galaxie build, caution contains moredoor

in the quest of making the wife happy, i need to build her galaxie.
this started a few years ago. she said she needed a car with a trunk.( the scion wasnt cutting it) so i made a few calls and traded a friend a quad for the 63 galaxie 500 4door.

so fast forward a couple of years, moved twice and a few car builds its time to start on it.

it will probably be a somewhat slow build because she has in her mind what she wants, though i have in my mind what i want (not sure who will win)
for the most part we agree.

so, on with the build!!!!!

this is when i first got it

 

first, i removed about 80lbs of non working crap and replaced it with a vintage holley street domintator intake and a new edelbrock 600. i will need to pull it sometime soon to do the leaky freezeplugs. when that gets done i will get the engine and bay all cleaned up

 

next was to take off the flowmasters and put on some porters. not that the flows sounded bad, they actually sounded really good on the ol fe, they just didnt fit this style of car.

 

next was to fix the brakes. so i started on the brackets, and finding some stuff that would work. i tend to keep old parts just so i have stuff to test out before spending hours at the parts place yanking parts.

this all fits with the stock 14" drum wheels

what i have on this is
04 jeep wrangler rotors 11"
s10 calipers, had to grind a little
stock hubs cleaned up on on a brake lathe
93 4x4 dodge front wheel studs( they have a deep shoulder to keep it all lined up)
and i took a old jeep rotor and turned of the mounting flange and used it as a 1/4" spacer
later i will make some collars to held keep everything hub centric

 

in the meantime wile doing this the past few weeks i picked up a few new toys

first is a 50's-60's towmotor i picked up for a hundred bucks. put in some plugs, wires and a new battery and she fired right up. it had been sitting for years. from what i was told, it has a continental 4 flathead. i havnt looked for any markings yet. its a 3k and lifts about 5'



and then scroungin c-list i ran acrossed a parts washer that i had to have. im not sure if i will ever have the use for all of its power, but it was a good deal so i snagged it. if i dont end up useing it i will trade it for something else. tis is a alkota 612 and is about 25k brand new( i about shit myself when the rep told me the price) and he about shit when i told him what i paid for it.

 

Nice project. Very inventive on the disc brake conversion. You're gonna like that parts washer. We have the same one in the diesel shop at work. IT KICKS ASS!!!
Todd

 

some more up updates.
got the inside gutted.

i insulated the floor and firewall with some spray on ceramic, it has a r20 value at 40 mills thick. then i put carpet padding down and the foil bubble wrap on the firewall and headliner.
this stuff does work really well. i was driving a few weeks ago for a few hours straight on a 100 deg day and the floor wasnt even warm to the touch

now for the stereo, i sent off to gary tayman and had it rebuilt with am/fm, aux in and pre amp out.
then that goes into a jbl ms8 surround sound processor to handle the crossovers and eq.
then through a hifonics 5 channel amp, then finally to all of the dayton audio rs speakers and tc sounds subwoofers.
the goal for the stereo was to have a ass kicking stereo that we can hear on the freeway but the inside looks all stock.

the last thing that i have got done lately was getting the megajolt edis ignition all setup. it runs a million times better than it did with the distributor. now i just need to tweak all of the settings a little bit more when i get the cable to hook up my laptop to tune it .

 

that last one right above is a video of it running on the edis for the first time

 

i forgot that i added a control arm stabilizer and lowered it a couple of inches. 2" blocks in the rear with new poly bushings and some 65 buick electra front springs that were a little stiffer and shorter than the stock ones. and some new kyb's all around. now i just need to work out the crappy power steering

 

Cool car, show us more. I'm one of those 'more-door' guys too!

 

cool brake conversion! what mc setup you going to use? more info on ignition conversion looks neat!

 

im using a 80's camaro booster and s10 master because of the s10 low drag calipers. i have ran this setup on a few cars and have always had really good braking.

the ignition is all off of a 97ish t-birds or lincolns. you use a 36-1 trigger wheel, the edis control module, and the coil packs. then you get the megajolt computer from http://www.autosportlabs.net/Megajolt_Lite_Jr.
its 100% completely programmable to do whatever timing curve you want. right now im just running a map that i downloaded from somebody on their forum until i get the usb to serial cable to plug in my laptop to do some more tuning.
when i pull the motor to paint everything im going to clean up the coilpack setup a little bit so i dont have plug wire strung across the front of the engine. but for now i just wanted to make sure it all ran good before i sunk a ton of cash into it.

i was thinking of starting a thread on megajolt so we had a single thread talking about timing curves, but im sure ryan would delete it because its non trad. .its tough on the mega forum because most of the guys that use this setup are all in Europe and are running it on four bangers. it would be nice to have a section with v8 timing maps so we can all learn more about how timing works.

and i wanted something that ran better than the p.o.s. dist. that was in there since this is going to be my wifes car and we live about 40 mile away from all the places that we drive to.

since i put it in, it starts easier, idles lower and smoother, makes a ton more power, runs cooler and im sure it gets better mpg's but the speedo is off so cant get a accurate calculation yet.

 

You've definitely got a different take on how to build a reliable and fun 4-door. I'm enjoying this.

 

Dude, I'm diggin' your subversive crank triggered ignition set up!
Are you gonna' leave the big ol' clunky distributor there to drive the oil pump or do you have some kinda' nefarious plan for that, too?

 

no, the dist. is going to come out and im going to cut it down to just drive the oil pump.

 

here is a 3.8 mustang next to it just for idea of what it will look like when stripped down.

 

here is whats going on the roof. the roof will be in candy red and the bottom of the car is going to be starfire white from toyota and lexus. code 077. its one of those heave pearl whites. we did my moms old vw convertible with it last summer and it is a beautiful color

 

here is the color that im using.

 

some of the int.

 

here is the controller for the stereo, i took out the factory clock that didn't work and lucked out that the ms-8 controller was the same size.

 

Nice details....Gonna' run a 3G alternator, or what, to keep everything going ?

 

the first thing i did to the car when i got it was to put in a 3g.

 

I really like this build, not traditional but looks like it at a glance, the ignition is great i'd like to know more about it. Happy to see you doing a quality build on a 4 door, many of them are thrown together. Nothing wrong with a budget build, but this one's on a different level for a 4 door and will be very nice.