This is a kind of off the wall subject that I started to write about in Headhunter's thread about the cruise-in in Stilly. It turned into a novella, so I'm putting it in its own thread:
Speaking of Kansas, the reason I'm going in June is for a couple of weeks of classes in auto restoration at McPherson College. Jay Leno donates to the school and has two scholarships there. They've been featured on Chasing Classic Cars. Some of you guys might be interested in going next summer or thereafter. It's very enjoyable and it's education that's hard to find.
It's the only school in the country where you can get a four-year degree in Auto Restoration with about four different emphases, including motorcycles and museum administration.
Anyway, each June they offer several week-long classes in all sorts of restoration areas including sheet-metal reworking, painting, brake repair, engine rebuilding, transmission rebuilding, casting your own parts, electrical systems, upholstery, chrome refinishing and so on. In each class the instructor tries to cover a semester's worth of info. Classes run from 8 to about 4:30 every day.
People come from all over the world and classes are held to under 10 students each. Everything is hands-on. Not a lot of note-taking. In metal working, you stretch, shrink, planish, roll, bend, form, English Wheel, weld (MIG and TIG) and hammer the crap out of sheet metal all week. There are two weeks of that class and are the best I have taken so far. The week of painting is really good, although the year I took it it was hot as Kansas and those full-cover suits and masks don't breath.
In brakes class, you take apart and reassemble several different kinds of old brakes, and so on in each class. There are a lot of collectors in each class and you can learn a lot from them and learn about sources to find old parts and assemblies.
Their emphasis is on older cars -- turn of the century up to about the muscle car era. They are not about hot rods at all. They just restore cars to their original, roll-out-of-the-factory condition.
They have old cars for students to work on, but they don't work on outside vehicles. Each night after dinner (they serve three meals a day) they caravan to a car or motorcycle museum or collection within about 30 minutes drive. It's absolutely un-freakin'-believable what amazing stashes of old cars are hiding in some of those Kansas farm barns!!
This will be my third year to go and my son's second. They have three weeks of classes. Biggest variety is in first two weeks. The third week is usually for the advanced metal working or advanced painting. This year, I think automotive woodworking is in the third week, too. Lots of the older cars were sheet metal attached to wood frames.
Probably one or two more summers for me and I will have taken everything I have any interest in. This year, just about everything I wanted was in the same week and you can only take one class per week. I'm taking electrical systems and engine tune-up and diagnostics this year.
If you saw them on Chasing Classic Cars, they have a team of students who assemble a Model T and drive it away in less than 12 minutes. They lay all the parts and tools on the ground around the frame, blow a whistle and start the stop watch. Very impressive. I mean they put the wheels on, place the engine in the frame, hook up the drive train, install the body, everything -- all by hand.
They do it outside at their car show in May, but I found a video of them doing it inside:
Speaking of Kansas, the reason I'm going in June is for a couple of weeks of classes in auto restoration at McPherson College. Jay Leno donates to the school and has two scholarships there. They've been featured on Chasing Classic Cars. Some of you guys might be interested in going next summer or thereafter. It's very enjoyable and it's education that's hard to find.
It's the only school in the country where you can get a four-year degree in Auto Restoration with about four different emphases, including motorcycles and museum administration.
Anyway, each June they offer several week-long classes in all sorts of restoration areas including sheet-metal reworking, painting, brake repair, engine rebuilding, transmission rebuilding, casting your own parts, electrical systems, upholstery, chrome refinishing and so on. In each class the instructor tries to cover a semester's worth of info. Classes run from 8 to about 4:30 every day.
People come from all over the world and classes are held to under 10 students each. Everything is hands-on. Not a lot of note-taking. In metal working, you stretch, shrink, planish, roll, bend, form, English Wheel, weld (MIG and TIG) and hammer the crap out of sheet metal all week. There are two weeks of that class and are the best I have taken so far. The week of painting is really good, although the year I took it it was hot as Kansas and those full-cover suits and masks don't breath.
In brakes class, you take apart and reassemble several different kinds of old brakes, and so on in each class. There are a lot of collectors in each class and you can learn a lot from them and learn about sources to find old parts and assemblies.
Their emphasis is on older cars -- turn of the century up to about the muscle car era. They are not about hot rods at all. They just restore cars to their original, roll-out-of-the-factory condition.
They have old cars for students to work on, but they don't work on outside vehicles. Each night after dinner (they serve three meals a day) they caravan to a car or motorcycle museum or collection within about 30 minutes drive. It's absolutely un-freakin'-believable what amazing stashes of old cars are hiding in some of those Kansas farm barns!!
This will be my third year to go and my son's second. They have three weeks of classes. Biggest variety is in first two weeks. The third week is usually for the advanced metal working or advanced painting. This year, I think automotive woodworking is in the third week, too. Lots of the older cars were sheet metal attached to wood frames.
Probably one or two more summers for me and I will have taken everything I have any interest in. This year, just about everything I wanted was in the same week and you can only take one class per week. I'm taking electrical systems and engine tune-up and diagnostics this year.
If you saw them on Chasing Classic Cars, they have a team of students who assemble a Model T and drive it away in less than 12 minutes. They lay all the parts and tools on the ground around the frame, blow a whistle and start the stop watch. Very impressive. I mean they put the wheels on, place the engine in the frame, hook up the drive train, install the body, everything -- all by hand.
They do it outside at their car show in May, but I found a video of them doing it inside:
