Fantom Works

[Restorer32]

Watched an episode last evening.  Would someone please explain to Dan Short that what he repeatedly calls "knee shocks" are in fact lever shocks?  While you are at it tell him that sand blasting a chassis while it is still assembled is not a good idea. Thank you.

[60FlatTop]

2 hours ago, Restorer32 said:

While you are at it tell him that sand blasting a chassis while it is still assembled is not a good idea.

 

You made me remember the job I had in a foundry. Any time you needed fill in work you just walked through the sand tunnel. (Better than changing a furnace roof between pours).

 

Don't those personalities have jargon classes? "I know I hear knee action shock. This looks like a knee." "No no no" "Well that's what I call them." That's what my old friend Mike said when he used the wrong term. Ever meet a guy like that?

 

If I called to my wife and told her there was a forum comment about the educated TV car guy she would know exactly who I mean. She has seen glimpses of him as I flip through the channels. His speech is too articulate to have not had a fairly high level job in the past. If he came from an automotive career it is a long shot. I would guess he bought into the car occupation as a manager. You know the type "My background is management. What I manage doesn't matter. I am a manager".

 

So he is working at a scripted level rather than years of background in the field.

Bernie

[BearsFan315]

lol

 

yeah they are right aroudn the corner from me. been on a few tours of his shop and such. cars are NOt the only thing they do there, there is a corner where they do old airplanes, and in teh wood shop they do some jukebox restorations. cool part is they have some custom steam boxes for steaming and working the wood. 

 

and the times i met him and talked with him, toured the shop with him in groups and such how he talks on tv is about how he talks and acts normally. msot people say he is an mass, jerk, etc. he comes of harsh. 

 

yes he is a business man... dont recall his background totally. he did not just jump into the car world.

 

i am interested in seeing what is next, at out last tour he was quitting the show, and making a turn in his business. going away from restorations and such and more into the supercar high performance car world. they were doing a custom aston martin, 200? extreme horsepower and performance. says there is NO money in restorations.

[Restorer32]

I do not think he knows the meaning of "restoration". Did you see the early Overland they "restored" and painted matt green because Dan said "They were never shiny when new ?  I give him credit though for his billing. Seems to be pretty accurate on time and costs.

[Detroit_Electric]

Talked to Dan at SEMA a few years back and he came off as a pretty good guy. I enjoyed his show because they gave a realistic idea on what the work costs and how long it really takes

[Matt Harwood]

6 hours ago, Restorer32 said:

Watched an episode last evening.  Would someone please explain to Dan Short that what he repeatedly calls "knee shocks" are in fact lever shocks?  While you are at it tell him that sand blasting a chassis while it is still assembled is not a good idea. Thank you.

 

Don't worry, they killed the show last year. All the stuff he's doing wrong, he's doing to cars you can't see anymore.

 

1 minute ago, Detroit_Electric said:

...they gave a realistic idea on what the work costs

 

LOL. That's always my favorite part.

 

Dan: Well Bill, you came in for an alignment on your Chevelle and to have a new shifter installed, but we discovered that the engine threw a rod, someone welded the steering together with clothes hangers, and the body was held together with Band-Aids and plaster-of-Paris. So we rebuilt everything the way I wanted using parts that weren't totally correct but look OK to me. The original budget was $800 but it actually took 935 hours and the total cost is [sorts through huge stack of receipts] $68,340.23.

 

Bill the Customer: Gosh! That's a lot. That's way more than I wanted to spend. But I really like the car, so OK, that's fine, I don't mind spending the money.

 

Viewers who have worked on a car before:

[George Smolinski]

His show is a thousand times better than Gas Monkey with his BS win, win, win.

[1937hd45]

If you have toured that shop was there any heat in the work areas in the winter? Did he actually carry the above mentioned $68,340.23 project and all the others and actually hope to collect, after the one and only bill presentation? If locked inside a shop could he PERSONALLY rebuild a wheelbarrow? Bob 

Edited August 21, 2019 by 1937hd45 (see edit history)

[1937hd45]

21 minutes ago, George Smolinski said:

His show is a thousand times better than Ass Monkey with his BS win, win, win.

 

BS aside I'd feel safer driving a Gas Monkey built vehicle, it would also look better and sell quicker, just my two cents. Bob 

[padgett]

Gee what polarization. I always thought of them as knee (action) shocks. Also saw a few where the work stopped when the deposit ran out. Did enjoy Dan and Wayne more but then am biased - think of beards as safety hazards and do not like needles much less drilling holes in cars or my body. Wrong generation I guess.

[39BuickEight]

There is an interview out there with Dan talking about the show and why it is no longer aired.  After the interview, I must say, he appears to be a much different person in real life.  A much better one.

Edited August 21, 2019 by 39BuickEight (see edit history)

[PFitz]

Shows like that are  a reminder why the TV is called, "the boob tube".

 

Paul

[BearsFan315]

yeah he said there is NO money in the TV show and then wanting to complete a car in an unrealistic deadline. money they lost and time they will never get back. also taked 10x longer to work on a car when they want you to do it and talk about it so they can film it, and then maybe do that again to make sure they got a good angle. my 6 year project would take another 10 years at that pace.

 

i have noticed when watching this type of car shows, if you notice in the background many times you will see cars featured in other episodes, in various stages. seen a older episode of GMG, and in the background you could see a car that they recently featured and worked on in the background a few times when they pan around.

[Restorer32]

12 hours ago, padgett said:

Gee what polarization. I always thought of them as knee (action) shocks. Also saw a few where the work stopped when the deposit ran out. Did enjoy Dan and Wayne more but then am biased - think of beards as safety hazards and do not like needles much less drilling holes in cars or my body. Wrong generation I guess.

 

Knee action shocks and lever shocks are entirely different things.

[39BuickEight]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:29 AM, Restorer32 said:

Watched an episode last evening.  Would someone please explain to Dan Short that what he repeatedly calls "knee shocks" are in fact lever shocks?  While you are at it tell him that sand blasting a chassis while it is still assembled is not a good idea. Thank you.

 

Car shows like this one are not on TV to appeal to real world car people.  They are there for entertainment and to gain a larger audience for advertising purposes.  You just have to enjoy it as it is.  It's not meant to be an accurate depiction of the industry.

[60FlatTop]

1 hour ago, 39BuickEight said:

You just have to enjoy it as it is.  It's not meant to be an accurate depiction of the industry.

 

Sort of like my wife being mesmerized by the world in the passenger rear view mirror while she listens to me talk about my view of the world.

[Lawrence Helfand]

Dan had a 41 Buick Special sedanette in the shop for restoration and I made a point of watching the project progress. I would have to say it was laughable with Dan proclaiming how impossible it was to get parts requiring the purchase of another car and that the finished car was not close to original as was stated by Dan to the owner. Some trim missing and incorrect interior finish work most glaringly the dash. He welded up the cracked manifold which is never successful.  I was quite disappointed at the result. And there it sits in the backround on every subsequent episode likely waiting for another manifold after the welding failed. Hate to think that the 41 Buick project is representative of the work being done on other cars. I believe Dan was in the Air Force and a helicopter pilot which might account for his harsh demeanor.  

[Pfeil]

9 hours ago, Lawrence Helfand said:

 

 I believe Dan was in the Air Force and a helicopter pilot which might account for his harsh demeanor.  

 

 

 I was a flight engineer in the Navy and I have a few friends and friends I have worked  with that were Pilots in the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Army. One of my old friends flew B17's and was shot down on his 25th mission over Germany which missed his home ticket by one mission and spent the rest of the war as a POW, another friend and surfing buddy flew Navy TBF's in WW2 and retired from American Airlines. Another guy that worked with was a F6F pilot in WW2. One of my closes friends that I've known from the 7th grade was a Air Force C5 pilot who spent most of his time around Vietnam and just recently retired from Delta Airlines, still another friend and work colleague spent his time in the Marines in Vietnam helping our guys on the ground, guys that were pinned down on the ground were very glad to see him coming to help them out in his helicopter gunship to save them from misfortune.

So tell me,

 Just what does a Air Force helicopter pilot have to do with a harsh demeanor????

Edited August 23, 2019 by Pfeil (see edit history)

[39BuickEight]

9 hours ago, Lawrence Helfand said:

I believe Dan was in the Air Force and a helicopter pilot which might account for his harsh demeanor.  

 

Watch his interviews when not on the show (many are on google).  Completely different guy.  One of the many reasons he ended up not continuing the show was the way he was portrayed.  The reviews of his place also paint a different picture of him.  I thought the same thing and was one of the reasons I rarely watched it.  I thought he was a jerk.  Once I dig a little deeper it appears that he's not actually that way.

[chistech]

Unfortunately, I believe the producer has a lot to do with the way many in these shows are perceived. Let’s face it, if there is no drama, most except the very subject devoted would watch it. Humans, by nature are some of the lousiest animals on the planet. We like mean, nasty, gory things. I rodeoed for years and people don’t go to rodeos to watch the riders be successful. The calf roping and team roping is when most get up to stand in line for food and drink and few watch those performances. People  want to see riders bucked off and hurt. Even in barrel racing they like to see some sort of high speed failure whether simply knocking over a barrel to horses stumbling and crap happening.

     Same with these shows, the majority of the immature watchers really don’t care about the true specifics of the show. I bet half the time the actors like Dan probably spew crap for the hell of it just to see if people like us, who really know are watching and can have a laugh at his BS. Dan: “over here we attached this pie cost to the front of the henway for better handling.” Let’s face it, these businesses have been found by television and not the other way around. They had to be doing something right to be in business long enough to even be considered by the network. Problem is they all signed on and agreed to play the games the networks want to keep the viewers. I actually had a local cable network want to do a little series on my one man shop bringing back the old cars. My neighbor  is a high up at the network and really liked what I was doing. When people from the show came, they realized with just me in the shop, there wasn’t enough excitement, only real stuff going on and the show would have to be more like a “boring” series documentary (their words) So they asked if my wife could get involved, (she isn’t other than often riding with me to pickup or deliver cars).They wanted her to come out and yell at me or tell me she’s fighting with some parts supplier on the phone. I was going to need unhappy customers who wanted their cars sooner than I could get them done, etc.. 

    So you can see, a real production with 100% real information is not wanted these days. TV is no longer a vehicle for knowledge like MOO Wild Kingdom or National Geographic was. Look what they did with the UK production Wheeler Dealers, the actual repair work shown was deemed to expensive to film with Ed China! Hell, even our news is no longer truthful and is more entertainment than anything. Needless to say, when I reneged on their ideas, they told my neighbor they weren’t interested as either was I. Our world today is all fake and it’s a shame. I take all these shows with a grain of salt and still liked FW more than most. I believe Dan was probably more like us than we think and got tired of playing the scripted guy they wanted him to play. I’m sure he was hoping on making money and getting more business but like the rest of us, there’s no gold at the end of the rainbow. It doesn’t surprise me he pulled out. I think anyone with half a consciousness would if they let themselves get sucked in in the first place. 

Edited August 23, 2019 by chistech (see edit history)

[Lawrence Helfand]

1 hour ago, Pfeil said:

 

 

 I was a flight engineer in the Navy and I have a few friends and friends I have worked  with that were Pilots in the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Army. One of my old friends flew B17's and was shot down on his 25th mission over Germany which missed his home ticket by one mission and spent the rest of the war as a POW, another friend and surfing buddy flew Navy TBF's in WW2 and retired from American Airlines. Another guy that worked with was a F6F pilot in WW2. One of my closes friends that I've known from the 7th grade was a Air Force C5 pilot who spent most of his time around Vietnam and just recently retired from Delta Airlines, still another friend and work colleague spent his time in the Marines in Vietnam helping our guys on the ground, guys that were pinned down on the ground were very glad to see him coming to help them out in his helicopter gunship to save them from misfortune.

So tell me,

 Just what does a Air Force helicopter pilot have to do with a harsh demeanor????

I also have many military friends most gone now and many that were in combat and some genuine hero's and they all were nice guys but some shared an intensity that was a bit intimidating at times and some just wanted to suppress and forget. Dan can be intimidating to his employees at times and his behavior felt very familiar to what I sometimes experienced from some of the guys I knew. You rely on your buddies and have high expectations from them and as a pilot especially then from your aircraft maintenance crew. Your life might depend  on it . Some never adapted to civilian life and substituted the missing adrenaline rush with dangerous behavior and confrontational attitudes. They were all honorable but did not leave the military without having been affected by their experiences in both positive and negative ways. Hope that answers your question regarding my comment about Dan. He certainly has a engaging and charming side as well and one has to also assume conflict might be scripted into the production to keep us awake.  

[60FlatTop]

1 hour ago, chistech said:

only real stuff going on and the show would have to be more like a “boring” series documentary (their words)

 

I would listen to a radio show while I worked in the garage if someone interesting read the AACA Forum.

 

Might have to holler from under the car "Alexa MUTE!" once in a while. But I could see it being better than the TV stuff I tried.

[chistech]

32 minutes ago, Lawrence Helfand said:

I also have many military friends most gone now and many that were in combat and some genuine hero's and they all were nice guys but some shared an intensity that was a bit intimidating at times and some just wanted to suppress and forget. Dan can be intimidating to his employees at times and his behavior felt very familiar to what I sometimes experienced from some of the guys I knew. You rely on your buddies and have high expectations from them and as a pilot especially then from your aircraft maintenance crew. Your life might depend  on it . Some never adapted to civilian life and substituted the missing adrenaline rush with dangerous behavior and confrontational attitudes. They were all honorable but did not leave the military without having been affected by their experiences in both positive and negative ways. Hope that answers your question regarding my comment about Dan. He certainly has a engaging and charming side as well and one has to also assume conflict might be scripted into the production to keep us awake.  

I’ve flown model radio controlled aircraft for years. Many of our club members are past military pilots and some were crew chiefs. Most have passed now but all of them were good guys with high standards. One was also a O2SU kingfisher and F6f hellcat pilot who told the story about attempting to fire on a zero only to have just one of the .50 calls fire. What I learned and didn’t realize is they had two pilots to each aircraft and while one was off, the other flew a sortie. Turns out the other pilot had held the trigger down, emptying his guns and melting the barrels out of 7. The crew chief replaced them but they forgot to clean out the cosmolene and the gas recoil mechanisms were clogged. Fred, who was normally very mild mannered, got red eyed and quite PO’d when he described his tongue lashing he gave to that crew chief as he ended passing a zero he could have easily shot down but ended up being in that zeros sights until fred’s wingman took the zero out.

     Another club members was a very slight bodied guy that was referred to as a “two cushion “ guy became was so small, he needed two cushions under his chute so he could even attempt to see out of the P51 cockpit he flew from. He too was soft spoken until something ticked him off and he could easily lose it. He’s the guy I learned to flyfull scale with as a kid as he owned and operated a small machine freight business to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands. I got to fly in a Cessna 205 and a skymaster! Neither of these two pilots acted much differently than Dan short when they were mad.

[padgett]

Most polite bar I was ever in required long guns to be checked but sidearms were OK.

[Frank DuVal]

Bernie, lots of Old Time Radio shows on the internet. Great listening to in the garage or while driving your old car. Also they are over the air on WAMU out of DC on Sunday nights.

 

Wwwwaaaayyyy better than these contrived restoration shows.

[Ronnie]

One of the first jobs I had was working in a small garage where the owner of the garage was also my boss. He treated me just like Dan treated his employees at Fantom Works. He treated another employee and his two sons that worked for him the same way too. I could always feel a tension in the air that someone was about to get chewed out. It was nerve racking.

 

Once the owner found out I liked fishing he invited me to go crappie fishing with him and his sons. We spent the weekend on his big houseboat fishing, eating, and talking about work. He paid for everything and we all had a great time. He never uttered a harsh word the whole time we were on his boat.  I thought I had finally gotten on his good side.  Come Monday morning I hadn't made it til nine o'clock before he chewed my ass out for taking too long to do a brake job on a car I was working on.  I'll never forget it.

 

I don't know if the stress of running a garage and having to make a profit made him act that way in his garage or if it was because he felt he had to talk rough to his employees to make them do what he wanted.   I didn't work at that job too long before I had enough and I quit and moved on, but that job taught me a good lesson that people don't react the same way in all situations.  Maybe Dan has the same personality as my old boss or maybe he is just acting like my old boss to put on a good show. 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Ronnie (see edit history)

[Pfeil]

11 hours ago, Ronnie said:

One of the first jobs I had was working in a small garage where the owner of the garage was also my boss. He treated me just like Dan treated his employees at Fantom Works. He treated another employee and his two sons that worked for him the same way too. I could always feel a tension in the air that someone was about to get chewed out. It was nerve racking.

 

Once the owner found out I liked fishing he invited me to go crappie fishing with him and his sons. We spent the weekend on his big houseboat fishing, eating, and talking about work. He paid for everything and we all had a great time. He never uttered a harsh word the whole time we were on his boat.  I thought I had finally gotten on his good side.  Come Monday morning I hadn't made it til nine o'clock before he chewed my ass out for taking too long to do a brake job on a car I was working on.  I'll never forget it.

 

I don't know if the stress of running a garage and having to make a profit made him act that way in his garage or if it was because he felt he had to talk rough to his employees to make them do what he wanted.   I didn't work at that job too long before I had enough and I quit and moved on, but that job taught me a good lesson that people don't react the same way in all situations.  Maybe Dan has the same personality as my old boss or maybe he is just acting like my old boss to put on a good show. 

 

 

 

Was he a ex military pilot too?

[edinmass]

Once you have 10 to 15 thousands of hours working in a garage/restoration shop, there is no high pressure or difficult jobs. It all becomes routine, and if your good at what you do, you don’t put up with crap like a boss with a big mouth complaining about trivial issues. The only difficult thing in restoration is deadlines, and explaining to customers why truly professional and competent work is so expensive. The only thing that matters are results...........and the made for TV bs is not worth my time. True restoration costs are breathtaking, sad but true fact. A working man can generally not afford most restoration shops unless it is for  specialty work on a limited basis. Current Pebble Beach restorations will run from 400k to 1.2 and possibly more with a strange and deteriorated car.  Fantastic work is fantastically expensive. I think the results justify the costs. Restoration standards keep improving while the available pool of craftsmen are diminishing.

 

PS- 400 is low, very, very low.

Edited August 24, 2019 by edinmass (see edit history)

[Pfeil]

1 hour ago, edinmass said:

Once you have 10 to 15 thousands of hours working in a garage/restoration shop, there is no high pressure or difficult jobs. It all becomes routine, and if your good at what you do, you don’t put up with crap like a boss with a big mouth complaining about trivial issues.

 

.

 

It just depends on what shop you are working at. You can't tell me there is no pressure when you have several hundred incident vehicles and thousands that were in production on hold while you are doing a investigation to see if this thing is a small production issue or it's going to blow into a full recall. If it is and after a suitable remedy is produced then the TSB must be written and approved and the time study for flat rate is established before going to print. 

  To top it off it just happens to be Thanksgiving or Christmas break. Been there and done that many times in 35 + years in automotive engineering.

  

So what do you have? The wife and the holiday that didn't happen, unhappy customers in the field, production wanting to know when they can get rolling. Did I mention the director of engineering and the Vice President of sales and service. No pressure? In my job there was no routine.  And the company that I worked for did not operate like most do. We didn't count how many cars went down before we did something.  Even if a problem arises on just a couple of vehicles we were on it right away. There was no grass growing in our engineering shop. Did I like it?..YES,  was there pressure? yes, even high pressure? Yes!      

[60FlatTop]

3 hours ago, edinmass said:

Restoration standards keep improving while the available pool of craftsmen are diminishing.

 

The pool of talent and abilities of craftsmen has always been about the same. It is who picks the management and where they came from that has been suffering for a few decades.

 

I have a management chart with the customer at the top and me at the bottom, looks like an inverted triangle. Ask to see charts from various companies, there MUST be another out there.

 

The car production thing made me smile. The guy who pointed out that small issue in a design meeting was probably the one who started talking and the boss rolled his eyes and then dozed off. "Every times he talks about details he puts me to sleep". Once, on a cogeneration job I asked my boss "Are we making electricity at $1800 per kilowatt today?" He said "Maybe, and walked quickly away.

 

Bernie