Projects Koz is building a modified, (my next build)

I certainly want to run up there & see your shop in action - it's been a while since I was up there . One day I'll drive my custom to Wildwood with you guys ...

 

This is the year for all of us!

 

Larry if you don't have something on the road for Wildwood this year you're going to have to stay across the street! hahah

 

At least I won't have to wear a coctail dress to the dance like in the old days! I need to get with the blaster today. I can't believe my frames not done yet.

 

Common Koz I'm pullin for ya.You can do it!

 

Last night I had some time to get my block and heads prepped for the tank. I cleaned up the bores to cut the glaze and ground of any loose flashing both internally and externally. There are two studs broken off in the one motor mount I need to take out and two stripped plugs to take out. Work for this evening. I have an order in for the rest of the motor parts, most are here already. I'm only getting maybe an hour a day right now to work on it but a lot gets done in an hour or so. While the blocks out I'll get the pistons, rods and crank ready. Having the short block together and painted will be a big boost. The trans is aleady done and the rear is done internally but needs the brackets, torque tube and brakes installed. I have the driveshaft cut but unfortunatly I scavenged the coupler for another project so I need to order one and turn the inside to fit the modified shaft.

I also drug out all the front end stuff and everything is here except for the bottom spring leaf and the spring hangers. I'm going to need to cut a spring leaf to get the 30" width unless somebody knows where I can get a reverse eye spring leaf. Shout out!

 

I'm making some serious progress and have a ton of pics. Unfortunately, I can't get anything to post using the "new" Photobucket. I just learned how to use the old one!

I have a good bit of the chassis well under way and this one could easily be my best yet. I have a pair of "A" rails that I straightened to make the absolute coolist pair of T style rails. They just look right. The rear Model "A" crossmember is narrowed to 37" and I'm working on another bolt in style front crossmember. The one on Grabowskis' Lighning Bug had to be the best. One of the things I never liked, although extrmely practical and safe is the way you weld a pc. of 2 5/8" DOM into the front rails and wrap it to accept the suicide mount. This time I fitted up the front using a swept front rail step of 3 1/4" and then split the "A" rail and widened the front 5 1/8" to accept the bolt in plates. Looks like it grew there. The tube is actually welded inside to the rails and the bolts and brackets are just eye candy but it is super strong and ready for a step box in the front to the K member and full box from there on back to the 10" rear Z. I have the front 'bones underway using a pair of very mint '48 style stepped 'bones and fit the forgings out of a pair of Speedway '32 style 'bones into them to give me the "lighter" front pieces and still take advantage of the added drop and lenght of the late 'bones. The tapered tubes from the Speedway 'bones will be put to good use as radius rods for the banjo in the rear.

Pics of all this when I figger this shit out!

 

Easily your best yet!? Man, I can't wait to see the pics!

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can't wait to see your pics Koz. What your doing is sounding pretty darn cool!! I'm interested reading more on 283s as I have two of them and am trying for a 3rd

In my current build I have a stock 57 Chev 3spd behind a 283. Have you any experience with these boxes? some guys here are sayin i shoulda gone with a 5spd but dang! I have 3 of these boxes just laying around

 

fleet-master, Right after the '39 style Ford box is the Gm three speed on my favorites list. In my opinion only, I want a rod to feel like a rod. I don't care for independents under an early rod. If I want to drive a Camaro then I'll get one. If I want to drive an S-10.... Well you know. Admitadly, the five speeds are a vastly superior drivetrain component. A GM three speed with an old Hurst Synchrolok or Sparkomatic shifter is just ten times more fun! (Avoid a Mystery shifter, the "mystery" was what gear you were in).

In a light rod with a good running 283 a three speed is both reliable and fast. They are about the same strenght as a Ford 303 box and easy to get parts for and fix if you should break one, which you probably will not in back of even a hot 283. I like the 11" clutch and a steel flywheel, which smooths the power band better than a lighter aluminum one on the street. Once again, a concession to driveability. The Aluminum flywheel will get upstairs quicker but just doesn't feel as good to me on the street. We used this setup in my former brother-in-laws roadster, which was an "A" coupster body on a cast off T Bucket chassis and it was brutally quick.

The advantage of the five speed is that it will keep the power band narrow so a small engine can be used to save fuel in a production car. Rods are generally so light and over powered, (can there be such a thing as "overpowered"?), that the effects of the extra gear, as fifth is an overdrive, are negligable. You can easily get well into the 20s' for gas milage with a small block and a three speed, which when you consider the number of miles you actually drive the thing in a year is pretty good. The five speed just doesn't justify the extra weight and space it takes up in an already cramped situation to justify the expense.

In short, go for it. The car will feel great on the open road and be reliable as hell.

As far as the 283 goes, I assume your building a light car and this is my first choice for such applications. My favorite setup on these is six twos on an Offy or Edelbrock manifold with the two center carbs run straight up with usually #51 jets in Holly 94s' and the other four run as dummys. Trips' work well too. My cam of choice is the 327/300 hydralic or a copy of this which everybody makes. You can only run the small valves in a 283 and early 520 castings, (Power paks), work well, or a set of small valve fuelies if you can find them. I don't use the 305 heads that are so popular because they limit your manifold choices. My favorite is to have an early points, or better yet dual point, distributor set up by Bubbas to be all in at 2000. You should easily be able to turn 7500 RPM+ with this and still have a good street runner on regular gas. Keep the exhaust to no larger than 2" to maintain good velocity and help with low end torque.

Good luck! Post some pics.

 

Hey,KOZ----quit typing so much and post some pictures LOL

 

Would if I could! I'm hoping for somebody to stop by that has the new Photobucket figgered out. I've been saving them up so as soon as I can they'll be up.

 

I was forced to switch over to the new PB as well. From what I did, you upload all of the pictures on there, then go to your home page and click on "view library" which will bring you to where all your photos are. Click on the picture you want to show up in your thread and copy/paste the "IMG" code from it. You can click on "next" or "previous" to get to the next picture you want to post, or click "back" and return to the library page to pick another picture.

Just an even fancier-looking way to do it now.

 

hey thanks for your ideas Koz, I'm actually putting a 283/ 3spd into my F1 pickup for now. I do have an old C357 intake here tho...and some 896 power pack heads.

 

KOZ,where are you????

 

My net was down for the last few days. All fixed now! I'll have some pics up soon on progress as the Photobucket is back working as well. For the moment I have the frame rails Z'd in the rear and the Model "A" crossmember narrowed, retaining the end clips to pick up my bed mounts since I am running about a 20" Model "A" bed instead of just the tank. The front of the frame is sweep Z'd to pick up an additional 2 5/8" which allows me to run a bulldog in the front as per Need Louvers? suggestion near the start of this thread. I have the entire front end made up along with all the susspension mounts on the frame. Still using the Model "A" straight axle, nicely perforated. I'ver been busy getting Kesss' '34 on the wheels but I manage to sneak an hour a night in at the end of the shift. I ordered some stuff I need from Wintec but I'm still waiting to build the new front CM as the Grabowski styled one I was first using. Building this frame from a set of origional rails as opposed to the fabbed ones really did the trick. It just looks right.

I have picked up some super tricky old speed parts for my drivetrain along with rebuilding a 78 case trans whick is ready to slip in. My next big hurdle is machining up a 1/2" steel adapter plate to use a flatty truck bell to bolt up the 283. I have an aluminum Offy adapter but I think the fabbed one is going to look so much cooler it's worth a Sunday afternoon to go the "old way". Pics will stay up now so I'll do a mini tech for the guys who want to give it a shot. I saw Pop do a lot of these back in the day, all without CNC and an engineering degree so I'll wing it. What's the worst that can happen?

 

Just so you guys know I haven't died! I'm pretty busy in the shop and haven't had the time to do dick on my car for Wildwood. I don't want you to think I've given up and I've decided that evenings are going to be mine until I get this thing inspected.

In an effort to have something to drive this year I've taken all the stuff I have ready for the modified and decided to build the cheapest, fastest thing I can put wheels on. I stored the body panels I was building along with the reworked A frame and kept the front and rear suspensions which are pretty much finished. Fryguy on here, supplied me with a nice '56 Olds 324 which I am hooking to a 78 case box with late gears and synchros, ('39 box), and the massively shortened banjo I built for the modified. I zipped up a dropped rect. tube frame and snagged a really nice, (read not a light weight), glass body. I have just about everything here for this so I'm just going to bang together a simple little car that will get me to Wildwood this year. If it sucks, I'll blow it apart and market the unused stuff when I finish the modified.

Some mock up pics from last week, 1 day into the build.



The wheels I borrowed from Kess. Everything else and a lot more was just laying around the shop.



What do you guys think of the red wheels? It looks pretty nice in person. The car sits really nice and is roomy enough inside. With one of my aluminum roofs I can easily make Wildwood. It's really more like a modified than a T bucket but it will do the job. I have some pretty trick stuff I'm going to sneak onto it.

 

Awsom!!

 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd....480x480/5777_668633759829131_1938119251_n.jpg



My new ride ...Im back in !!

 

wheels and tires look sweet, what size tires are they?

 

5.60x16 up front and 7.50x16 rear Firestones. These tires are Kess' but I'm getting the exact same ones on my wheels. The look is perfect and with the 3.78 rear and 31" meats on the rear it should be just perfect on the road and still have good around town manners. In my experience, anything bigger than a 6.50 on 3.54 gears is too anemic for my taste.

 

cool, im running 3.90 rear and was thinking about 7.50x16's for the rear, they look sweet

 

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Wow..very handsome...the car, that is.

 

Can't see any of the photos!!!

 

Probably tryin to figure out How do I get out of this damn thing haha

 

Man... I look nasty after two days of no sleep and another 8 hrs. of welding! Unfortunately, all the old pics were lost in my computer "malfunction" a few months back. This project was a lot more advanced ands involved. I did manage to get my steering in today and Jerry, (HomemadeHardtop57), dropped off a very nice window frame with standards and glass to add to the project. Thanks Bro! I'm trying to have the frame and all chassis work done by this Sunday. A lot depends on if parts show up. At this point I'm three days into the build.

Hate to be disappointing Gary but I bet I have damn near as much room as you do! There is very little drive train in the interior and plenty of foot room. Wildwood is gonna' be easy in this one.

I spent a little time getting some stuff ready for the machine shop tomorrow as I'm running a crank driven fan on the Olds which is pretty tricky eh? Pics od some really cool stuff if I can finish up tomorrow.

 

Some more work done.... Steering is finished up to the column. Using the 17" sprint car wheel for viz. I'm planning on a 15" Bell style or if I have time a handmade 15" four spoke with 3 layers riveted and a salvaged 15" rim. Most of the suspension is done and the drivetrain is roughed in. Good progress working an hour or two at a time each night.





I borrowed Henry's tires while his roadster was in for some service to check it out. I like this look as well. The car masses very nicely and really doesn't have that goofy T look.

Now I'm excited!

 

We're all excited!
MORE, MORE!

 

looks great with those wheels!