Projects What did ya get done this weekend?

FIRDAY First starters. I cleaned the garage, channeled the 37 and test fit the cab on the frame. (LOOKS WICKED).
Ton of other manual labor. IN beween consuption of several brews.

 

replaced both taillight bulbs in the 64... broke the oil pan in my 04.. haha.. not very eventfull..

 

Went to Puke swap meet. Used to be a big one here in NZ but not anymore. The vintage guys that run it are screwing people over and got the turnout they deserved. The weather wasn't great either.

 

We had clearance issues with the 4" scoop, so some modifications were in order:

 

building an gastank for my roadster.....

 

friday nite took the wife to her first autorama...she had fun but didn't like all the walking...sat vegged and read the Hamb all day and nite, hangin out with my dogs...sunday finnally made it out to the garage..cleaned up the paint stripping mess from the passengers door...extracted all the old bolts, no not studs, out of the axels on the olds rear end....went to check the fit on the slots i have for it...whoever drilled the 5 on 4.75 holes screwed it up...so it looks like i'll have to pull the axels and send them out to be redrilled...might need to be pluged before can be re drilled first..i got disgusted and walked away from it...trimed the rear of the frame to make laying out the rear kick easier..was not cut at the same length when i got it...looked at the possibility of using radius rods for the rear end locator...i like the looks and they are onlt 32"...found out my wheel base is shriking down to about 93 1/2" instead of the 96" i thought it would be...dropped an old vega steering column in to check for clearance on the exhaust..tried to envision what i am going to do for exhaust..gotta have headers on it...looked at what i need to do for a firewall now that there's a sbc setting in it..jacked up rearend and checked drive line angles..looks good!!this was the only thing that looks like it will work without more modifications!!!played around a bit with where the 53 cheiftian dash head is going..behind the steering wheel or center of dash...still a toss up..looked at the tank i took off a semi, figureing that it was a good starting point for a fuel tank..but it is all wrong ( check classified later tonite for it..nice tank, just wrong shape for my topo)....sat in Lil Beast and dreamed of driving one day..and ended sunday nite looking at tires ..again..radials or bias..cheater slicks from Radir or Mickey Thompson Indy Profiles..liken the Daimond Back radials look, but just isn't wide enough for my tastes in the rear......

 

Nice tom, it is coming together!!!

 

Moved a Pontiac inline eight engine from one side of the shop (where it was in the way) to a more permanent spot on the other side. Now it's outta the way till I decide what to do with it.

 

Welded in the last exterior patch panel on my 49' Shoebox. That makes pretty much everything from the 1/4's forward new hand fabbed sheetmetal. Started welding im my floors Sunday. Got the pass side done. Waiting on my brake kit to get here so I can mount it and finish up the driver side. Man it's been a long strange trip.

Took the kids to a nice local car show Saturday. Saw some friends, ate some burgers and had a good time. Lot's of nice cars.

 

I welded in the goofy side window patch panels on my '49 Chevy panel truck. They're not finished but at least the hard part's done. You can see what I started with and the other picture is of the "to be finished" side panel.

320 tack welds and counting...on one side...

 

The '50 Burb's getting a new gas tank, so I got the fuel gauge set up for it.
Rebuilt the alternator on the Saturn.
Had a friend bring me one of those water4gas things, put it on his BMW.
Messed with my '71 Chevy diesel PU a bit.
Watched Hollywood Knights
Been reading that Twilight series, killed some evening time there.
Fixed both the washer and dryer. Simple shit, lucky me.
Fixed Mom's water heater - elements died.

Just another weekend at the ranch

 

Pulled the tired old 216 out of my 51 and started cleaning the engine bay.

 

Bought some stuff that wasn't right on Saturday. Swore at it on Sunday. Then cleaned the garage. Amazing how much better it makes me feel!
Jim

 

wow, I read in another post that if you put headers and a 4 bbl on that 350 you car will run in the 10's...

 

Looked at houses most of Saturday. Worked all night on my bike for BP. Put up a new fence on Sunday. Trying to get my house ready to sell is taking up so much time that I'm getting ready to hand my Mercury off to a friend to finish.

 

got my 56 olds all striped and ready to head to the sandblasters

 

Went to the truck race in Atlanta. Go Kyle !!!

 

Oil, plugs, rotor, cap, and brake cylinder cap for my f100

 

I got a fair bit done on my coupe.

I adjusted the handbrake, sorted the window winders, finished the new floor and tunnel, fitted my new coolant recovery tank, fitted my new firewall to radiator supports and sorted a problem with the induction.

 

I am one happy boy...

A quick trip down to Biff Burger to get my engine oil warmed up so I could change it Friday night, saw Greg of The Downshifters of Brooklyn, he did a double take and told me One-Eye would be proud... and that he wouldn't be at Billetproof, too close to thier VA show... More on that later.

As it turned out, I hobbled my sedan up to Hudson for the Poor Boy Pre-Billetproof Breakfast Extravaganza, and then over to DRoosters hot rod's (Dave's) shop to find all the things I did half-assed, didn't see or just plain wrong.

First thing, I didn't put a hose on the gas tank breather, so it drooled all inside my heat shield and ate some of the paint, we fixed it. Thanks Glenn and I think Ralph...

I over filled the rear diff, using the plug on the back of the housing instead of the yet to be discovered plug on the chunk, causing the a rear axle seal and pinion seal to leak... 2 stores and $80 at NAPA later, we had the parts to fix it. Thanks Dave, Glenn and Brian!

My cheap Chinese line wrenches didn't get a few of my brakes lines tightened enough, so they wept, Thanks Skippy!

Forgot to grease the tie rod ends and kingpins, Thanks Dave!

Everything went smooth as Dave installed a killer exhaust with trumpet-style ends where I wanted them... even though I think everybody but me thinks they look weird... Sound good too!

We kind beat the bottom of the passenger side front fender (with Brian's guidance) that got mashed putting my car back on the DV8's trailer at BPFL08, I can put a bolt through it now.

Glenn and Dave discovered another "One-Eye thing" (the first one eye thing was the 1/2" too short oil pump shaft)... this time, it was a 1/2" too short #1 cylinder intake pushrod... I imagine when Ol' One Eye removed the original roller cam stuff, he must've lost on of the "new" pushrods and just stuck one of the "Old" ones in there... and just cranked down on the rocker arm to make up the difference... Ghetto, which made my Ghetto TickTM, Dave and Glenn adjusted all the rockers the timing, the carb... I'll let them discribe the grin on my face when I heard my smooth running engine for the first time... Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! Dave and Glenn, at least my only looks embarassing, it doesn't SOUND embarassing too.

Lil Mike and I installed one new Drake repop mirror...if you've ever had to do one of these, you will know what a HUGE PITA it is. I did the other one at the barn yesterday, and painted and installed the inside mirror I kept from my old 52 Ford. Thansk Lil Mike and Joe!!!

We worked on the passenger side window mechanism, free it up somewhat and found out Henry used 12-32 screws to hold them on... you can use 10 32's with loc-Tite, finished up the last two rusty joints and it works fine now. Thanks Lil Mike!

Decided that I'm not ready for the bear claw latches yet, so I just installed a hardware store barrel bolt on the pessenger doot for the time being.

My buddy Joe filled some of the holes in the floors with sheetmetal, engine heat blowing up my jeans was fun... Thanks Joe

We put the plates on the rear wheels for the Spiders, gotta do the fronts yet, but I got all new screws to hold them on. Thanks Glenn!

Tried to get the hood latch fixed, '42 hoods have a slightly different design than the 46's to hold the pin on, so some fabricating is gonna have to happen in the next two weeks.

Felt froggy about 8 last night and grabbed one of my spare '65 Covair bumpers, sawed the ends off and fit it inside the gaping grill opening, and drilled two holes to hold it in, actually looks good... 20 minutes. then I got too froggy and tried to make the bottom of the top grill bar look good with a piece of stainless somebody had drilled holes in, doesn't look as good at I had hoped, so it's coming back off.


On the way home from Hudson to Largo (U.S. 19) I was in the left lane most of the way (I'm guessing 60-65 mph with a few 75's to pass), even had a panic stop and the brakes worked great and the rears didn't even lock... considering that my fenders are all held on with 2-3 bolts, and there is no trace of insulation, it was relatively squeak and rattle free... bumps are a different story... Kawump! and the involuntary squiggle because I didn't make a panhard bar for it yet.

Took it to go get Pizza with my buddy Joe Saturday night, he was the first passenger ever, I know he's never been in a hot rod before, even he was all smiles.

I have Iowan family coming down tomorrow, I was thinking to wrangle one of them into helping me a few nights...

This may be a normal weekend for you experienced hot rodders, but this ranks up pretty high in the top 10 best weekends for me.

 

Sid (55Mercury) and Don (oldskoolbelair) came over and we installed one of Sid's axles in my 50 Chevy pu. We put a 4" axle in and removed a couple leaves and ended up with 5 1/2" of drop in the front. While we were at it, we went ahead and dropped the rear to match. Sid was needing instructions for installing his axles in one of these pickups, so we documented it as we went. Now I just need to get the brakes done and get it running...It is definitely motivating to at least get it sitting right.

 

Relocated my tube-finned trans cooler to a better location so I could mount my backup pusher fan properly. Consequently, cranked down too hard on the trans cooler mounts and, apparently, bent it enough to make it leak like crazy. Bought a new trans cooler and had to mount it in a completely different location.

So, I basically spent a bunch of hours fixing crap that I broke in the first place! Yet, I still consider it a good weekend because I was working on the car..

 

Cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned. If you want more detail, I cleaned the house, cleaned the shop, and started cleaning the pool.

Oh...and I also got some trim off my 69 Barracuda (which I'm getting rid of) that I intend to keep.

Next weekend? Continue to clean the pool. Clean the garage. Relax.

 

4 days of hammering out dents and block sanding, followed by scraping vintage undercoating and rat piss. Still a long ways to go if I am going to drive this thing to the Round Up.

 

Adjusting doors, and thinking about fenders. Im pretty sure '56 olds headlamps, and extensions, will be done(*ahem* started) in a couple of weeks.

 

I started on the aluminium work for my roadster, still a fair amount to do.

 

finished the brackets and mounted/wired my radio and speakers up under the dash so they can't be seen...... hardest radio install i've ever done, did about 30 freakin test fits.

 

Got some work done on tunneled headlights, tail light housings, and jambs on my 55 buick.

 

Took the Dodge Pickup for Quick ride ( no glass) cleaned the garage,then cut the roof off. Friend at work stopped the progress,said he might be able to get me another roof to make the chop easier to weld up.

 

I got the flu, but was able to install my vega box and linkage before I was knocked out.