Bienvenidos

Welcome to the home page of the Dulce Vida Car Club. We are 22 members and our families, out of East San Jose, and we build and show lowriders: Impalas mostly, plus a Fleetline, a Monte Carlo, an El Camino, and a row of Cutlasses and Regals. Some of our cars have been in shows from here to Fresno. Some of them are still in primer in somebody's driveway. They all count.

My name is Cleveland Cortes and I'm the president of the club. I paint cars for a living at a body shop in San Jose, and I've sprayed the candy on about half the cars in the club, so if you see one of our rides and like the paint, I'll take the compliment. I drive a 1964 Impala hardtop on hydraulics. My wife Marybeth and our girls, Jessica, Crystal and Erin, ride with me to every show, and Jessica is already telling me which car she wants when she turns sixteen. (Not mine, mija.)

People get the wrong idea about lowriders sometimes. To us it is about familia, about doing it right, and about patience. A good car takes years. You save, you build, you do it again when it's not right, and you take your kids along and teach them how. Our grandfathers cruised and our kids will too. That's the dulce vida, the sweet life.

How We Started

Five of us went to the same high school, class of '77: me, Gregory Vazquez, Michael Estrada, Bruce Llanos and Larry Casarez. We cruised together as kids and then we all got jobs and got married and kind of drifted apart. In the spring of 1987 Michael's mother passed away, and at the house after the funeral the five of us ended up in the garage looking at Michael's Fleetline, which had been sitting under a tarp for six years. Somebody said we should get it running for her. We did, and then we did mine, and then we did Greg's, and by the end of that year we had a club. Michael's mother always said life is sweet if you work for it. That's where the name came from.

Club Rules

1. No drinking at shows, period. Not in the parking lot, not in the cooler, not "just one." Families are there and so is our name.
2. Cars kept clean. If you're showing it, it's detailed, wheels and undercarriage too.
3. Everybody helps load out. Nobody leaves a show until the last car is loaded and the last canopy is down.
4. Respect the neighborhood. No loud music on residential streets after 9. No burnouts. No hopping in front of anybody's house but your own.
5. No trouble. No colors, no attitude, no fights. If someone wants trouble, we leave. You represent the club every time you turn the key.
6. Meetings are the first Sunday of the month, 2:00, at my garage. Dues are $20 a month and pay for the club canopy, show entries and the toy drive.
7. Help each other. When a member needs a hand on his car, you show up. That's what the club is for.

The 1999 Season

Good year. We took cars to seven shows and came home with fourteen trophies, including Best Paint for Gregory's '63 in Salinas, Best Interior for Stephen Medina's '63 twice, Best Hydraulics for Eric Alvarado's '64, and second place in the single-pump street hop. We also got the Best Club Participation plaque at the Fiestas Patrias show for bringing the most cars, sixteen. The whole list is on the shows page. Next up: the fall show in Modesto on Sunday, October 10.

Tech Talk
The questions people ask us most at shows, answered by the guys who know.

Candy paint. A candy is a see-through color. You lay down a metallic base first, silver or gold usually, and then spray coat after coat of candy over it, and the light goes through the color, hits the metal, and comes back. That's why candy looks a foot deep. Every coat makes it darker, so every panel has to get exactly the same number of coats, the same thickness, or the doors won't match the fenders. It's the hardest paint there is to do right. Then it gets clear coat, gets wet-sanded flat, and gets buffed. My '64 is candy brandywine over a gold base. It took me eleven weekends.

Flake. Metal flake is little chips of glitter sprayed in the base or the clear. Mini flake is subtle, big flake you can see from across the parking lot. Under the sun it sparkles like the ocean. You need a lot of clear over flake to get it smooth again.

Pinstriping. Done by hand with a long squirrel-hair brush we call a dagger, in one steady pull. No tape, no stencils. A good striper can lay a line six feet long without stopping and make both sides of the car match by eye. Bruce does most of the club's striping. He says the secret is to breathe out and don't think.

Wire wheels. Thirteen-inch chrome wires, 72 or 100 spokes, with skinny 5.20 whitewalls. The small wheel and the skinny tire make the car look even lower than it is. Keep them clean with a toothbrush. Yes, every spoke.

Hydraulics. The story goes that back in the late '50s California made it illegal for any part of a car to sit lower than the bottom of the wheel rims, so the guys figured out how to lift the car up when they had to and drop it when they wanted. Here's how it works:

• Pumps. An electric motor turns a hydraulic pump that pushes fluid out of a tank and into cylinders that take the place of the springs at the wheels. Fluid goes in, that corner goes up.
• Dumps. Valves that let the fluid back out of the cylinders into the tank. Open the dump and the car comes down.
• Batteries. The motors run off a rack of batteries in the trunk, wired together. More batteries, more voltage, faster lift. A street car might have four or six; a hop car has a trunk full.
• Switches. A little switch box on a cord inside the car: front, back, side to side, all four corners. That's how you get a car to dance or lock up on three wheels.
• Reinforce the frame first. Before you put a single cylinder in, have the frame wrapped (welded with extra steel plate). Hydraulics without a reinforced frame will crack it. Ask Devin how he knows.

The hop. In a hop contest you hit the switch and bounce the front of the car off the ground, and a judge with a measuring stick sees how high the front wheels go. It's loud, the crowd goes crazy, and something always breaks. Eric's '64 did 38 inches in Stockton this summer.

Join Us

We are always glad to meet people who love these cars. Your ride doesn't have to be finished; a project counts, as long as you're working on it. Come to a couple of meetings and a show or two, meet the families, and if it feels right, the club votes. New members prospect for six months. You don't have to be from San Jose and you don't have to be Mexican, though you will learn to like carne asada either way.

Officers

Pictures: My nephew is bringing his digital camera to the Modesto show and he promised me he'll put the pictures on a disk for this page. Until then, come see the cars in person.