This week Royboy talks with Heath Murray of Murray Kustom Rods of Fort Worth, TX. We talk about everything from kustom Chevys to 90’s car audio, to 1400 HP Corvettes at the Texas Mile.
Way back in 2010 I drove 9 hours into northwest Iowa for a first time show with no idea what I was getting myself into. My buddy John Wells was putting together the first ever Vintage Torque Fest, a car show with an indoor area for feature cars, a dirt track for the folks that wanted to take a couple of laps and a great vibe, something that many shows just don’t have.
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48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
I remember seeing a listing for the Stray Kat 500 a long long time ago in the back of some magazine. I thought, what a cool name for a show! It was a couple of years before I got myself down to Dewey, OK and when I finally made it, I never missed another ‘500’ again.
That first year that I made it had to be 2010 if my memory serves correctly, it was just a year or two later that I got my folks to join me and they have been coming since as well. See a theme developing? This is one of those great shows that is hard to really describe correctly. The best way I’ve found is to call it a family reunion, where you just aren’t related to everyone and they all bring their cool cars. That’s a bit of a misnomer though, because by the time you leave the 5oo, you ARE family, you’re part of the Stray Kat Family.
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48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
For the last few years we’ve had a fun little show in our town on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. It’s really about gathering up some of our great car friends and just having a good time. It’s called the Gypsum Pie Festival and Car Show and it’s coming up again May 28th in Gypsum, KS. Scroll down for more info and photos from the last few years!
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
This week Royboy talks with Matt York from the Rust Culture Project Podcast in a swap cast where we’ll both release the audio on our respective podcasts.
Here’s some Go Pro Video from the starting line on Saturday, and a whole bunch of burnouts!
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
As I drove to Texas for the Texas Thaw I wondered what kind of effect if any there would be by sharing the weekend with the March Meet out in California. There are a bunch of front engine dragsters in the midwest and I know that some of them go out to CA for the March Meet. I was thoroughly surprised at a couple of the amazing machines that showed up at the North Star Dragway for Texas Thaw. The Trans Am Funny Car above and the twin engine flathead powered Front Engine Dragster below. Amazing machinery was all around. This is the last photo post of the event coverage, check back tomorrow for some video!
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
For part 3 of the 2017 Texas Thaw coverage I’m at the starting line of the strip. Literally where the rubber meets the road. Big smokey burnouts, hot rods, drag cars and some guys that drove to and from the track while taking some passes while they were there.
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
For part 2 of the 2017 Texas Thaw coverage I continue in the car show area of the event. The Torques club has space for about 100 show cars with some overflow that was completely filled up this year. Any more than that and you start to eat into the amount of space you have for the race vehicles, trucks, and trailers. The North Star Dragway gets filled up quick with the cars starting to roll in around 8am and by 11 the place is full and cars are still coming in.
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
On March 4th, 2017 I went down to North Star Dragway for the Texas Thaw. I try to make it each year for the event, it’s a fun day of drags and show where the gate proceeds go to a great cause, sending care packages to members of our military overseas. I’ll bring you more photos all week long and maybe some video too 🙂
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
This week Royboy tests out the new headset mic in the camper. Is it a rant? Is it rambling? Is it incoherent mumbling? Probably all three but the only way to find out is to listen… Oh and this one has some bad language, you’ve been warned.
Here’s a couple photos of the camper project:
Lots of rot in the old roof. There’s not much wood that was exposed to the outside world that wasn’t destroyedUsing the Kreg jig to assemble a new front window frame after the old one disintegrated when we removed it.
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This year I couldn’t make it to the Detroit Autorama so I asked my buddy Dan Podobinski of Dan’s Hot Rod Photo to provide some photos for me to share with all of you. Dan has a great eye and you can see his work in the last couple issues of Hop Up Magazine and various others. Thanks for the photos Dan!
48 Cars In 48 States : The Great American Road Trip – A 48 state road trip with a stop in each state to photograph a traditionally styled hot rod, kustom or drag vehicle. Daily updates will be posted here on royboyproductions.com so you can see where I’ve gone, who I’ve met, some of what I’ve seen. At the end of the trip I’ll produce a 200 page full color book of the entire adventure. Business Sponsorship Packages here available as well as you can pre-order the book here!
