Customs found this Chadly Johnson article and after the fact build thread on my bubbletop Futurian

57 chevy rear end too....

 

thanks man, yeah I can't draw at all and I have tried, both my Mom and my brother are tremendous artists. Even when it came time to do the paint layout. I had painted the car white, pearled it and mini flaked it with silver and gold mini flake (looks amazing in the sun) cleared it and sanded it with 600 grit. then I proceeded to use up at least 10 rolls of fine line tape trying to lay out a pattern that I liked and could not do it... I gave up and called my pal Dennis McPhail and he came up and nailed it!!!

 

I thought I would ad some more pics and make this sort of an after the fact build thread. I thought I had a shot of the bare frame but I couldn’t find it. It is made from 2” round tube, ladder style. I used a 57 Chev rear on coil springs and hair pins. The front axle is 37 Ford v8-60 with horizontally mounted coils. I covered the frame with sheet poly and started laying on plaster and vermiculite newspaper spit wads. These first pics are not for the faint of heart. I gotta tell ya that after a few nights of this it would have been real easy to quit. Looks horrible


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The next step is to use a cheese grater file and whatever else works out to shape it


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I screwed around too long trying to get the sides symmetrical ( I had cardboard templates all over the place) that the whole passenger side dried out, cracked and fell to pieces on the floor.....


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After I finally got the plaster in shape, it was time to start laying up glass. I used polyester resin and the first couple layers were done in cloth. I had never done any glass work prior to this and I was told the cloth was important for strength. The cloth was followed up with 1.5 oz mat which was far easier to with with.


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After the glass cured, I spent what seemed like forever getting the plaster out of the body, it had glommed on around the frame tubes and was a bitch getting the body off and cleaned up. I had a giant pile of plaster to get rid of. I scraped the garage floor and it was about 6 inches thick all over... big mess, big success... flopped the body back on the frame and man was it tougher than a night in jail on the outside......


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The next step is lots of grinding, most of which I tried to do outside to keep the itching powder to a minimum.


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Finally in primer


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I don’t have any pics of the bubble top mold. I made it from plywood as instructed by Ed Roth. It took 4 tries to get a decent one that wasn’t lopsided. One thing Roth said when I sent him pics of this car in primer was “I don’t know why anyone would want to build a car that looks like I built it in the ‘60’s, you should be building something futuristic “ that was actually a compliment in my eyes because I wanted it to look Roth inspired.

Next I built some of the “fun stuff” like the tail lights. Because you can’t just put production car parts on a custom built car


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Next it got blown apart, I rebuilt the engine which is a 215 aluminum Buick. I built my own blower manifold for the 4-71. A weiand plate holds 6 stromberg 97’s. Bored .030 over. Mallory dual point distributor, offy valve covers that I machined off the name and inserted a plexiglass futurian name plate. The engine is painted House of color candy purple


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I did all my own pre chroming polishing. That is some of the hardest and dirtiest work a person can do... pained the frame gloss black and assembled all the suspension parts and installed the engine and trans


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The next step was a ton of priming and blocking until I thought it was straight enough and then painted in ppg white with hok silver pearl and covered with silver and gold mini flake. Metal flake over white is almost invisible except for in the sun light but boy does it sparkle in the sun!! Like I said before I have no artistic ability whatsoever and try as I might I couldn’t come up with a layout. My pal Dennis McPhail came up and did an amazing job.....


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Once the candy fogs were painted, cleared, sanded and rubbed I got a bunch of guys over to put the body back on for the last time. This time we had to be careful not to scratch anything.... here is a pic after assembly and before upholstery. The interior was done by Bob Holland. Bob was a friend of @Tuck and he saw the car at bobs shop. That was before I knew tuck and before I joined the H.A.M.B.


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Here is a pic of me trying out the fit for the first time


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As soon as it was completed it was loaned to Starbirds hall of fame museum. When I unloaded it there Darryl took one look and said “ that looks more like a Roth car than a Roth car”.....


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Here is a pic a few years later in front of the museum shooting a Christmas card pic with Darryl....


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This is one of the first car shows Gsta


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It was at this point some of my buddies said "get rid of this crap before too many people see it" LOL

 

Found another pic that should have been included. Painted body


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hard to say. I haven't used any in a long tome. when I did my trike body I used foam insulation skimmed with a thin layer of plaster just to keep the resin from eating the foam. It was way less messy