To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Cars, Car Stories, and More

Father-Daughter Restoration: Edelbrock Carburetors, Jeep YJ Builds & The Future of Hot Rodding with Riley's Rebuilds 🛠️🔥

• Doug & Christian - Your Guides to Classic Cars & First Car Stories • Season 7 • Episode 2

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What happens when a 13-year-old girl wants to buy her first car but can't legally work? She starts rebuilding carburetors in her dad's garage—and accidentally builds a national brand. 🔧😲

In our 2026 Premiere, we sit down with Riley and her father Dane, the dynamic duo behind Riley’s Rebuilds. Riley went from being a high-level soccer player to a viral automotive sensation, restoring thousands of carburetors for enthusiasts worldwide and becoming an official rebuilder for Edelbrock Group.

We dive deep into their incredible journey, from scouring Facebook Marketplace across four states to building a Jurassic Park Jeep YJ and navigating the automotive industry as a young female entrepreneur.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • 🦖 The Jurassic Jeep: The story behind Riley's first car, a 1995 Jeep Wrangler YJ transformed into a movie-accurate Jurassic Park tribute (mud included!).
  • 🔥 The Nitrous Incident: Dane’s "first car" story involving a 1977 Monte Carlo, a stoplight race with a Ford LTD police car, and a hidden nitrous plate.
  • 📈 Viral Success: How a car accident and a single Facebook post led to 300+ free carburetors showing up at their doorstep.
  • 🛠️ The Art of the Hustle: How Riley balances a triple major in college (Math, Physics, Mechanical Engineering) while running a business and managing a team of her best friends.
  • 🤝 Women in Automotive: Riley's work with the Jessi Combs Foundation and her mission to bring the next generation into the trade.

Don't miss Riley and Dane's favorite episode with their good friends, father-daughter duo Caroline and James from HH Wheels: https://buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/17960446

Whether you're a seasoned mechanic or just love a good story about grit and family, this episode is the perfect way to kick off the new year.

🔗 Links & Resources:

  • Check out Riley's work: Instagram @rileysrebuilds
  • Watch their builds on YouTube: Riley’s Rebuilds
  • Listen to our 60+ episodes on LinkTree 🔗🌲 https://linktr.ee/carsloved

📢 Join the Conversation: What was your first "wrenching" experience? Did you learn from a parent or figure it out yourself? Let us know on Instagram @toallthecarsivelovedbefore


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SPEAKER_04:

Welcome back to All the Cars I've Loved before your authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. You know what time it is? It's time to flip on your favorite car themed t-shirt, get a little grease under the nails, and step back in time, make new friends. You know, it's what we do. And oh I how you doing partner? I see the car theme t-shirt. I see the wrenches. I see it looks like somebody graffitied on your chest. What what is happening with that? It says get wrenched. Okay, did you catch the guy with the pink hands or did he uh see a little too quick for you? Oh come on. This is this is merch from HH Wheel. Yeah, now I I I am not wearing the car theme t-shirt, but this is one I haven't worn in a long time. You know, I I live in Florida, and you know, if you have a collar in Forma in Florida that that passes a formal, but I have ketchup, I have secret sauce. This is one of my favorite shirts as we are underway here today. And we don't have any uh new reviews as of yet, but please help us grow. If you like what you hear, welcome back. Telefriend helps us grow. And for, let's see, Ash, welcome back. Aspirin, Virginia, Culver City, California, Wichita, Denver, Quebec, Quebec to our friends north of the border, like Quebec, as well as overseas, France, Italy, Sweden, Israel, Bangladesh. Welcome back. These are all new listeners within the past few weeks, I would say.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So it's it's great how the algorithms work, right? And people discover us over time.

SPEAKER_04:

Higher minds than mine, math. What can you say? But yeah, so check us out, carslove.com, carslove.com in our link tree, which I like to think of as our digital switchboards there. You'll find our coordinates, our, let's see, again, leave a review, uh, streaming on your uh podcast platform, streaming platform of choice. What else do we have, Doug? Are there any more tech notes before we are underway here?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh none that I can think of off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_04:

Indeed, indeed. So well, we have very special guests today. Let's get right into it. So, Doug, please tell us how did our guests enter our garage? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So our guests plural virtual garage. Yeah, our guests plural. Father-daughter, Dane and Riley. Riley from Riley's Rebuilds. So I had seen Riley on YouTube many times, and there's tons of articles out there floating around about her, and she's met some great celebs that I've also seen on YouTube. And when we first talked to HH Wheels, Caroline and James, and we asked them, hey, we you know, we had so much fun on our episode because it was uh our first father-daughter episode, even though we, you know, we talked to Cat DeLorean about her dad, who's no longer with us, but we wanted to keep the father-daughter theme going, and they said you gotta get in touch with Riley. So I found Riley's email, sent her a note, and she replied right away, and here we are. Fast forward.

SPEAKER_04:

Very excited. Yeah, so so I've had this circled on my calendar for some time. Check out, as Doug was saying, the YouTube channel Riley Rebuilds, wonderful production values, and just so pleased that it's brought Riley Adane to our doorstep. So, welcome. How are you doing this afternoon to our guests?

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. Good, how are you?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, excellent. And and where is the weather? How is the weather where you are located? Because even though this was a uh this was a Florida-based tandem, they seem to have split. So uh hopefully amicably, but but how are things where you are in Florida and and and how things are in Connecticut?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, Florida's gorgeous. Florida's always beautiful, except for the hurricane season.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, why would someone leave, Dane? Why would someone leave our fine state of Florida? Any ideas?

SPEAKER_01:

I have I I guess we're terrible parents. She went as far as she could get.

SPEAKER_04:

Negative, but you know what? I did the same thing. I can certainly understand. So now let's pivot to Riley. Now, Riley, you have a very good reason for going all the way up to the Northeast. Can can you share why, what, how you escaped the state of Florida and what you're doing in the Northeast?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I go to Connecticut College. Here I was scouted through my soccer life. So I played varsity soccer here. I got a bunch of scholarships to go here. I'm able to accomplish a triple major in six years. Here they offer a program which is called a 4-2 with Wash U that allows me to do a dual degree in math and physics while I'm at Connecticut College. And then it'll transfer over to two years to get my mechanical engineering degree at WashU. And then if I want to add another year, another year, I can get my master's.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic. And as if you weren't busy enough. Okay, so let's count off. I think I'm going to run out of fingers on my hands to talk about what you're okay. So you mentioned soccer, you mentioned the school. I I would superimpose on top of the school uh the triple major you just mentioned. Okay, so as well as the YouTube channel, which people would know you from. And the thing that intrigues me, I'm not going to say the most, but I find very interesting to sit on top of all this is the business. How do you find time to run all of that? In the business, I think it's a very unique arrangement that that you've arranged. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage all of that in school at the same time?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So the business is has been going for a couple of years now. So we've definitely got down the way we flow the best as kids are working on carburetors, as we're mailing. I have a little brother named Graham. He just turned 16. He's our floor manager. So as I was doing this my entire high school career and bringing in friends, he was also helping me out, and he was watching from the sidelines. And then we tagged him in when I left, and he ended up bringing in five amazing women and three other boys. And so he helps run the shop while I'm gone. And then also Dane helps a lot with all of the things that involves an adult. I'm able to do a bunch of the social media content. So over breaks, we bucket a bunch of videos so every day we can bang out at least like six. We change our shirts, we change our, we say it's a different day, we have different lighting, and we pre-post those to go out on certain dates so that I don't have to exert enough energy more energy while I'm at college. And then we focus heavily on breaks. So that's when you see the most like new content coming out is breaks when we're able to sit down and start filming again.

SPEAKER_04:

Gotcha. So do you sleep at all, or is that just you'll you'll catch up with that? That was my question.

SPEAKER_00:

I do. I'm a very good multitasker, so I'm very like early bird. So I'm up at like six doing work and then to go to the gym and then start my school day.

SPEAKER_04:

And the dad in me is gonna come out. I'm sorry for this. Are you getting enough sleep?

SPEAKER_00:

I am getting enough sleep. Okay, I just had to make sure.

SPEAKER_04:

But I think that's uh yeah. So so before we go in the way back machine and kind of talk about your your your earlier cars as well as Dane's I see what I was gonna ask you. Whoa, what's happening? I was gonna ask you, how did you I've can I apologize, I completely lost my train of thought. The genesis. Yeah, the genesis. Hop in here, Doug.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I think what Christian was thinking about, and he generally doesn't lose his train of thought, that's me normally. But yeah, so we know the story, but we're hoping you could give us a quick quick background on how Riley's rebuilds came into being.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so Riley's rebuild was originally a was originally 13-year-old me doing carburetors on the side to build up enough money to buy my first car. I grew up very tomboy. My dad was a stay-at-home father, so I was always in the garage. I knew I wanted to be automotively inclined, and I knew that I wanted to be able to build my first car or at least know what's wrong with it if I ever broke down. And I told my dad this, and he said, Yeah, with what money? Because I came at him wanting like RX7s and Skyline.

SPEAKER_02:

Good, good choice, by the way, RX 7.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah, so he said, Yeah, with what money. And in the state of Florida, you can't start working until you're 14, and it's for minimum wage, which was like$8 at the time. So that obviously wouldn't get me to where I needed to be for a car. So he turned me to the garage and I found a carburetor on the shelves, asked what I did, what it did. He explained that it's an air and fuel mixture ratio device, and showed me how to break it down, and it was super simple. It was like Legos, and for the first couple weeks, he watched me break them down and rebuild them to make sure that I wasn't going to flood anybody, anybody's car. Um, and then I kept getting better and better at it to a point where I was doing them really quickly. I made enough money for my car. COVID hit, so we stopped for a little bit and we ended up building the car. It's a 1995 YJ, it's a Jurassic Park Jeep, which is really fun.

SPEAKER_02:

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

And I continued to kind of keep it up, but I didn't necessarily need a lot of money. I'd already made a bunch and COVID hit, so we weren't spending money. And then I got into a really big accident with one of my girlfriends at the time, and she oh, I got into an accident with my girlfriends at the time, and then it ended up being a big amount of expenses for the car, and so I picked up Riley's rebuilds, and that's when I started running out of parts, and I had pretty much bought out all of Florida of carburetors on Facebook Marketplace because I'd been doing it for three-ish, four-ish years at that point, and so that's when I put it on Facebook, and we ended up going viral on Facebook, and I had over 300 carburetors on my doorstep for free in the next like three weeks, and then I was ended, I ended up hiring my four girl best friends, and they came into the garage and they joined me, and then we just kept it going from there and we made it big.

SPEAKER_04:

So, how did you how did the carburetors find their way to so so as I was watching the videos? It was just and my jaw kept hanging lower and lower lower is is it's kind of your story unfolds in in I I feel like kind of that your whole audience is there from the inception to kind of see you walk through and you go through the garage and you you see all these carburetors all over the place. How how did these find you? I know you went viral, but but how how did these land so quickly in your lap garage?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so we did have our addresses on the page, and then when we did go viral, we started, I started having open communications, and then I was underage at the time, so Dane also helped me a bunch with a lot of the communications. Um, we were just because like when you're in a male-dominated industry, you're always gonna get non-family friendly things filtering in. But it was a really good way to learn business at the time, and we looked at it as a learning opportunity with business and LCs and tax write-offs, and and being able to show kids how to do this in a fun environment. Um and so we I'd also been on social media before, so I went viral on TikTok during COVID for anime reviews. I would like read manga and I would do anime show reviews. And so I was used to having content like friends and making content every day and kind of just going at that, so it kind of came with second nature, and also when you go viral in high school, that's a really big deal to a high schooler. So they really want to jump all over it, and so we were talking to a bunch of people, I messaging a bunch of people that wanted to help me. I ended up getting in contact with Edelbrock as a company. So now we are Edelbrock's official rebuilding service. We get sent pallets once a year to twice a year, sometimes a couple months there, here and there, of returns that we rebuild. And then we started going onto TV shows and talking about our tuning expertise and showing you how we rebuild carburetors, and people just it sounds so weird and so niche, and you wouldn't think there's a lot of carburetors in this world, but there are so many.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely, so many.

SPEAKER_00:

And the rebuilding service, I don't necessarily know how it gets out there, but it does. We do a lot of podcasts, we say yes to everything. So our name is definitely out there. I've you work, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

You are a very large public speaker. That much is clear. I'm gonna put you on pause for one second. Let's bring Dane into the conversation and not to embarrass you at all, Riley. But Dane, I have to know was she the kind of child that was forever picking something up, taking it apart, putting it together? How, where did this come from, or did it just all of a sudden she picked up this piece of metal and it worked? How did that was there anything to to foreshadow that?

SPEAKER_01:

She no, there wasn't. She she was typical kid, typical young kid. If your typical young kid is is an athlete, that was her first thing was soccer. She played soccer at an extremely high level uh as a child. She was on the Olympic development program and played for IMG and traveled the country at 13, right? And and and I'm dad bragging now. She's still officially the youngest semi-pro player in Florida at 14 and a half. So she she was, but the cars were always in the garage. I was always wrenching. It's a hobby for me, not a not a career. So I always have something. And when I could get her in there, I'd get her in there. You know, like bleeding brakes, come in here and pump the brake pedal for me and you know, things like that. But when she wanted her first car, there was the opportunity. I had tons of parts on the shelves, and I said, look, just go in and repurpose, polish and put them up on eBay. Let's get all this stuff cleared out of the garage. And then she ran across the carburetors. And like if you've ever done carburetors, you know they're not terribly difficult. But like Riley said, they're like a bunch of Legos. You if you put the pieces in the right places, it'll work. And then she started going on Marketplace and buying them all over Florida. And it was an opportunity for me to teach her how to negotiate with adults. And because she was playing soccer, we were traveling every weekend all over the southeast. She would jump to marketplace, knowing whatever route we were going, and she would find all the carburetors between here and Athens, Georgia, and we would buy them on the way and on the way back, and that's how it started.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, and I can see in her tremendous drive, but also tremendous focus. So I can just sort of see in my mind's eye, and as much with my own children, too, this just hyper focus on the task at hand here. I heard somebody once say that when he looks to hire, he looks to musicians and athletes for the reason you just said. So lovely. Thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah. So before we uh put you both in the way back machine here, go 88 miles an hour back into the past. I just wanted to say before I toss it over here to Doug, the video on the Jurassic Jeep uh blew my mind. It was wonderful. You gotta check it out. Riley Revoiles on on YouTube. And she's right next to this beautiful Jeep with the Jurassic, you know, the Jurassic Trim edition, and it's got mud all over it. And I'm just, you know, half listening to her about why is there mud all over that? And at the very end, she says, Yeah, that's right. And I went mud last mudding last night, and I just didn't have a chance to clean it off. So with that, I'm gonna toss it over to Doug and uh let's step back into the time machine. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so we'll uh we'll we let's let's ask Dane because we did talk about Riley's first car. We are gonna go back to it, but uh Dane, tell us about your first car.

SPEAKER_01:

So my uh my first driving experience was I grew up on a farm in New England, and up in New England back when I was young, maybe still the same. You could drive at the age of 13 if you were within five miles of the farm. So wait a minute. Really? Uh-huh. Country roads.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And it was, you know, it was a way for us to get to and from fields, you know, where we're bailing hay and you got to get to another field or whatever it is. So I was driving farm trucks when I was 13 in a little town, you know, drive to the convenience store, and it was not uncommon. It was a little farm town, so you'd see it pretty frequently. And so my dad wasn't overly mechanic, but uh mechanical, but we always fixed our own stuff, right? We were on the farm, so I learned I learned how to weld stick weld when I was probably the same age, you know, 12, 13, 14, you know, fixing tractors and things like that. And when I was getting older and starting to look at cars, I was starting to get hungry for some speed. And um, my first car was a 1977 Monty Carlo with a 350, and I did everything I could do on that thing as a 16-year-old, including putting nitrous on it, which ended up being the end of that car.

SPEAKER_05:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. It was uh it was a kind of a funny story, but I was uh kind of uh it was early morning driving home from a friend's house, and I ended up going stoplight to stoplight with an LTD and did three or four of them in a row, and then he pulled behind me and threw a bubble light up on his dash and pulled me over. It was a gun. And and then he obviously now I know he couldn't give me a ticket or arrest me. I mean, he we we were racing each other like four lights in a row, and he he started going over my car, and then he he said, Do you have no nitrous on us? I said, No, sir, I don't. He goes, All right, lift your air cleaner off, and I lifted it off, and there was the plate, and that was the end of that car. Got impounded. You can't have nitrous in Massachusetts. You can have it in New Hampshire, you can't have it in Massachusetts. So that car got impounded, and my dad wouldn't let me get it out of impound. So that was the end of that car.

SPEAKER_04:

Now that one was a hand-me-down from your brother, too, and we we get that a lot, and we just love love how these kind of descend from from sibling to sibling.

SPEAKER_02:

That's kind of cool. Or at least it stopped at Dane at that point. Yeah, it wasn't going anywhere else. True. But yeah, I did I did love it.

SPEAKER_01:

And now my kids got you know a big block Ford with the dual quad tunnel ram at 19. So I guess it didn't really stop.

SPEAKER_02:

Good point. Continue on, and I loved tell us about your radio and That car.

SPEAKER_01:

No radio. What radio? No radio. It was so loud you couldn't hear anything.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Especially when you're racing uh Ford LTDs that LTD police cars.

SPEAKER_01:

And and of course, I had you know headers into little thrush mufflers and no side, no exhaust coming out. So it was just I remember one of my buddies was behind me after a football game, and he pulls up next to me on the highway, screaming for me to pull over, pull over, pull over. I pull over and he comes up next to me and goes, Your car's on fire. And I'm like, what? He goes, It's underneath your car, it's on fire. And I went down, it wasn't on fire, but it was blowing flames out of the exhaust every time it would shift. So he was behind me watching this debacle go down.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, if only we had iPhones back then to take videos, right? That would be beautiful.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know, or we'd all be in jail.

SPEAKER_04:

And incriminating, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I was about to say it could go either way.

SPEAKER_04:

Posterity doesn't need to know that much, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

For sure. So now if we can shift to Riley, and you know, I I owned a few Jeeps, I think I had a 94, was probably the last Wrangler I had. And uh, you remember it, Christian. Absolutely. Yep, and I remember the Jeep had a kind of poor man's fuel injection system. So I was wondering from Riley, did you swap out the fuel injection for a carburetor built by Riley's rebuild?

SPEAKER_00:

No, but we're going to.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh well, next on the list, it is a way to tease the content.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is like the last thing that we need to do on the Jeep. We pretty much done everything else on it. We were we've been thinking about selling it. So, or Graham has it right now, but we've been thinking about possibly selling it and getting me a new car. So that'll be the last thing. And it's bad though.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, it is sad. That was that was the next thing to pop out of my mouth. Well, where's the crying emoji? And some crying emojis flying around here.

SPEAKER_02:

So this this might be jumping ahead, but what Dane and Riley, when when Riley was learning about carburetors, did she test the carburetors on any cars? And what what cars did you have in the garage that she used?

SPEAKER_00:

We diagled a couple of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, go ahead, Ryan. Go. Okay. Yeah. So so I uh one of the cars we have is a Dodge Little Red Express drag race truck. And so we did we did a bunch of testing on that. We also have a friend that owns a dino shop south of us about a half an hour. And anytime he had a carburetor motor come up on the on the dyno stand, he'd let Riley come down and we'd work on it and tune it. And uh that's where she really cut her teeth. And after she got confident, whenever we went to car shows, she would bring her tool bag with her and convince all these old guys to let this 16-year-old girl tune.

SPEAKER_02:

I saw the video, I saw one of the videos of her doing that. Hi, I'm Riley. Would you like me to tune up your carburetor?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I love videoing those from the very beginning so that I can show the guys' reactions. They're like, whoa, wait, really? Like, you know what you're doing. Like, and then once she does it, and the car just runs so much better. I mean, Ryan, have we ever had run into a carburetor that was already tuned well? Like now, but they all run, they just don't realize that they could run better. Better, yeah. Just put that extra effort in.

SPEAKER_00:

Carburators like Elderbar carburetors are out of the box, put right onto your car. Go and go. Carburators. That's like what they're meant for. Versus, but you can always make them better. Like, I feel like a lot of some of the older carburetors, too, you needed to tune them to the car specifically, but that's why, and we're primarily Edelbox, that's the ones that we normally tune. So they're never tuned to the car because they're meant to come out of the box and be put right on the car and still make it go really well. It's just we can make it better.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep, well, that's and like you said, a lot of people don't realize there are a lot of carburetors still in use today.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a bunch of we actually were at the Sanford plant in at Edelbrock where they build all their carburetors, and they are they are making the same amount today that they were making 20 years ago. Wow. Every week they're producing the same number. That's how many carburetors are still in use.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I I have a quick funny about my late father, and this had to be in the late 80s when all the cars were moving to fuel injection, and I remember him saying, Man, I I I don't want to move to fuel injection. I my next car, I gotta keep carburetor. I said, Dad, I think the only car you can buy now is a Hyundai Excel that still has a carburetor. He's like, Maybe not.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, just or a dump truck.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, or or we could have had a dump truck ride to school. So yeah, right. Exactly. Or or a uh or a tractor, right? That's right. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04:

One one thing that popped into my mind here, Doug. Sorry, sorry, Pop in. But but uh something Dane said or wrote early here pops into my mind. The salt and weather reclaimed one of your automobiles to the ground. So have you spoken to Riley about you know being up north and the salt and the conditions of the road, etc. Have you mentioned anything about that?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah. She had never you had seen snow once or twice, but you had never driven anywhere near it. So there's a lot of over-the-phone education on driving snow, and and then it's one of those you just kind of let them go and hope, hope that they do okay. Um but when we do project cars, we try to we try to buy something that is you know Georgia, Tennessee, South. Um we can do rust, like Riley's Fairlane, right? I feel like I'm stealing your thunder, but we didn't. Yeah, perfect segue.

SPEAKER_04:

That's what I was digging for.

SPEAKER_01:

But please, yeah, we did all the panel work on it, and but I would much rather spend my time on the mechanical than on rust and bodywork. But go ahead, Rah.

SPEAKER_00:

I have a van up here that my grandma gave me. It's like really dinky little van. So it's four-wheel. The first time I drove in snow, like it dies on me every other day. But yeah, I definitely learned really quickly that you can't have nice cars up here, and they can't be two-wheel, they have to be four-wheel.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, indeed. That's a good idea. Yeah, we we had an interesting. This is the first year, first winter my daughters had a license and had a car, and it's just the debate, Dad, can I draw it? No, you don't you haven't done it yet, and we just hadn't had it, but then the snow didn't stick around far enough, so her car was stuck here for a couple days.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but yeah, it's uh take her out into an empty parking lot and do donuts and slide.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, part yeah, part of the No, he took her to Dunkin' Donuts, I think. That's the closest we got to that one.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, part of part of the problem is I drive an electric car as my daily driver, and she's scared to drive it. Oh and her her car actually belongs to her mom, and her mom doesn't want me driving it. So there you go. We'll get there somehow. But someday, yeah, I I remember great times owning a Jeep in the snow. So much fun. So much fun.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so at this point, let's get to our least favorite cars.

SPEAKER_04:

Is there a least favorite car? And let's let's uh let's toss this out to Riley first.

SPEAKER_01:

Least favorite and why least favorite that we've owned?

SPEAKER_00:

Owned or that we've worked on because I've worked on your choice, roll with it.

SPEAKER_04:

I would be able to do that. Your least favorite, Ruth. How about your your 2000 Mercury Villager? Is that helpful?

SPEAKER_00:

Listen, I love Ruth. Okay, that's that's her name. Yeah, Ruthie is the best because when we need to move all our college items, we can pack her up.

SPEAKER_02:

And yeah, it's actually a Nissan, right? Ruth underneath the covers. I think the villager was actually Mercury Villager, a Nissan Villager, yeah. Okay, useless trivia.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but I think the corvette that we worked on on repair to rev, it was a C3, C4.

SPEAKER_02:

C4.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, just the engineering of the bay was so strange. They had the water pump on top of electrical on the distributor. So if the water pump ever leaked, your distributor would get leaked on. Like it's there's just some engineering points where I'm like, it's Corvette.

SPEAKER_01:

You're okay you're better than this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my my worst or yeah, 1992 Alpha Romeo and quick story on that one, and I'll tell you why it was the worst. Was we were buying a house and we went to go do the final walk through, and the homeowner wife met us. She opened the door in a panic, and she goes, The house is ready, we can totally do the closing, but there's a car in the garage, we can't get it started. And I was like, All right, that's okay. So we did the whole walk through the house. House is great. We get into the garage, opens it up, little red alpha romeo spider, like not from the graduate, but like a couple generations ago. Oh, yeah, yeah. And and I was she goes, We're gonna get it out of here. I promise, and we're getting a tow truck, we can't get it started. And jokingly, I said, Well, you can just leave it. I'll buy the house, anyways. And she goes, You'll buy, you'll take the car. I was like, Wait, what? I was like, Yeah, how much do you want for it? So she gets her husband on the phone, he says, Oh my gosh, will you take the car? I was like, Yeah, I'm a car guy. He goes, I said, How much do you want for it? He goes, How about$2,000? And I said, Absolutely, yes. Go ahead. So I just told the house agent to cut them a check at the closing. We went back to the house, and they didn't realize that there was a a clutch safety switch that you had to have the clutch to press to start the car. It fired right off. It ran fantastic. Great car. The only problem is I'm 6'1, I couldn't drive it with the top up. So I'm looking through the duck down or this, looking through the windshield. That's why that was the worst car I've owned. Not not the car itself, but it just wasn't built for a 6'1 American. The Italians are smaller people.

SPEAKER_04:

Now, on a car that you worked on, how about the Chevy Nomad? I like that you wrote that it was an amazing historic car that nearly destroyed you and the restoration. It was you with a car. So what let's tease, let's pull the thread there.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So this one Riley knows intimately. We've owned it since she's been alive. 1957 Chevy Nomad. It was a full frame off restoration. Every single Duncan bolt was restored, and I will never do it again. That was the hardest thing I've ever done. Brutal. And it was taking like we 18 years. I get a phone call from Riley randomly. She says, Hey dad, I was on the phone with the Armo council at SEMA, which is the automotive restoration council. She said, I was on a conference call with them, and they asked if anybody knew of any great cars for SEMA booth. And I told them we'd bring the nomad. And if you saw the nomad at the time that she said this, it was a shell. There was no motor in it, no transmission, no interior was out, no glass, no chrome. And we had three and a half months to finish it. So we killed ourselves. We had all the kids in the garage working on it, Riley working on it. Golly. And we got it done. And we got it done to a level that I was very proud of. We brought it to SEMA. It was fantastic in the booth. And then it went straight from there to Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago to the McCann show. And it scored a gold at a 969 for our first restoration. So we were really proud of it. I will never do it again.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. Such attention to detail. Congratulations. That's really something.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Yeah, Riley Riley knows that car from when she was, as she can remember, right? I I have pictures of her at three years old, block sanding it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's like my oldest memory.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's a great one, right? Yeah. That's what we love to hear. And you guys are just you've been smiling the whole time, but you started smiling even a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, just all these kids running around in the garage, just uh, oh Lord, yeah. Get OSHA involved, out of control. Okay, Doug's favorite part of the show coming up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So start with Riley. What would be your dream car? And you introduced me to a new acronym that I didn't know about.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, an OBS. An old body style truck. I'm really I've been really into them as a younger age, but I never was able to buy one. So I think that would be really cool. And modifying it, putting it on some good wheels and getting it going. I also have a little spot in my heart for like a 73s Bronco, like an orange Bronco. Um, I think that was a trend a little bit of a while ago, and they got really popular, but I've always liked them for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, beautiful car. Well, I'm sure one or both are in your future.

SPEAKER_00:

I think so.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. And there'll definitely be an Edelbrock carburetor on there.

SPEAKER_04:

They're definitely for Dane's dream car, he's going to turn into Mad Max and just drop drive around the wasteland, right?

SPEAKER_01:

I think forgotten about that. Yeah, I I love movie cars. I always have actually that's why she has the Jurassic Park team.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01:

I just love that. I want to do an A-Team van, I want to do all kinds of stuff, but you know, the biggest and the best was the Mad Max Jensen Interceptor. Black with the with the blower out the hood. I mean, God dang, you can't get any cooler than that.

SPEAKER_04:

Beautiful. Yeah, yeah. I remember. I remember. Yeah, and in before we start to to ramp the show down here, Riley, I wanted to pivot to you. And and we always like to ask our guests about causes or certain themes or things they support. And you wrote something lovely here that I'd like to get your thoughts on. You wrote, I'm all about getting the next generation into the industry and your living embodiment of that. And you mentioned that you're a huge supporter of the Jesse Combs Foundation. Could you talk a little bit about your involvement with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so the Jesse Combs Foundation is one of my favorite, like all female groups. I in 2024 won the Rising Star Award. So Jesse Combs Foundation was like part of the first woman that introduced me kind of to the industry. When we first went to SEMA, we made sure that the girls and I went to as many women events, and the Jesse Combs Foundation like instantly saw me, grabbed me, and it was really a fun development. Because that was the first year, that was 2023, and I heard a lot of people telling me that I reminded them a lot like Jesse, or that they met Jesse. And I like had watched the documentary, I knew her, but I was being told all these amazing stories about Jesse to a point that I felt like I knew her, like there was such a connection, and and everybody that talked about her loved her. And so I started to love her. And the women that were part of the Jesse Combs Foundation, I started to love through Jesse and like through their actions. And then the next year I went to Sima, I won the award. So I wore the bandana and I got to really be involved with the foundation and meet all the wonderful people, um, like Dana and all the other like presidents of the foundation. And now I work with them adamantly. We actually have been kind of throwing it around to we have one of Jesse's trucks that she used to work on with her dad that we are possibly throwing around with some companies and some content creators to make it an all-female build and bring it to SEMA as a SEMA build and then make it into a race truck and get a team going and start branching the foundation to make it a women empowerment, like loving job.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. And you know, it's it's it's one thing that Dane was saying before about engagement, youth engagement. And I wouldn't look when I look at the two of you together, it it just the theme of togetherness, it's just kind of oozing out of the phone with your family involved in things, and you're obviously very close, and that's really wonderful to see. Uh and uh as we guide the podcast gently to the offering, two things on the way out for you, and you don't have to take them in sequence. But I would like to ask, what is next for your brand, Riley? And then tangentially, we've never had this before. This really excites me. I wanted to mention uh you have something going on with HH Wheels, who we interviewed, I don't know, Doug, what, about a month, month and a half ago? So take those two however however you'd however you'd like to interweave them. But what's next for the brand and and mention how you uh what you're doing with HH Wheels.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Can I take the brand thing? You take the HH wheels.

SPEAKER_00:

You want to go first?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. I'll take the brand thing, you take HH wheels. So this you guys are gonna get the exclusive. We do that, we do like to get this. We're working with a team to develop an e-commerce site that will be powered by turn 14 and Motor State so that Riley's rebuilds will be able to sell virtually every hot rod part available, and proceeds are gonna go towards scholarships and tuitions for young men and women to go through the automotive industry. Love it.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic. How do you follow Riley? Are you are you even able to follow that up? Goodness.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, yeah, we are. So, with part of that branding going on, we have been obviously bringing in a bunch of sponsors with that. We wanted to make sure that the cars that I was working on, we had those parts up and bring in brands that we really love and trust with our style of branding as well. And then with that, for the summer, we are going to be doing the great race. So that's gonna be with the fair lane. Um, and we were thinking about it when we originally got introduced with this idea with cochre tires and hemmings, and they chucked it up to us at SEMA and we said, What happens if we made this bigger? And we reached out to 20 plus content creators, all women in the automotive industry. And we were like, yo, if we decided to pick up one or two each day and get like sponsor money and travel money and make this a really big collab race and have just a lot of fun with this because it's a 10-day race through seven different states, and somehow most of the content creators are all in these states. So this is where Caroline comes in from HH Wheels. Yes. We initially chalked this idea straight to her dad because her dad and my dad are friends.

SPEAKER_04:

Wonderful people. They are wonderful people. So please continue.

SPEAKER_00:

No, they're wonderful people. And so normally in this race, there's a navigator and there's a driver. And so we instantly went to Caroline and we were like, We needed we need to figure this out. Like you are going to want to be main people in this. Like we're going to figure this out. And then the dads were like, We should go in with an RV from the 70s and drive in the back and like little.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. We're the support team. Not that these girls, these ladies don't need mechanic support. They know more than probably we do. But James and I are calling ourselves the support, the support team, mainly because we want to live vicariously through our kids. Pretty much how it goes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So that's a really big, awesome thing. And we're doing the fairling with that. And then can I say the other part now?

SPEAKER_01:

Go nuts.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. I think another.

SPEAKER_01:

Hold off on. I know where you're going now. We'll have you.

SPEAKER_04:

Wait, pause there. We'll have you back. Yes. We love the expression. That's a good way. Let's break news in the future. Hey, we're great at breaking news, not so great at putting it back together. Well, Dane and Riley, this has been just a total treat. I want to thank you for making time for us in your schedule. You made Doug's day. You made my day. Doug, what do you think? We have anything else?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I think we covered. Other than a great everything. This was another fantastic interview. You know, I again, like the gift that keeps giving, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Even though I seized up early on in the show like an engine without oil, but you know what? That's what happens. It's a one-take show. It's what we do. You have oh so thank y'all for uh joining us and and please come back anytime.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Happy to do it. And if you need any recommendations for other father-daughters teams, we got some.

SPEAKER_04:

We got all right. So, Riley, I would just begging you to get enough sleep and school first, please. Sorry, I'm a dad. You have just heard the high-revving, low mileage late bottle, her round the world authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. He's Doug. Reach him at Doug at Carslove.com. I'm Christian. Reach me at Christian at Carslove.com. They are Dana and Riley. You know where to get them. Riley's rebuilds on YouTube. But she's probably too busy to get back with you and do not interrupt your sleep. Please follow and check out. If you like our podcast, tell a friend review. That's how it allows us to grow. And I always say it wrong, Doug. So give them our link tree.

SPEAKER_02:

L L-I-N-K-T-R dot e slash carsloved.

SPEAKER_04:

And I swear one day I will learn how to spell. But until then, go there. It's our digital switchboard. I'm sure we'll see you at the next local car show, showroom, race trip, or concourse. We appreciate your listening, and we'll see you next time.

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Christian

Host
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Doug

Co-host