Well, we finally made it to LA after a delay leaving Auckland as somebody had ‘incorrectly turned off an electronic device’ in their luggage which meant a bag had to be found and removed from the hold of the plane. Pretty uneventful flight, but there isn’t a lot of comfort spending 12 hours in the seat and trying to sleep – got a couple of hours which was good.
Craig was waiting at the airport to collect us with the chevy pickup that we will also be using after an eventful drive down from Canada that involved someone backing into the trailer and squashing the guard onto one of the tyres and bursting it. We threw our gear into the back and headed off to find the Famous Pacific Shipping yard and collect the ’56 Kustom. LA is a big place!! After getting into the wrong side of town we eventually found the yard but the car hadn’t arrived, and wouldn’t get there for another couple of hours, so it was off to a mall to get some spares for the chev, a navman ‘cos trying to get around here with just a map is damn confusing, some phones for us all ($20 got a phone that costs $1 a day to use) and kill some time.
Back to pick the car up. It has arrived but has a few issues that need sorting out before we can take it with us so made a decision to leave it at the yard over the weekend and get the bits we need to fix it for Monday morning. Steve Curle found us a cheap hotel to stay at where we had a few beers, met Danny who is taking an Indian racer to the salt and finally sloped off to bed.
The weather is nice and warm, it’s shorts and Tshirt stuff.Plenty of cool cars to see driving around and parked on the side of the road – new mustangs are pretty common!Plan for today (Saturday) is fix the Chev (power steering pump) then head off to collect an Oldsmobile for someone back home, get the spares for the Kustom ready for Mondays repairs and probably have a few more beers at the end of the day.

Noddy had organized the number for the build car we will be taking to the salt – 6942 – and we will be running in the E/STR class, which means – 184 to 260cc, Street Roadster.

The pictures are from stuff waiting to be sent from Famous Pacific Shippings yard - stuff going all over the world, some is very tasty and some needs a lot of work

Welcome to the Kiwi Hot Rod Challenge blog where you can follow all the adventures and action as a team of 6 Hot Rodders from throughout New Zealand travel to the USA to attend the 60th Speedweek on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
The idea was hatched from the ever active mind of Noddy Watts who is the driving force behind the Beach Hop http://www.beachhop.co.nz/ and is scheduled to start from August 1st when we will travel to the USA to build a Hot Rod in front of 800,000 people at Hot August Nights, Reno NV. The Beach Hop is New Zealand's biggest Hot Rod & Rock'n'Roll Festival with 100,000+ people attending over the 5 day event. That is pretty impressive for a country of 4 million people.
We'll be building the Hot Rod at the Hot August Nights Swapmeet using the parts we could find or buy there. The Challenge will be filmed for a documentary on Fox Sports Network (82 million cable homes) that will screen before Christmas 2008. We are then taking the Hot Rod to Bonneville Salt Flats for the 60th Speedweek - where Burt Munro raced. The Hot Rod - and our tow car (pictured) will then take a tour around the USA for 1 month going to every car show we can - including the HAMB National Nostalgia Drags in Missouri. The Hot Rod & tow car will be shipped back to New Zealand in October. We’ve already attracted interest in the States before we even get there.... from USA Today - http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2008-06-20-reno-hot-august-nights_N.htm And TV - http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/19818634.html And the world's biggest Hot Rod Website Hot Rod Hot Line - http://www.hotrodhotline.com/pr/2008/08hanpr/ And finally the Hot Rod will be auctioned WORLD WIDE on the internet at Beach Hop 09 by Turners Auctions. A portion of the sale price will be donated to charities - it could be a sizeable amount. So how crazy is that? Follow us as our team of Hot Rodders from New Zealand fly 1/2 way around the word to the USA where we build a Hot Rod in 24 hours and take it to the 60th Speedweek and then every car show we can find for the next month!

We’ll be updating this blog with details of our activities, photos of the build, cruising at Hot August Nights, the run at Bonneville, the Nostalgia Drags and any other event we can get ourselves to over the duration of the trip.
There will be comments and highlights from all the team members posted to keep all of you back home entertained and thinking about making plans to get over for ’09.