Catalina «

Rocker Panels, Who Needs Them? Not This Guy.

By Jeremy Nutt, on July 12th, 2010

: Welcome to New England.

: Care for some rocker panels? No Thank you.

: Don’t need floors either. Floors are silly.

: More animal nests? Yes please, just enough to fill the intake.

You know how sometimes your eyes are bigger than your stomach when you’re at a restaurant? Well I have that problem with old rusty junk cars. I see a car that looks like it was likely deemed unrestorable in the early 1980′s, and I decide I need to save it. UGH. I then drag it out of a ditch, trailer it’s dead body home and unload it into its final resting place in my yard. Around this moment is when my brain is released from ambition prison, and I say “oh crap, what have I just done?!“ Before long I am knee deep in sandblasting sand, MIG welding wire and receipts for sheetmetal. Rather than spending a grand on a solid car from Arizona, I spend 10,000 hours restoring a rot box from the north east. What the heck is wrong with me? Do other people make bad decisions like this or am I alone here?

Car Builds: Before and After Pictures

By Jeremy Nutt, on March 30th, 2010

When building or restoring a car, you absolutely HAVE to take pictures.

Here are my top 7 reasons why:

1) Without pictures, nobody will ever believe that you did any of the work (unless it’s terrible, then they will believe you 100%).

2) You will never remember how things originally went together. That extra bag of bolts needs a home!

3) You can hold the photo up against your car and say “look guys, before and after”.

4) It can remind you where you came from, and how you got to where you are.

5) You can look back and laugh at the horrific work you did toward the beginning of the project. Remember when you couldn’t weld?

6) You can post them on the internet and show off all of your work to the world.

7) You don’t realize it at the time of the photograph, but there is always weird stuff going on in the background. It is fun to look for!

If you are saying to yourself “This guy is right, I don’t have any pictures of my cars…”, grab a handful of camera right now and go take some pictures. I promise you that you will appreciate it down the road. Just imagine how cool it would be to see all the cars that your parents had throughout the years.

Got before and after pictures? I want to see them! Post them up or Send them to me: jnutt@1aauto.com