Monster Garage Hot Cars Roar Into WESTEC 2005 Celebrating Manufacturing Innovation

Monster Garage Hot Cars Roar Into WESTEC 2005 Celebrating Manufacturing Innovation

DEARBORN, Mich., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Eight extraordinary "Monster Garage" machines from the widely-acclaimed Discovery Channel series will celebrate manufacturing innovation at WESTEC 2005, North America's largest annual manufacturing and metalworking event. In Monster Garage, they pit man's creative will against ordinary metal by "turning ordinary cars into extraordinary machines." These unique vehicles, ranging from a 1990 Ford Mustang GT-lawnmower to a Toyota Celica Jet Car capable of running top speeds of 200 mph, will be on the show floor at WESTEC 2005 being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center April 4-7, 2005. A "Monster Trivia Contest" will award cool Monster Garage gear to attendees hourly.

These exciting machines showcase the work of hit TV hero, Jesse James, custom bike builder/designer of West Coast Choppers, Long Beach, Calif., who in leading his team of designers, engineers, fabricators, welders, and free- thinkers, "has led a frontal assault on the perceived boundaries of American ingenuity."

Over 20,000 manufacturers attend WESTEC in Los Angeles every year to connect with their peers, find manufacturing solutions, and see new technology from leading equipment makers.

Vehicles on display include:

* Fire Truck Limo, a 5,000-pound firefighting monster machine capable of extinguishing a fire in a six-story burning building created by ripping out the car's midsection and cutting the roof so that it would open like a clam shell and allow the main nozzle to come through,

* Mustang Lawnmower, a 1990 Ford Mustang GT transitioned into a lawnmower by throwing out the back seat muffler and catalytic converter and adding a 10-horsepower Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine and a 48-inch triangular Delta Deck mower installed under the car,

* Quarter Mile Cadillac, a 1981 Fleetwood Caddy transformed into a quarter-mile dragster by building a new JEG engine and narrowing the rear end chassis to fit the rear-end housing,

* Chevrolet Suburban Wedding Chapel, a tricked-out wedding chapel created by hinging the rear passenger doors from the bottom to create a walk-through vestibule, cutting and hinging the roof to create an arch above the vestibule, and installing a pipe organ in the back,

* Toyota Celica Jet Car, a car capable of running top speeds of more than 200 mph, with a Rolls Royce Viper MK22 that generates 6,300 pounds of thrust, and mounting the 640-pound jet engine by stretching the car 30 inches and building up the sub-frame,

* Cadillac Escalade Ultimate Tailgater, created by mounting a 42-inch plasma television to the rear hatch and powering it remotely using hydraulics with considerations to weight, location and position of the television, and engineering the hydraulics, cylinders and hinge system to work properly,

* Pikes Peak Hill Climber, mounted a Ford front end on the 1988 Chevy Blazer and aligned and calibrated correctly so that it was straight and level; and,

* Open Road Racer, a stock '64 Lincoln Continental with a NASCAR chassis, a 600-horsepower 427 Motown engine and a T-100 four-speed manual transmission with the unibody separated from the vehicle and prepped on the "bare" NASCAR chassis. Unibody construction is a manufacturing process where sheet metal body parts are combined with stress-bearing elements to form the body and chassis as a single piece, as opposed to attaching body parts to a frame.

Sponsorship Opportunities:

Sponsorship packages are available for companies interested in gaining visibility, both on-site with the 20,000 WESTEC attendees, and through print and on-line marketing seen by manufacturers worldwide.

For more information click on "Sponsorship Opportunities," at http://www.sme.org/westec , or call Kara Walters at (313) 425-3059.

To Register:

For more information about WESTEC 2005, visit http://www.sme.org/westec , or call the SME Resource Center at 800-733-4763, or (outside the U.S. and Canada), (313) 271-1500, Ext. 4500, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday - Friday, Eastern Time, or fax to (313) 425-3401.

WESTEC 2005 is co-sponsored by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), http://www.sme.org/ , the American Machine Tool Distributors Association (AMTDA), http://www.amtda.org/ and The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), http://www.amtonline.org/ .

Source: Society of Manufacturing Engineers

CONTACT: Howard Pearlstein of Lee & Associates, Inc., +1-323-938-3300,
leeassociates@aol.com

Web site: http://www.sme.org/
http://www.sme.org/westec
http://www.amtda.org/
http://www.amtonline.org/

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