Mel's drive in

[Fredvon4]

In my area we ave a small resurgence of the "Mel's drive in" phenomena of kustom cruisers...

We actually have a Mel's Burger joint but she put it in a bad location for car cruising and parkinig... so the hot rods and Kustom cruisers meet in Copperas Cove Tx at the Dairy Queen out on the main drag (hwy 190)

In my small town of Lampasas, 16 miles west, we have Storms drive in burger joint from the 50s. We have a very small group of custom trucks, cars and hot rods who meet there on weekends... The town also has a custom car and bike show once a year that has a farily large (in a small town way) array of competitors... Some of the old birds in this area have well kept Model A and Model Ts and other pre war old tin they drive in every parade

We have a local kid started a business called Kickin Kustoms and does very respectable job of making old tin cool again... a few "T" buckets, 32 Fords, and other lead sleds in great looking paint and body jobs by the young man.

Later next year wife and I are bailing out of the Harley Davidson motorcycles and I am looking at a 23 "T" bucket custom for us to do some evening cruising in.

I had thought it might be interesting to drop and chop the Smart car but probably not....

I have always wanted a open wheeled roadster. Here in Texas there are a few companies that have full kits. They assemble a few each year for sale. I am leaning this way for the basic car as the cost is reasonable $13~$17K and they have the grief of getting the VIN and title.

Later, doing the custom paint myself and adding all the chrome doodads is relatively easy.

I might even find a Ford V10 and morph it back to old skool with a retro fit to carburetor and simple electronic ignition getting rid of the fuel injection and computer control.... I think chrome headers with 5 primary tubes per side will look pretty cool feeding Lake pipes in front of Mickey Thompson N50 15s

[DaveInTexas]

The guy in the hanger next door to my Fathers hanger sells the T-Bucket kits. He is based out of McKinney(North Dallas Suburb), and used to also make the bar stool racers. This is a side business for him. His son owns a sign business and his main line of work is Areal photography.

[Twojjs]

Do they make a green type kustom cruisers?

[Fredvon4]

By green, do you mean ecologically friendly?.... I would say-- sort of... The cars while usually powered by High performance motors and escape any catalytic converter requirement because of their age... but they are usually driven infrequently and do not rack up a lot of annual miles. They are not oil burners.... In contrast every day there are hundreds of thousands of old 10~20 year old cars and trucks peeing blue white smoke all over the state....

OTHO if by Green, you mean a well done green painted Lowered, chopped, channeled, and exceptionally beautiful '33 Duce Coup in Sea-Foam green? .... Yep, got one in the group. Also there is a 40s dodge panel van in bright neon Green, and there is a early 60s Ford F100 pickup in Lime green, and there is a old 60s Chevy truck in John Deere Green n Yellow