![]() It was after his first internship after college that Brame found the time and resources to devote to this task. So that’s a long-winded way of saying I’ve rebuilt the engine completely.” That was where she got really unhappy - and she never ran right. “I ended up just buying a little temperature gauge and got to know it - like once were 400 on the temperature gauge, ooooh just pull over to the side of the road and let her cool off. “I didn’t have the money or the time, at that time in my life to rebuild those problems, I tried but clearly it was internal issues, something was way off.” During those years Brame attempted quick fixes. I just borrowed people’s motorcycles to satisfy the craving all the time until I bought mine.” ![]() “I rode to the bank and I almost flipped it over because I only used the front brake out of panic. “I told my friend I needed to borrow his bike, but I didn’t tell him I was going to learn on it,” he admits. They don’t have the same noise, the same look, the same the vibe, the same rattle, you can’t replicate it.” He says it was a hot and heavy kind of passion he felt for the bike right away but had no formal training riding. “You don't get bikes like that, even the recreations these days. “I saw him riding it and it looked so beautiful, just so classic,” he says. Brame didn’t really have any experience with motorcycles, but he had to figure it out his way. ” After seeing a friend in college cruising around campus on that very bike once or twice it was love at first sight. Now we turn to the opposite side of the garage where a pair of Japanese cruisers sit. I just fell deeper in love as I learned more. “Learning how to really work on a vehicle was truly something special because I'd worked on other stuff before like my friends Camaro, but never done everything to it, all the maintenance. “I’ve been the only one to ever work on that truck period,” he says. So, what came first the chicken or the egg? He calls it an enabler, remarking on how his lifestyle seems to require a truck, but the lifestyle he lives has evolved from always having a truck. “It's done more than I should have asked of it,” he says. It's taken him through the desert into the mountains, and it's done more off-roading than it deserves to have done as a non-4WD truck. He’s been interrogated by the Canadian police in it, to Mexico and back, all while hauling bikes. The affordable and basically unevolved Nissan helped his family during a hurricane and moved Brame personally across and the country multiple times. The interior is spartan but I like it that way.”īrame is extremely proud of what the Frontier has accomplished in its time with him and his family. “The whole drivetrain, the transmission, the engine, all the support systems. “The bed and it’s just bullet-proof mechanically,” he says. ![]() “It’s so good.” He calls this the secret sauce. It is so buttery smooth, so torquey, it's so nice… the timing chain lasts forever,” he sighs. “It's not getting great mileage, but it will run forever. He mentions the V6 engine, and the “best truck bed on the market” though he admits he is not up on his truck market research. “Nissan wasn’t on the radar for me at least until I bought the truck but then I really fell in love with it.” While it may just look like another silver Nissan Frontier to most, the things that Brame loves about it are very specific. ![]() And when Brame started college the coveted Frontier was finally his. His dad, though not a car guy himself, trusted his son’s opinion and agreed to let him pick out his new truck. The Frontier in his garage had a life before him even though he picked out. “I started working on my best friend at the time’s shitty 90s V6 Camaro. “I wanted to graduate to the big leagues when my friends started getting cars,” he says. ![]() “I was taking apart stereos, shocking myself, cutting myself taking things apart because I really didn't know how to.”Īs he got older he started evolving to larger projects the next-door neighbors would want to know if he wanted a crack at fixing a broken lawnmower or the chainsaw. An engineer by trade, when he was just a little kid Brame wouldn’t let his parents throw anything away until he had tried to fix it, or ruin it he says. The fever for cars started at 11, but the fever for the combustion engine started much younger. I wanted to go but I couldn’t ever because my Mom and Dad were not into cars.” Just a bunch of old guys in their hot rods - nothing that cool. “I used to drive down San Jose road in the car with my mom and on weekend mornings there would be car shows. “It probably started when I was growing up in Jacksonville,” he says. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |