(Editor’s Note: Keith Daleen is an avid hot rodder and hill climb racer in his spare time. His full-time job is the General Manager of Burr King in Warsaw, MO.) This is for home builders or enthusiast that like to make parts at home. It isn’t about

Jerry Mlady has been into custom cars and motorcycles since he was a kid. In the third grade, he wrote a letter to Ford Motor Company asking what it would take to be a car designer for them and got a friendly letter back from a Ford Vice President te

During these strange and uncertain pandemic-driven times, car enthusiasts based on the West Coast have come to the realization that the 2020 show season stopped somewhere around March 15. Yet rodders resolved to find alternate ways to get their “car

LOKAR adds to their LS Classic line with the introduction of their new retro-styled LS plug wires. These high-quality plug wires feature 7 mm Kevlar spiral core suppression wire, high-temp EPDM jacketing, and silicone boots. The wires are 9 feet long

Henry Dana grew up in Staten Island, NY, and began drag racing in 1961. He went on to gain drag racing fame on the East Coast running a ’56 Chevy wagon in the Junior Stock class. Henry left N.Y. for sunny Florida in 1969 and eventually opened Dana’s

If you’ve been involved in the custom or hot rod scene for any amount of time, you have most likely heard the term “Carson Top.” Little did I know at the time that the final Carson Top by a family member of the originators would be restored right her

Stepping back to October 1981, I was in my first couple of months of employment at Street Rodder magazine, and I received an assignment to photograph the Oak Creek Rod Run in Sedona, Arizona. I jumped into my ‘34 Ford coupe and drove the 450 plus mil

In the early to mid-’60s, Garry White of Richmond BC, was one of the numerous junior high guys who didn’t have a full-time job after school, which meant no money to buy a car. So helping his high school buddy keep his ‘46 Ford on the road was as clos

As a teenager in the late ‘60s, I loved hot rods. I grew up in several small towns in Oregon, so hot rods were few and far between. But I saw many when I went on a trip to Los Angeles with my parents in 1964. Through the ‘60s, I cut pictures from hot

As 2020 comes to an end, custom car enthusiasts across the U.S. have become accustomed to hearing that their favorite event has been postponed or, as in most cases, canceled. As we headed into November, COVID cases continued to climb, and we were ant

I had previously bought a deuce roadster in the early seventies, which had been raced on the grass tracks around Auckland back in the early sixties. I turned that car into a resto rod, which is now owned by Steve Sharpe. But the photos of the day whe

Since a young (14 years old) teenager in 1950, Max McLain has been building hot rods while growing up in California’s oil-rich southern San Joaquin Valley. With his meager tools in the shed, Max channeled the Model A Roadster, laying the groundwork f

Lee Sesler was born in North Denver, Colorado, in 1943 and has been into custom cars and racing all his life, thanks to his dad’s involvement in the hobby. At the young age of 15, he purchased his first ride, a 1948 Ford sedan for the hefty sum of $6

In November of 1998, Larry O’Toole, owner of Graffiti Publications in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, sent a reply letter to American hot rodder Ed Belknap of Monrovia, California. Ed had contacted Larry (also the editor/ publisher of Australian St

Victor purchased the body of the coupe from Bobby Walden in Pomona, CA. It sits on an original 1932 Ford chassis, which he purchased from Scot Gillen in Malibu, who acquired in a deal from Don Fergusson. The engine is a French Flathead V8, which is b