Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

Merry Christmas to all and Chip will be looking forward to seeing all the UGLY you take out of that T next year.

Gary

 

Merry Christmas fellas. Waiting to play Santa, eight of the 11 are down!

 

That's quite a crew to get to go to sleep! A quiet, gentle thump with a rubber mallet might make it happen for all... Probably a good thing I'm not a parent; right?

 

LOL, did someone cough? I think everyone needs a spoonful of Robitussin! Good night monsters, see you in time for lunch... I WISH!

 

Merry Christmas all - hope Santa brings you all the hot rod stuff you've been asking for!

Steve

 

Oh, and miss Judy sends a quick holiday greeting as well...

 

Best laugh I've had all season! Thank you Miss Judy!


jerry

 

May you all have a Merry Christmas and a safe happy,healthy and prosperous New Year.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

This car was for sale here locally. I thought about buying it, but it was just too single purpose for me.

 

I just picked up some clean headlight stands today. Old Offenhauser stuff that is clean looking to replace the turn signaled stuff that the P/O foisted on me... Tomorrow might hold another trick up my sleeve with this deal as well. We'll see if time works out for it correctly.

Got a kick out of Roy's buddy Kurt tonight at our 35th Ave cruise night. He mentioned as he wired this car, his mantra was "that will be the next guys problem..." He then turned back to me and said as he waived, "Hi next guy"! Thanks buddy!

 

Just went back and looked at your first shots. I hadn't noticed how the turn signals were mounted. Mega ugly! Looking forward to progress.

Driving my 48 moordoor to club breakfast tomorrow.

 

Ha! Good luck!

 

Hey gang,

I have been pretty diligent on getting "endlessearth's" C10 up and rolling this week and haven't had much time to devote to messing with the 'Bucket. It has been hauling me all over town chasing parts and doing what needs to be done as a good driver should. I believe Friday alone I put damn near 150 miles on it just here in town.

I don't remember if I showed them the other day or not, but I grabbed a pair of Offenhauser headlight stands at Roy's the other day to replace the messed up turn signaled pair that came on the car. They were at one time polished, but haven't seen action in many, many years. In the mean time a friend and fellow H.A.M.B.er was over at my place the other day using my bead blast cabinet on some wheels. The castings were super smooth and in very good shape, so I suggested he polish the wheels. He responded by saying he couldn't afford that, and I said "just do it yourself"... he told me he had never polished aluminum and didn't know how much work it would be.

That prompted me to do this yesterday, after I was done with Grant's truck for the day. I stated earlier in this thread that I LOVE aluminum parts. I truly do! They are the easiest way to get nice, shiny stuff without paying the chromer two arms and part of a leg! It dawned on me that my buddy's plight might be fairly common, the lack of polishing knowledge and practice that is....

I guess I will call this Half Hour to Happiness!

Basically, polishing aluminum is the act of making super duper fine scratches in the metal. You literally are removing layers of the metal in finer and finer layers until the "scratches" become a finish.

The first picture you will see is the pair of head light stands, with one as it came from Roy's rafters, the other has been wet sanded at the kitchen sink (Judy was resting comfortably with prince Nyquil... Otherwise this would have waited until she was at work. Kinda like baking exhaust manifolds!). Honestly, the wet sanding part of this deal took almost 3 minutes with the 600 grit, and nearly a whole two minutes with the 1200. If I had 1500 or 2000, I would have spent another 2 minutes using that as well - remember, finer and finer scratches.

The next couple of pictures are out in the shop. I have two types of aluminum polish around the place at all times, MOTHER'S, and Blue Magic. I usually start with the MOTHER'S, as it has a slightly courser grit to it, and follow up with the Blue Magic which is very fine. So, before you slather on some MOTHER'S, take a minute or two to walk back into the house and grab a pump of your lady's hand lotion - trust me on this one! One of the best tools for initial polishing is your finger. If your skin is dry all the time like mine, your hands will become shiny and metallic looking if ya do lots of this. While it's kinda fun the explain to the "straights" at parties, women hate dirty metallic hands... See, polishing and relationship advice, all in the same thread!

Now, take your finger and slather on a bit of MOTHER'S, and rub it in real well. Use your index finger to get it down into the cracks a crevices that are on the part. It will start to turn color a bit and get dark. When it does, grab an old cotton T-shirt (for the love of God not a greasy shop rag!!!) that is clean and rub like there is no tomorrow. The next thing you will see is a shine! Now do the whole part....

But wait, there's more!!! Even though you can see your self in what you've accomplished so far, you can grab your finer polish and make things look even more mirror-like. Grab your Blue Magic polish and repeat the same. see how it isn't as cloudy? Well done! hat's the last pict...

See how easy that was? I spent literally 20 minutes on this deal. Had this been a rough casting it would have taken a bit more sanding initially, starting with say a 180 grit and working up from there, but once you have the coarsest grit sanded, it goes much quicker from there. The backside of this part will eventually be painted the same bright orange as the rest of the car, not only because I was too lazy to sand out the coarse recessed casting area, but because I think it will add a little detail to an otherwise traditionally all polished part. On final assembly of this car after the paint, I will probably take this piece and others down to ElPolacko's shop and use the power buffer that I brought in over there with a jewler's rouge to really bring the part out. That same step can easily be done by hand though, too. for now these will look ten time better than the hacked up parts with the damn turn signals bolted to them....

 

Looks real good

 

Here's how I polish aluminum.... http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39869

 

I have to confess, when I wired my car, it ended up being "me" friendly. I have a great schematic and had what I thought was enough color coded wire to get the job done. I totally miscalculated the amount of wire needed and as a result color coding went out the window. I was just to excited and impatient to run back to Radio Shack. So, there's a LOT of blue wire in my car.

I SWEAR I'm going to make it right......one day.

 

Man, that would dive me nuts!!! I'm so OCD about wiring I drive others nuts about it. Everything is to color code, every tie wrap exactly so far apart, every wire untwisted and coaxed perfectly straight. I never have electrical problems though...

 

You want NUTS wiring I once worked on an old show car turned street car it was a pearl white 65 Corvette. when I worked on it helping to locate a wiring issue causing turn signal problems we found out every single piece of wire in the car had been rerun using WHITE wire!

 

Worst I ever came across was under the hood of a former girlfriend's '68 bug. Now, right off the factory floor the '68 and '69 bug had the most diabolical wiring scheme ever devised by man. For god knows what reason the windshield wiper switch becomes the point of all power throughout the vehicle. I swear to god that wiring system was designed by the boss's retarded brother Yurgan while all the real engineers were at lunch one day!

So I had seen this girl a few times before she consented to grace me with an over night stay. In the morning after I made her one of my famous breakfasts, (among other things) she pouted her beautiful lips and said, "your friends treat you like a mechanic god with Volkswagons... Can you figure out why my inside lights come on when I step on the brakes? Oh, and by the way, my brakes don't work very well". Eager to please my response was something like "Yes Mam!!!", and probably the boy scout salute, too!

I wasn't ready for what I saw when pried open the hood... every wire in the car with an already bazar wiring scheme - RED! And, strung all over every which way possible. literally! Took me four years to figure it all out, and only two and a half to figure out she was as crazy as she was beautiful! Truly the wrong way to go about it.

 

hey guys have a happy new years eve..... we'll see you on the other side.

 

I can vouch for the need to be a bit OCD when wiring. When I did my 47 Ford, it was the first time I had ever wired anything more complex than a Triumph street bike.
But I approached the task with the mantra, "what could possibly go wrong?".
With that in mind every time I started a circuit, I imagined every possibility of something going wrong.
What I ended up with was a wiring job that worked the first time, and will be easy to troubleshoot when something does fail. A little OCD in fabrication is a good thing.

 

Happy new year!! Here in Miami Fl. as soon as we see a nice VW that's just been fixed by a local Cuban rojo wire expret {lots of those here,not always red],we send it right to Az. along with the crazy chick too. You may not understand her talking but do ya ever?

 

You too! I walked out and read your comment while I made coffee this morning, and took it back to Judy who had the news on. We watched the footage of the fireworks exploding from atop the tower in Auckland, and I said "I've already gotten my New Years greeting for NZ". The very best of the new year to you too sir!

 

Just seems right to end the year like this.,

 

Same place I have been doing all the hand sanding on the valve covers and oil filter cannister from my desoto. While the wife is out, natch. And the headlight stands look great.

 

You guys keep talking about OCD, which I'm thankful I don't suffer from. But I do wish you'd correct that to CDO.........the letters MUST be in alphabetical order!!



Happy New Year.

 

Fellow H.A.M.B.er Bodi and I at 8:20 this morning. We did a cool little run from downtown Phoenix all the way out to Tortilla Flats, AZ. About ten cars and some flat stunning scenery, plus some shenanigan's and a touristy ghost town. The thread is on the "traditional Discussions page under "First Cruise of the Year for the Phoenix Guys". Check it out and see how we do New Years Day desert style...

 

Louvers, who makes that side mirror? I'm looking to replace mine.

 

Another from this morning! My car was running so bad that Rick had no problem whippin' my ass! Those that know me though know how obsessive I am about how my cars run, and at the first stop point I pulled my lean metering rods and fattened it up a bit with my richer pair, and wiped the accumulated moisture out of the distributor cap from last night's wash. I noticed Rick didn't try this again!