Tune in your A.M. F.M. computers to....

It's been a very busy summer. All the club members have been working our tails off on that and this, and this and that.

I wanted to give a fore warning... the future is now.

The MoonShiners will be invading your ears...

Thats right. We are going to attempt a podcast that will cover topics like, traditional styled customs and hot rods, motorcycles, cheeseburgers, french canadians, and what ever else the coversation leads too...

Stay tuned to the blog to see if we can pull it off.

and just for a disclaimer... Caution on the content. Who knows what garbage will come out of a bunch of creep gearheads.

Absaroka is taking over.............

Prepare yourself... 

Call your best gal...

Shine your chrome....

Clean your whitewalls...

Rub down your Primer paint job...

Absaroka State Takeover is coming....

August 26-27, 2011

Official News Coming

Consider yourself warned!

Moss, mold, and mice garbage... 1954 Cadillac gets a new lease on Life.

In 1971 a light blue 1954 Cadillac was purchased and driven to a remote hay field in Sheridan County, Wyoming. It was supposed to be torn down, and the motor used in a farm equipment. That never happened. 

It sat outside for the next 39 years until (with chance and generosity of the land owner) It was saved... by me.

The first year out of the field, the car saw no improvement. I didn't have the time, space, or money to start work on it, and even then I wasn't sure I was going to keep the car. 

I have some awesome friends and club members, and with help, the title issued where solved and now the big blue Cadillac is inside a building for the first time in 40 years. 

The Cadillac is pretty rough, by most standards. There are rust issues, completed destroyed seats and interior from 40 years of rodent occupancy, and even nice patches of moss. The interesting thing is that the car is nearly complete. Minus hubcaps, skirts and the radio, the rest of the car is there... including the original keys that were laying on the seat. 

When I inspected the engine bay, I removed the factory air cleaner and was stunned to see very clean carburetor. Lets hope as I dig deeper that the rest of the internals of the mill look just as good. The previous owners did a great job of plugging all the vitals before they let it sit, obviously because the engine was the most important component for them to save. 

Heres how it looked the day after we pulled it from the field more then a year ago.

 
And not much change but...

This carb looks pretty damn clean for 40 years of sitting.

The inside is a different story....

Mice are little, harmless and even cute when in cartoon form, but in the real world, when it comes to automobiles and time the damage they cause is astonishing.

Heres the interior fresh from the field

After a light cleaning before it was in my shop the interior was a touch more bearable. 

I dont really have words for how uncomfortable it was to remove the seats... lets just say it was ....well, uncomfrotable.

 Feeling fairly proud of accomplishing the "removal of the doomed seats" I decided, why get that headliner out while I'm at it. 

Guess where the rest of the backseat padding was...

The picture doesn't really this mess justice. It about 6 inches deep and prolly ten pounds of grass seeds, mice shit, and mice carcasses. 

That was about all I could handle at that point so I called it a night. 

I dont think that I have any desire to use the factory seats, they are just to gross and I think I want to take the interior in a different direction when i build it back up. Maybe a nice seat of 60's cadillac buckets.

Never the less, the rest of the interior is still savagable and Im happy with that fact. There is a long road ahead on this project, so I will keep updates coming as they happen, but heres a few more pictures of the car and it's "friends" that will be keeping it company.

 Adios,

Stutz

Stutz' story and the Origin of the Moonshiners C.C.

I haven't been updating the blog much since I got back from GNRS. That's the way it goes sometimes. Work gets busy, and everything else most slow or stop. 

The purpose of this blog is simple and easy. I wanted to give a back story to how our car club thing began from my perspective...

The MoonShiners C.C. is a traditional car club. We aren't going to be to picky about it, because after all we are cars guys, and everyone is different (just like snowflakes), but we believe in tradition,  in heritage,  in proven cool.


As the fearless leader of the Club, it seems appropriate to explain my past. I have always been into cars, and specifically big body 50's customs. You can thank Ghostbusters for warping my young mind with that big beautiful 59 Cadillac in the movie. Like a lot of car guys, I grew up around them. Pretty standard recipe to raise a Gearhead, with a soft spot for land yachts. 


It wasn't until I was around 12 or so that my natural instinct of looking up to big brother introduced me to the culture of hot rods and customs. The reeeeal deep historic old school rockabilly hot rod "Kulture". My obsession has only deepened.
In high school I drew pictures of Rat Fink and flying eyeball headed drivers in chopped and lowered hot rod Ford's. Designed flamed paint jobs for cars I thought I would never owned, and basically didn't pay to much attention to anything but cars. At the same time with the guidance of backing of my Dad, my gearhead big brother, and the talent and teaching of "Shooter" (pinstriper extraordinaire) , I got to really see what driving a traditional styled hot rod was all about. Meet "Anabelle"... 1954 Buick Special Mild Custom
Started by my Brother John and my Dad,
Finished (a that point) by Shooter and a 16 year old version of me.

Now, driving around in this car at 17 had its benefits, and short comings. One of the best parts about it was the people you meet. Its hard not to look at a car like this these days. Especially with every modern car looking like a river rock. Thus, I always had people asking things, telling me stories, introducing me to their own view of what I myself was learning. The old ways. I loved the stories and wanted to know more history of hot rods at every opportunity. 


In my hunger for hot rod car themed stories, I became ever more interested in the illegal whiskey world known as "moonshining". Not that I wanted to make it at the time, I just wanted to find stories, about running from the Revenue Agents in hopped up jalopies. There is something really cool and pure American about it. Little did I know at the time what Sheridan County, as well as the rest of Wyoming had a whole hell of a lot of stories... just gotta ask the right people. The name MoonShiners was stuck in my head from that point on.


Meanwhile, the idea of a club spun around in my teenage mind. A couple friends and I, namely Nate and Toad, would talk about it and even considered it official. We were the Moonshiners beta 1.0. We drove around town and cruised the main drag in our old school hot rods, truly enjoying something that was no longer normal practice. We in a sense where following in the footsteps of the old timers. We were a high school car club and we had fun. Youth has a way of tricking you. I had alot to learn before shit was "official".

Years go by and I continued to learn. Not always the easy way, but learn I did. A few years my car sat, broken, and untouched as life lead me down different paths. My passion for traditional custom cars only got deeper. I always tried to follow a couple important things along the way. 


        1. If your going to do it, do it right.

        2. Open your ears, and shut your mouth. (especially around old guys you can  learn from. which is hard when you're young and think you know everything)

Which leads me to this point. I returned to Sheridan (via Denver), finished some goals, and got back to my Anabelle. I found a shop to call my own and learned by doing, until a fresh hot rod power train brought my beloved car back to life...

In the back ground of this several different things were happening. 
                 One, I was discovering the car club history of Sheridan. Which is deep, mind you, all the way back to the early fifties. The Conquistadors, followed by several others thru the years until it seemed they no longer existed but in local lore. 
                Two, I was meeting people, and reconnecting with old friends, that shared not just a passion for cars, but a respect for vintage hot rodding. Guys who in different ways had the same mind set towards keeping the spirit of tradition alive in the modern day. 
               Three, I had a goal to share my passion with people. I wanted to put together a car show, were people could see why for the last ten+ years a few punk kids have been spending all their free time playing with old junk cars. I wanted to have a car show be fun again, minus the high dollar, built by someone else, soulless kit car garbage. I wanted people to see more of the made in the garage type cars, like they did in the past. I wanted to resurrect the car culture of the 50's and see people enjoy it like I do.

The combination of the three wasn't all to my credit. Tommy, My Brother John, Nate, Rusty, Shooter, and I had long talks about it. They all in different ways lead me to deciding it was time to take it serious. If we came together and formed the MoonShiners Car Club, we could achieve common goals, spread the knowledge that we learned for the old timers to the next generation, build and drive awesome vehicles, keep local history alive, and have a good damn time doing it.


At 25 years old, I have a lot to learn about how to run a club with such big ideas. 


however, we have successfully accomplished the Car Show that I hoped for titled the Absaroka State Takeover, and plan to keep it going for years to come. 


If all goes right we will only get better.

Introductions: Barney's Hacienda

Friday, I was hanging out with a old friend and one of the original club member from back when we "started" the MoonShiners Car Club. Nate a.k.a. Barney, has been getting his garage/shop at his house in order to get some of his projects up and rolling again. Here's a little picture tour.

Nate's 67 Chev is one that he drove the shit out of it high school, but his direction and ideas for the truck (like most vehicles over time) have changed. So he tore it down and set in motion its resurrection. The '53 Belair on the side is another old friend's car that Nate is care taker/builder of while "Toad" was off at tree school.

One of three Original Club Plaques I made when I was in college.

If you don't know barney... well let's just say hes a character.

Hope you enjoyed this... I know I did, Nate is sort of like a white Dave Chappell, so shit never stops being funny. That's my favorite part of our club, the good people that keep us all laughing. 

I will have more introduction and picture tours... that's it for now.

- STUTZ

Steeeekers

VicePres Tom "the fighting dolphin" Manning, made our California bound crew a shit load of stickers to give away. Tommy and I decided it would be cool to give back to some of the vendors and people at the Grand National Roadster Show. They feature the Moonshiners Logo, with this exact blog's address, a sort sticky business card.

 IF you really want one... email me.

-Stutz

Custom Car Highlights: Dave Nostrands 41 Ford Convertible.

Custom Car Highlights with Stutz

In my line of work, I have the opportunity to meet lots of interesting people. This summer I had my 54 Buick sitting outside our family's store. It was the first time in several years that I had driven the car since a long awaited engine swap. Most people that saw the car called it anything but what it is. "That a '55 Chevy?" or "Nice ratrod" crap of that nature. However, one customer hit the nail on the head and said, "that looks like whats left of a '54 Buick". I didn't take the "whats left" part to heart, because after chatting for a minute with the customer I was pleased to find I was talking to a real car guy. Dave (the customer's name) was a very nice, clean cut guy. You wouldn't expect him to be someone who was in the custom car scene at it's infancy, but he was. Dave was a young man in the early fifties, living in the Seattle area. His car was a mild custom '41 Ford Convertible. He told me some great stories, but the best part was he brought down the only pictures he has of his car. Nosed and decked, chrome dash, pontiac taillights, single spotlight, the car was truely a clean custom in its day. Dave told me that the paint was a burgundy, the color of wine, done in 17 coats of hand rubbed lacquer. In a story he told, he visited the famous Barris Custom shop and spoke with George and Sam Barris, who told Dave that they couldn't replicate the paint, it was just too nice. He sold the car in the mid fifties, and the Ford's fate is unknown to date. He told me that the guy he sold it too had damaged the car in a short time with lacquer thinner, as well as crashing into road barriers. The only time Dave saw it later in life, was outside of an auto parts store. It was in primer and appeared to be in the process of being rebuild by a "pimple faced kid". He told the kid that it was a nice looking auto he has there, and the kid said thanks, "it took alot to get it to this point". Amazing to think what became of such a beautiful and rare car.

This is the only "color" photo left of the car.

The Absaroka State Takeover

Although its come and gone... the Absaroka State Takeover Traditional Hot Rods & Kustoms Gathering 2010 went off without a hitch.

Here's the back story...  In 1939, a man named A.R.Swirkard and like minded counties in northern Wyoming, southern Montana, and western South Dakota attempted to form a new State called "Absaroka", with its Capital being Sheridan, Wyoming. Going as far as producing license plates, and naming a "Miss Absaroka" the proposed state was short lived. However, as a tribute to this rebel spirit, we created the Absaroka State Takeover held in Big Horn, Wyoming just south of the former Absarokan Capital. Designed as a gathering of Pre 1965 Hot Rods and Custom Cars, we had our own "Miss Absaroka" the second of her kind, Courtney Gifford (Former Miss Wyoming) and Trophy license plates resembling the rare originals given to each participant. Cars lined the street in front of the Historic Bozeman Trail Inn, with good food and drinks a plenty, the vibe of the show was excellent.

Sponsored by 307 clothing (Stalick Brother LLC), The Moonshiners Car Club, The Bozeman Trail Inn, The Big Horn-Y, and Manning Signs (Gillette, Wyo) we hope to be able to make this a yearly event. Special thanks to the organizers and Participants. Look forward to seeing everyone next year.

Here is shots from the First A.S.T. August 21st 2010.