Words & Photos: John Gunnell
Imagine you owned a subtle-but-cool-looking gold ’32 Ford three-window coupe and you wanted it to look as impressive parked, with the hood up, as it does when it’s going down the road. That means you would have to do some special under-hood detailing to set off the engine compartment.
Since the car has a special look on the outside, you would need to carry that over to the power plant. With your coupe’s unique color, you would want to have a matching color scheme going beneath the “bonnet.” Now, gold is a tricky color: use just the right amount and you wind up with a rich and bright appearance. But if you overdo it, you create something hokey and garish.
One way to create subtle gold accents under the hood of a hot rot is to use flexible braided sleeving, which slips over wires and metal lines. Flexible braided sleeving comes in a wide range of colors and textures. The available colors include metallics like silver, copper and gold.
If you’re not familiar with flexible braided sleeving, think of wrapping your wires in a spider web with a tight mesh. The braised sleeving can be expanded to slip over terminals and sockets, but once it is on the wires, the braided material tightens up again and gives you a nice clean appearance.
A New Jersey company named Wire Care (www.wirecare.com) has done a good job of promoting this product in the hot rod industry by bringing displays of dressed up engines to trade shows like SEMA and PRI. Techflex (www.techflex.com) and ElectriDuct (www.electriduct.com) are other suppliers. If their names don’t sound particularly “hot roddish” that’s because the cable management industry grew largely out of the computer field. Using it to dress up hot rod engines was a natural and it is also now used in various other industries, too.
If you pick up a catalog from one of these companies, you’ll find a wide range of colors and styles of braided sleeving featured inside, plus other products and a variety of installation tools that may be great additions to your toolbox.
Creating a “goldenrod” look is definitely not the only option you’d have as far as dressing up an engine goes. In addition to sleeving in every size and color of the rainbow, there are patterns resembling the braided cloth spark plug wires used in the ‘30s and ‘40s, in case you want to create a real “old school” look. And if you have a hot rod shop, you can get shrink wrap wire covers with your business name printed on it. It’s a great way to advertise your shop.