The Tommy Hilfiger experience

At the end of October, as world finals came to an end, we were feeling a little down after having killed a piston and missing our chance at the blown fuel record.



As we were collecting or equipment and getting ready for the long drive home, we were suddenly faced with an entirely different option.



A location scout by the name of Todd knopke approached us to let us know that Tommy Hilfiger really like our car and would like to know if we would be interested in staying an extra week to be a part of the photo shoot for their upcoming Spring Summer line. That's Todd on the left.


Hmmmmmm.. That one really threw me for a loop. After some discussion with my pit crew (aka Fiance and friends) it was decided that it sounded like fun and that we were in.



As we discussed the shoot more with the company it turned out that they were still looking for 2 more vehicles of similar appearance, so I let them know that I had one more old race car back at the shop. Bill Burke's original racecar:



and that we could build them another car from an old tank I had hanging from the ceiling.



They liked that idea, so I flew home and my buddy Logan Davis slapped a rolling lakester together in 2 days, and our friend Jerry shot the paint. The color has picked by the art department, not me. haha
And we headed back out to Bonneville with the 2 extra cars.





The 3 day photo shoot went great.




I got to drive the Crow while they shot some video. Here is the You tube:



Here is some of the finished product. Keep an eye out for billboards and magazine ads






While I was there, they asked if I would be interested in bringing the car out to Amsterdam for their runway show. Sounds good to me, I said.
But first we had get all this stuff back home.

On the way home from Bonneville Drew and I stopped by the "old sign graveyard"




and then shot machine guns at the local shooting range.

I think the oversized grin on Drews face pretty much says it all. hahaha

I was excited about the Amsterdam offer, and proposed that Myself, my fiance Carol and my friend Drew be flown over to help with the logistics.
However, shipping a car over to Europe is no easy task as I soon learned over the following few months. By the time we had finished all the details on negotiations with the rental of the car, it was too late to ship out of Los Angeles, so instead the car had to be trucked to New York and put on a container there and shipped to Antwerp, Belgium. Shipping out of New York shaves off about a month of travel time across the ocean.
But once we knew the car was safely in it's container and on the open ocean, the three of us hopped on a Swiss air flight to Amsterdam.

Here is the view from our hotel room



Luckily I had a friend in Belgium.

Hans, seen here in the photo is a vintage motorcycle collector and he helped me get the car from the shipping company in Antwerp.





We transfer it to the Hilfiger showroom in Amsterdam. About a three hour drive.



Once we arrived at the Hilfiger showroom, the front window of the building had to be removed and a crane helped pickup the car from the trailer and hoisted it into the showroom where it will live for the next month. It was quite a production.








We were in Amsterdam for 2 weeks and had a nice time except for the freezing wind and rain that greeted us everyday. (Note to self,..don't go to Europe in the winter)
We drank loads of Belgium beer and met some great people. As illustrated in the following pictures.






All in all it was an wonderfully interesting experience and all thanks to the crazy world of Hot rodding, land speed racing and the fashion industry.

To view more pics of our adventure, follow this link:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/hilfiger%20story/

October was a crazy month

I'm gonna keep this kinda short and let the pictures do the talkin because there really is too much to talk about.
We took the Crow to bonneville with a new intake and carb to try and grab the open record for the fuel class. We ran a different blower with methanol.

Here's the result of 6 lbs of boost and a broken ring landing. haha. Prety ain't she?

But despite the blown piston we had a great time and as usual met some great people, even other tank people:

And even though we killed a piston, it could have been a lot worse, here is a picture of Roy Creel's motor from the same meet:

I guess he spun a bearing, broke a rod, and sawed the motor in half. Ouch. But I'm sure he was going faster than me when it happened. He always does.

here is a link to more Bonneville pictures. http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/Bonneville%20Oct%2007/

Bonneville Speedweek 2007

Were back and feeling good !!!!!. The week we spent in Wendover UT was great!!!! And we came back with a record. Official record: 12-Aug-07 Old Crow Speed Shop V4 BGL 104.365 mph
Do we plan to go faster next time? Of course !!!

A big highlight of the week was hanging out with the Tom Beatty Bellytank
This was the car that inspired the look of the Old Crow.
Looks like Father and son huh?

As you can see in the picture below, our 50 yr. old unopened bottle
of Old Crow bourbon has been opened, consumed, and filled with Bonneville salt.
It will now have have a new home in our shrine to the gods of speed.


But the celebration didn't stop there, oh no.
In true conquering hero fashion, I gotta get a tattoo.
Master tattoo artist Zulu lays out Coop's old Crow

A fitting end to a fantastic week.


To see more pics of our Bonneville week visit Coop's album: Photos here.

And for the best Tattoo artist around, visit: http://www.zulutattoo.com/

Bonneville bound

After fixing all the bugs were ready to hit the salt. If you make it out to Bonneville this year, stop by and say hello.

That's Racing

Well,... After fixing the broken drive shaft in the blower, and rebuilding the waterpump and adjusting all the valves, the old banger decides to blow a head gasket.
No time to locate another one and swap it out before El Mirage today. So there goes our last test run before Bonneville. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to wing it.

Vintage Trailer rally

There is an obscure event that happens every year here in Southern cal.
It's called the Vintage Vacations trailer rally, and I try to make it every year.
It's a great way to spend a day in Orange County, Newport Beach to be exact, which is kinda of the Beverly Hills of Orange County, and normally I would'nt spend much time there, but they do have a really nice RV park in wich to house this fine event.
It's put on every year by an old friend of mine, Craig Dorsry, you can find out more about him and the event here: www.vintage-vacations.com
Here are a few pics, and a link to my photobucket account with a bunch more pics. Enjoy.







More pics here: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/vintage%20trailers/

The ugly electric fan

If your like me, there's nothing that can ruin a period perfect automobile worse than a "stick out like a thumb" modern piece of equipment on a car that far pre-dates it's modern upgrade. Most car people have their own pet peeves when it comes to this. For some, it's disc brakes, or an alternator instead of a generator, for others it's air conditioning, but for me, it's electric fans. Uugh.

Well,... As you can imagine, when I found myself with no other option but to use and electric fan, due to an engine swap to a much larger motor, I was not very happy.
I was hoping to hide the fan in between the radiator and grill shell, but there just isn't enough room. So my only option was to put the fan on the engine side of the radiator, but in a roadster with no hood or fenders, there's really no hiding it.
So I decided rather than hiding it, I'd dress it up to fit with the time period of everything else around it. I had seen pictures in old Hot Rod magazines of a couple cars that experimented with the use of electric fans on cars in the 50's. Most looked like house fans, and that was the inspiration for the treatment of my modern plastic necessity.

The following is a pictorial. Perhaps it may inspire others to hide their ugly moderness, and keep me delusional as to the decade I'm living in. LoL. Enjoy.

Cut away as much plastic possibly, that is not absolutely necessary.

Find yourself an old table fan with the right diamater screen.

Spray anything showing with old timey wrinkle paint.

Cut off the finger guard of an old 40's or 50's fan, and attach it over your electric fan.

And voila, modern cooling that's easier on the eyes.