Gas Mileage Is For Daily Drivers

These shirts http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/dailydrivers.html came from a comment that came to mind while reading a message board for cruisers where we live. I was reading a post about a show that stated they had lowered the entrance fee, so you could buy an extra gallon of gas to drive there (it was tongue in cheek). My immediate reply was “gas mileage is for daily drivers, summer is too short to worry about that with your cruiser!”. Then I thought “hmm…gas mileage IS for daily drivers!” and designed shirts for those that agree with us. We already had these shirts http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/gasmileage.html (and we do wear them) that had come up from a conversation with a spectator at a show saying that our classic must get pretty poor gas mileage. Honestly, we have no idea, it hasn’t been driven enough to know, due to various problems that have kept it in the garage more-such is the fun of a restoration. However, we told the gentleman in a very nice way that we didn’t build it for the gas mileage. In keeping with the gas mileage/gas prices theme, we also added these http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/letscruise.html and these http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/buygas.html because we can’t let gas mileage keep our cars garage bound. Snow and breakage will do that for us!

My other car is being restored

This was a tongue in cheek design, made because our little never ending restoration project was beginning to the be the stuff of legend. People we knew from out of state had never seen the car, and began to tease us that it really didn't exist. We tried several times to get it into drivable condition to make events, but as restorations go, this one has been fairly typical in taking WAY too long and being filled with endless surprises and part searching expeditions. We have later model cars that we can (and do) take to events, but that classic never seemed to make it. We decided that other people must have the same "problem" and decided we would make a shirt for all of us out there with one of those forever restorations. So, we came up with the simple saying, my other car is being restored.

Forget Diamonds!

This is another favorite of mine. I'm not a diamonds and dresses kind of girl, and I'd much rather get things for my car that jewelry for the holidays. Most people that know me aren't surprised by this at all, but Mike used to get some funny looks when he bought me microfiber towels as a birthday gift! So anyway, around the holiday season one year some commercial for a jeweler came on, talking about how every woman wants diamonds as a gift. I said, forget diamonds, I want CHROME! And then I promptly logged in to create that shirt, which I frequently wear to car shows. It gets a lot of comments! I have to say, it's the PERFECT shirt for anyone like me that couldn't care less about carats but insists on triple dipped chrome! You can find these shirts here on our website: http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/diamonds.html

How Gear 4 Gearheads Got Started

Did you ever wonder what exactly started a company? Well, let me tell you what one event started Gear 4 Gearheads! Surprisingly, although Eleanor is a regular "contributor" to our sayings, she wasn't the that vehicle that started the shop. We don't own the one that started it all anymore, it was our daily driver at the time.

A few years ago, we had a Subaru Baja (ok, I know, it's an import, but Ford won't bring the Falcon Ute over here and we wanted better gas mileage than our Bronco was getting us). Surprisingly, it was REALLY capable off road. It's small size and well refined AWD system made it nearly unstoppable as long as ground clearance wasn't an issue. It could slog through mud like no other truck we ever owned.

One day while we were driving around, we found this great "seasonal use highway" that was full of mud and water. I had just gotten a new DSLR camera and thought it would be fun to get a photo of the Baja flinging mud. So, we made a low speed pass to check for rocks, a second higher speed pass for the fun or it, then another higher speed pass for the photo opp. That photo can actually be found on our wallpaper page, right here http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/mud.html .

I made that photo my computer wallpaper I liked it so much. Then one day while I was thinking how fun it was to send the mud flying up into the air like that and I thought "if the mud ain't flyin, you ain't tryin". Hm. You know, I thought, that would make an AWESOME shirt. So our very first shirt was "born" and so was Gear 4 Gearheads. Look for that shirt soon, as we add "off roading and mudding" to the website (we are completly changing the site, so we only have a few of the 30 or so sections up at this time-pardon the bondo, but the final result will be a lot better than before, with the added bonus of Made in the USA shirts being added as we go).

Anyone that's been through a restoration process really knows the meaning of these t-shirts! It can seem like a never ending process, where the light at the end of the tunnel might turn out to be a freight train instead of the actual end of the tunnel! From the hard work and late nights to scouring the internet and junkyards for the right parts to the surprises and of course, the cost (which is NEVER what you intended to spend-it's always more), restoring a car can be a real frustration. But in the end,it is all worth it when you get into the car, sit down in the seat (that's even attached to the floor pans), turn the key and that motor roars to life as you hit the open road. All the aggravation, exhaustion (I've taken to calling ours "project sleep deprivation"), time and of course, money, just fades away as the asphalt disappears under your wheels. Ah yes, in the end, it's worth every damn penny! This shirt is dedicated to our own experiance driving our project, which certainly was worth every damn penny! Want to see our project? check out our "about us" page for some photos: http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/about.html

I love the smell of bondo

Hello, this is the "wife" half of Gear 4 Gearheads. I decided I would go ahead and start blogging about the different sayings on our shirts, and where they came from. Because we are deeply involved in the hobby and are restoring a car ourselves, many of the unique phrases you see came from personal experiences. We don’t just sit behind a computer and slap up saying on shirts, we live them! All of our designs can be found on our website, http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/ (ok, SOME of them-we are overhauling the site right now, so bear with us). As far as the origins of our designs, I’m going to start with one of the more obscure ones-I just happened to pick it up to wear today and it made me think about it.“I love the smell of bondo in the morning” ( http://www.gear4gearheads.biz/smellofbondo.html). Well, this one is pretty straight forward-I DO love the smell of body filler. Paint (especially a quality clear-smells just like candy to me) too, but that’s a different subject. This particular shirt though, came from an early morning body work session with the car we are restoring. See, we bought this car back in November of 02, knowing it needed some work. Well, as anyone that’s restored one in their garage knows-one little thing leads to about ten huge things! At the time this shirt saying came to mind, we were trying to get the car ready for Woodward (never happened, but home resto project rarely make a deadline). We needed to replace the driver’s side rear quarter skin. Once we got that skin off, we needed to replace the outer wheelhouse too-like I said, one thing ALWAYS leads to another. Well, we got the repopped wheelhouse in, after some modification (ever notice “bolt on”resto parts never are?) and used body glue to put the skin on. So far, the glue is holding fine. Anyway, we had to smooth the line between the new skin and the original body-so, early in the morning, we were mixing up some bondo and I said to my husband “I love the smell of bondo in the morning!”.Then I said “I’ll be right back, I gotta put that on a shirt!”. So there you have it-the story behind the shirt that says “I love the smell of bondo in the morning”. It’s a great gift idea for someone that does body work for a living, or, like us, is deep into a restoration project. Because usually by that point, a good laugh is a great thing!

Woodward Dream Cruise traffic jam

If you've ever tried to cruise the famous Woodward ave between Ferndale and Pontiac on the Saturday of the Dream Cruise, you know exactly what we were thinking when we came up with this one. Any other time you are stuck in that kind of crazy traffic, with the heat of summer making it feel like a blast furnace, you would not be very happy. But on that one magical day in August, you can crawl at an idle and take over an hour to go a mile-and be happier than a clam! The exhaust fumes, full of octane and lead supplement, burns your eyes, the rumble of the motors can be felt in your floorboards and you are one of thousands of enthusiasts gathering to celebrate the hobby, it's history and the cars. There's just no way to describe this amazing event-pictures might be worth a thousand words, but there's not enough film in the world. So, we'll see you at Woodward, doin the Woodward Crawl, and having the most fun we'll ever have in a traffic jamb!