Building season

 The summer is behind and now its time to push my bucket of bolts into the shop for Saskatchewan's long cold building season. This is why we have such nice hot rods in Canada. We can only drive them for 5 months of the year then work on them for the other seven. This also gives us lots of time to save up money, dream about then finally order that shiny new part that will make our car the fastest thing in town. This is all fun and not much beats the feeling of opening up a box of new speed parts! There are guys that build all their toys from used stuff as well. They get great satisfaction from making stuff work that they find cheap. This is also a fun way to do hotrodding but it usually takes longer because of waiting for the right deals or treasure hunting wrecking yards or kijiji. Re-purposing is the newest buzz-word i see on the internet. My wife likes to take some old wooden door, pallet, or window frame and somehow make it into a shelf or decoration for our home. I like to take an old engine or rearend and upgrade it to work in some way in my next project car. My problem is that I have so many ideas for projects but I often have to step back and decide what i can afford or have time to build. The main thing I'd encourage guys to think about in the hobby is to have a plan. I see many young guys with no plan. They just know they want to build something cool and fast. They tend to make bad choices, spend money on the wrong stuff and end up disappointed selling a half done project for a huge loss. They work with what they happen to have because it was free instead of paying a little extra and getting something worth building. Why spend one cent on a 305 chevy when you can get a 350 core for $100 ? Why build a 5.3 LS when you can spend a little extra and get a 6.0L ? Why build a 454 when a 496 rotating kit costs the same amount? Why spend a bunch of money on rebuilding iron heads when you can go to aluminum for an extra $400. I've made some of these mistakes and i'm here to tell you to be patient and do things right. It will always cost more but when you see a guy who's engine doesn't make the power it should because he bought chinese cylinder heads or went with a flat tappet cam when he should have went roller, a few extra bucks is a small price to pay. Buyers remorse never happens to a guy who buys the best parts. It happens to the guy who bought something cheap thats really worth nothing. I made a big purchase this year that i feel good about. I finally bit the bullet and bought an aftermarket block. It was exspensive but will hopefully last for many years and be a strong foundation for big horsepower.
  As I usually do I would also like to take some time to talk about the lessons i've been learning in my faith. I really like hotrodding but i really Love God. Living within God's kingdom and seeing him lead my life has been the biggest joy and blessing this year. I have found him to be completely trustworthy. People that don't trust God don't know what they are missing. This summer I started praying that my family and I would experience what it means to be in God's family. We went on a vacation out Vancouver Island and God answered our prayers. Every time we went to church we met awesome people who are part of the family of God. They showed hospitality to us and we did really cool things that we wouldn't have had the opportunity to do. I love salmon fishing but its terribly exspensive to hire guided boats. On our first Sunday on the island I swam with thousands of Salmon! It was an experience I will never forget. Then I caught a big King Salmon and got a fish cleaning demonstration from an ex - commercial fisherman! The second Sunday we were invited onto a 35 foot cabin cruiser and went out fishing in the pacific ocean twice. We loaded up on Koho salmon and bottom fish. It never cost us a dime! Usually when I'm on holidays I never seem to make it to church. Not Anymore! Lately I've come upon the verse Ephesians 3:20. Take some time to read it and ask God to show you its potential and your potential in his Kingdom. You will never be the same.

its got a thousand horsepower man

  I've noticed in the last couple years that dual purpose street machines are leaning more and more towards single purpose drag cars. The line is getting harder to define for street or race car. Any car that can be driven down the street is called a street car. Even if it gets 3 mpg on race fuel, breathes through 4 inch exhaust and has 14 x 32 slicks. This is all fine by me and makes me want to step up my program. It seems as though a thousand horsepower is the new benchmark and showing up at the local street races with anything less is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Of course by "street races" I mean a top ten list shootout that will become a TV show and have its own website! I have real street race footage on video but posting it online seems like a good way to get sent to jail. I'm not quite sure how that works? Maybe if i blur out the faces, liscence plates and bleep out all the talking along with the scenery that shows the locations? Might not be to enjoyable to watch then.
  So 1000 ponies is what i wanna talk about. Its definitly attainable but whats the best way to do it? If you know me and have read my past postings you'll know that i like big motors. If you start with a big motor over 500 cubic inches then making 600 hp is easy. Preferably more. Then use nitrous to top off your 1000 hp goal. This is all simple but here is the kicker, how are you gonna stick that on the street? A 500 hp car that hooks will leave a 1000 hp car in the tire smoke and there is no catching up when 2 or 3 seconds are spent blazing tires.
  Also if you've been following along you will have read and seen pictures of a project car called "The Ghetto Blaster". After taking a few months off, today is the day when i finally fire up that project again. Teaching young guys about hotrodding is a passion for me and it allows me to share my faith in God. Last year we got the car running and driving. God willing we will tune it this year and get it to the track. I'm very excited about seeing everyone one who took part in it go down the drag strip. I'm hoping for a high eleven at about 113 mph in the quarter. The car weighs 2910 without driver and some of the drivers are pretty light. We never tackled paint and body on the Ghetto Blaster so it still looks like a pile of junk hence the name. I'm not sure if or when paint and body will happen. I had dreamed that a journeyman body worker with a similar ministry would be interested in taking it on as a way to teach young men those skills and about God. Please contact me if you are that man. As far as what we still need to do to the car, It needs new wheels and tires for the back before it hits the track. I'm looking for a set of 15 x 8 weld draglites with around 4 inches of back spacing and a set of Mickey Thomson 28 x 9 slicks. I will likely purchase the tires new but if any readers have these wheels to sell please let me know. This whole ministry has taught me so much and built up my faith. My original goal of building a budget race car was based on what money i thought we could reasonably come up with. I was thinking in terms of what i could accomplish. God however had a much bigger and better plan. We likely have well over ten thousand dollars in this project and alot of high quality brand new parts. I'm so happy I didn't need to spend hours and hours searching for used parts and trying to scrape up money. God is good. If you are a believer please pray for me and the young guys involved in this ministry. If you are not a believer then believe me when i say that if you trust Jesus and turn your life over to him you will never be the same. You will have a purpose and joy in your life as you allow God to direct your paths.

What a year..

Here i am a few months later and so much has happened. Since i lost my welding job in April I have experienced so much and felt so dependent on God. Finances have been very tight and everything I do is weighed in a scale of how badly I need it. Being broke sucks but i'm not starving. God continues to provide. In my last post I told you about "The Rocket Shop School of Performance". In January as a way of reaching young men with the Bible I started hosting evening classes once a week to learn about building race cars and study the Bible. In Febuary the students pooled their money and bought a project car. The plan as detailed in my last post was to run 10's for $5000 and do a wheelie. That proved to be a lofty goal but through the guys donations and a few other generous donations we have came a long way. Our car is a 78 Pontiac LeMans. We built a 11 -1 CR 383 chevy with dart SHP heads and a big comp solid cam that should likely put out around 450 hp. We put it in front of a complely built turbo 350 with a 4000 stall one of my 9 inch rearends with a strange center, 4.10 gears and a 35 spline spool. We also installed a 6 point roll bar and built the car to run as fast as 10.0 at 135 mph. Realistically it should run high 11's. We did not put nitrous on it as i realized it is beyond the scope of this learning process at this point. All through building this car we have taken the time to study the Bible and spend time in prayer as a group every single night. We have learned so much an I myself am thankful that God used me to lead this ministry. The ministry has had many ups and downs. I have found myself at all ends of the spectrum emotionally. I'm sure no one who took part learned near as much as I did. Sometimes I felt very let down by God and other times I felt so thankful and amazed by Him. My faith was tested many times and I think I failed lots of those tests. It seems ironic that the year I have no money I end up leading a ministry that required boat loads of it. I had also looked forward to getting the LeMans to the track this year so the guys could get a chance to race it. We were all prepared to go and needed only one more part to finish the car. We needed the center section for the rearend. We had the money to buy it but had very little time. A guy called me with a used one for sale and we saved up the money to buy it for $1400. Then the guy wouldn't return my calls and we ran out of time to buy a new one. I had spoken to the guys about how we should have faith that God brought us this far and he would provide for us as he had every step of the way so far. I felt so let down when the day came and went for us to race. Everyone had worked so hard and given so much of their money towards building this car that I just couldn't believe we missed our chance. God however does not work on my schedule and has a bigger picture in mind. This has all been part of the tough lessons I have been learning. With the car basically done the mechanical phase a decision needs to be made. Paint and body. The car will pass tech and is ready to race but it defintly won't look good doing it! I'm not a body man and my shop is not equipped for body work. I need God's leading as to the next step because he always has our best in mind. If you are reading this and are also involved in some form of automotive ministry I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading
Brian

contact me (please)

To contact me, click on the email button in my profile. Email me directly at brianj_taylor@hotmail.com or phone me at 306-752-5558. To comment on a post (this would make my day) click on the comments link at the bottom of the posting.

new direction for me

Finding one's life path can be a tough thing. I've been looking for my whole 35 years. I'm not just talking about a career but thats definitly part of it. Money is deceptive. Chasing the almighty dollar is fruitless. You can never have enough and there is always more stuff to own. Sooner or later you have so much stuff that it begins to own you. You can't sleep at night because you are worried about all your stuff. It might get stolen, it might rust away, it might break down or get destroyed by a storm etc.... I live on an acreage so there is certain exspensive pieces of "stuff" i need but i hate owning. A good example is a tractor. They are very exspensive, require lots of maintenance, exspensive to repair, should be stored indoors (especially in winter) and with a diesel engine they can be hard to start in cold weather. I need a tractor for moving snow and vehicles but i hate all the aggrivation of owning one. Another annoying machine is a snowmobile. I love ice fishing and hunting so a snowmobile is necessary but they are such unreliable pieces of junk that i also hate owning them. All these exspensive items brings me to my recent life lessons on money. Over the past 8 years i've been living a double life. All summer long i've been working at a small factory building agricultural structures. It is hard, tiring, unhealthy work but it has a few benefits. The plasma and welding smoke is brutal and lifting heavy steel all day along with kneeling on the floor to weld is very hard on my body. I will likely not live to be an old man if i worked this job my whole life. The main benefit is the good pay and i work good hours (7-4) and its not very far from home (15 min drive). In the summer I make good money but the job doesn't allow for much time off. I'm paid in such a way that if i take a day off, i lose more money that what i would have made by working that day (ya its hard to understand) so i don't take time off in the summer which is the best part of the year where i live.  The other half of the double life that i mentioned is at home in my shop working as an auto mechanic, selling performance car parts and building performace cars/motors. This career also has positive and negative results. I get to be home and spend lots of time with my wife and three children. I have lots of time to travel and hunt / fish with my family. I love working on and building hotrods. I love meeting and talking with other gear heads. I have time to work on my own projects (just put a bigger cam in my malibu) and for all this i am thankfull. The big downer is that i don't make any money. There is only 10 - 15% markup on speed parts and all hotrodders seem to know of somewhere cheaper or easier to get stuff. Hotrodders love buying stuff online from the states (they don't seem to mind paying freight / brokerage) and it seems like a dying hobby. Few young guys are getting into it. If your dad wasn't a hotrodder chances are very slim you will be. So to conclude my story, in the winter when i have all the free time, I have no money to enjoy all that free time!
  This all leads me to share my newest adventure. The Rocket Shop School of Performance! Over the last 3 weeks i have been hosting evening classes out in my shop that i have really enjoyed teaching. We learn about building performance cars and spend a bit of time in a classroom type setting then move to hands on work. Then near the end of the evening i take a few minutes to share a lesson from the Bible. I try to make God the most important part of my life and this class has allowed me to use my gifts to serve him. This class is what i look forward to so much each week. Building into the lives of young men is very important to me. There are much wiser hotrodders out there than me but God has gifted me to share my faith with these young men. One of the tough parts of the class is keeping stuff in my shop to learn on. So far we have tore down four small block chevy's and i'm ready for something different! Through a friend who has the same vision as me we felt it would be good to have a project car. This will help the young guys to unite and have a common purpose. The idea that came to my mind was a drag race car. Not a street car (been there, done that many times). The goal i presented was for 5000 dollars to run low 10's and do a wheelie! This is a tough challenge. The best way to meet these goals that i could think of is a 500 hp 350 chevy built from mostly all used race parts (remember its not a street car) and a 200 dose of spray all in a light, cheap car such as a g-body. When its all done it would be so rewarding to haul it to the strip and give each student an opportunity at making a pass with it. This is also a big test of faith for me because i neither have the money nor free parts to make it happen. So far we have a 4 bolt 350 block and a set of resized stock connecting rods. I'm looking for a used forged crank, forged high CR pistons, aluminum heads, solid roller cam, turbo 400 tranny, 4000+ stall convertor, shifter, roll bar and many more things. Being a race-only car makes things simpler and cheaper but still a good challenge. I also haven't nailed down a car yet for sure but i do have my daily driver 81 malibu wagon. It still runs and drives great with a V6 so i hate to tear it apart just yet, especially since i might need it to drive to work this summer. This is an opportunity for my vast readership (good one eh?) to help. Finding deals on parts plus telling me of possible other methods of meeting our goal. Do you think there is a better way to run low 10's for $5000 and do a wheelie? Let me know! Also if You are a Christian or even better a Christian hotrodder, please pray for me and the young men who are a part of this ministry. Deep down i'm hoping and wondering if God might be changing my life path through this ministry of his. God bless you and thanks for reading.
brian

sleeper stang video

Finally the long awaited (at least by me) conclusion to the sleeper stang trilogy. Check it out and leave a comment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VCg1nLPerY

winter projects & summer memories

 Here in Saskatchewan we are blessed with a long cold winter. The perfect time for every hotrodder to pull his car into the shop and do a bunch of modifications. As with any project, one modification can lead to another. I plan to do a cam swap but that means timing chain and valve springs and since i plan on pulling the motor I might toss in a 4000 stall convertor. Stabbing in a bigger cam is one of my favorite mods. Its a fine line between going to big and not going big enough. In my small block chevy days i put in my share of "too big" cams. These will actually slow you down. If you make that mistake once or twice you become very hesitant about putting in a bigger cam ever again. One of the things you learn from reading hot rod magazines is they are always preaching about staying on the milder side when selecting a cam. Thats all fine if you want to go slow! Not me. I'm all for going big. With a big block its hard to go too wild on the cam if your motor is built for power. A serious motor deserves a big solid roller cam.
 This past summer was like none other in my books. I came face to face with a kind of evil I hadn't given much thought before. Pride in all its ugliness. Its something we are all guilty of but we seldom recognize it unless its in someone else. When we consider ourselves to be without guilt before God then we know we have alot of pride. When someone says " Nobody's perfect" or "I'm not perfect" that means they think they are just about perfect. Speaking of evil, have you noticed how many t-shirts, tattoos and window stickers are all skulls, skeletons, demons and twisted wickedness? It nearly makes me sick. Why are people so hyped up on death? Do they want to die? All those things are an outward sign of whats in the heart. The bible says that " the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked". Give your heart a check-up. Do you fill your heart and mind with junk? An easy way to tell is by keeping track of what you say. Are you always saying good or bad things about people? Our mouth is the gateway of our heart. Jesus said : "those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile a man". The problem is we are born with a evil heart, then we continue to make it worse. Unless God steps in, the present and future for men is very bleak. The bible also says "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved". Thank God, he has stepped in. What are you waiting for?