TMU Ep. 3: Rebuilding a Mystery Hot Rod Motor with Drag Racing Legends

In this episode of The Motor Underground, we're finally putting the show title to work. But, back up half a step and indulge us for a minute. It's really easy to buy a brand-new crate motor and bolt a reliable, safe, 1,000-horsepower mountain (that even comes with its own warranty!) into your 25-year-old "old-school" pickup truck and go have $100K worth of fun for about half that price. Really, it's a great moment in time to be a hotrodder: Never before, in the history of cool stuff, have we had this much potential at the tips of our fingers and on just the other end of our credit cards.

On the other hand, this show asks, "Where's the back-breaking, soul-crushing fulfillment in all that?"

The Stoner T has been an exercise in futility, as much as one can be in putting some soul back into the process of building a car. When you embark on the agonizing journey of the hunt for old speed parts, trying to reassemble a machine and a moment in time that's long since passed, the reward is the soul you put back into the thing. Will anyone care, once they're in the midst of it? In its presence? That probably depends on how open one's third eye is.

You've heard your author say this before: The DNA embedded in all the parts of this car, like a million-year-old bug in a petrified block of amber, is only valuable if we can put these inanimate objects back into service again. And then share their stories. And it's with that in mind, that we bring you this third episode of The Motor Underground.

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