Evolution is the way of the world in all aspects and your car projects will evolve as you tinker with them or build new projects. Turbo charging or supercharging an engine is fairly simple and can be done inexpensively, but there’s a few places where skimping can cause headaches. Leaking boost flex hoses and clamps are the bane of existence with many DIY turbo setups. A good way to correct this issue is by replacing the silicone or rubber hose connections with V-Band clamps.
Author: Joe Dick
Beginners Metal Shaping Project- Making a panel blister.
Metal shaping is one of those things that seems like black magic to beginners. There really is a science behind the process that takes quite some time to learn and understand. The quickest and easiest way to understand how metal shaping works on the granular level is by comparing it to pizza dough. The more you stretch it out, the thinner it gets and the excess material has to go somewhere (in the pizza’s case its the rolled up crust) and the more you shrink the metal the thicker it gets and again it has to “go somewhere”. I decided to demonstrate a great beginner project for gaining experience in metal shaping by making a panel blister out of a 12″x12″x12″ piece of 5053 .035 aluminum. This process is great to help you understand the process and is pretty straight forward.
2014 Eastwood SEMA Hands-On Award Winners
Each year we blow up our social media feeds with our favorite vehicles from SEMA. This year we decided we’d take it a step further and give the owners and builders of some of our favorite vehicles notoriety for their hard work. After some brainstorming the Eastwood “Hands-On” Awards were born. The idea behind these awards are to recognize some of the standout vehicles from the show. We judged on a number of factors from quality of work, execution of concept, and just outright ridiculousness of the finished product. Really the car needed to have something “special” to catch our eyes and earn the award. We’ll admit we leaned heavily on the smaller shops and DIY builders that didn’t have a million dollar dream team of employees and tools to finish the car, there’s plenty of awards out there for those guys!
SEMA 2014 Day One Recap
SEMA 2014 Day One Early yesterday morning the doors for the show officially opened and the crowds of show goers pushed their way into the doors to start walking the show. The size of SEMA has only grown and no one is exaggerating when they say that you’d be hard […]
How to Restore Car Headlights
Out of all minor automotive restoration projects, restoring your headlights is among the most important. After years of use, headlights can get cloudy, rendering their effectiveness much weaker and therefore more dangerous. This is why it is important to restore them to their original clear state in order to ensure […]
SEMA 2014 Preview
SEMA 2014 Preview SEMA 2014 opens officially tomorrow to the public but we’re lucky enough to be able to scope out the show during setup Sunday and Monday. For us this is the best time to be able to find the best vehicles of the show. Walking up to the […]
Customer Favorite Award #10- Chevy Impala Lowrider
Whether you love or hate lowriders you can’t deny the quality of the paint jobs that these guys are laying down on their cars. This Impala SS named “Lifestyle” is no exception with glass smooth custom paint that we could stare out for days! Aside from the insane paint, the […]
Customer Favorite Award #7- 1934 Dodge Brothers Sedan
With the perfect mix of traditional custom, lowrider “bomb”, and street rodder smoothness, this oddball sedan grabs your attention without the use of ultra-bright paint, rims, or over the top styling. This is a PERFECT example of restraint when building a custom car and we couldn’t get enough of this […]
Customer Favorite Award #5- 1937 Packard Street Rod
With enough money anyone can build an old Ford into a street rod or custom, but building up something different takes some guts and some luck. This ultra-smooth ’37 Packard custom street rod ticks just about all the boxes for us!