Category: Riley

My son Riley and his auto body technician buddies are in Vegas for SEMA, the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world. The boy has loved cars since he was a toddler and his ability to name automobile makes and models around him was truly uncanny. Now he’s one of the best auto body guys in Puget Sound.

He texted me this picture of the room he checked into tonight and serendipity is most definitely happening. He knows my lucky number and I’m sure he smiled big when he got the room assignment.

I was going through old stuff today and found these things. Happy Fathers Day to me!

Steph laid more things out on the hot tub, prior to heading to the scrapbook.

The kids bought themselves a cord of wood for their Seattle winter and of course Riley had to build a shelter for it.

Here’s a big lift to facilitate an automotive rebuild as Riley’s skills continues to evolve…

This banged up Kia is one of Rileys current projects at Exhibition Automotive. It’s also of particular interest to him as they own a new Kia.

SlideShow (Kia Down)

SlideShow (The Nursery)

Jess shot an Instagram of Riley sleeping today and of course I had to grab and tweak it.

Riley’s still having fun with his current project. He’s taking these shots with his new Samsung Galaxy S2, and they’re huge, so I have to run my magic on them to make them manageable for the blog. Here you go:

Full disclosure! The wreck displayed below is just that, a trashed vehicle that the good doctor Bangert was using to extract body parts.

The real project is here:

Riley performed emergency CPR on this vehicle today. The poor car had been written off, but doctor Bangert was on the scene.

Even the tech in the background thought he was crazy for trying to save it…

Riley is becoming the Jeep rebuild specialist in the Seattle area. He’s been sending me pictures of his latest project and I had to take a look at his previous Jeep job to see if I was confusing them.

Nope, different Jeep…

I’ve figured out this auto body game. A Jeep gets broadsided, and brought to Riley…

He pulls the door off and makes mysterious markings on the frame.

Then he throws away the old door, and orders another…

Diesel is Riley and Jess’s big dog. They’re currently wrapping up the construction of a backyard kennel for this very cool guy. I met him on the last trip to Kent, WA. and he’s a great dog. A new fence is being built, along with the dog house.

Riley’s got a great job. They lay a mangled wreck in his lap, and tell him to fix it.

So what’s he do? He lounges around the shop for two weeks, smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and surfing the internet for old Jeeps to fix up, and sell.

When the deadline arrives, he uses his Magic Wand and Presto! On top of that, they pay him a bunch of money to do this.  Sweet :-)

Update: Just got off the phone with Riley, and he was saying this should have been a total. The technical things he had to go through to get this car back to spec, are amazing. It seems to me like it’s harder than creating the car in the first place. And, no cigars or booze consumed. Very proud of my boy, he took a hit on this one…

Riley’s latest project: 55 hours labor, 15 hours painting, plus parts and materials.
Insurance cost? Doesn’t matter to me, as long as my boy gets paid what he’s worth!