Technical SOURCE, How To Build An Old Driver Cheap!

more tech then you can shake a stick at! here ya go

Now while this isn’t the word of God or anything this is how I put my shoebox together, and how I went about things. I’m a broke as hell college student and I should have this thing completed and chopped for under two grand and that’s in real money and again this isn’t every last detail but it is a pretty good outline of what to do.

The Basics
To start out with we need to cover the basics, you need a work space were you can keep the car for the duration of the project. Preferably warm and dry but hey we take what we can get, as long as you don’t have to move it in the middle of a motor swap and you know were your stuff is you should be fine.

Tool wise the bear basics will work but the more the better. You will need a welder, a torch, an assortment of wrenches and sockets—those ratchet wrenches are awesome by the way, and a sawzall or cut off wheel. That’s about the most basic list I can give you, any more tools will make it faster but that list is what you really need to have.

Another thing that helps is some friends that know what there talking about even if it’s some friend that knows nothing about cars really other then doing brakes, his phone number will come in handy. And of course you can do like me and ask a million seemingly random questions on the HAMB to fill up your automotive mental needs.

Also you need to use safety glasses, and welding shields were ever applicable, I know I sound like a shop teacher, but after having of all things a tiny spec of rust fall into my eye and the thoughts of medical bills and surgery while I tried for hours to fish it out with my finger, just were some damn eye protection.

Another must for any car building project that I am to get my self into is a copy of any of the fine BLEED cds, you need something to keep you inspired along with those printed off pix of your dream car taped to the windows.

And the final tip before starting into this is to remember the K.I.S.S. rule, Keep It Simple Stupid, while all kinds of tricked out over engineered stuff is cool, your broke and its just more shit to build and or fix.

This is how I went about it, and the following is in roughly some order of how to do it


First of all you need to find yourself an old car, obviously, now before you go jumping on every four door pre 64 take a minute and search for a deal. There’s the HAMB classifieds, there’s junk yards, and there’s e-bay. I looked all over and at a swap meet found a flier for a $800 dollar 50 ford and he also had some other good deals, before I confirmed anything I went to check it out and low and behold beside it a $650 dollar 50 for with a stuck motor. There ya go I found myself a deal.

Now another thing to do before cashing out for your newly found beauty of a deal is go thoroughly go over the car, check for rust, cracks in the frame and suspension, is the glass good?
With all those things make a list of what it would take to get that thing a roller and before you buy it look up what it would cost to build a part or buy the part to fix it. While the quarter panel for your ‘75 polara might have only cost you a sixer of pasbt I can assure you a flawless 57 fury massive finned quarter will cost you a bit more.

If you still think its workable and affordable go for it.

Build Plan
Now you’ve got your new toy in the shop, or the yard whatever, and your about to ensue into some automotive mayhem. Stop, hold the bus you need a plan. Not only will you end up redoing things because you didn’t think about the order things go together but the car very possibly will end up a fancy of what ever currently catches your eye. And as we all know a car with out a plan, taking on a little of this and that, turns out to be a copy and paste abortion we all see in off topic posts with links to eBay. Don’t do it!! Sit down, figure out what you want, find a couple pix and print them off and then go to work. Another reason a build plan comes in handy is you know what you will need, and it makes buying a parts car a lot easier. I bought a cheep car and got more out of it then I ever would have gotten dollar for dollar if I bought it piece by piece.

Kind of a measure twice; write down the measurement so you don’t forget it, then cut.

Also keep in mind this is to build a cheep reliable car, while you might come across an awesome deal on a blower a car with out one will drive just fine and that money you blew on a blower could have went to your new driveshaft and you could have been on the road instead of walking to work with you blown but un-drivable car in the garage still.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse but that’s the basics of keeping a budget.

Strip it!

After you decide on your plan tear everything off the car that’s not in your plan, being careful not to ruin those parts, as well all know one mans trash is another mans treasure.
Most likely if you bought a 600 dollar car the motor is stuck or not even there, remove the motor, transmission, driveshaft, but leave the rear end in until you are ready to swap in your new rear, you never know when you might have to roll it a bit to make something work and the less you have to rely on jack stands the better; it should also go with out saying don’t use a jack, wood, or concrete to hold your car up. Yeah its cheep but really how fun is having a couple thousand pounds of Detroit’s finest crushing down on your skull? That what I though anyways; pull that bare frayed wiring out, yes all of it don’t kid yourself. Also go ahead and pull that bench seat out and get your dumpster ready for pounds of old carpet insulation and whatever other weird shit you find on the floor of your new beast. It’s a lot easer to work under a dash when you don’t have to roll around in filth, and there is less stuff to catch on fire if you end up welding under or on the floor, like patches or ect. Also be careful about what your cutting off to pull the motor and transmission, you just might need it later.


Sell it!

Now this is were all that time spent carefully removing useless door handles, old regulators, bumper guards and drive trains comes in handy. Make a list of what you’ve got and proceed to sell it on eBay, the HAMB swap meets; whatever you prefer, for more car funds. This is also a good time to trade some of that stuff for things you really need, hell you could even be a nice guy and just give it to some one who needs it, karma works that way.

Motor and Transmission mounts

I find that when your working on such a large project it’s a good idea to mix the big and little projects together so you don’t spend 2 weeks of doing little stuff and stand back and cant really see that much of a change, through in some of the more noticeable things and you’ll keep inspired to keep on keeping on. That said onto the mounts.

When mounting a motor and transmission the biggest thing to keep in mind is position, no only that your angles and ect are correct but that you can get to everything with ease.

- again this will be using my car as an example so yours may very, this is again a sbc/350 into a 50 ford car—

After taking everything out of the engine bay that you think just may interfere with your motor going in, and strapping everything else out of the way lower your motor into the engine bay with a cherry picker and see how it will clear and see what other trimming you will need to do to get everything to fit. In my case I needed to remove the stock transmission hump out of the floor so the bell housing and ect would fit.

After everything is out of the way bolt the motor and transmission together and proceed to lower it back into the newly trimmed bay. Now position and block in your drive train making sure everything is clear. Check the following for beginners.

The motor needs to be centered in the engine bay.

Steering, the box is tight on the column and you need to think about routing exhaust, also the draglink crosses directly under the oil pan. You will need to know if you are going to switch to a different oil pan, a dropped link, or just do as I did and mount the motor higher.

Make sure you have clearance on the cross member to work on and remove your fuel pump

Make sure you can get to the oil plug and oil filter and they don’t interfere with the steering. Check the FULL range of steering, just because its ok with the wheels straight forward doesn’t mean it will clear with the wheels locked side to side.

Make sure the your distributor cap will clear the firewall if it isn’t already installed on the motor, the swap to a 350/350 will leave you needing a rather long driveshaft and you need to have clearance for your fan and radiator, so the further back you can make it work the better.

Now after you have got it centered and everything clears you need to get the motor at the correct angle. As I’m sure you’ve read countless times when switching rears or using drop blocks driveline angle is important! The upward angle of the rear pinion needs to be the same as the down ward angle of the transmission out put, so when putting in a motor you need to angle it back. The angles should work out to the tail shaft pointing 3 deg down and the rear end up 3 deg or something similar, other wise you will encounter driveline vibration problems and you will go threw u joints fairly quick.

So how do you level you motor to wear it needs to be? Well most likely you have a block of wood under the balancer or some were need the front of your motor, and the transmission is resting on the stock cross member, because the front block is keeping your clearance and heights in check adjust your angle by adding shims of some sort under the transmission were your mount will be.

Now that you know how to level it out were do you put your degree wheel? Good question. The carburetor base on your intake manifold should have about 3 deg built into it so with the motor mounted with the 3 deg downward angle the carburetor will still be level. Measure at this spot, but before you got jumping into this find a reference point that you know will be level with the car under full weight. As soon as you drop 700 plus pounds of motor into the car it’s going to drop and everything will be off, on the ford I took a degree measurement off the base for the battery tray and measured with that as a reference to level. Also make sure that the motor is level side to side, the carburetor can be used as a reference for this also.

Now finally with your motor all exactly were you want it you need to make templates for the mounts you are going to make. I used the top half of a stock motor mount as part of my design, the gm clam shell, so take this into account when reading this. This also allowed me to use the stock rubber isolators in the mount. Using card board I made four templates, two for each mount. Taking into account the curvature of the cross member I made a template from each side, the front and the back. Lining up a small rectangle of cardboard with the holes in ears on the top mount and whittled on them until they fit, making sure to note were the hole is located. If you don’t pay attention you’re going to end up with a mount that’s the right length and shape but when you go to bolt it in won’t clear correctly.

Now with four differently shaped templates I lined up the holes on them all and cut the tops off so that they would all clear at the top correctly. Then after measuring the space between inside of the ears of the mount I selected some 1 ¼ aprx. Square tubing of good thick ness and with a chop saw, grinder, and a drill made the mounts. After fitting and bolting in the mounts onto the motor and trimming them to fit—don’t forget to take into account the amount of metal the saw will remove when you mark your measurements onto the tubing- take your welder of choice and heavily tack the mounts into place so they absolutely will not tweak out of alignment.

Then move onto your transmission mount, the stock cross member dose come out with 8 or bolts, but in reality this car is 50 plus years old and its going to tweak and get messed up as soon as you pull it out and the try to put it back in so keep this in mind when designing your mounts and reading reference books about your car. There’s a lot of ways to go about this and you could probably just reuse a stock transmission mount from a car that had your train stock. But in either case measure extremely carefully to wear the transmission sits sit to side and how high it sits over the stock cross member as well as how far out your transmission mount bolts are from the cross member. Now take a jack and lift it up under the transmission and lift the tail to wear it just barely sits over the shims, like 1/16th of an inch not much at all.

Now I went back over to the square tubing and made a mount for not only the transmission but for the mount to the cross member. The mount had to come up aprx an inch and half and come forward a few inches.

After building the mount how ever you decided to go about it pull the shims out and slide in the new mount, bolting it to the transmission and the tack it solid to the cross member to the point were it also isn’t going to tweak out of alignment.

With all this done, take a good look and smile at actually getting something done.

After all this hard work proceed to remove all your mounting bolts and carefully remove your motor and transmission and finish weld your mounts, the train mount to the cross member and the motor mounts, made of 4 tubes, to each other and to the cross member. To clear up any future confusion I mean weld the two tubes per side together no side to side or any weird stuff like that.
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Floor clearance

After having your motor and transmission all together and bolted in you’ve noticed that the floor won’t clear here and there, so with everything out of the way trim the floor and anything else that’s going to be in the way. Something to also take into account is that with the motor mounted higher then stock and with the car lowered your driveshaft is going to hit the floor. To remedy this I took a saws all to the floor after measuring the width of the U joints and driveshaft and cut a 5 inch wide slot down the middle of the floor, the rear cross member may also need to be notched depending on the amount of drop you plan for the car. I then took a 5 inch pipe and cut it in half using a torch, cutting it just a bit past the half way mark figuring it would expand a bit after it had been cut open, it did. Then proceed to weld in the half of tube over the giant gaping hole in your floor. At this time it’d probably be a good idea to take note of the height of the new tunnel as it may interfere with the bottom of the stock bench seat later, I raised my tunnel about 2 ½ inches and had no troubles.

Gas linkage

With everything out of the way and the motor and train mounted back in there new rustoleum protected from rust mounts it’s onto linkage. I haven’t really looked at other set ups so this may only apply directly with the ford but the idea is pretty universally applicable.

The stock linkage rod type linkage came out from the driver side firewall and ran along the firewall over the bell housing and up to the other side as the stock carburetor linkage was on the passenger side. On further inspection I found that the way it was sprung was a spring on either side of the motor flanked by mounts to the fire wall. After some though I removed the mounts from the fire wall and let them hang on the linkage. The linkage is made out of think round stock so after some measuring I heated and bent the rod upward at about a 90 degree angle near were the drivers side spring would have mounted, and cut it off about at the height of the distributor cap. I then reinstalled the spring from the passenger side along with the driver side spring, back onto the linkage. After making sure that the pedal had full range I fabricated the linkage from the pedal to the carb. This is probably going to be different from carb to carb. My first linkage I made out of thick wire like a coat hanger almost to see what length it would need to be to have full range at the carb with the range of motion the pedal had. I would suggest making your finally linkage a bit adjustable, using some sort of threaded system.

Shifter linkage-

This again may only be a shoe box ford only thing but being creative instead of spending money is universal and will work with any car. After looking at the prices of floor shifters and the hassle of making lines fit in safe spots we came up with re using the still perfectly good three speed column shifter and instead of spending a hundred dollars I used a bolt.

Looking closer at the column we noticed that on the motor bay side of things the shifter has two arms sticking off the column witch previously held the transmission linkage for the old 3 speed. We found that the arms were in good range of were the new linkage needed to go so we took the top arm, witch allows the shifter to move back and forth in the H shift pattern, and pulled the arm all the way to the top and toward to fender ;holding it in this position makes it impossible for the shifter to follow the H and only follow the up and down motion, and twisted the top 90 deg with heat so that the round opening faced up with the flat ridge in the fire wall. After it had cooled we drilled a hole in the ridge and bolted the arm to the firewall, rendering the H motion obsolete. Then all that was left was to make a rod long enough to connect the linkage to the transmission.


Radiator

The radiator is a very important factor in your motor swap and your reliability. After removing everything on the radiator support, horns ect I took the radiator I wanted to use and sat it in front of the motor with a fan bolted to the water pump. Very, very close and with the car being driven often the frame and motor are sure to move enough to hit something. After moving some things around I found that I could trim the front of the heater boxes and some of the radiator support and place the radiator in front of the radiator support instead of behind or in the middle of it.

After getting your radiator to wear you want it take some small straps of metal approximately ¾ inch wide but 2 inches long and bend them into an L shape. Then take them and line them up on the top of the radiator, one on each side and figure out were a good mounting position would be, for my radiator and car it was wide enough that I could use the uprights on the originally rad support for mounting spots. After making sure they fit correctly drill a hole in the top of the L and then mounting spot and bolt them together, then braze the mounts onto the radiator. Make sure that you have good clearance and that you can get your cap off and fill it with no problems. And you can still run your transmission cooler lines if you’re not running a remote cooler.

Rear Axel

One of the most basic aspects of doing a motor swap and building a reliable driver is your rear axel choice. On the budget end of things you need to find something that will at the most need new perches welded on, for the shoebox ford I found a maverick 5 lug rear bolts in just fine. You also need to think about gearing, although 4:11 ‘s are fun its going to kill you pocket at the gas pumps.

With the new rear not yet in the car take some time to do some maintenance on it before you have it bolted in and have to crawl under the car to get it done. With a rear that has who knows how many miles on it you should at least change the gear fluid and check the brakes.

Now when it comes to brakes if the drum doesn’t just come off there should be a plug in the back of the brake on the backing plate that when taken out will revel the adjusters inside the brake. Usually a screwdriver can catch the gears and turn it loose so you can just pop the drum off and go about your business. But often it just won’t move, or its all striped off so a careful torch threw the sight hole melting the adjuster will collapse the brake and let you pull the drum off.

This is going to be a driver so good brakes are important, and you might as well do it now and not after you run it into the back of someone else’s car- might want to take a look at rebuilding you master cylinder while your at it.

With both drums off and the new equipment in your hands leave one side all put together, you see all those springs clips and ect?? Yeah well books don’t really show you how that all goes back together very well so leave one side in tact so you can look at the other side when you put the new one together. Another budget tip is to check the drums on the rear before you consider buying it, new drums for a 70 maverick rear can cost you around 50 bux a piece and the net thing you know that 80 dollar rear wasn’t such a good deal.

With this all apart anyways spend a couple dollars and put new axel bearings in, it sounds hard and expensive but for a couple dollars and the rear out of the car why not. Take the four bolts out that connect the backing plate axel and all that together out and pull the backing plate off with you new brakes intact and bolt the ends of a big log chain to two of the lug studs. With some one holding the rear in place snap the tension out of the chain and couple times and the axel will slide out. Make sure you remember witch side is witch as they are often different lengths. Looking into the axle tube you’ll see the bearing right in the end of the tube. There is a small round spring in it so don’t forget to make sure you get it out, a hammer and a screw driver or the like will get it out. Before you pull them both out take note of how far in they are into the tube. Take the new ones and place them in the tub and tap them into the tube evenly with a hammer, be careful as they will bend and thus be unusable. After they are started find something about as round as the I.D. or the tube, blunt and a couple inches long, the end of a large rubber mallet or a piece of exhaust pipe covered in duct tape works well, and continue to hammer them evenly further down the tube to about were the old ones sat, if its not quite as deep don’t worry when you put the axels back in it will push it to wear it needs to be. To finish off the brakes on the rear replace the rear hose and block that attaches to the top of the axel, its just a piece of rubber and a couple bux isn’t worth your life.

Put it all back together pretty much as it came apart, I had no idea what I was doing the first time I did this and it went together fine with a little frustration of not knowing if I was doing it right.

Onto filling that rear with new fluid, the rear end usually has some sort of plug and or sight hole in witch you can fill the pumpkin with fluid and for the most part you drain them by loosening the bottom bolts on the rear cover and letting it drain out, drain first, fill to sight line second.

With your new rear end lubed up and ready to go its time to pull the old one out. With the rear of the car on jack stands unbolt the brake lines ad anything else that may be attached such as the parking brakes. This also could be a good time to remove the old gas tank, be careful removing old gas lines as they are most likely holding some ancient gas, along with the lines the tank is most likely holding some now turned to varnish gas. Some were on the tank there should be a square bolt drain plug, drain the tank into some other container before you try to take it out and plug all the holes in the tank, the last thing you want when your pulling that think out is old gas sloshing all over you.

With everything out of the way and the car on jack stands precede to unbolt the four bolts on the bottom of the rear leafs, this is often also the lower shock mounting point. On the note the shocks also need to be removed, don’t forget how ever angry you get that if you torch a shock it’s full of oil and way flammable stuff, as well as all the gas fumes you just released from that foul smelling tank.

With a rolling jack and a helping hand lift the rear off the springs and roll it out of the way and roll the new rear back under the car. If you are using lowering blocks this is the time to install them. After all your brake lines and other bolts are on and tightened up sit you are finished and car sit the car back down after you put the tires and lug nuts back on.

Stand back and take a look and your new tail dragger, and don’t forget when the car is all together to crawl under there and measure the pinion angle and go get some shims from the alignment shop, doesn’t seem like much of a deal and you can take the vibration. Well your car cant and after about a thousand miles your going to have to crawl under you ground scraping ride to replace a 35 dollar u-joint. Stick to your budget and do it now so you don’t have to do it again later.

Gas tank

Now that you’re old tank is out of the way and your car is lowered do you really want your gas tank under the car taking that many hits from speed bumps? Didn’t think so, figure out were to move it and mount it. Its pretty simple as you saw when you pulled it out, find some were safe and strap it down. When you go to connect your gas line to the tank make sure you use the lease amount of rubber line possible and that you use gas rubber line not some flimsy vacuum line crap. This is also a good time to check the rest of your fuel lines, and install your lines to the fuel pump and carb while you’re playing with the tubing bender anyway.

Wiring

Now that we have got most of the basic stuff done we get to wire it!! Oh yes you know how you have yearned for this moment. The sight of 350 dollar kits in magazines with miles of wiring are very intimidating, but keeping with the K.I.S.S. rules wiring is cheap and easy to do, if you can wire up some fog lights to a switch you can do this.

Hopefully there is a picture some were in this to explain it a little better for all of our visual learners.

On your next parts run hit your local radio shack and pick up a 4 dollar, four or five fuse, fuse panel and a big roll of decent thickness wire. Check for gauge recommendations per item you wire. And if you want to get fancy I suppose you could buy more then one color of wire. You also need two switches< A and B> and a momentary button switch< C >.

Seeing as this is the basics of everything I’m going to tell you how to wire the car to start and have head and tail lights, and how to wire extra things later on. And again I’m being pretty basic so I’m leaving out how you wire the alternator and some of the starter because they are often different car to car but what I’ll tell you is pretty universal.

First off mount the fuse panel some were you can get to and it’s easy to work on, how much fun do you have crawling under your dash all twisted up trying to find a fuse? Put it some were you can get to, a glove box ect, be creative.

This is a list of the wire you will have to run and this picture will explain the rest
If I’ve left something out let me know, I haven’t got the car right in front of me and I’ve done this all of once.

Run a wire from headlight to headlight and back toward the fuse panel and ground each light

Run a wire from taillight to taillight and back toward the fuse panel and ground each light

Connect the headlight and taillight wires together and connect them to switch A witch will act as your light switch

From the other side of switch A run a wire to the fuse panel and then a wire from the fuse panel to the battery.

Run a wire from the battery to switch B – switch B will act as your key, like when you turn it only to accessory

From switch B run a wire to the distributor and to your push button switch, switch C

From switch C run a wire to the correct terminal on your starter

From the battery run a Thick battery cable to a ground

From the battery run a Thick battery cable under the motor to the correct terminal on your starter, it’s the big on with a nut on it

Wire in your alternator and adjust the belt

You know can start your car, flip switch B and push switch C, and turn on your lights using switch A.

The way that is wire you can turn your head lights on anytime. To wire them, or anything else you want to add to be only able to be on with the “key turned to acc” or switch B switched on, run a wire from the key switch to the fuse block and then to your accessory like a radio.



Drop front

now that you have much of the car sorted out and the back dropped you need to lower the front of the car, if the car has coil spring simply remove the coil, per maintenance book procedure following all safety rules and cut a coil out of the spring using a cut off wheel or something similar. Depending on your car and the shape the springs are in one coil is good for 1.5 to 2 inch of drop, cut them one at a time as the rate is not always dead on and you don’t want to cut three and then have them to low and have to get new springs. Also do no torch the spring to cut it, heat messes with the temperament of the coil and will mess the spring up. Also on that note to not heat springs to lower the car, the ride will be poor and may settle funny. Follow all safety rules! A compressed coil let lose can go straight threw a cinder block wall and you head as well, be smart, be careful. Install the spring back the way it says to I the manual.

On a 50/1 ford and possibly the 52/3/4 you can remove the coil by first removing the shock out of the coil and placing the car on jack stands. With a floor jack under the rear of the lower A arm and remove the U bolt, then carefully lower the arm and spring down with the jack and pull the spring out, put it back together the same way.

Exhaust

Just a simple tip, if you truly are broke go to the closest exhaust place with a big Chevy truck out front getting flow masters, wait for it to get done and when he leaves ask the shop owner if you can take the old exhaust he was going to through away anyways. This will most likely yield you some free 2 ½ inch pipe, glass packs, and the clamps to bolt them to the manifolds, you wont need all the bends and ect but it will be enough straight and curved to make what you need.

Finish it up!

Through a blanket over the seats, buy a case of Wal-Mart’s finest dollar spray paint and go to town! Tape everything off and scrape overspray off the glass with a razor blade, try to use wide light strokes and a cross hatch pattern and you should get even color for the most part

Shave handles

Now that it’s in one color and running I suppose your going to want to start “customizing” it. Let’s start with the door handles and the rear deck trim. There are a million I different latches you can make work for your trunk from import trunks and ect and an equal amount of ways to open your shaved doors but here is your basics on welding the holes up. For small trim holes you can probably fill them completely with weld, just take your time and move side to side and hole to hole tacking as you go and eventually the holes will be filled and by going from spot to spot you reduce the chance of warping the panel by over heating it. For the larger door handle holes find a piece of sheet metal and cut it to size and bend it over something to get your matching curve. Cut the patch piece to size leaving a small gap around the edges about the same thickness as the metal your welding. You can clamp a piece of copper metal to the back of the door and onto the filler so it stays in place and it doesn’t weld to the copper, or if you can take the smell duck tape it in from the back side. Again use small tacks and move from spot to spot, side to side to reduce warping. Another tip, is to use a small snapped off drill bit and a cordless drill and setting it at a low speed use it to “massage” out the high spots in the holes that you fill completely with weld.

HAMB chop

After all that and driving the car for a while you want to chop it and really make it something, have a HAMB chop and get the chop done with friends and let every one get something out of it. Yeah materials and food isn’t free but it’s a lot cheaper then screwing your roof up trying to do it by yourself and trying to figure out what to do with your hacked up car. With a group of friends you have experience and a lot of knowledge, and really what fun is messing with cars if you don’t have friends to enjoy it with.

Learn something new and pass it on

Tim McKenny December 2003

 

fantastic stuff tim!that must have taken forever to type up!!Im gonna print it and hand it to every mate that says
"ive been thinkin about gettin a cool old car and doin it up"
REAL WORLD TECH ROCKS.

 

its 11 pages single spaced and yeah it took forever to type


glad you enjoyed it

tim

 

wow thats awesome! thanks!


edit: and if you put it in courier new, i almost doubles it!
most teachers want double space,, you can customize the spacing to 2.1 and widen the margins too!

 

and oh yeah, thanx rocky and damnitdave for helping me in one way or another to learn most of that to were that was all memory

viva la hamb

tim

 

GREAT READ!

Tech-o-matic?

 

Wow this one is a canadate for a winner!

 

Whew!!!

Flatheads forever

 

You might be a "Young Gun", but you already have a lifetime of knowledge. The future is in good hands!!
I remember building my first couple of cars with no money (first car was a '56 Chevy for $15!), but a lot of ambition. You sure know more now, than I did back then.

 

Tim I really enjoyed your post, lots of good points, but I think you need to do more homework on wiring a car properly.Using wiring diagrams in shop manuals to get a better understanding of how different components are wired.Headlight switches,dimmer switches,turn signal switches Etc. are not very complicated and using a self powered circuit tester you can figure out how they work and what wires will need to go where before you even install it. You'll find out how the turn signals are tied into the brake light circuit and such. I think every "DRIVER" should have working headlights(Hi &amp; Low beam), parking lights, turn signals &amp; brake lights.

I'm not in any way trying to personally bash you, but there are alot of beginners &amp; those lacking knowledge in certain areas coming here for guidance/advice and I would'nt want someone to think that that is all you need to wire a car for safe travel.

Other than that it was a really good post.

Billy

 

yeah, like i said in no way is that the word of god or anything and feel free to correct anything i said that wasnt right,

youll never learn if no one ever tells you your doing it wrong and then tells you how to do it right


now onto wiring, i plan on finishing the wiring with blinkers highbeems brake lights and all that jazz. but i just wanted to show the bare BASICS of everything, and i figured lights and starting are the basics and you could get an idea of how to do everything else from what i said. or as i intended ,take the scaryness away from wiring.

lol that and if i finished on how to wire every last detail i might end up with a realy long post god forbid lol :>

later~

tim

 

tim,what size shirt you wear?i'll let ryan know. kool tech piece...quickrod

 

Jeezus, Tim. That is the best post I have EVER seen out of you. I am VERY impressed. I notice you ask some good questions around here and have put them to good use.

As the builder of a whole shit stack of "budget" cars, let me say, you have the basics covered. Get them to run, drive, stop, steer and be safe. Then go from there..

Your post is by no means all inclusive or 100% dead nuts, but a hell of a good place to start.

Am I gonna see you at the Hamb Drags next year? -Abone.

 

yeah, i didnt realy plan on it being all inclusive, just covering the basics

and god willing ill be rolling into the drags in my budget built chopped shoebox

tim

 

Two things:

1- the engine DOES NOT need to be centered in the engine bay. If you need to offset it a teeny bit for clearance, it's fine to do so. Old Mopars of the 60s did this from the factory.

2- the shift linkage deal....I've done exactly that, with the column shifter mods. It's a bad idea. You need a proper shifter with detents. Otherwise, all you have is the trans itself keeping the proper gear. All it takes is a slight bump of the shifter to change gears otherwise. Bad deal at highway speed. Also, put a neutral safety switch in the car. You don't want to kill someone by accidently starting your car in gear.

 

thanx for the shifter info, the centering the motor thing i figured was just a good idea to have the motor roughly in the center of the car.

i havnt drivin the car or realy tweaked the column shift quite yet, if you have any tips on how to make this work beter pm me id love to know about it. and yeah a neutral switch is in the works

once more very basic out line


tim

 

new addition: to add to your low buck sled, read the white wall tech article and use those worn out, belts poking threw tires that your car came on for practice before putting on your freshly ground pepboy 50 dollar speacles with ground www's


viva la tech week

 

Tim, You got great ideas for such a young punk
Alot of knowledge presented here and alot of work and foreskin oh I mean forethought went into this. Hell of a job! You know there's a hell of alot of natural teachers in this group. That's why I love it here!

 

yeah i was trying to think up what could be a decent tech post and came up with like 9 alright posts but nothing great, so i just put them all into one.

hope it was easy to read alot of times thers something thats you realy want to read about but its so hard to read threw the whole thing that you never get it done

thanx
tim

 

The factory late 70s-early 80s chevy van steering columns that I use do not have "detents" for any of the gears except "park". They rely solely on the trans detents. That way there is no chance of the trans being out of "sink" with the column. As long as the shift lever at the bottom of the column and the shift lever on the trans are both the same lenght from "pivot point" to where the connecting rod hooks up on them your factory gear indicator pointer at the top of the column will read P R N D 2 1 correctly. Dale

 

great

 

No no no, ya got it all wrong. You buy a car for $300, and then spend another $1300 on it getting it roadworthy, just like I did.

 

BTTT

 

in case someone mised it

 

Very cool post, Tim.

 

id love a 49-51 ford shoebox for $800, way to go. the thing about shaving handles and stuff, or doing patches, he isnt joking about taking your time, lightly tack them one one side, then do the opposite side, then let it cool down, and do that again, light tacks, and take your time, seriously. use a panelflange for backing if at all possible.

 

800 dollar shoe boxes are all over man, i know of at least two
and a couple more for even less if you dont mind extra doors
later
tim