Is this OK? Cast aluminum head split in half with a billet spacer welded in to make it fit a '26 Dodge Bros. Block. It also has billet columns welded in for the head bolt bosses and will have a 1 inch billet spacer bolted to the intake side to pick up those 5 head bolts and block the open water jackets. So is it cast? Or billet? View attachment 2670283
A pre war Eddie Myer dual pot. It came with the heating manifold block off plates for racing. I wanted the heated manifold look so my buddy made this coolant manifold to hook up for street application. I've never seen an original so I don't know if it really looked like this but to my eyes it's a work of art.
Thanks Rich, I totally agree about Hot Rodding being about making parts - I've been making parts since I started - I'd like to think I've learned a bit with each one. My dragster was one of the most fun projects because I made so many of the pieces parts - some more obvious than others. Here's the rear end fill cap I made in stainless. And here's the shifter and fuel lever - putting in the letters was fun!
Done right, milled can be indistinguishable from cast. The HAMB builder of these parts: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...f-employment-land-speed-racing.1131806/page-4
This is what I made. It took several months to do but I'm pleased with the outcome.Technical - Reinventing the wheel | The H.A.M.B. (jalopyjournal.com)
I'm not a machinist but I was wondering if a ball end mill could be used for the fins and then the piece media blasted with something heavy to give it a cast appearance? Maybe rounding the tops of the fins off?
Here's some items I've made in the past with a 3/8 EM and a 1/16 corner cutter. Jimmy stuff and weber air cleaner. 6061-T6 works well and is weldable if you do a little screw up.
The question of what is traditional is based on when did stuff like this first appear. I am going out on a limb here but not many people come up with a radical new idea. It is normally a variation of something they have seen before. Also the internet did not have much of a following back in the 50's. The world was a bigger place. What may have been traditional in an Australian town might not have been heard of in the states, and vice versa. I have seen what I believe to be machined finned aluminum on WW2 radio suppression systems. Sometimes these were fitted to ignition coils. It would seem very logical that some person came back from WW2 and decided to build a hotrod. It would also seem very logical that he thought the machined fins that he had been working with for the last few years looked cool and decided to make something similar for his own car. Back in the post war years there were a lot of people that had learnt how to machine and it would have been easy to get a piece of war surplus equipment and machine it, than cast a piece. His buddy might like the idea and go one better. Therefore I think it would be a hard case to argue that machined fins are out of scope for period correct hotrods. If any of you have had the opportunity to be around old aircraft they had all the makings of a 50's hotrod. Steve
Couple of things I learned making 'cast' finned aluminum. Use a tapered end mill (2 or 3 degrees) to simulate the draft. Radius the end of the flutes. Round the end of the fins with a router round over bit. I put it in a collet on the Bridgeport. I didn't like the thermostat housing on my 292 Chevy 6. Wrong angle, wrong holes in the wrong places. Just plain ugly cast iron. This was a 4" cube of aluminum: With the sheet metal on, hardly anyone will ever notice, but I know
Not finned, but plenty machined in 1928: Machining existed long before the billet craze. Indeed, the very popularity of "billet" meant that very soon most of it wasn't machined billet at all but die-castings straight out of the dies.
No, per side. I think that I settled on 2 degrees looking the best. I radiused the corners of the cutter to leave a blended transition in the bottom of the cut, not a ball end. I did it free hand on a bench grinder. A real machinist would probably have made a fixture to make a true radius.
Stop right there. In looking at your stuff you are a true machinist, nice work! If you sandblasted that it would look like Edelbrock had it in their catalog.
My dad was a machinist. He could figure out how to make anything. He taught me how to look at stuff with an eye toward the steps involved to make it. Unfortuneately, he passed away before I got a lathe and a Bridgeport. He probably would have set up sleeping quarters in my shop if I had had them earlier. I wish I could ask him questions all the time. Thanx for the complement though.
Damn, some of you guys are artists! Makes my home made stuff look like it was pounded out by a cave man. Come to think of it, it was compared to you craftsmen! Keep posting pics, I'm enjoying looking at this stuff.
Not to hijack, but I am working on putting the finances together to get a 0.04mm accurate handheld scanner. My plan is to do reverse engineering with it, with a side-business of scanning and replicating impossible to find parts, and even broken ones, even with pieces missing. Everyone got so caught up with early CNC billet aluminum parts, and have it in their head that they are always only flat, perfect, and sterile. I have a 5-axis mill that can reproduce about anything, including the mold marks, minor defects, slight variability, and even the texture of sand, from billet, or just about any material. On the outside, it will be indistinguishable from a casting. No foundry required. I have already been asked to clone parts for boutique restorations, when only 4 or 5 exist in the world. There is no reason I cannot add this to the mix here. I can scan bland factory parts, and once in the CAD program, reconfigure them to whatever the customer wants. Yeah, I know, this is not traditional.
Gimpy; That sounds fantastic, & something I'd actually really enjoy doing. No skills, nor the bag-o-bucks needed for that kind of machinery. Lots of interest in seeing how stuff is done. . I do hope you do some How-to threads when you get to do some more cloned parts. Marcus...
I will need to clear this with the board owner, as this is not something that is part of the traditional hot rodding cannon.
Might as well give the whole tamale. Here's a Jimmy two piece valve cover and the infamous water neck. ter neck.
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