Posted 9:54 pm Sunday, January 29, 2012
Tyler-Based Ssnake-Oyl Products Big Name For Small Details In Classic Cars
By CASEY MURPHY
Business Editor
Business Editor
Craig Chesley has always been a car nut.
"When I was 5, I could tell you every car on the road," he said.
After a career in banking and real estate appraisals, his interest in cars led him to buy Ssnake-Oyl Products, Inc., a car seatbelt restoration company in Tyler.
"Our customers are worldwide," Chesley said. "We've been in the business for 30-plus years, so we're well known all around the (classic car) hobby."
Famous customers include Jay Leno, Alan Jackson, Conan O'Brien and Rosanne Barr.
Others come from as far away as Australia, Europe and Japan.
Although customers might never walk into the Tyler shop because most are mail orders, all the work is done here.
"There are not many people who do what we do," Ssnake-Oyl Manager Sam Houston said. "We're the original (company) that started doing seatbelts ... that's what we do."
Mike Walla started Ssnake-Oyl in 1980 in Dallas. The company starting selling a penetrating oil product, similar to WD-40, hence the name Ssnake-Oyl, Chesley said.
Houston said the original owner restored cars for himself and redid his own seatbelts. Word spread and people started asking him to repair their seatbelts. His skills at seatbelt restoration became so popular it took over the business and the oil product was dropped.
Walla moved the company to the Holly Lake Ranch area around 1985. After Walla passed away and the company moved to Tyler, Chesley bought the business in 2000.
Ssnake-Oyl has been located in a small shop at 114 N. Glenwood Blvd. since 2001. Chesley kept the name because it is so unique -- no one forgets it, he said.
CAR GUYS
Chesley, 62, was raised in Tyler and attended Tyler Junior College. He moved away for 15 years to attend East Texas State University and a career before moving back in 1983.
He is on the National Board of Directors of the Mustang Club of America and is ranked as a "gold car judge." Chesley said he has always been interested in cars.
"I've always been a car nut; that's what gave me an interest in this (business)," he said.
When he was 40, Chesley restored his first Ford Mustang convertible in 1989, and has since restored about 20 cars -- early Mustangs, including several Shelbys, as well as a Corvette and a Cuda.
In front of his shop on Tuesday, Chesley showed off a 1967 Shelby GT 350 Mustang, painted a shiny red with white racing stripes. The car took him about a year to restore, and of course, included him restoring the seatbelts.
Houston, 49, has worked at Ssnake-Oyl for 12 years and manages the business. He was working in the restaurant business when Walla asked if he would help run the seatbelt restoration company. Houston thought it would be a good time for a change of pace and took the new career opportunity.
He said he was interested in the unique business and the process of how the seatbelts were restored.
UNIQUE BUSINESS
Restoring seatbelts for classic cars is a tedious and detailed job, Chesley said.
"We try to do everything historically correct," he said.
In the business' workroom, there are two computerized sewing machines, worth about $13,000 each, that stitch patterns on the seatbelt's webbing to look exactly like what is done in the car factory, he said. Buckles are re-chromed and re-plated and everything is done by hand, down to repainting tiny logos on the seatbelt's push buttons, Chesley said.
"When they're being judged for car shows, stitch patterns and angles have to be exact," Houston said.
There is a paint room for painting small parts and a curing room for them to dry near rows of old used parts stored away to match the right seatbelts when they come into the shop.
He said they buy a lot of the parts from junkyards to restore and fit into classic cars.
"A lot of guys want the original stuff," he said. "It's a very specialized business.
Houston said original parts don't mean much to most people but it does when they are getting judged in car shows.
Chesley said that because his business is so unique, employees learn the trade when they come to work for him. Most of his eight to 10 employees have been with him for at least 10 years.
"It's a specialized business," he said. "There's nowhere else to go to do this. Consequently, we can't go anywhere to hire experienced people."
Rodney Constant, also known as "Ssnake-Oyl Rod," has worked for the company for nearly 10 years and "does everything that needs to be done," he said.
Chesley said he and Constant were "car buddies" before working together. They began restoring old cars together in the 1980s and both own classic Mustangs.
Chesley said that if they can't fix or replace a seatbelt because it is a rare part that can't be found, then they won't do it. But 99 percent of the projects they see can be done.
If they get a project they have never done before, they research and document it, he added.
"You wouldn't think there would be a place that just does seatbelts," Houston said, adding that he couldn't guess how many thousands of seatbelts they have restored.
Most of what the company does is by mail order. Chesley said it takes about six weeks to restore a set of seatbelts for a car, depending on the difficulty and the supply of parts.
NEW PRODUCT
Ssnake-Oyl continues to focus on seatbelt restoration for classic show cars.
But since Chesley and Houston invented the Fender Gripper, the product has taken over more than half of the business, he said.
Fender Grippers lay on the fender of a car for people to lean on or place tools on without moving or scratching up the paint on the car.
"Car collectors are very careful about that," Chesley said.
Ssnake-Oyl wholesales them to auto-supply and catalogue companies and has dozens of logos they can put on them.
Ssnake-Oyl also produces carpet underlayment to be placed under the carpet in cars for a temperature, noise and vibration barrier.
