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player ready...You might have seen Tristan Hanford and Will Fiedler cruising around Naperville in a tricked-out, deep-red Jeep they custom-built, the top down, engine roaring, country tunes playing from speakers posted above their headrests.
They do it because, yes, their car is cool — but also to let kids and other teens know how rewarding it can be to work on automobiles. When they’re out and about, they rev the engine for passing children and stop to let people check out the vehicle.
“I’m always looking forward to exposing younger kids to cars,” said Fiedler, 17, a senior at Naperville North High School “That’s how I started. I was always the kid that was gawking over nice cars on the side of the road.”
“If you get one kid interested, it’s worth it,” said Hanford, an 18-year-old senior at Naperville Central.
For more than two years, the teens toiled away in Hanford’s parents’ garage, building their so-called “Tiny Jeep” almost from scratch. They were recently rewarded for all their sweat and largely self-taught ingenuity when the vehicle won second place in its category at the Chicago World of Wheels auto show last month in Rosemont.
Their foray into car restoration started when they paid $700 for a rusted, falling-apart Jeep to tinker around with. Hanford’s dad surprised him with a new body for the vehicle, and they decided to go all the way.
They installed a new engine and a battery designed for boats. They rebuilt the transmission. They put in new seats, a custom lighting and sound system. They did everything except the paint job, the official color of which is known as Alfa Rossa red.
Sometimes they’d work on it every day after school and till 3 or 4 in the morning on Fridays and Saturdays. “There were a couple of really late nights,” Hanford said. “And then we would crash.”
There were hiccups along the way, like when Hanford was installing batteries beneath one of the seats. “I heard a spark, and then I saw a big orange ball because my head was under the seat right next to the battery,” he recalled. “And next thing I knew there was a big flame and smoke just billowing in the garage.”
The silver lining: They ended up switching to cooler seats, ones that Hanford says “really pull the car together.”
At the auto show, the teens competed against professional car restorers and people who’d spent significantly more money on their rebuilds. “I think it’s fantastic, especially considering they’re teenagers,” said James Hanford, Tristan’s father.
The childhood friends weren’t just building a car during all those hours in the garage; they were also setting the foundation on their future careers. Both plan to study mechanical engineering — Hanford at one of the Florida state schools, Fiedler at Michigan City University.
Hanford said he would love to end up at BMW or Audi; Fiedler has his sights set on Koenigsegg Automotive, a Swedish sports-car manufacturer.
Both were introduced to the wonders of the automobile from playing the Xbox racing game “Forza.”
“My grandpa was big into cars. He exposed me to his model cars,” Fiedler said. “But it was in high school that I really got into the mechanics and started learning how to work on them. That’s where I got hooked.”
He’s part of Naperville North’s automotive program and auto club.
“When I was younger, I would take apart little trinkets that played noise when you press the button, or the old flip phones,” Hanford said. He’d also disassemble lawnmower engines.
“In grade school, he would point out every car on the road that went by,” added his mother, Pam Hanford.
She sometimes asks him how can put up with all the noise produced by his exhaust system.
“It’s therapeutic for me,” he said. “When I hear the sound of an engine revving or something working that harmonically, in unison, it’s a sense of consistency. Once you understand what goes into an engine and how many parts are moving at thousands of times per second, it’s incredible.”
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The guys plan to show off their Jeep at a couple of upcoming community gatherings: an auto show May 6 at Naperville North and a car event for kids May 13 at Maplebrook Elementary School. They also have a popular Instagram account, @tiny.jeep, where they post pictures and updates on the vehicle.
Ask Hanford what else he likes about working on cars and he turns downright poetic. Unlike other modes of transportation, he says, they represent total freedom.
“When you get into your car, it can take you wherever you’d like,” he said. “You can build a car to handle the roughest conditions, and take you to the peak of a mountain. Or you could build one to get you to California, with as much speed or power as you decide. They are entirely ours, and controlled by us, designed to do what we’d like them to. That’s the magical part about them.”
Giles Bruce is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.