The minute I walked into Bell Paint and Body in Titusville, FL at the tender age of five years old my fascination with wrecked cars, Claw Plast body filler, Lucite lacquer, and the amazing pile of parts took over.  One afternoon we visited the shop while the frame of a wrecked Cadillac was being straightened when a chain broke loose and shot across the shop.  I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest but I couldn’t wait to see them tie up and make another pull.  It was almost like my Dad and his head man wasnt going to let it win.  That was 42 years ago and a million miles or more later, a lifetime of experiences.  I have looked straight into the grill of a stock car at 200 mph on pit road in Daytona, ate lunch with Richard Petty and shed tears on the day Dale Earnhardt died. 

Since 1984 I have made my living building performance vehicles in the professional motorsports industry, at last count over 200 cars - from the first piece of tubing in the chassis to the decals and all the wiring and plumbing in between.  I have personally trained 1,700 technicians working in the NASCAR touring teams, and another 300+ that make a living building hot rods, concept vehicles, war birds, or modern art.  In 1987 I got the opportunity to be involved in a program General Motors called The GM Tech Team.  The Tech Team was made up of technicians that specialized in dedicated areas.  Fabricators, thermal dynamics, drive train, engine tuners, chassis dynamics, all worked together to make the GM Cup Teams faster, or at least understand the dynamics of the various systems they were using.  The GM program included many trips to the GM Tech Center in Detroit, Michigan.  On many occasions the over whelming presence of the Tech Center and the projects inside were intimidating at least.  Our fearless leader reminded us on many occasions that like Las Vegas, what we saw in the Tech Center stayed in the Tech Center except for vicious rumors that leaked occasionally.  The experience on the Tech Team reinforced the presence of GM in the industry and the technicians in the center had a level of imagination that could not be discounted.  The John Glovers, Terry Stegalls, Jerry Okenks and Gary Eakers all moved the auto industry to where it is today, not to mention the design engineers and fabricators before them, like Bunkie Knudsen, John DeLorean, Smokey Yunick, and Zora Arkus-Duntov.  Like Forest Gump, that’s all I got to say about that!

In 1988 my family started to build a version of the famed English Wheel.  The Metalcraft Tools version is made from the plans designed by John Glover, a concept fabricator for GM.  John’s history with the wheel dates back to his childhood.  With fifty years of metal shaping, John’s practical application and understanding of what the tools was about lead him to produce a unit that was mobile, simple to use, with a set of anvils following designs proven for generations.  John, in 1972, put together a set of plans to sell to metal shapers in the U.S.  The anvil designs were patterns that John, as a young apprentice, had been exposed to by master metal shapers.  There plans have been sold world wide, copied, stolen, traded and used by 98% of all production English Wheel manufactures world wide.

To this day, every English Wheel, or English Wheel kit sold by Metalcraft Tools Cal Davis sends $10 to John Glover for a set of plans.  The Motorsports industry has been in an evolution of change since the first Model ‘A’ built in the past 40 years I have seen and experienced a lot.  This Blog, with the help of some friends, will bring a new prospective to custom auto fabrication.  We will define skills, dispel myths, simplify concepts and blow away the magic smoke that surrounds custom metal shaping, chassis building, along with engine building concepts.