I’ve spent most of my downtime over the past few months checking out car-related channels on YouTube. I’ve found a number that I like and keep going back to, and an even larger number that I watched once or twice. Of the ones I keep going back to, three stand out; of these, Mighty Car Mods is my favorite. For fabrication work there’s The Fab Forums and Tinman 2 Kustoms.
The guys at Mighty Car Mods are my favorites for a number of reasons. Marty and Moog started out working on cars in their driveways and garages, Marty at his mother’s house. They have since moved to their own garage (being from Australia, they call it a shed). They’ve also branched out to having their own website (mcmtv2.com) with its accompanying channel mcmtv2 and a spin-off show called The Skid Factory starring their friend Turbo Yoda (Al) with his friend Woody.
Marty, Moog, Al and Woody all combine humor with showing viewers some pretty cool builds, although most of us from North America won’t be familiar with many of the makes and models they work on, since they are in Australia. However, a few, like the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Nissan Sylvia (240Z to Americans) are cars we are familiar with. Moog and Marty really aren’t mechanics, and this is something that makes their channel a little more appealing. I definitely recommend that you check these guys out.
This channel is run by a guy named Kyle Voss. I started paying attention to The Fab Forums when I watched a video of his and he mentioned that he was from Cupertino, which shares a border with my hometown of San Jose, Calif. and is in fact within walking distance of where I grew up. I even graduated from the same high school he did, albeit more than two decades earlier.
After finishing that video I subscribed, went to his channel’s homepage and picked a video to watch at random. It was on his Fox Body Mustang project which he calls The Bibbster, although calling the car a Fox Body is stretching things a bit because he’s removed most of the body and was replacing the whole frame. It was the cantilever rear suspension system with oil tanks that he was designing in front of my eyes that hooked me though. I actually had to look it up to see what he was describing verbally. I respect his work enough to have asked him to use images from his videos several times.
Tinman 2 Kustoms/Tinman II Kustoms
Tinman 2 Kustoms is run by a self-made fabricator named Luke Merrill. Many of you will remember Luke and his channel from two articles I wrote covering projects of his – the $600 restoration of his ’65 C-10 when he was 18 and the article about his selection for the SEMA Young Guns Build=Off at the 2017 SEMA Show. He’s building a sweet ’40 Chevy for his mom for this year’s build-off.
Although I don’t much care for his music selection during his videos, considering the fact that he’s completely self-taught, he’s damn good at what he does. He documented the C-10 build really well, showing his good work and his not so great work. You could see his thinking and skills improve as the build went on. Considering that he only spent $600 on the build (he got all the metal from his dad’s scrap pile) it looks excellent, especially since it started out with a tree growing through the floorboards! Luke builds rat rods and he uses techniques he’s come up with in the five or six years since the C-10 build. You should go check out the channel. You won’t be disappointed.
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