We're getting a great reaction from people who seem to globally love these and hate the plastic pedal cars you can buy in the toy stores. But no sales as yet. :(

Still, you get to see a little bump in the web traffic on Monday night & Tuesday, so people are at least looking. If you see us there, drop by and say hello. If we're not with the car, pick up a card and call us and we'll come running!

In the meantime, I have a wagon with a crummy engine and great transmission and a convertible with a great engine and crummy transmission. Which one will win?

After a little bit of thought I'm going to sacrifice the convertible and swap its engine into the wagon. Tara will get a fun car to drive and the convertible will be off the road until.. well, further notice.

Reason being, I want to drive around the pedal cars to local events like Summit, HAMB & Grits and get the work out. I got the first one, a fire truck pedal car (shown here) yesterday.

You'll find a description of this quick process over at lowhum, but for now you can visit the squidoo page about Cordless Tool Combo's and Cordless Combo Tools now.

P.S. This is far too simple to work I think, but It's fun nonetheless.

P.P.S. Thanks Howie.

On second thoughts, perhaps I should link to ebay from here too?

Cordless Combo Tools.

It will reopen on my personal website in March when that site is updated.

See you on the flip side...

Anyway, I got inspired by all the recent talk of car club jackets on the HAMB so I tracked down someone who imports them over here. I could only find one importer, and luckily he was only 45 minutes away in downtown Atlanta!

I just picked mine up early this morning (gotta love that 7am traffic) and thought some of you might be interested. It's thick wool with PVC on shoulders and top of back.

Best part? $65!!! www.crashandburnatlanta.com

I'm no model, sorry

Looking on iTunes came up empty though, and although Amazon lists it, it's out of stock.

Of course, Google is now completely overrun by spam-like sites that display the lyrics of songs so little joy to be found by searching for the name.

Does anyone know if it is available somewhere?

This weekend I got a few hours in the garage so I worked on my dry sump tank, water header tank and both catch cans.

I had one small setback where I put the header tank too close and forgot that the rocker covers are on studs so I needed more room to remove them, but at the second attempt I'm happy with how everything fits.

Now I have to start planning the hoses and hose ends to plumb them up.

I got $50 from the in-laws today (my birthday) so I think a trip to Summit is in order for hose ends!

Inevitably this will cause some broken links for a few days. The site itself should be fixed up overnight, but Google will update its links "in due course" as always.

I know this reflects badly on us, but it's important enough that I felt it should be done sooner rather than later. In the big scheme of things, it's no big deal. As I get older I'm trying to not stress the little stuff. That said, I wanted to at least post an apology for those of you that hit a missing page.

To try and distract you, here is a picture my kid drew..

Read more on the HAMB

I use iTunes to listen to music while at work, so I simply subscribed to the podcast using this iTunes link and got all episodes.

I'm currently on episode 3, back from June 2005

Too much time spent on the HAMB I guess.

Last night I jumped on and introduced myself. One question came up quite quickly - is music on web sites more acceptable nowadays? Obviously myspace is the big fish and every profile page plays music. So the kids are used to it. It was always a laughable offense to put blinking text and music on web sites - but now I'm not so sure about the music.

Many tiki and hot rod sites play cool music now. I visited www.thehukilau.com and loved the music!

What do you think? Tell me below.. cos otherwise the next time you visit you might find music here..

There were a *lot* of stock muscle cars that weren't floating my boat, but enough hot rods to keep me happy. I loved seeing the showboats too - for a change. It's amazing how much time and money goes into some of these cars showpieces.

And of course I had to pony up for a socal tin sign and get it autographed by Jimmy Shine (from the Hard Shine TV show). He was a nice guy, chatty and talked to all my kids too.

Ok, so it's not a famous movie by any means - it certainly qualifies as a cult movie by most measures in fact - but I was lucky enough to see it many years ago and it stuck with me much like I remember the first time I saw American Graffiti.

The loveless is a biker flick - no hot rods in this one. But it is set in the late fifties, in rural Georgia, as a small biker gang stops on the way to Daytona to "hear them howl". It is period perfect.

The atmosphere of the movie is thick, and with rockabilly musician Robert Gordon co-starring in the movie and writing the soundtrack most hot rodders will love it. This is not some sugary movie like Hot Rod; be prepared for a dark movie that nonetheless still makes you wish you were one of the gang..

I see that you can still buy it at Amazon.

Great articles about a straight-axle vette, steel wheels and a great montage of photo's that I've never seen done by another magazine.

It's described as a "prototype" to gauge reactions; I think they've done a great job with this one.

You should read the thread about the meeting, but here's a pic of yours truly admiring Dave's (dvanecek's) bike..

The Electroline Diaries

Laurent Bagnard spent some time with the Burbank Choppers (where our very own Keith Weesner is a member) and documented his stay in this great new book. I can't wait.

Perhaps I could even persuade them to let me sell them here..

They were carving them out of palm trees with chainsaws, then tidying them up with more precise tools before going over them with a blowtorch!

It was pretty cool to watch and they had a great selection - up to 8 feet high.

But all this is beside the point. Yesterday I noticed that some crazy woodpecker has been "having a go" at the tiki! Those holes in the forehead weren't there when we bought it!

First was removing the wheels and painting the centers of the drums silver - it was a quick and dirty fix to the problem of having no room to fit the cones.

Then I scrounged up enough of the old trim fastenings to fit the trim...to one side of the wagon! I'll have to order some more, but at least Tara will see the trim  when she gets in the car.

Getting the indicators to ground to the bumper is still an issue, can't get one of them to work still. I suspect I'll have to buy a new housing.

For the first time I can see how the chop looks, how the rollcage looks in the car and how the car will sit over the wheels.

I'm really pleased.

It's not fitted of course, I just rested the body on the rollcage, and jacked it up a little at the back with a piece of 2x4. I think the small rake is about right, what do you think?

The front end is sitting a bit high in these pics due to poor fitment, so the front wheels will be covered an inch or so more.

I'm so glad I went for the Mopar Police wheels, not the usual big billet!!

Although the vinyl seats were in pretty good shape, they were a bit tired and a boring dark red color and Tara wanted to "spice things up" a bit. Well, I think we found the right material for that, that's for sure.

We bought a roll of pink, furry leopard-like print material that I joke is so nice to sit on it that everyone should drive in it naked. Tara made me promise not to though.

Amazingly to me, Tara made these truly fitted covers over the weekend, took the seats apart and fitted them to the seats properly. Not just elasticated slip-ons, but really fitted. It makes a world of difference.

Love them or hate them (and every woman who sees them, loves them) they certainly liven up the interior. Door panels will come soon, Tara is already planning how to replace the flat sheets and re-use the top fiberglass panel.

Oh, and on a zero budget.

This thread about the project is really incredible.

Check out the plot, cast and beautiful pictures at www.deuceofspadesmovie.com

But when I took them down the road poor Alex couldnt get the tires to blow up. I ended up taking them to McDonough Tire on racetrack. They had a cool method that I hadn't seen before; using a little compressed air tank they shot - more like exploded - 160psi of air into the tire. It basically BLEW the sidewalls against the rim.

They had to do it like 3 times per wheel to get the seal, but it was fun to watch.

Now back on the car, they fit perfectly. Next is to lower the body onto the chassis and see if they still rub the bodywork...

Now it drives much better. Tara got the groceries in it and dropped off Molly at a sleepover, so it looks like it's finally settling in as a daily driver!

Just in time, because tomorrow is our first Royal Tiki sales event - the local elementary school Fall Festival where we're selling our Skateboard Racks.

Always fun!

And yesterday I found a writeup that they've published about their trip which is awesome. Now I can't wait to read part 2...