Sticking to my trend of posting about people who build or restore hand-built and one-off cars, I have to post about Chris Runge. Hand-built air cooled hot rods inspired by some of Porsche's early race cars? Yes please!
All photos courtesy of Chris Runge.
I stumbled on Chris a few years ago while researching some forming buck designs. His presence on social media, very apparent, you couldn't help but follow this guy to see what was going to happen next. Built from scratch and inspired by some wonderful specimens of race history, his builds are sketched and built to his vision and to what he loves.
A "lifer" of all things 4 wheels, like many of us, and starting at a young age with a 1951 GMC 3/4 ton pickup and a '77 Chevy Nova, it wasn't long after that he discovered the romance of VW's followed by the introduction to early Porsches a bit later. German design and engineering just made sense to him. Finding so much joy and satisfaction in driving these small displacement German cars, it was only a matter of time before he felt the need to build something in his little shop space, in Rural Minnesota. One can't help but be impressed by his visions and the ability to bring those visions to life.
I can go on and on about this guy and the work he does, but I'll let the pictures take over from here. Pictures really are worth a 1000 words. Check out his website and follow him on social media for inspiration and updates. I certainly know he's an inspiration to my endeavors. I hope he inspires some of you!
It's no secret I'm an early Porsche fan. The history, the sound, the beauty in the machines built on race history. So I love talking and learning about them. A German buddy of mine, Matthias Hoeing of Wicked Sixes and Mezger engines, is one of the premier early Porsche engine builders in the world, has put together some incredible engine teardown and build up videos with Filmkooperation. Nothing new here, but if you haven't seen them, now you're going to. They're just too good not to share.
There are many parallels in my little universe, but the majority always lead to something mechanical in nature. Something that is a common topic here is the beauty of old machinery. One breed of machine that I've only briefly talked about here, is that of the tower clock movement. Mechanical Craftsmanship - Tower Clock Movements
Over the past couple years, I have been volunteering my time to help restore one of these lovely machines in our little town for the old Courthouse. The clock was built by A.S. Hotchkiss under the Seth Thomas Company and was constructed in 1876. The clock is a model #12A. The clock featured a time and strike train that was wound by hand once a week until an electric unit was fit into the existing clock movement frame in the mid 1940's. During its life, the clock has seen time periods of functional issues and lack of maintenance, ultimately preventing it from keeping time, striking the bell, or functioning at all. It now needs a great deal of attention, including reconstructing missing wheels/gears, redoing the clock dials, and even some internal structural repairs to the building itself. There's a long road ahead, but the county, help from our community, and mentoring from tower clock expert, Phil Wright from the Tower Clock Company, will keep me in-line and will be doing a portion of the restoration as well.
Here's what it looks like now. I'll post some updates as this gets further along.
HUGE thanks to my good friend Andrew for showing me this car. What an amazing accomplishment for the early 1900's and proving what power electric cars could have on the race car. Can you imagine driving a car capable of 120 mph in 1902? Incredible.
Sorry for the delay in posting! The usual life insanity has about crippled this blogger. I'm working through it, though. don't give up on me.
Thanks for the reminder from Chris Meurett and his employees at PowerStream to keep the ball rolling! I appreciate the nice words!
Okay... enough of that. How about a movie?
I'm a long time lover of the GT40! You know... the ones that gave Ferrari a taste of good 'ol American racing at Le Mans in 1966 through 1969 with a 1-2-3 in 1966. But this isn't about one of those cars. This blog LOVES those cars and will certainly talk more about those later...
This blog has always been about the support of the, "if you can't buy it, build it!" attitude. So check out Jim Cowden's INCREDIBLE 15,000 hour build! The details are incredible and this is FAR from being some kind of kit car.
