Five Great Gifts for Car People, or My Christmas Rocked
December came through in a big way, and I’m not just talking
about the weight I gained. December
added a historic hot rod to my stable (although, quite small), gave me some fun
and afforded me the opportunity to make my two (classic?) cars better.
How?
Well, here’s the five gifts I was given, gifts that I think any car
enthusiast would enjoy.
First Gift Idea – Buy your hard-to-relate-to car obsessed
relative the car they want.
Does this sound insane?
What, you didn’t win the lottery?
That’s ok. It turns
out, you don’t have to buy them the full-size version to make their day. Most car enthusiasts are giant
five-year-olds. They’ll be happy with a
little version of a favorite car.
My family bought me Dragula, the classic Munsters dragstrip
car. I’ve forced them to watch reruns of
the show… many times, but they thoroughly embraced it for Christmas, buying me
a Dragula Christmas-tree ornament.
December 26th, there was no way I was putting
Dragula in the Christmas decoration box, bound for eleven months in the attic,
so I drilled a hole in my bolt bin and Dragula joined my other cars in the
garage.
Warning – You need to
find a car/motorcycle/etc. that the recipient actually enjoys.
Several years ago my kids bought me a Harley metal sign for
Christmas. I smiled, told them thanks,
and then strategically placed it in the garage where they could see it, but
anyone taller than 3 feet likely wouldn’t.
I’m just not a Harley guy. That sign still haunts my garage’s base
boards, occasionally reappearing from behind cabinets.
So, buy that car-crazed loved one a hot wheels car, model
kit, scale model, tree ornament, 80s style poster, whatever… as long as it is
of a car you know they love.
Second Gift Idea – cool vintage stickers. Vintage water
transfer stickers are even better.
Some random woman gave me this present this year. Sounds weird, but it’s true.
My 1957 MGA was constructed piece-mill from junkyard parts
and I’ve taken to calling it Frankenstein.
Remember above, when I mentioned that I have a strange affinity to the
Munsters? I set out searching for a
sticker of Herman Munster to put on my windshield. But, because it’s my windshield, I wanted the
sticker to only inhabit about 1.5” of glass in a corner. I couldn’t find a Herman that small.
I reached out to a woman on Etsy who was selling small
water-transfer style Boris Karloff Frankenstein stickers. I asked if she had a Herman Munster, but
unfortunately she’d never made a Herman design. So I bought a little
Frankenstein.
When the mail arrived, I was delighted to find a
Frankenstein sticker, and a Herman Munster face! She’d apparently decided to
try her hand at Herman’s face. It was a
great gift!
Unfortunately, when I put the Herman sticker on the car… it
didn’t really look like him.
So I took
it off, and went with the Frankenstein.
And it’s rad. It fits the car
perfectly.
So, buy that obsessive car nut several vintage
stickers. You can find them by searching
ebay for “vintage hot rod sticker” and “vintage hot rod water transfer”. Get more than one, in case your enthusiast
finds the first one doesn’t fit their car right.
Gift Idea Number Three – Let Them Buy the Parts They Need
You might think this is giving money, but not necessarily.
For example, work gave me this gift this year. I worked a lot of overtime and didn’t feel
bad ordering things I “needed”. My
family also “gave me” this gift by being understanding when I was tired,
working weekends, etc.
They were also
understanding when the (many) parts boxes arrived.
But fun parts don’t have to be expensive. For example, I just bought a Harley stereo for my
1957 MGA. It was a returned/second-chance item and the entire stereo system cost me $65.
Now, why would I want to put a Harley stereo in a classic
car?
It turns out (some) motorcycles use little, enclosed speakers,
mounted to the handlebars, fed by a tiny Bluetooth receiver.
I could tuck this entire stereo into an un-used corner under
my dash. It’s fairly loud. And all the stereo needed was a
power wire and a ground. It’s completely
hidden under my dash, so there is no modern unsightly stereo deck that doesn’t fit the car, and it
plays whatever audio I want from my phone (Pandora, MP3s, etc.). Yes, the wires are a bit of a mess; the stereo came with really long wires and I didn’t cut them down.
For $65 dollars my 1957 MGA was once again (presumably)
blasting early Elvis hits during an excellent December adventure (more on that
later).
Have no idea what part your car nut might enjoy but don’t
want to give cash?
There are gift cards.
Crutchfield sells a huge range of stereo equipment, for all types of
cars, boats, motorcycles, etc. Summit
and Jegs sell a huge range of great parts and tools for all types of cars. Speedway Motors is a more American hot rod
oriented. Dennis Kirk is for
motorcycles. All these companies also sell
fun shirts; I found that Holley has some great vintage design tees.
I wore my David Freiburger “Don’t get it right, just get it
running” t-shirt for most Christmas events this year; after all, it was my new
shirt.
Gift Idea Four – Give the gift of time.
Cars don’t heal themselves. Car folks need free-time to work on their
cars.
Thankfully, my normal work schedule gave me some time off
this December. And the weather was too
cold to go outside and work on our piece-of-junk daily driver, so I was allowed
to work in the garage on the fun cars.
My Lotus 7 (recreation) hadn’t been fully-functional since
the October autocross where I pulled the throttle cable through it’s mount.
Several times I had tried to “fix” the cable by jamming it
back to where it was before I yanked it from the mount, but it was hanging up
on something and the throttle would jam open.
On one trial outing my son and I were about 4 blocks from home when it
jammed. I messed with the cable on the
side of the road but realized I needed to get it back to the garage.
I decided that I’d use the brakes to keep the car from
over-revving. I fired it up and took off
like a rocket. At that moment, some lady
looking like she wanted directions, tried to wave us down. I was literally wide-open, doing all I could
to keep the car from skyrocketing to 8000 RPM (and engine meltdown); there was
no stopping, I must have seemed unkind as we blew past her.
Finally, with a couple days of time, I addressed the problem. I built a better holder for the cable at the
carb, added a throttle return spring, and I built a throttle stop at my pedal so my heavy foot would stop
yanking on the cable so hard. The throttle stop looks simple, and it was, except I had to slide into my footwell upside down; I’m getting old and my torso was kinda sore for days where parts of the car dug into me in the process.
I finally have the Lotus back. After driving the MGA for several months, the
twin cam in the Lotus feels phenomenal.
With everything working, that car is fun to drive, and the motor
responds really well.
At (almost) 40 years, I learned something today. The hubcaps I put on my Lotus’ Camaro Z-28 wheels are referred to as “Poverty Caps” because they were always the cheap factory option. Maybe you all knew that. I just learned it today. The name is entirely legit. This was the cheapest decent-looking wheel/tire combo I could come up with. Their other slang term is “dog dish caps” because a lot of people pulled them off and used them as their dog’s dish.
I have a pair of cool 2002 BMW M3 wheels I’m going to put on someday, but I’m having such a hard time stomaching the $1,000 plus it’s going to cost to put tires on them.
Also, with this gift of time, I installed the earlier
mentioned stereo in the MGA.
So, the fourth gift idea is to give that car nut guilt-free
time in the garage to complete projects.
Don’t just give it, but encourage it!
Gift Idea Five – Give your car lover an adventure.
For me, it was freezing rain that made for a great day. I know, you’re not God and can’t make freezing rain, but again, simply
encouraging and facilitating the fun can be the gift.
After a night of freezing rain, our city had 3” of solid ice
coating all the roads. And it was cold;
the ice was not melting.
I didn’t tell my wife what I was doing. I wasn’t even sure if I should do it, because
I wasn’t sure I’d make it back up our driveway into the garage. But I found myself pulling the MGA out and
doing donuts in the church parking lot at the end of our street.
The MGA drives shockingly well on ice. Better than the Lotus, which I pulled out
later. Except, the MGA’s motor stumbled several
times. Only later, replaying the day in
my head, did I realize I was probably running the fuel tank pickup dry by
spinning the car (all the fuel was probably on the other side of the gas tank).
When I came back to our house, my wife came out. I didn’t know what she was going to say. She might have said, “You’re going to annoy
the neighbor” (which is/was true). But
no, she said, “That sounded like fun, I want to go.”
And we went back down and spun more donuts in the parking
lot, listening to Elvis (except when this video was taken, because my phone
wont take pictures and play music at the same time).
As we were leaving the local undercover police SUV pulled up
and parked at the entrance to the lot. I
have a feeling I had the police called on me, but since we were leaving they
didn’t even talk to us.
Which brings me to Buffalo banning driving during their
winter storm. Really? Again, we’re sacrificing freedom for
safety? I hate to tell you this, you’re
going to die, one way or another. Why
does it seem like so many of you want to do it obese and late in a boring safe
life?
I’m so thankful America wasn’t setup for this design. American freedom was not designed with safety
as the end goal.
It’s like when Oregon told us to flee the forest fires. Me, and a dozen guys from our church, loaded
up some tools and headed to the homes near the fire to fight hot spots threatening
the homes. We didn’t know what we were doing, but the guy in the picture below showed up and gave us a 1/2 hour tutorial on how to actually be helpful ha. I don’t want to flee danger. My life goal isn’t to be safe.
Men pursuing safety is such a sign-of-the-times. I’m sure many more guys, pre-1990, would have
went out with my friends and I during the fires. Now men flee fires, flee ice storms, and flee
sicknesses. Fight fires, go out in the
snow, and workout to be physically capable of handling sickness! It’s a better model. I like my life. I’d recommend it. There is more risk. It’s not a bad thing, it’s actually fun.
Speaking of risk, to avoid a girl’s-only birthday party, I took my five-year-old driving in the woods. He gave me a tour of the left and right ditch. Good thing he’s got some years to work on his skills.
So gift idea number five, is give the gift of
adventure. Encourage it. Buy them a track day experience. Tell them to go compete in an autocross. Make
them do something exciting in a car!
With these gifts, I had a lot of fun with my automotive toys
this December. It revitalized a hobby
that’d been grinding me lately (lots of work on the MGA, Lotus broken, daily
driver needing help, etc.). If you get
the chance to gift any of these five, I’m sure the car lover in your life is
going to appreciate it! I did. Getting all five was a treat.
