THE LOWBUCK STORY by Pat Ganahl Dave didn't ask me to, but since I was helping him put this catalog together, I figured I could slip something here in the front to kind of explain what this "low buck" stuff is all about. (Of course you don't have to read this if you don't want to.) When I first met Dave and saw his shop, I had my doubts. He was working out of an old lop sided red barn. Under the pepper trees outside were all kinds of parts and pieces - the skeleton of a real used-up ‘57 Chevy short tracker, an old Willys drag coupe, a couple of relic frames, bits of Peterbilts and lord knows what else. At first glance the inside looked the same. Dave was working on a Model A street rod. In one corner was the beginnings of a Chevelle sportsman. In another was a supercharged Chevy Small block, alongside a mothballed NASCAR V-8. Hanging from the walls were all sorts of curious mementos, including model airplanes, a sprint car nose, 180-degree headers and snap shots of hot rods, race cars, dragsters, trucks and micro-midgets. While he was giving me the grand tour, Dave pointed out a pencil sketch of what looked like a 1920's C-cab flatbed truck. "That's what I'm going to build next," he said. "Sure," I thought to myself, "I'll believe that when I see it." In less than a year I was photographing the completed truck for the cover of Street Rodder magazine. The thing was a work of art, with a mid-mounted 292 Chevy six, a Corvette independent rear suspension and laminated wood body. He built the whole thing from scratch in the red barn. Two things immediately impressed me about Dave's operation. First, although the shop itself and many of the tools were old and funky, everything inside was orderly, well maintained, even painted to match. Some of the tools he had even made or modified himself to do specific jobs. Second, despite Dave's apparent "laid back" attitude to work in general, work got done in that shop at an amazingly steady rate. Every time I stopped by he was working on a new project for a customer, at the same time that visible progress was being made on his own various machines. I couldn't say the same for some of the super-trick custom fabrication shops that I frequented, where the double-throw-down projects seemed to linger forever. Dave started messing around with cars when he was a kid. Since he was always hanging around the Betz Speed and Custom shop in his home town of Anaheim, California, the owner finally gave him a job operating the louver press. By the time he was 15, he had put together his first drag machine, a T coupe with a Cragar 4-banger. Soon after came a Model A coupe with lots of louvers and Von Dutch pin striping. Then a sprint- style T roadster street rod. At the same time, Dave had built his own T-bodied micro midget and was learning how to race on dirt ovals. That's the beginning of the low buck approach - building stuff for fun, learning by experience, doing it yourself and fiddling with it until it works the way you want. It's a combination of inventing by necessity and not being satisfied with the products offered in the marketplace. Dave acquired the red barn when he was running end- dump semis. The trucks were old and tired, but he kept them working by doing his own late night maintenance in his shop. Somehow he also found time to put together a ‘57 Chevy NASCAR sportsman which he campaigned for a couple of seasons before turning it over to his wife, Sue, who proved to be a better driver. The next season Dave built her a new ‘65 Chevelle limited sportsman, which she drove very successfully at Southern California tracks, setting the course record at Orange Show Speedway in the men's division. Anybody who has a well outfitted shop and builds cars ends up fixing all his friends' cars as well. Especially if the guy does good work and doesn't charge an arm and a leg. The traffic around Dave's old red barn got so thick that he finally decided to hang up the trucks and work on cars full time. Calling the new venture Custom Metal Fabrication, he welcomed any sort of one-off job from engine installations, to firewall modification, to chassis fabrication. The turning point came when Dave needed a flame cutter for making brackets and gussets for various jobs. Since he couldn't, as he put it, "Afford to go into L.A. and buy the stuff I wanted," he made his own. The slick little unit was so neat that others who saw it ask for one, too. Before he knew it, Dave was shipping Lowbuck Flame Cutters to customers all over the country. Next he worked out his own design for an inexpensive tubing notcher for easier roll-cage construction, followed by a simple sheet metal bead roller. Dave built each originally for his own shop, but soon found that other backyard builders and small construction shops needed the equipment just like he did. It didn't take long for the Lowbuck Tool business to mushroom into a full-time job. Dave complains that he hardly has time to work on his own hot rod projects anymore, let alone anybody else's. He's finally moved out of the old red barn into a small new shop, but it's still literally a backyard operation. Dave does all the work himself and wouldn't have it any other way. The only thing Dave really wanted to put as an introduction to his catalog is this: All pages are printed on standard bird cage size paper. So in case it's of no use to you otherwise, at least you can do something with it. Pat Ganahl | Home/Welcome | Specials | Related Info  | Products | | Contact Lowbuck | What's New | About |