Well I have been wanting to start this thread for awhile... This will be the chronicles of building my A. I am not a professional, just a hobbyist with a too small garage. I am receiving alot of good direction and tech here on the hamb and want to give back what I can. I mostly lurk and don't post much unless something strikes a nerve with me. So to those I offend now or whenever, get over it! Unless its a tech article we are just giving opinions on topic abc anyway. I will give insite to how I do things as much as I can, so if you have specific questions just ask. There are alot of things that I do "incorrectly" by some opinions, so follow my lead at your own risk. I tend to go in whatever direction the mood takes me that day, sometimes it includes bending tubing by driving up it with a forklift, so be warned some of my techniques are not to be repeated amongst "professional" fabricators. I get by with whatever works. I have limited tooling like most home builders so what the hell sometimes the design goes out the window and I just make shit work. I got this A out of a trade for a firebird. I had originally picked up the firebird for a quick buck. After selling the stock running gear out of the A I am basically into the body for $0!! I usually have an idea for the direction of a project before I ever get the actual project, so it doesn't take long to get rolling. I am cursed with always wanting a car to do too many things.... such as be a drag car, handle awesome, be totally trick, be cheap, be expensive, have the best fab work, be the simplest to build, etc. So usually I pick up a general direction, and after get rolling I start leaning more one way or the other. I just am finishing a 62 corvette that i have been building for 2 years. I have a ridiculous amount of money in it and I am pretty proud of the way in turned out having done every bit of work myself except spray the paint. That being said it is the type of car you can't leave anywhere because you are afraid of what may happen to it. So for the A I wanted something inexpensive to build less than 12K hopefully, street worthy, and something I can park and have the sign say "go ahead crawl in see what you think" instead of the typical "please look but don't touch". As most of my toys I wanted it just alittle faster than the other guys. So I will post as the project goes along, here is what I have so far.
Here is where we are right now. Car is a rolling chassis. I brought the car home on Sept 1 st give or take. It came home on a Fri night, by 10 that night I had the chop layed out, by noon on Sat the top was cut fitted and tacked back on. Thankyou to littleman for the inspiration on the frame. I built the chasis which I will detail out more over the next few days. I really like to come up with my own ideas and have done some pretty cool one off stuff in the past, but when I see a good idea and it fits what the hell, just give credit where its due.
Well I do this for a living and what you have started is very nice, congrats on it , keep us looking at it often.........
I need to get some of the original pictures off my home computer, but they will be up in the next couple of days. Here is the start of the frame. I won't do a complet tech on most of the stuff on the car so if you have questions just ask. I will give some details on things that may or may not be commonly known. The first picture shows the start of the rear frame section. This type of curved rail may intimidate most people, but it is very easy to make. I made a 1/4 plywood template of the shape of the rail and plasma cut it out of 1/8" hot roll steel. then I took 1/8" by 2 flat bar and simply bent it around the pcs tack welding as I went. This gave me the rear frame rails, the hardest part of the frame. For the main frame rails I used 2x4 .180 wall tubing most people get by with .120 wall but since I plan on abusing this thing something fierce before it is all said and done, the frame is not hte place to cut corners. The second picture shows the rear frame section tacked together getting ready to be test fit under the body
hell yeah, are you going to run a radiator/grill shell up front? or are you going to run it out back like littleman did for that drag look?
These pics show cutting out the floor of the body getting ready to accept the new frame. The rear frame section is only tacked together at this point so that I can make sure it is right. Picture of me in the trunk, just cuzz its funny to see people in engine compartments etc.
Yes its a 62 vette in the back, I was going to put the radiator up front originally. I extended the wheel base 12" to accomdate the radiator going down behind the front crossmember. The more I looked at littlemans, though I really dig the way that motor looks sticking out there without a shell, so I think I going that direction.
As a side note, I just noticed that is Mark in the background he used to go by chopped top on the hamb. He passed away about 6 weeks ago adn damn it we miss him
These two pictures show the frame rear section. And then the main frame rails being laid out up on the bench. I do not have a "frame jig" I have a 4x8 workbench. I put a pc of 3/4" mdf on top of and use this for layout and fab. The nice thing about this is you can draw on and fit pcs right to the full scale drawing and it keeps it square too. When it comes to welding it up, I level the bench perfect and then cut and fit right to the drawing. I measure and level and cross check over and over and over to make sure nothing is moving. When it is all done the frame is as straight and square as anything out there I guarantee it. When doing the vette shown above I grafted on 96 corvette suspension in a very similar fashion leveling the frame and just using level/plumb and tape measure to square up all components. After getting the vette on the road I took it to my budy's for an alignment and we wouldn't have had to change anything to be within 96 vette specs, but we did dial it in slightly.
Once the main frame rails were done, It was time to start on the front rails. I started with 2x4 tubing cut it to the proper length and then ripped the pc full length. I took a wedge out of it from 1" at the front down to nothing at the rear. This gives it the taper. I tacked it, and started laying out the holes. For the holes in the frame I used tubing, not pipe. If you go to your local metal store chances are they will only carry pipe. Both have a welded seam down the side but pipe typically has a bead down the inside and tubing does not. You don't want to grind off this bead trust me. Also tubing is available in smaller increments. For the rails I used 3", 2 3/4", 2 1/2, 2 2 1/4, and 2" 2 holes of each size. The front frame rails are longer than most. This gave me more holes!! It also allowed a couple of things that were important to me. 1. I wanted a real extreme chop on the roof but wanted to be comfortable driving so I needed all the leg room I could get. No pushing the firewall back! 2. I wanted that long low look of a drag car, and originally planned on putting the radiator up front so the frame had to be long enough for the radiator to fit behind the front crossmember.
Okay here is #1 trick that will probably get me ragged on by the pros. I made a wood jig for torching out the holes in the rails. This made it go very fast and insured that all the holes would line up from both sides. I have a drag tip on the plasma and cut holes in the jig 3/16 larger than the holes I needed in the rails. The jig worked great for the first two sides but by the last two it was getting pretty charred. I had the place cut the tubing into 2" increments to make less work for me, but they ended up varying from 1 7/8 " (unusable) to 2 1/4, (major grinding) next time I will cut my own pcs. I have more time in grinding and welding the sleeves than the hole rest of the frame.
Here is a shot of the body fresh off the original chassis, I chopped it before pulling it off. I set next to my vette to determine ride height. With the same amount of ground clearance it puts the A top slightly lower than the vette.
thanks for the encouragment, I am trying to get back into gear after not doing much for the last few weeks. I'll post more later
Awesome man. Good to see some more Nor Cal HAMBers... I'm building almost the same car 6" chop 4" Channel, custom frame, and a HEMI. I'm also a noob and started a build up on it. I didn't get so lucky on the body though. keep the pics comin
Thanks chopperman Rocklin, huh we'll have to hook up one of these days I'd like to see your project we are on similar paths
Okay, now that i am home I can put up some of the pictures from the start of the project. Here is the car when I first brought it home on a Friday afternoon. It was a fairly complete original car I almost felt bad about what I was about to do.... I made a quick stop by the dmv since i had it on the trailler and got the vin inspection done and when I left I had registration and plates w/tags. I got lucky and got someone in a good mood. So it is ready to drive!! okay not quite but at least the paperwork is done.
So whats the first thing anybody does when they get a new project? Call their buddys! I had a couple of the guys come over that evening to take a look see. First question.... how much are you going to chop it? I got out the tape and with a little help from Steve I started laying out what I thought was a good chop. 6" The plan was too tape it off to get an idea how it would look.
I had planned on pulling the body off the chassis before i started cutting, but once I got it laid out I coulnd't help it. Plus with it on the chassis it helped everything hold square. Notice that I don't have any bracing on the inside. With a simple chop like this everything will line it self back up pretty easy. I do however hold off on completely welding the pillars back up untill the doors are completely fitted back on.
Here are a few shots with the top off. It helps to have a friend to help put the top on and off the body since things are pretty flimsy right about now. I didn't have any help on this morning so I just stood inside the top picked it up by the gutters and kept climbing up in the car and setting it down. It probably went on and off 6-8 times grinding down everything so there weren't too large of gaps to weld. If you haven't done this before, take the time to fit everything really well before you start welding. This old thin sheet metal likes to burn through real quick like when welding. There are some steps you can rush, this isn't one of them.
After welding up the top on Sat I tore the car apart on Sun. So here is what I was left with Sun afternoon, my 3 day owning the car. Here is a close up of the weld on the chop. I the stich weld technique with a mig, this keeps the metal from getting to hot in any one place. You just randomly bounce around untill eventually the whole thing is filled in
Aweseome work Eddie - I'm a hobbyist too so I can really appreciate the support and help from the HAMB. I'm struggling through my first build but you are far more skilled than I am. I love the frame work you did and I dig the mean & low stance. Really well done - can't wait to see more! I had my yellow vette ('72 LT-1) parked next to my project for a while too until a scraped up some of that pretty Sunflower Yellow paint with a rusty old brake backing plate... be careful! I felt miserable for days...
pretty cool!!! Nice work. You should check out the guys over at Blue Collar Customs off of Madison and college Oak area.
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