Projects 49 Prefect - "Altered" Style Build

I talked about this in my Scout Gasser build thread but we started to strip the car down this past week so I figured, what the hell, let's give it it's own thread. We are hoping to have it out in the summer of 2012. Target times are in the mid 10's.

I am using the term "Gasser Style" to portray the look and feel and to keep the arguing to a minimum. The car will actually be better defined as an "Altered" or "Comp Eliminator" with the seat relocation, engine setback and fuel choice being Methanol

The car is very straight and has very little rust. There is some in the bottom corners of the doors but it's not serious. The rusty areas are on the floor boards and firewall, both of which will be cut out. The interior is completely rotted out.

The plan is to put a square tube frame down the middle with a very narrow Ford 9" and ladder bars. We'll use an aftermarket 12 point cage to tie it all together. The front will get a Speedway leafspring drop axle. Rolling stock will be Speedway 12 spokes up front with (likely) a set of slotted rims or steel wheels out back. Driver position will be almost center steer to clear some wide shoulders. All the glass will be replaced with Lexan. We're going to try to keep the stock windshield cranking system intact. The car will be left all steel but we will probably make a one piece tilt front end out of the stock inner and outer fenders and the hood.

We have a circle track 358 sbc with 12.5-1 and a big cam / full roller valve train that was dyno'd at 505 hp on alcohol. It has some very restrictive heads on it right now so we are looking to upgrade and let the .693 cam work. We will try VERY hard to use my Hilborn set up left over from the Scout build. We'll set the motor back as far as we can without getting goofy. Old school Moon style tank mounted up front (of course). A Powerglide will get the call for the tranny

Pulling it apart was a blast. I found 3 nests. A bird's nest above the front windshield, a rodents nest in what was left of the back seat and again between the gas tank and the floor boards. The one above the tank landed on my face, complete with a couple of dried up ratlings that didn't make it. (Yuk?)

It was almost a crime to take apart the cable actuated brake system. It was a work of art with at least 6 pivot points. The clutch was similar set up. The motor was siezed hard and 2 of us man handled the engine and tranny out with little effort. Same with the transverse spring banjo style rear. I could actually arm curl it with the spring and trailing arm attached.

Next step is to strip the front end and continue to clean up the areas we will be focusing on. Possibly a media blast of the interior metal

Just to be cool. We are also hoping to keep a lot of the exterior patina, to give it that barn find / old race car from the 60's look. If we can accomplish this then we will add some faded lettering and speed shop decals.

I'll post as we get stuff done.

 

sub-F'en-scribed!!! i got me a '48 prefect just sitting and waiting.

 

Finally, something different, I LIKE different!

 

Cool thread.
I have 4 of these Prefects.

 

great start, have an old prefect gasser to restore one day.

 

Alright! I´m watching.

 

looks like you have a nice start.looking forward to watching the build.

 

This should be good, might give me some inspiration.

 

Yup...subscribed..

 

This oughta be fun, I'm definitely on board!

 

Here's a little inspiration for you to keep going;

 

They certainly look better with the Ford Pop/Anglia front on them.

Is it close to a bolt on?

 

Yeah, the 2 dr. frontend fits right on them and really looks great, but then you lose the unique Prefect look. It would save time and money though just buying a regular glass frontend.
Nice thing about a Prefect vs. my Austin 4dr. is it's longer, so not so squirrely. Austin decided to make their 4 dr. the same wheelbase as their 2 dr. (89") So they're short and a handful under power.
Sure looking forward to this build!

 

Hey all, thanks for the interest. Be patient on this one as we are in the middle of a snow storm and quite frankly we don't have any room in the shop for the Prefect

But we're not at a complete standstill, the frame rails, ladder bar / coil over / rear clip and 12 point cage have been ordered. The 9" rear end is in the planning stages and we have gathered most of the parts for the Powerglide. We already have the engine and fuel injection / fuel tank / system so even though I haven't posted any actual build progress we are well into this project.

I agree that these cars look a ton better with the anglia front but we're all about different and distinctive (As in Dare to be Different) Besides, this is a budget build and the $$$ we would spend on a front end could go somewhere a bit more critical. So unless someone out there has a glass Anglia clip they would like to donate to the project we'll be staying with the Pinocchio look.

Once we get the "Ugly Beast" dug out of the snow and indoors beside the "Little Beast" (Scout) we'll start work with a vengance.

More as it happens
Cheers

 

Dave
I like the build. It looks a lot different than when I saw it on the farm where you bought it. The body is nice and rust free. Your brother will get it going like his Ranger. Will it be done for spring. With the snow yesterday you must be like me not wanting to do anything.

 

Hey Tom
The only rust issue is where the center door posts attach to the frame. They are pretty much gone and should be cut out and replaced. Should be a simple fix.

Snow sucks. Makes me wonder why I live here... Spent the last 2 days digging out driveways and shop entrances. Not good for a back that is already toast. To make matters worse I was loading up the Scout to get the roof fixed at the body shop only to find out the shop wasn't ready to take it. So off the trailer it came. By the end of it all my back was screaming for mercy, especially in the cold.

I'm motivated as hell to get started on the Prefect but the space issues in the shop would mean I am working outside. Not a good thing at -12 thank you very much.

We are hoping to have it out at the track sometime this summer. Spring might be a bit too optimistic but you never know. That's "if" we have a track next year. Not looking good at the moment with Blaine rejecting the latest terms from Gimli.

 

If any of you have been following my Scout build, then you will know that we swapped in the 358 sbc circle track motor that was purchased specific for this project. We never did get it to run what we thought was it's potential and ran into issues getting it to rev past 5800 in third gear. When I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago the oil drain plug / magnet had a LOT of metal on it and a chunk that looked like a piece off of a ring. Not Good !!

We tore the motor apart today and had a good look and expected bad things. Fortunately, what we found is not catastrophic.

We found teeth broken off of the top timing gear. The cam / crank were still in proper alignment so the chain didn't skip.

We also found that every rocker arm had been clearanced and EVERY one of them had additional damage. The clearancing was slightly offset which makes sense but the clearancing didn't line up properly in the positions we removed them from. It did if we swapped the rocker to the opposite head. This is telling us the rockers were replace out of order or on the wrong side of the engine.

Were not sure if the rocker issue contributed to the timing gear damage or vise versa but it's obvious we will need new rockers and timing gear. (At least) We'll also tear apart the short block and change the bearings just to be on the safe side.

We modified our welding table into a pseudo frame table and started on the rear frame assembly. All of our parts are in for the rear suspension, diff, trans and front suspension so there is little holding us back other than time, energy and motivation.

I'll have pictures Sunday (ish)

 

As promised... pics of the engine damage and the start of the frame.
The big pile of parts on the table is the Speedway gasser axle kit w Mustang discs and Vega box.

 

Looks like time to go to gear drive timing setup!

 

We are for sure going with a center steer - Altered style build.

We have the chassis coming together on the chassis table and even have it to the point where we have the body mocked up.

The center steer decision was prompted by the length of the rear frame rails and ladder bars. That's a nice way of saying we screwed up on the planning and didn't leave room for the seat. When we found out we screwed up I kind of sort of threw the seat into the car and it landed in the middle of the frame rails. When I turned in disgust I saw my brother with a weird kind of "Hmmmm" look on his face. After a few seconds we looked at each other, shrugged and came to the same conclusion... Center steer the little beast and put a funny car cage in it. We actually think the center steer is really cool and since we don't want to undo the chassis work - we are pressing on with that plan. The center steer also means we will be straddling the driveshaft with some important body parts and by the rules that demands a 1/8" containment shield for the full length. This shield will do triple duty as a safety device, the primary floor and the seat mount platform. The seat will be flanked by the rear frame rails so we'll have to do some fancy bracing to mount the roll cage.

So far we have the frame rails set up and a mock up diff hung on the ladder bars. It looks like the car will end up with a fairly low stance, even with the straight axle.

The engine is still at the machine shop but it should be ready fairly soon. In the meantime we are gathering the parts to make the Hilborns work and lining up a sprint car guy to set up the injection.

 

I'll be watching this one. Unbelievable they are pretty rare here in the UK, most folks prefering the two door Pop/Anglia.
As side note, my 53 had the same front as Jnr Thomson's and it took a lot of fab work to make the Anglia front to fit. The earlier (export) 47/48 Prefect shared the Anglia front A posts and sides and is easier swop.

Here's mine.

 

Enjoyed the scout build, and i do like a prefect hot rod, so i will be keeping up.

 

Thanks guys...

Patience on this one as the Prefect has taken a back seat to a busy shop and the fact that I have the Scout front end stripped down to the bare framerails on a complete go through / rebuild.

Thanks for the tip on the front end but I think we will be staying with the seriously ugly Prefect sheet metal. Gives it character in a red headed step child sort of way.

We should be making some headway on the little 4 door by the weekend and I'll have pictures for Monday (ish). If nothing else we can all have a laugh at how narrow the 9" diff is.

 

WOW ! How'd I miss this thread ?
If this compares to the scout this this will be a great build and a blast.

On a side note I drove a 6.50 (1/8) vega through the auction today. The smell of race gas and the sound of open headers makes me wish spring would hurry and get here !

 

Here are some shots of the diff mock up as well as the placement for the engine and trans.

The diff is a 31 spline Ford 9" with a nodular center section and pinion support. It has a spool and 4.70 gears. The brakes are Speedway discs. We narrowed the housing in house and then fabricated our own support. The whole diff will be smoothed out and painted but for now it's complete.

I included a mock up of the fender just to give an idea of the stance. We are close to putting the car on the ground and we'll make a final decision on stance at that time but for now it looks like it's going to be fairly low.

The engine mounts are actually the trimmed pieces from the engine plate in the Scout. We are fabbing up a solid trans mount and I'll be setting stuff on fire (probably myself... as past experience has shown) with the plasma cutter as I attempt to cut out a mid plate

Stay tuned kids... were starting to get some momentum on this one...

 

Cool build. I'm subscribed.

 

This is my friend Gary. ONDR member living in the Niagara area. Center steer home build---cool old bugger--and for sale

 

We had the front axle narrowed to 38" king to king and assembled the spindles and brakes. Then we mounted the Speedway 10 spokes to have a look see. We got them very cheap as "blems" which turned out to be damage to the edges and some scuffing. For once the saying "it'll buff out" actually applies as we more or less hid the damage with some fine grit grinding and a bit of buffing. We kind of thought we were going with the high front end (Gasser style) look but we are really digging on the in-the-weeds stance. It will actually sit a bit lower as the front end is at full drop in the picture. Hey... what the hell, you have fenders big enough to house the Titanic you might as well use them. Besides, it should help with the stability at speed.

What do you think of the stance ??
(Sorry for the crappy Blackberry pictures...)

 

We are almost done with the rebuild of the 358 sbc. We pulled it apart and sent it to Brazier Race and Machine for a thorough going over and updating. Pete Bozlovitch is doing the assembly. (Pete is a multi time National event winner in the NHRA Super Stock ranks and a whole lot smarter than I am... which really isn't saying much)

After decking the block the compression has been bumped up to 13.6-1 and the roller circle track cam will be retarded to move the power band higher up in the rpm range. This thing made 500 hp before the rebuild and there has been some talk that the rebuild will unlock a bunch more. We may dyno it on gas with a carb (if we dyno it) so we can tune it and make any adjustments required. Then we'll have a local sprint car guy tune the hilborns on alcohol.

Pressing hard to have the Scout ready for the World of Wheels in 2 weeks. Once that is done then we'll focus a LOT more on the Prefect. There is still a possibility we'll shake it down late this season.

 

While I love the nose high look of the late '50s-early '60s Gassers, my first thought is that performance comes before looks. A lower nose will let less air under the car and probably make it easier to control on the top end. Of course your Scout seems to negate that viewpoint. How did it handle the top end, especially with stiff crosswinds, or was it just fine? If your experience shows that height didn't seem to be a factor than go with your gut. Either way, this ought to be one badass little car.