Here’s another post stuffed with 40 photos from the Rocky Mountain Auto Show. The show featured all kinds of cars and like I said in post 1, most of them were new to me so I’m sharing them even if they don’t fit in the more traditional/old school style. There is a post coming that is chock full of vintage hot rods that were at the Hot Rod Hill Climb so stay tuned, to make sure you don’t miss it, subscribe by entering your email address in the top right hand corner of this page. Again thanks to Dan Greenberg for allowing me to borrow this lens, go check out his photography and buy something!
More to come tomorrow, don’t forget to subscribe in the top right hand corner of royboyproductions.com to get this blog delivered in your email inbox every time it goes live. 1 lucky subscriber at the end of each month will win a prize package, you have to be on the list to be eligible.
See you at a show,
Royboy
CALENDAR UPDATE!!!!
As of right now only 20 copies remain of the Trucks Edition, all others are sold out!
The second stop on my trip down to Pistons and Paint (see show coverage here and 1st shop visit here) was at Oklahoma City’s Shoebox Central. Owner Chris has owned shoeboxes as far back as high school, so he knows them inside and out. He has a ton of parts cars out back and shelves and shelves of various parts inside, pulled from parts cars, some N.O.S., some reproductions, all kinds of parts for just about anything else you could need.
5th and final post of my 2013 Pistons and Paint coverage. I’ve saved a few images back and I’ll write up a piece to accompany them for an article for a magazine, stay tuned for that. Click on any of the photos to purchase it as a print and help put more gas in the Royboy-mobile to get me to another car show!
Part 4, only 1 left after this one! Quite a few of these cars I get to see in Austin at the Roundup but this show is about 1/3 the size. I’ll be completely honest here, I like the smaller shows. When you start to get over 1000 cars you really loose the intimacy of the show, there’s just too much to see, too little time to spend with friends because you’re always pulled to go visit other friends. This show had officially 494 cars, enough to fill out your day but not so much that it felt overwhelming. The cars, the people, the bands, all added up to a very enjoyable day.
Continuing the coverage of the 2013 Pistons and Paint. I’m going to save my brain a bit and not type too much here for story as I am trying to see if I can get an article on the show published. If you see any photo that you like, buy a print, it’ll put a little gas in my tank to get me down the road to the next show (literally) so I can bring more coverage to you!
Before any of the car stuff, the day this post goes live is Veteran’s Day 2013. Thank you to all current and former Veterans for your hard work and sacrifice. Early this year one of you that was close to me passed, on an extremely cold day in a snow packed cemetery, 2 incredible young men came out and sent him off in a way that still makes me tear up to today. He flew in WWII and was a flight instructor, in a war that was well into the history books decades before these soldiers were born but the respect and dedication that they had to see that he was honored properly was inspiring. The cold, the snow, the fact that they never met the man who’s service was over almost 70 years ago, none of these meant that they would give any less than their all. Thank you to all of you that have served and God bless you and your families.
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My first Pistons & Paint weekend is about over. 🙁 Well, as I type this it’s 11:35pm on Sunday night, so the weekend is over in just a few minutes. I hope you enjoy the Pistons and Paint coverage as much as I enjoyed the weekend! Click on any of these photos to go to the full gallery and purchase a print! Help get the Royboy cameras to another event by getting some prints for your walls!
More to come throughout the week, subscribe at the top right corner of the page to get the daily Royboy blog posts delivered to your email as soon as they hit the site!
See you at a show,
Royboy
Don’t forget to get your 2014 Calendar for Charity order in ASAP! They’re already going fast, once they’re gone they’re gone!
I’m sure glad that I came down to Denton, TX this weekend for Pistons And Paint! About 500 cars showed up and I was able to meet new people, see new cars, and spend time with close friends along the way.
Today’s post will be some cell phone photos of the event, while I do a couple of shoots here in TX before heading back home to prepare more for you tomorrow.
For years I’d had to shamefully admit that no I hadn’t been to Pistons & Paint in Denton, TX every time I’d been asked. This year I change that. So for the 46th Royboy gallery in the 2013 folder I headed down to Texas for the PnP.
Friday Nov. 8th 5:30 am Ugh, 5:30 in the AM… as in morning. Yuck. Already a half an hour behind my meaningless and self imposed schedule. But the bed was so comfy… just 10 more minutes of sleep… No. I have to get up, I have to get on the road. It’s time to kick this mule.
6:10 am I’m in the daily driver and headed south. The GPS is on, not so much because I need it but the app I use does allow other folks to warn you of potential speed traps. I might as well use it if it helps. There is just the faintest of hints of the impending sunrise on the horizon to my left as I blast south on what can be deer infested two lane country blacktops.
7:15am Okay so now I’m 15 minutes behind schedule, must have made up some time on those back roads. Now it’s time for breakfast with the Wichita guys. A group of car guys that I know gathers for breakfast at the same diner 6 days a week. It’s always a good time to join them, so I do just that. The guys liked the calendars that I showed them and they bought a bunch, even some strangers across the joint buy a couple.
8:30am Back on the road headed south to Nostalgia Sid’s in Guthrie, OK for a shop visit. Sid shows me around, I take some photos, learn more about that in an upcoming article right here.
11:40 am Nostalgia Sid’s Shop visit is over and now I’m off to Shoebox Central for a visit. More pics and a story again, coming soon!
1:00pm Heading south again this time headed for Atlas Speed & Custom in Denison, TX
4:00pm Hanging out with some old friends who have gathered at Atlas. More pics and a story from there soon as well.
We ended up gathering up a bunch of folks at a fried chicken place called Babe’s in the evening for dinner, it was pretty awesome.
More from the show tomorrow, see you at a show,
Royboy
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Okay folks, this is a complete experiment. This is a repost of an article that I did for the Galaxie Club of America Gazette a few years back. If you want more tech articles like this comment below or contact me here to let me know!
Upgrade Your Audio
A few years ago I decided to replace the horribly installed speakers in the rear deck of my Galaxie. The person who’d put them in had used pennies for washers among other sins of installation plus the speakers weren’t all that good. It was time to install some new ones and get rid of the ugly aftermarket speaker grills that were perched on the rear deck. Now I must say this, I am no pro installer, you’ll notice that when you see how straight my cuts are…
As you can see in Picture 1, a previous owner had decided to cut out the factory rear deck wood and vinyl to install a pair of 6×9 speakers. I have to say I HATE to see speaker grills in the rear deck area of a car, 9 times out of 10 they are ugly and out of place. The older (maybe factory) center 6×9 grill is pretty ugly as well, so let’s fix that! The goal for this part of the install was to see if I could put these speakers in without leaving any permanent changes to the car.
In Picture 2 you can see the factory rear deck metal, I have removed the rear seat bottom and back so that I could remove the upholstery that covers the rear deck. I won’t go into detail on how to get the panel out since each model of car is different. Lucky for me, Ford left 4 large openings plus the center 6×9 mount. Since stereo sound works best in the car when you have the most separation between left and right speakers, I am going to install the rear speakers in the far outside openings.
Picture 3 & 4 shows a tool that I have had for years…. And I have no idea what it’s called. It’s an adjustable curve that you can pick up at Hobby Lobby. I use it to copy complex shapes in the car. Here you can see it wrapped around the inside of one of the openings in the rear deck of the Galaxie. Simply fit the curve to the shape you desire to copy, then lay it on a piece of 1/8th masonite and trace the shape. This tool comes in very handy when making cardboard templates for patch panels when doing body work as well.
My idea to build the mounts was to use the small ledge in each opening to my advantage. I built a 1/8th masonite plate that fit into the indented part of the metal, then put another masonite plate under the rear deck and used small bolts to cinch the two pieces together tightly to hold them in place in the rear deck. The speakers will be mounted into the bottom panels. Picture 5 shows the rough shape of the panels with holes for the speaker in each panel. I have also drilled holes for the bolts in the panels at this point. The panel in front is the one that goes on top of the rear deck metal, the square-ish one behind goes below the metal and gets the speaker mounted to it. Next I painted them black so that the wood would not show through the final upholstery. I also used speed nuts to attach the speakers to the bottom panel so that I could remove the speakers from the panel without having to unbolt the panels from the rear deck.
Picture 6 shows the rough fitting. Everything is assembled and loose in the rear deck for adjustment. It should be noted at this point that if you have holes in the upholstery panel over any of the center 3 openings that you should cover the openings so that the sound waves that come from the rear side of the speakers do not come through into the passenger compartment. The rear side of the speaker produces a sound wave that will partially cancel out the sound from the front side so this is very important. I will be building a subwoofer setup that will fill these openings so it is not an issue in my case. Since the subwoofer setup will not be ready until down the road I covered the backside of the speakers with foam baskets to keep the back wave contained.
Picture 7 shows the finished project. The beginning idea of getting rid of the ugly holes and speaker grill and ending up with a clean looking rear deck has been accomplished.
The speakers sound much better and have been providing years of enjoyment now.
See you at a show,
Royboy
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Don’t forget to get your 2014 Calendar for Charity order in ASAP! They’re already going fast, once they’re gone they’re gone!
When the show was started it was in June and ran from 4p-10p, now that it’s in September, the show ends up at 8pm after the pinup contest and the awards. Perfect timing to head to my favorite pizza joint in Wichita then head to the after party. I had a really good time and I will be back next year.
Soooo, I got a lot of photos of my lady friends on stage and a few more with them next to some cars. Who can blame me, really? They were nice enough to walk around with me after their performance and pose by some cars and I am not stupid, pretty girl + kool car = WIN!
The show started at 1pm after some morning weather, that may have scared some folks off, but the die hards still came and were rewarded with perfect fall weather. From the time I rolled in at 1pm until leaving at 8pm it was perfection. The stage for the bands, pinup contest and awards was setup under the Kellogg flyover, and surrounded by cars as I rolled in. Later cars filled the adjacent parking lot, there was room in those two areas for 30 or so more cars as things were set up, and room up the street for a ton more as the show grows.
This ride is a regular at cruise night up in Salina, there will be more info on it coming, stay tuned 🙂
Something about this ride I really dig, maybe it’s the attention getting paint, maybe it’s the pie cut slicks, maybe it’s a lot of stuff.
So much style in the Pontiacs
Simple recipe, and it works.
Ooops I thought I had another shot of this truck without people walking almost in front of it. That’s the risk I take when shooting from so far away at a car show.
Like I said yesterday, I see Jason and his truck everywhere and I cant stop taking photos of it.
Nice looking roadster.
Another simple recipe with great results.
I think I should shoot a feature on it, and get the skinny on all of the details for you, what do you think?
So much cleaner without the handles and the factory turn signals.
I’ve shot dozens of photos of Joe’s Caddy over the years. I shouldn’t love it so much but I do, and I don’t care who knows.
Matt’s roadster is just too kool.
Hey that’s not a traditional hot rod or kustom! Yeah… I know. It’s my site I make the rules.
Cassie’s 57
Oh sweet Nadine. For most of you, your ride wishes it had this many miles and was still kickin.
Chad Ward was busy painting off the tailgate of his ride.
My buddy Elvis’ Caddy, yes he knows his tire is going flat.
A couple of my favorite Dirty Martinis entertaining the crowd with song and dance.
That’s it for this post, more throughout the week or you can click here and see the entire gallery.
The Rumble (formerly Rumble in Delano) has been going on each year in Wichita for a few years now. This is the second year for the show’s new late September date and the first time for the show’s new location just south of the Go Away Garage in downtown Wichita. Those two changes can be tough for a show to survive, but from my experience Saturday I think the show came through fine.
I really dig the under Kellogg/US-54 location, it just has an interesting and kool look about it. Here’s my Galaxie when I rolled in. As always, to purchase any of these photos as a print, click on it and you’ll be taken to the gallery where you can pick size and paper style. Metallic is my favorite paper right now but they all have their own place to be used and the site will even tell you what each does best.
There were quite a few early arrivers like myself.
Doug’s Toad and McPhail’s 41 Buick at the registration booth.
A few of the pinstripers hung out at the Go Away Garage and had a panel jam.
The platform out side of the Go Away Garage made for a great place to watch the incoming rides.
Jason and his truck have been at a lot of the same shows as I have been lately, and I’m not complaining.
Jack and his 51 leading in a few friends from the Mulvane Marauders. The 51 and Joe’s 41 Ford Pickup behind it took home 4 combined awards. The awards were hand made and painted and some of the koolest I’ve seen all year so far. Congrats to Fast AL’s Upholstery on the Best Interior award on the 51.
Last week I introduced you all to my friend Jonnie King and his website. This week we’ve got audio for you from an interview that Jonnie did with Chuck Miller on his beautiful 32 Roadster, an 18 year project. Click here to go to the page to hear the whole interview.
Go spend some time on Jonnie’s site, you could easily spend a few hours just hanging out and listening to his interviews.
The beautiful blue Kansas sky and the big trees of Forest Park combined to make lots and lots of harsh shadows. If I had more time at the show I would have used an off camera flash to fill in a bit, but I had 3 hours to cover a park with about 2000 cars in it… So yeah I didn’t do that 🙂
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Sooooo Nice
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I stopped in to see the guys from Affordable Street Rods, this beautiful roadster is theirs and is just plain awesome.
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I love the stance of this shoebox. If any of you know the owner I’d like to find out how this stance was achieved. I have 3″ drop springs for the front of mine and 3″ drop springs for the rear, but I’m sure I need to get down farther than that.
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I see the Spiwak’s about everywhere I go and it’s never a bad thing.
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A touch too much.
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I’m not normally a Camaro guy but this one was very nice.
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I’ve always liked this 40
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Fresh back from the Hot Rod Hill Climb
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Nice scallops
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That’s a heck of a stretch job!
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My favorite ride of the show. This is a true survivor hot rod that was a dirt track racer before it was turned into this show rod in the 60’s
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It’s neighbor wasn’t too shabby either!
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Look at all of those identical hoods open. You can bet your behind I walked right by that whole area. Who needs to stop and look at 6 identical cars except for their paint colors?
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Bryce, lookie here my friend.
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You cannot go wrong with a Rivi
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A very nice Anglia
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Gentry’s GMC Cabover is evolving every time I see it. I’m not sure it could lay out last time I saw it.
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That’s it folks, that’s what I saw in my whirlwind 2013 Ol Marais River Run trip. I only had time for 1 pass around the park, so if I missed your ride, I apologize.
One of my favorite’s from the Greaserama was also in Ottawa.
Beautiful truck, the suicide hood being open is less visually offensive than if it was a regular style.
My dad’s 59 Thunderbird and our extended “family’s” cars behind it.
Frank’s beautiful 56 Chevy took home an award for best Home Built I believe. Congrats Frank! I know you’ve put a lot of time and effort into your ride!
Rick’s 57 has every option that you might want for a kool road trip cruiser and will look good while doing it.
Roger Ward’s car has looked this good for a long long time and gets driven.
While not an artist per se, Jonnie King is the focus of today’s post. If you’ve never been to his site, “Legends Of The Rod & Custom Hall of Fame” then you’re missing out! Jonnie interviews many of the koolest kustom folks and posts the interviews on the site. A few years ago we crossed paths and I’m not sure how we even met but I’m glad that we did! If you don’t know who Jonnie is, here is his site.
One of the newest updates on the site is an interview with Gene Winfield talking about his 2013 777 Award winning clone of his famous Pacifica Econoline Ford Pickup. The original build was done in 1962, and the clone is visually just about the same as the original, but underneath the truck is much more modern. Click here to open that page, the audio will begin automatically.
I’m hoping to talk Jonnie into doing a blog post here for you whenever he has new audio articles up, at the very least, I will do a post like this one and give you links to the good stuff!
See you at a show,
Royboy
What is your favorite Gene Winfield build? Comment below!
Just under a month away from the Iron Invasion! Oct. 12th in Woodstock, IL will be the 2nd Iron Invasion show, the first was a really good time, the 2nd should be even better!
Okay so we’re a couple of days short of a month, oh well. Still plenty of time to get ready. The plan for the weekend of October 12th was supposed to be my 2nd trip up to Woodstock, IL for the 2nd Annual Iron Invasion. My plans have changed though. I still think that Iron Invasion is an amazing show and I’d love to be there, but I had an offer that I didn’t want to pass up.
That show is the Old Geezers Car Show in Lamar, MO. I’ve been told that the show will be about 100 cars parked around an old town square. Most of them will be kool old school kustom style, right up my alley. So I’m headed to Lamar, MO to hang with the Kustom family.
The family that hangs out at the cars show together…is kool.
Mickey’s Merc
15 shot HDR Panoramic of the show
One of the stars of the show. Micheal’s newly finished 34 5 Window Ford, done in an East Coast style. The 59 Olds steering wheel is the only part on the car newer than 53.
I love it!
Lonely Knights
Larry Wolfe recently brought this late 60’s Dave Stuckey creation back home to Wichita. Plans are to return it to it’s 1967 state. Back in the day Stuckey used this wild sectioned 1965 Pontiac Catalina to tow his Top Fuel Drag car. I reallly wish I could have been around to see that rolling down the road.
Clean.
The good tunes all day were provided by my buddy Everett.
Some of my favorite cars all in the same shot.
I love it Neal! Thanks for bringing it out!
Dad’s 59 Thunderbird and Ron’s Chevy Truck
Voodoo Jim’s Corn Cobb Coupe
Doc Parsons’ T is purrrrfect.
Yeah yeah yeah it’s for your wife, we know we know.
The Lonely Knights’ Big Rich awarding Mickey with their award.
Mickey and one of Wichita’s Godfathers of kool, Johnny Hammann
For Part 4 we’re still at the show, and we start with Aaron of Fast A.L.’s Upholstery’s Ford and Mickey’s (StrayKatKustoms’) 60 Chevrolet flattop with 60 Merc Grille and Pontiac taillights.
Joe brought this beauty out for us all to drool over.
I caught Jack unloading some chairs out of the trunk of his new 51 Ford. Body, Paint and a bunch more stuff by Chaotic Customs.
One of my favorite new rides of 2013 is Butch’s 40 Sedan.
It still rocks a straight 6 but Steve’s 58 Ford moves on down the road and looks good doing it.
All the way from Omaha, NE to Wichita to hang with us. Thanks for coming down!
The Merc grille looks good with the 51 Ford turn signal housings.
If you don’t know Gears and Gals Magazine, you need to go to their site and order an issue. You should then buy a subscription.
Good to see you again my friend, 2 weeks in a row even!
Mickey’s Merc always looks good at the Starliner.
Joe’s Caddy is a ton of fun, maybe 2 tons looking at her…
Don’s Buick is probably one of the finest anywhere.
Some of my favorite Kansas City area folks.
Jeff and Verna brought this killer Plymouth hot rod up from Texas. I am planning on shooting this car this fall. If no magazines bite on the article, I’ll post it here for all of you to see.
One of the koolest places ever to hold a car show, even though this year it was quite hot.
Another shot of Steve’s chopped 40 Ford. Again, 300,000 miles on it and he’s owned it since 1969.
Friends and family.
I’ve seen this truck in Austin and a bunch of other places, I dig it every time.
Normally not my style but the nose art on the truck matches in with the location.
The McGregors, an American Car Family.
Hub and Gloria’s “Cinnamon” is my favorite kustom ever. It’s been together since the late 80’s. It’s been in magazines before but would you like to see a full feature on it here?
McGregor cars.
U.S. Mule even came out to play.
Jeff Myers of Premier Body & Paint brought out the 59 El Camino, Johnny Torres brought out his 41 Plymouth, and you can’t see it here, but Jim Allen brought out his “Corn Cobb Coupe”
Roy brought out this beautiful shoebox. The flathead is one of the cleanest ever.
The 2nd stop on the Garage Krawl for our group was my friend Roger’s house. Due to it being a private property I will not mention his last name or where it is. Roger has a fantastic collection of Fords mostly 40’s of various types and a couple of Falcons and more, but his automobilia collection is equally as impressive.
Great old signs
Extra parts
Some grilles in the background behind this great plane
Dashes, grilles, and beauty rings
So the power company puts in an ugly power station behind your house and keeps building it bigger… well you’d better find a cool way to hide it from your view. This works
Everyone’s backyard should be so kool.
More yard art, some of it I might have a need for, I may have to come back and make an offer…
The chain was just laying there, but I couldn’t help shooting a pic of the cool wheel and tire.
pretty kool mag.
One wall of the garage featured license plates staring in 1913 I believe, and sequentially going up from there.
Another wall featured only 1940 Kansas plates, from 99 of the 105 Kansas counties, that’s an impressive collection.
Some great car club plaques.
Great taillight lens display
What to do with your extra plates? Why not make an American Flag? 🙂
Then it was off to Chaotic Customs in Mulvane, KS for a shop visit and some lunch. Giant hot dogs, soda, chips and some homemade cookies really hit the spot. Here’s Mike Young’s 40 Ford pickup which is being built for SEMA this year.
Some of the projects under construction at Chaotic.
Then it was off to my buddy Jack’s place for a visit. Here’s a lineup of Jack’s rides. He has a 30 year head start on me but I hope to catch up one day.
Then it was off to Big Joe’s for an air conditioned shop visit (it was a hot one that day!) Here’s a “gas station” that Joe built to hold his compressor and welders and such when not in use.
Some of the art inside the main shop building.
Then I hopped in my buddy’s Galaxie for a ride to Rocky’s shop, we had a good line of 10 or so rides on the way there.
Rocky has a pretty kool collection of Wichita area club plaques too.
and the best chandelier around.
Then it was back to the hotel for some fajitas courtesy of the Lonely Knights. Thanks for the good eats folks!
The 100 or so people in the parking lot stayed out and socialized until around midnight. So many good friends that are all really more like family than friends. This is a big reason why this show is one of my favorites of the year.
As I did last year, I got to the Host Hotel on Thursday evening about 7pm so that I could wake up ready to go on the Garage Krawl on Friday morning. After dinner with some friends I shot some night shots in the parking lot.
One of my favorite Mercs around.
Mickey’s Merc
Love that hood ornament
More of our friends from the Lonely Knights in Colorado