; smart guys get their stuff for free". One of my film shop assistants once said to me, "Jim, you kill me. You can pick up a piece of trash off the shop floor, and next thing you know, it's an important detail in the scene". I'm always checking out dumpsters for cool things that might work themselves into a project someday, and that also applies to raw materials. If I see a piece of aluminum stock in a trash pile, that puppy follows me home. And anything chrome plated becomes part of my pallete. Like Jon Gnagy pointed out- "Everything is made up of spheres, cones, cylinders and rectangles." Same deal with chrome shapes. Still, Frank, you gotta admit that you can build a finer machine for less money than most people, and that's because you're smarter than most of them, and smart guys.... Frank: It also doesn't hurt that I come from a long line of horse traders (or was that horse thieves?) and I tell everyone that I was raised by Bilko. People think I'm kidding but I'm not. For those of you unfamiliar with Sergeant Ernie Bilko (Phil Silvers, not the Steve Martin movie, the old black & white TV show), he was a balding, conniving career Army guy who my father, also a career military man, not only emulated but actually very closely resembled. Like Bilko, my dad had a finger in every deal that went by and I learned at the feet of the master. He held regular raffles, cook outs, door prizes and drawings at the NCO Club and the Rod & Gun Clubs on the Air Force bases we lived on, bought and sold used cars and appliances, jewelry, antiques, Turkish rugs, TV's, stereos, guns, you name it. He also had 5 separate crews for cleaning base housing when people were transferred, generally paying a fair local wage, pocketed the rest of the money and had his choice of anything they left behind, which he would then sell later, etc. One time he managed to "appropriate" a freight train car full of aluminum tubing that had gotten lost in the paper shuffle and after he set up the tools and jigs (and pressed my brother and me into service), almost everyone we know had aluminum fences, aluminum this and aluminum that. During most of my time as a VW hobbyist, I have been offered many, many cars just for towing them away, some perfectly good running cars that were just looking for a new home. It gets that way no matter what you do once people realize you're the VW (or whatever) guy.. . And then there's Big Daddy Roth, also one of my life-long role models. Almost everything he ever built was based on whatever deal happened to come by at the right price. One of his later works was based on that 3-banger GEO Metro motor just because he got a deal on it. Of course after it was done, he had the entire frame chrome plated (there's no face like chrome, no face like chrome, no face like chrome...). Big Daddy must have had a serious favor or two owed him for that one, as chrome is way too expensive nowadays (I know someone who restored their Mercedes approximately 15 years ago and it cost him over $5K to replate it all, way back then). And Big Daddy had built the frame in such a way that it all bolted together and could be pulled apart to be UPS'ed to the platers and then back to him when it was done. Earlier in his career, he built a number of VW and Corvair powered creations (one of them even mounted the engine upside down!), and of course he practically invented the fiberglass bodied VW trike kit... Since I mainly do VW stuff, I have a lot of stuff sitting around that will eventually get used in a future project. Recently, I sold a motor for one of my neighbors and by the time the deal was done, I walked away with a great set of dual, dual 40 mm Dell Orto carbs jetted for nitrous, with ported and polished intakes, linkages, etc. It doesn't hurt to find yourself in the middle of deals like that either as the guy I sold the motor for walked away with a thousand bucks for something that had sat on his garage floor for the last 10 years, the other guy got almost $4K worth of motor at a wonderful price and I got a thousand bucks worth of carbs for being in the right place at the right time. Can't beat that! Of course, now I'm going to have to build another nasty little motor to go with those carbs and thanks to the ideas you've given me about fabrication using common, affordable materials like foam rubber and panty hose, it's going to have a wild, state of the art fan shroud and cylinder cooling tin assembly which will resemble carbon fiber at a fraction of the cost (and that polished block, as I mentioned earlier). It'll also have some nice big valve heads, stainless steel exhaust system and a nice little cam. It sounds like it'll be fairly expensive (and it will definitely be another show-quality masterpiece, even if I do say so myself) but it really won't be very expensive at all as the carbs cost me nothing, the stainless steel exhaust system is less than $300 (VW stuff is cheap), jugs and pistons are just over a hundred bucks, a serious cam is $50, polishing the case and fabbing up the shroud assembly will mainly cost me my own labor and I'll have approximately $500 in the big valve heads, approximately a thousand bucks total, dirt cheap for a brand new and fairly fast motor... Jim: This supports my thesis that smart guys do it on the cheap. The VW is the cheapest hot-rod powerplant around, so that's what you build hot-rods around. Back in the golden age of hot rodding, guys built their hot rods around Ford flatheads, and later, small-block Chevys, and they used Ford platforms because they were common and cheap. I had to laugh a year or two ago. Popular Mechanics (which used to be a great magazine for guys who liked to make things, but is now yet another mediocre magazine for guys who like to buy things) ran an article called something like "the new hot rods". It was about pampered rich kids who take Hondas, Toyotas, etc. and hop them up. The magazine had the nerve to state that these over-priced, gadget-ridden ricemobiles were the "new deuces". Idiots! I don't know what the "new deuce" is, but the VW engine is definitely today's Flathead. Getting back to bicycles, there's a common perception that Schwinns are almost compulsory for building a lowrider bike. To a lesser extent, this is also the case with bike rodders. So, people who want to build one go out and beat the bushes for a "genuine Schwinn" for a basis, thereby competing with a bunch of nostalgia-damaged geeks looking to relive their youths. A middle-aged guy who fantasizes about having the fancy bike he lusted for in his childhood is willing to pay big bucks in his attempt. (These are also probably the guys responsible for the popularity of porno flicks about cheerleaders.) Why compete for these bikes? If I had a Schwinn, I'd sell it to one of those geeks, get my hands on a cheapo frame, and use the savings to buy lots of cool details for it that I couldn't make myself. What about you? You're primarily a car guy, but I know you've also got a fair-sized stable of bikes. Do you go in for Schwinns, or does your common-sense approach apply to two-wheelers, as well? Frank: Cheerleaders on Schwinns? I'll have to think about that... To start with, we like weird, it doesn't matter where it comes from... We have a bike with side car from the Philippines, one of those replica Penny Farthings from Coker, one of the tiny bikes you see in the circus, a tandem, etc in our collection. We also have the mountain bikes and 10 speeds for everyday use but we definitely tilt towards the twisted... Someone once said that nostalgia is strip mining our past and I believe that to be a fairly accurate statement. I never had a Schwinn when I was a kid so I can't really miss something I never had (it was a Murray with the light on the fender and the tanks and who's going to pay good money for one of them or restore something that was mediocre at best anyway?). It was certainly nothing to brag about but what made me what I am today was that day in the seventh grade when Harold Winslow showed up one morning with his new, trick Schwinn with the purple candy paint, some trick white accent pinstripes, turned up handle bars, no front fender and bobbed rear fender. It rocked my world! Before that, as an obedient military brat, I collected military models (ships and planes) and photos, briefly flirted with the electric trains but had never even considered building model cars, much less customizing, cars, bikes or anything else... In fact there's a trend in the hot rod world where they are now taking all of the cars we didn't want when we were young and tricking them out. They call them "odd rods" and I kind of like the term as I love to find a piece of dog ugly mechanicals and figure out how to make them pretty. After I did my first Type III VW motor in a trike, I had a great time when people would ask me if it was a Porsche, a Corvair of if that unique rear mounted fan housing meant it was a turbo... In the stock market, investors who bet against everyone else's common, perceived wisdom are known as contrarians. Most of the time, they may lose but when they win, they win big and I see that as the coming trend. Not only has Hemmings and Ebay ruined what used to be fun with their ridiculous prices, but everyone can't all do the same thing at the same time all the time. And why would you want to anyway? Imagine how boring it would be if everyone drove tricked out '32 Fords, for instance... A good analogy is us restaurant people: no way do we ever go out to dinner at 6 PM on a Friday or Saturday night. Just because everyone else is doing it is certainly no rationale when we are used to walking into a movie on Monday afternoon (almost all restaurant people are off on Mondays), sitting anywhere we want and enjoying a very uncrowded theater experience before we stop by our favorite place to eat for a nice, uncrowded early Monday evening dinner. The world is a lot less crowded that way as anyone who moves to the sound of a different drummer can tell you, and we like it that way... Most old bikes end up getting tossed in trash or given away and that's certainly a good place to start a project. By the time you're done, it won't be a Schwinn anyway but it will be exactly what you want, who cares what the label says? I guess the best example of how not to do it are the guys that spend thousands and thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of their work to perfectly match the stock overspray pattern in the 1959 Rambler Wagon's engine compartment (not that I have anything against Rambler's it's merely an example), pay way too much for old stock engine compartment decals, etc and make sure all the factory numbers are "correct". In the end, they have a bone-stock car that no one wanted way back when it was new, it handles like something out of the last century and cost them 5 or 6 times what the new one did. My approach would be to shave the trim (sell it to one of those guys, like you mentioned in your example), part out almost everything else and drop in that late model motor and tranny you found at the junk yard or from your buddy's wrecked Camaro, throw one of the Mustang II front end kits under it, paint it yourself and drive it for free (after you part the other stuff out) for the next 20 years. Restoration is the sport of the anal retentive... Jim: I always thought detailing was the sport of the anal retentive! I guess I'm a looser guy than I thought. BR&K's unofficial rallying cry is "We got nothin' to lose but our friggin' decals!" Works for me. Although there's a show category we've come up with called "Ghost Restoration" which involves faking stock bikes which never actually existed. Lots of phony decal and trim detailing involved with that one, which is considerably more fun than tracking down real ones, and a lot cheaper than paying through the nose for them. Your mentioning your penny farthing bike reminds me of our on-and-off discussions about motorizing it. While browsing through RBR's site www.hiwheel.com, I found this production designer's sketch for a film bike. RBR did the wheels for it. I presume that the film is that Wild Wild West deal from a year or two back. Would you be inclined to agree with me that an engine is the ultimate bit of detailing that you can stick on a bike, or do you have another candidate? Frank: Thanks for pointing out the Wild Wild West bike. I love that thing even though it's wildly impractical or like I later realized about one of my early creations: it's great sculpture but lousy engineering... I do admire the bikes from the period when they transitioned into light motorcycles. They had great style even though the engineering was very primitive compared to modern mechanicals but I am of two minds about adding a motor to a bike however. I'm a gadget guy as much as anybody else but the customizer in me truly believes that less is more. I shave all trim and badges from my cars (and bikes), don't believe in decals, dealer's license plates frames and won't even wear a T-shirt with a logo on it (unless they want to pay me for it). The T-shirt thing goes back to when the gas stations and other manufacturers would give them away for free, just to have their brand name seen in public, in essence they were willing to support the cost of you being a walking billboard for their product. A few years later and now they want us to pay to wear their advertising when we walk around? I don't think so... Anyway, I prefer my machinery like my women, smooth and low (just kidding dear). I do appreciate that Zipper motor kit on that 10 speed (it's a kick in the pants and even the Harley guys come back from a trip around the block with an ear to ear smile) but it really isn't the prettiest thing in the world and I can see all kinds of ways to wrap a sweet little fairing around it and smooth out its appearance. Some of the other, larger motor kits also appeal to me based on their design but then we are talking about something expensive enough that it borders on the cost of a good used motorcycle. Then there are those wild little V-8 motors you showed me... I absolutely adore them but I will never spend that kind of money no matter how affluent I may become. They are gorgeous but simply too extravagant for my taste. A buddy of ours slaps decals all over his tool box and I give him anything speed related I get (like the one for the headers for my Datsun motor project, the Mallory distributor, etc). And I do admire phantom rides of all sorts (in fact, I have several future projects in mind). Finally, if less is more, perhaps I would nominate some serious polished stainless steel hardware (or that gorgeous billet aluminum machine work on Real's bike) as the ultimate accessory, the devil being in the details and all that (thereby bringing this conversation neatly around to our starting point)... Jim: You're right about the motorized penny farthing in the drawing being impractical. The accompanying text on the RBR site actually says that it had to be pulled on rails for the shot. This kind of galls me. When I do a machine design for film or whatever, I make sure that it could actually function-even if function isn't called for in the script. Function is the critical part of the design, and determines the way a thing looks. Any other approach to fake machine design is just Dr. Seuss crap, in my book. When I built a fake engine for my daughter's tricycle, I made sure that the engine design and installation were as real as possible. The generic engine block and cylinder barrel looked kind of like a Briggs and Stratton. I cheated on the intake side, by giving it a fake fuel injection, rather than a carburetor; but it was a functional-looking fake fuel injection, and was practical for actually making one. Same with the exhaust system- it wasn't like existing small-engine muffler, but certainly could have been, and much nicer-looking than the usual. The speed sensor apparatus for controlling the rev-rate of the electronic engine-sound generator was housed in a functional-looking "chain guard" connecting the engine to one of the rear wheels. It was so realistic that, on a couple of occasions, disapproving busybodies stopped us on the street to inform us that 3-year-olds needed exercise, and that it was bad for them to ride motorized vehicles. That's what I call successful faking. I do love that late 19th-century Jules-Verne-ish industrial design, and am pretty good at faking that, too. But practical machine design of that period is interesting enough, without throwing in a lot of idiotic wildly-impractical window-dressing. As you may have guessed by now, I despise most of the other production designers in the film business. Funny, this rant has brought me around to lowrider-bike detailing. I have a hellacious amount of respect for the thought those guys put into distinguishing their machines from all those others based on exactly the same frame, wheels, handlebars, seats, and general off-the-shelf equippage. I love the individual approaches to frame fairing, paint and graphics. One bit of detailing I despise, though, is those fake exhaust pipes that they mount to the rear axle. While we were checking out the lowrider-parts section in one of the bike shops we patronized for 2much!!!, Shane became enamored of those fake pipes. Dave and I privately agreed that we'd club him insensible if he made an attempt at actually trying to stick some on the thing. In my magnum opus on bike lighting, I showed a suggested design based upon that lovely chromed brass drain tubing from the hardware store, which makes a curved right-angle bend. The tubes were rear-facing, and would house hi-brightness LEDs. Three of them would function as tail-lighting and directional signalling. The fact that they would suggest exhaust pipes was merely a nice psychological touch. That's considerably different from just bolting-on an obviously-non-functional piece of window dressing. I believe you mentioned decals and stickers? Those are another pet gripe of mine. When my daughter had just about outgrown her "motorized" tricycle, I built her a bike- on the cheap, as usual. It was based upon a nice little 16" chrome "BMX" I found in a thrift store. I fitted it out very nicely, with chrome fenders, a springer-sissy banana saddle, etc. I even machined a polished alloy mount for a chromed "Goddess" figure just in front of the stem. It was gorgeous, and really tasteful, for an all-chrome machine. Soon thereafter, we were in the local bike shop. Feeling unusually generous, for a cheapskate, I told her that if she saw something for her bike, I'd buy it for her. She chose to buy about a dozen "X-treme Sport"-style stickers, and proceeded to plaster them all over my creation, even on the upholstery. It was too late for an abortion, and it was her bike; so I let it ride. But I learned an important lesson that day. From then on, we went to the bike store with a specific goal in mind. I'm glad I let her live. She's 17 now, and her taste has improved considerably. I agree with you on Real's machined details on Fat Red- I love that stuff, too. Ironically, If 2much!!! had been built in New York, it would probably have a lot of those touches on it, as I hang out at a machine shop and get really cheap rates because I do the dog work on machined projects. Here in Baton Rouge, we only had stuff like a Sawzall, a drill press, a dinky bandsaw, and grinders to work with, though. So I ended up putty-sculpting and fabricating functional details, rather than machining them. There's one particular piece on there, though, that was just begging for milling. It's a small plate used to clamp the battery cage to the former seat tube of the donor rear. It's a little 3/4 X 3" rectangle with two holes and rounded ends, fabricated from 1/8" aluminum stock. It functions perfectly as-is, of course. I would dearly love it if it could have been machined from 1/4" stock, end-mill-grooved and paint-filled. Of course, under normal conditions it's totally concealed, and you'd have to strip the bodywork off the rear to see it, but I want it there, anyway. Maybe when I get back to New York.... Frank: I studied Architectural Design in college (among other things) and they practically beat it into our consciousness that "form follows function" and although I had already reached that conclusion by myself by the time I was 19, it can't be emphasized too strongly. Trailer Queen cars (and bikes, etc) are merely great sculpture but their true function is to be driven (or ridden). My preoccupation with clean lines also spills over into my preferences for architecture as I am a minimalist by nature and if I had my druthers, my house would only have built in furniture and very little on the walls in the way of decor. Living in Japan and Okinawa only reinforced this tendency in me. I do have to admit to a great fondness for Art Deco as well, styling many of your own works exhibit. Style for its' own sake can be very refreshing, especially if the machine underneath also actually works.. And on a purely abstract level, I also have to admit to a certain attraction to mechanical absurdity (which is why we also call ourselves The Institute for the Mechanically Deranged). Like horrible, Grade "C" movies (another personal predilection which is why we write the reviews for "Video Hell"), they show us how not to do it. I should also mention that that is why we adore Elvis in England's wonderful web site www.3-wheelers.com. Elvis has some great early English (and other) three wheeler designs there, machines at once archaic and yet delightful, in an early Industrial Age kind of way. Again, most are studies in how not to do it... I am so against decals in general that I even strip them off of our home appliances, our daily drivers, my tools, virtually anything they come attached to and within minutes of them entering the house or garage. If you look at how stock cars are designed, they are almost elegant until the marketing department decides to stick a badge on all four sides of the damn thing so every idiot will know what it is that you are driving and then throw on a batch of generally ugly and totally useless chrome trim, allegedly to "improve" it but in reality to tack several hundred bucks more onto the price. That really rankles me and it's also an example of design by committee, a very effective way to screw up great design. Jim: That reminds me of a story which may be apocryphal, but has the ring of truth to it. I'm sure that you're familiar with the General Motors cars of 1958, which are legendary for their excessive chrome trim. Supposedly, at the annual dealers meeting, the styling dept. had prepared overhead projection transparencies of various chrome trim schemes. These were to be projected on the cars' basic bodies, with the dealers to vote on their favorites. According to the legend, the transparencies all stuck together, so the '58 Buick got all the trim projected on it at the same time, and the dealers gave it a standing ovation. Frank: By the way, if you ever get a chance to ride a Penny Farthing or a replica, you will soon see why they had to tow it on rails across terrain like that. They steer slowly, it takes the width of a street to turn around, a slight incline either way can be disastrous and they have absolutely no suspension so you feel every little bump in the road (or in their case), the desert. They say that our great grandfathers lived in the time of "iron men and wooden ships" and I have to concur. They called these bikes "bone shakers" or something like that and they are indeed for the hardier souls among us... A few years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a man in the street interview for New Years, asking people what they'd like to see for the coming year. This is California and you do expect to get a certain amount of touchy-feely crap when you lob a soft ball question like that out there but one answer has stuck in my head ever since: "I wish people with taste had more money and people with money had more taste..." Jim: I'm very fond of art deco, true; as well as art nouveau. I think this is my personal theory, but it may have soaked in while I was sleeping through art history class; it's to do with those styles. Art Nouveau is a result of the way industrial casting patterns were made in the Victorian age. Everything was cast iron, and the patterns were carved wood. The same people made furniture, so they used a lot of intricate foliage, etc, as in furniture of the period. Art Deco happened because industrial designers had access to milling machines as electrically-driven machines became available. This was reflected in the patterns, for alloy castings and metal stampings, which were made using the new machinery. In that respect, Real's work and classic hot-rod billet design is pure Art Deco. Frank: Of course you're aware of Posie's Extremeliner, one of the truest examples of popular hot rodding and Art Deco colliding and producing some great rolling art. That car does it for me, I have to admit.. And the coffin-nose Cord, the Delahayes, etc are absolutely stunning and in a perfect world, I'd do something like that with a set of mechanicals as affordable as the VW stuff (detailed all the way out, of course). I have spent most of my life learning mechanicals as I always thought those classic and swoopy lines were beyond my ability but I've changed my mind over the last few months (largely in part to what you've taught me about fabrication) and hope to eventually clear the deck to tackle a project with that kind of style and grace. Of course I'll have to build it myself as those cars are way out of my league but getting there should be all the fun! Jim: I've designed a "streamlined" cruiser frame in pure '30s shape (teardrop, like 2much!!!'s original rear fender). It may be the next Wizard Bros.production. I suppose it'll have the usual tank, or  maybe a full-frame fairing, along with ribbed trim and the rest of the deco trim vernacular. We'll probably make it out of CroMoly, though, along with composite tank and fenders, so it shouldn't weigh a ton, like 2much!!! But it'll have that detail-on-top-of-detail look and feel to it. Didn't you send me a photo of the Posie Extremliner a while back? How about sending it to me here, so we can show it to the readers? It was a streamlined hot-rod RV sort of thing, wasn't it? Frank: The Extremeliner is an Art Deco Woodie with one of the first Harlequin (color shifting) paint jobs. The styling is dramatic and the execution is awesome.There are also asymmetrical details in places (it gets extra points just for being able to make that work). The wood work and leather interior are also first rate workmanship. See it on Posie's site at: http://www.posiesrodsandcustoms.com/posies_Xtremeliner.asp?id=20 Jim: That's not the one I was thinking of at all! Fantastic detailing on that thing. What's up with those front wheel covers? How does that possibly work? Frank: This is Art Himsl's Zeppelin Hot Rod RV (this is what you were thinking of?) Jim: Yes, that's the one. Yum Yum! I guess  he used aircraft dacron for the shrunk skin. Pity he's not heard of Kevlar Spandex 8-) I go through periods in which I study fields outside the ones I'm directly involved with. I pick up all sorts of tricks and interesting ways of thinking that way. About fifteen years ago, I started getting magazines to do with home and kit-built aircraft every month. That's where I gained a lot of knowledge and insight into processes like composite over foam, wooden and metal aircraft construction techniques, etc. Later, I subscribed to Wooden Boat for a year, and gained a lot of insight into that technology and the approaches to detailing it. Same with firearms and kit cars. I really like to step outside my usual box and steep myself in other areas of expertise for a while. Do you do that? Frank: I'm an automotive slut and get ideas from almost everything out there (of course they aren't necessarily good ideas but...). I have always loved the traditional hot rod sense of frugality, which ties in nicely with the VW thing as they are (were) the last affordable frontier but with what California's smog laws and the new crop of hobbyists have done to their numbers, they are getting expensive too. I also get ideas from totally unrelated disciplines; like the computer industry's use of exotic fasteners like Torx bits and button head bolts. Sometimes the traditional Allen head bolt just doesn't look right and a trip to the nuts and bolts section of a good hardware store has the solution for a problem you haven't really even defined yet. There are all kinds of goodies in those little bins and even though it may not come to you while you are looking at them, sooner or later it will. I also get ideas from some very unlikely places such as your own web site. I like cool bikes as much as the next guy but I really like vehicles with motors and many of the bikes on your site have great style, which would translate easily into motorcyclese. And when we were first introduced and you started telling me (and showing me) about the stretched spandex method, my brain literally spun for several months, the implications were staggering! I could now do the things I had only dreamt about for years... Then I saw an episode of "This Old House" where they used some trim made out of foam and relieved it from behind to adapt it to a curved wall. Suddenly I could see how to apply it all to a car project and how simple it would be to build a fake woodie using the technique (cut the fake boards out of foam, radius the edges like real wood with my router, cut the relief lines in the back of each piece to follow the curves of a fender, attach it in place on the body, stretch the spandex over it and then apply the resin... I've always loved the look of woodies but missed my chance to own one when they were reasonably priced and in fair shape for restoration. Now I can have my own (even if I do have to build it myself) and without having to replace all of that rotted wood and rusted metal. Best of all, it won't cost much as VW mechanicals are still very affordable and it'll never rot. Jim: Well, Frank, I think we ought to shut this discussion down, so I can finish getting this issue to bed. I know we could keep going for much longer; after all, we've been doing it for a couple of years now. I love this kind of chat. I hope this has raised our audience's detail consciousness, somewhat. Detailing is what makes the difference between something which is nice, and something which is incredibly cool. Many people, especially those just starting out in bike kustomizing, or anything else, for that matter, are content with just doing the thing. They're so impatiant to get it achieved, that they hardly consider how they can make it really great. It's like a piano-playing dog. Sure, a piano-playing dog is interesting: but the big question is "does it play well enough to get to Carnegie Hall"?  Not without the details. Thanks, Frank, it's been the usual pleasure.

Sweating The Details: A Conversation Between Jim Wilson and J. Frank Webster, On One Of Their Favorite Topics. Frank and I were introduced a couple of years ago. We hit it off when we discovered that we were both equally maniacal about fine detailing. Frank's mostly into hot rods, and I'm mostly interested in custom bikes, pedal cars and that sort of vehicles. However, we would have found common cause if he'd been into custom firearms and I'd been into custom knives. Details is details. We both think of a project as something to be detailed.

Jim: You know, Frank, to the uninitiated looking at one of our projects, it might seem that these are incredibly expensive things we build, as they have a level of detailing more commonly associated with Rolls-Royces, English shotguns, and other high-end luxo toys of the rich and famous. However, I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to parting with cash, and you're actually notorious for it- people don't call you "$5 Frank" because you're a big tipper, do they? Frank: Actually it's exactly the opposite and I got that name by someone who really doesn't know me at all.   I generally spare no expense when it comes to doing it right but, like having your car painted at a shop, the supplies are only about 10% of the total cost: the rest being labor. And as I am my own shop, I do almost 100% of my own labor. I may send something out to get powder coated or chromed once in a while but I do all of the "grunt work" such as stripping it all down to bare metal, polishing the parts, painting, etc. Additionally, in the VW aftermarket, there are a large number of very affordable chrome plated goodies available and it's possible to put together a show quality motor for a couple of hundred bucks with a little ingenuity and some scrounged-up stuff like spare paint, used carbs you rebuild yourself and stuff from swap meets and your parts bin. Again, the main thing is the labor and since you are doing it yourself... . While we are talking about paint I should mention a couple of things the average guy should know. One is that a lot of paint stores may have a gallon or two of paint that they mixed up for one of their larger commercial customers and it was slightly off compared to what they needed to match it to so it is just sitting on a shelf in the back of the store, waiting to go bad. After you have gotten to know the guys at your local paint shop, ask them if that happens to them and you will be surprised by what they say and how little they are willing to let it go for. There's nothing wrong with it and if all you know is that you want a certain color and are doing the whole project at once, not trying to match another color, you can pick it up for pennies on the dollar. The other thing to know is that you can tint not only primer (an old hot rodder's trick) but paint as well. Wes the Welder once bought a couple of gallons of Caterpillar Yellow at a yard sale for $2, added a little tint to make green out of it and painted a Bug with less than half of it after thinning it considerably, then tinted the rest and painted another, larger car brown. Total cost: less than $10 for enough paint to do 2 cars and still have leftover paint for touch ups, etc. How I got the name is a fun story, however. As I said before, I spare no expense when I am doing a project. I'll do as much of the work as is possible but I don't believe in cutting corners if it at all affects the quality of the outcome and step up and pay the money (of course I've taught myself to polish and paint and will soon buy one of those do it yourself powder coat outfits). And, as an almost 30 year VW hobbyist, you eventually build up a rather substantial parts inventory, almost as large as a local shop would have, prepared for almost any contingency. I should also point out that you will, at some point, become almost modular in your approach as you can yank a motor with problems and slap another spare one in, when all of this stuff gains an almost critical mass. Additionally, you develop relationships with parts suppliers and know where to find the cheapest prices, you can also do business by mail order, you can order almost anything online nowadays and you always take full advantage of vendor sales at car shows and swap meets. In short, you have it all, sometimes with several spares as well. A friend we have known almost 25 years had started working at a local VW shop. When I walked in to buy a few things one day, the owner pointed at me (not knowing we knew each other) and whispered to him "That's Five Dollar Frank; that cheap son of a bitch comes in here all the time and never buys anything over $5..." He didn't know that my garage was probably almost as well equipped as his and that I only bought from him when I absolutely had to have it as his prices in this small town are almost double what I would pay anywhere else in the Bay Area. My buddy couldn't wait to get over here after work and tell me what the guy had said and we all had a big laugh over the absurdity of it. After I told the story to a number of friends, one pointed out that I had just acquired my hot rodder's nickname and that frugality is an admired trait in that circle and in a perverse sort of way, it was a compliment, even if that wasn't how he intended it. Fine, call me Five Dollar Frank (I've been called a lot worse)... Jim: Oh, right! I forgot about the story about how you got that alias. I, for one, come from a long line of cheap sons of bitches, and I'm proud that I'm carrying on the family tradition. Just about every detail in 2much!!! is made from scrap, and that's a pattern that extends through almost everything that I do. My motto is "Any damned idiot can walk into a store with a pile of money; smart guys get their stuff for free". One of my film shop assistants once said to me, "Jim, you kill me. You can pick up a piece of trash off the shop floor, and next thing you know, it's an important detail in the scene". I'm always checking out dumpsters for cool things that might work themselves into a project someday, and that also applies to raw materials. If I see a piece of aluminum stock in a trash pile, that puppy follows me home. And anything chrome plated becomes part of my pallete. Like Jon Gnagy pointed out- "Everything is made up of spheres, cones, cylinders and rectangles." Same deal with chrome shapes. Still, Frank, you gotta admit that you can build a finer machine for less money than most people, and that's because you're smarter than most of them, and smart guys.... Frank: It also doesn't hurt that I come from a long line of horse traders (or was that horse thieves?) and I tell everyone that I was raised by Bilko. People think I'm kidding but I'm not. For those of you unfamiliar with Sergeant Ernie Bilko (Phil Silvers, not the Steve Martin movie, the old black & white TV show), he was a balding, conniving career Army guy who my father, also a career military man, not only emulated but actually very closely resembled. Like Bilko, my dad had a finger in every deal that went by and I learned at the feet of the master. He held regular raffles, cook outs, door prizes and drawings at the NCO Club and the Rod & Gun Clubs on the Air Force bases we lived on, bought and sold used cars and appliances, jewelry, antiques, Turkish rugs, TV's, stereos, guns, you name it. He also had 5 separate crews for cleaning base housing when people were transferred, generally paying a fair local wage, pocketed the rest of the money and had his choice of anything they left behind, which he would then sell later, etc. One time he managed to "appropriate" a freight train car full of aluminum tubing that had gotten lost in the paper shuffle and after he set up the tools and jigs (and pressed my brother and me into service), almost everyone we know had aluminum fences, aluminum this and aluminum that. During most of my time as a VW hobbyist, I have been offered many, many cars just for towing them away, some perfectly good running cars that were just looking for a new home. It gets that way no matter what you do once people realize you're the VW (or whatever) guy.. . And then there's Big Daddy Roth, also one of my life-long role models. Almost everything he ever built was based on whatever deal happened to come by at the right price. One of his later works was based on that 3-banger GEO Metro motor just because he got a deal on it. Of course after it was done, he had the entire frame chrome plated (there's no face like chrome, no face like chrome, no face like chrome...). Big Daddy must have had a serious favor or two owed him for that one, as chrome is way too expensive nowadays (I know someone who restored their Mercedes approximately 15 years ago and it cost him over $5K to replate it all, way back then). And Big Daddy had built the frame in such a way that it all bolted together and could be pulled apart to be UPS'ed to the platers and then back to him when it was done. Earlier in his career, he built a number of VW and Corvair powered creations (one of them even mounted the engine upside down!), and of course he practically invented the fiberglass bodied VW trike kit... Since I mainly do VW stuff, I have a lot of stuff sitting around that will eventually get used in a future project. Recently, I sold a motor for one of my neighbors and by the time the deal was done, I walked away with a great set of dual, dual 40 mm Dell Orto carbs jetted for nitrous, with ported and polished intakes, linkages, etc. It doesn't hurt to find yourself in the middle of deals like that either as the guy I sold the motor for walked away with a thousand bucks for something that had sat on his garage floor for the last 10 years, the other guy got almost $4K worth of motor at a wonderful price and I got a thousand bucks worth of carbs for being in the right place at the right time. Can't beat that! Of course, now I'm going to have to build another nasty little motor to go with those carbs and thanks to the ideas you've given me about fabrication using common, affordable materials like foam rubber and panty hose, it's going to have a wild, state of the art fan shroud and cylinder cooling tin assembly which will resemble carbon fiber at a fraction of the cost (and that polished block, as I mentioned earlier). It'll also have some nice big valve heads, stainless steel exhaust system and a nice little cam. It sounds like it'll be fairly expensive (and it will definitely be another show-quality masterpiece, even if I do say so myself) but it really won't be very expensive at all as the carbs cost me nothing, the stainless steel exhaust system is less than $300 (VW stuff is cheap), jugs and pistons are just over a hundred bucks, a serious cam is $50, polishing the case and fabbing up the shroud assembly will mainly cost me my own labor and I'll have approximately $500 in the big valve heads, approximately a thousand bucks total, dirt cheap for a brand new and fairly fast motor... Jim: This supports my thesis that smart guys do it on the cheap. The VW is the cheapest hot-rod powerplant around, so that's what you build hot-rods around. Back in the golden age of hot rodding, guys built their hot rods around Ford flatheads, and later, small-block Chevys, and they used Ford platforms because they were common and cheap. I had to laugh a year or two ago. Popular Mechanics (which used to be a great magazine for guys who liked to make things, but is now yet another mediocre magazine for guys who like to buy things) ran an article called something like "the new hot rods". It was about pampered rich kids who take Hondas, Toyotas, etc. and hop them up. The magazine had the nerve to state that these over-priced, gadget-ridden ricemobiles were the "new deuces". Idiots! I don't know what the "new deuce" is, but the VW engine is definitely today's Flathead. Getting back to bicycles, there's a common perception that Schwinns are almost compulsory for building a lowrider bike. To a lesser extent, this is also the case with bike rodders. So, people who want to build one go out and beat the bushes for a "genuine Schwinn" for a basis, thereby competing with a bunch of nostalgia-damaged geeks looking to relive their youths. A middle-aged guy who fantasizes about having the fancy bike he lusted for in his childhood is willing to pay big bucks in his attempt. (These are also probably the guys responsible for the popularity of porno flicks about cheerleaders.) Why compete for these bikes? If I had a Schwinn, I'd sell it to one of those geeks, get my hands on a cheapo frame, and use the savings to buy lots of cool details for it that I couldn't make myself. What about you? You're primarily a car guy, but I know you've also got a fair-sized stable of bikes. Do you go in for Schwinns, or does your common-sense approach apply to two-wheelers, as well? Frank: Cheerleaders on Schwinns? I'll have to think about that... To start with, we like weird, it doesn't matter where it comes from... We have a bike with side car from the Philippines, one of those replica Penny Farthings from Coker, one of the tiny bikes you see in the circus, a tandem, etc in our collection. We also have the mountain bikes and 10 speeds for everyday use but we definitely tilt towards the twisted... Someone once said that nostalgia is strip mining our past and I believe that to be a fairly accurate statement. I never had a Schwinn when I was a kid so I can't really miss something I never had (it was a Murray with the light on the fender and the tanks and who's going to pay good money for one of them or restore something that was mediocre at best anyway?). It was certainly nothing to brag about but what made me what I am today was that day in the seventh grade when Harold Winslow showed up one morning with his new, trick Schwinn with the purple candy paint, some trick white accent pinstripes, turned up handle bars, no front fender and bobbed rear fender. It rocked my world! Before that, as an obedient military brat, I collected military models (ships and planes) and photos, briefly flirted with the electric trains but had never even considered building model cars, much less customizing, cars, bikes or anything else... In fact there's a trend in the hot rod world where they are now taking all of the cars we didn't want when we were young and tricking them out. They call them "odd rods" and I kind of like the term as I love to find a piece of dog ugly mechanicals and figure out how to make them pretty. After I did my first Type III VW motor in a trike, I had a great time when people would ask me if it was a Porsche, a Corvair of if that unique rear mounted fan housing meant it was a turbo... In the stock market, investors who bet against everyone else's common, perceived wisdom are known as contrarians. Most of the time, they may lose but when they win, they win big and I see that as the coming trend. Not only has Hemmings and Ebay ruined what used to be fun with their ridiculous prices, but everyone can't all do the same thing at the same time all the time. And why would you want to anyway? Imagine how boring it would be if everyone drove tricked out '32 Fords, for instance... A good analogy is us restaurant people: no way do we ever go out to dinner at 6 PM on a Friday or Saturday night. Just because everyone else is doing it is certainly no rationale when we are used to walking into a movie on Monday afternoon (almost all restaurant people are off on Mondays), sitting anywhere we want and enjoying a very uncrowded theater experience before we stop by our favorite place to eat for a nice, uncrowded early Monday evening dinner. The world is a lot less crowded that way as anyone who moves to the sound of a different drummer can tell you, and we like it that way... Most old bikes end up getting tossed in trash or given away and that's certainly a good place to start a project. By the time you're done, it won't be a Schwinn anyway but it will be exactly what you want, who cares what the label says? I guess the best example of how not to do it are the guys that spend thousands and thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of their work to perfectly match the stock overspray pattern in the 1959 Rambler Wagon's engine compartment (not that I have anything against Rambler's it's merely an example), pay way too much for old stock engine compartment decals, etc and make sure all the factory numbers are "correct". In the end, they have a bone-stock car that no one wanted way back when it was new, it handles like something out of the last century and cost them 5 or 6 times what the new one did. My approach would be to shave the trim (sell it to one of those guys, like you mentioned in your example), part out almost everything else and drop in that late model motor and tranny you found at the junk yard or from your buddy's wrecked Camaro, throw one of the Mustang II front end kits under it, paint it yourself and drive it for free (after you part the other stuff out) for the next 20 years. Restoration is the sport of the anal retentive... Jim: I always thought detailing was the sport of the anal retentive! I guess I'm a looser guy than I thought. BR&K's unofficial rallying cry is "We got nothin' to lose but our friggin' decals!" Works for me. Although there's a show category we've come up with called "Ghost Restoration" which involves faking stock bikes which never actually existed. Lots of phony decal and trim detailing involved with that one, which is considerably more fun than tracking down real ones, and a lot cheaper than paying through the nose for them. Your mentioning your penny farthing bike reminds me of our on-and-off discussions about motorizing it. While browsing through RBR's site www.hiwheel.com, I found this production designer's sketch for a film bike. RBR did the wheels for it. I presume that the film is that Wild Wild West deal from a year or two back. Would you be inclined to agree with me that an engine is the ultimate bit of detailing that you can stick on a bike, or do you have another candidate? Frank: Thanks for pointing out the Wild Wild West bike. I love that thing even though it's wildly impractical or like I later realized about one of my early creations: it's great sculpture but lousy engineering... I do admire the bikes from the period when they transitioned into light motorcycles. They had great style even though the engineering was very primitive compared to modern mechanicals but I am of two minds about adding a motor to a bike however.