Projects Mr. Palumbo's Shoebox project

Oh, Koz beat me to it. I'm sliippin."

 

LOL - that damn Koz !!
Yea , I've got old dude hands . Years of hard work , I guess !

Thanks !

Thanks . The bear claws are a definate improvement over my 49 latches . The Jamco mounts are a good kit . They bolt through the holes where the original front mounts went , and you just drill your original tranny crossmember (centered) and bolt the mount plate on & you're done ... pretty simple !

 

Great looking build!! I subscribed.

 

Thanks , JRacer .

 

I got about an hour to tinker with the car last night , so I decided to go after a botched repair someone did to the lower part of the fenders . It looks like they hired Ray Charles to do it , lol !! My thoughts are to re-use the repair panel . If I can , I can use that money saved on repair patches somewhere else on the project .

Here's a shot of the backside of one of the fenders - it looks like it might be the start of a quality repair , right ??



But , when you mount it on the car , it looks like this - look at that gap - it's tight top & bottom , and large in the middle . The other side is way worse , IIRC :



And it follows the contour of the door pretty well





So I scraped a bunch of putty off , and saw a solid weld :



So I carefully cut it off at the weld to save their step flange . You can see , once I did , the gap looks pretty good once the stress is gone :



And here's the repair panel I cut off :



Here I'm holding the old repair patch up in place with my knee - it looks re-usable to me :



That's all I had time for , so stay tuned for the reinstall job !

 

repair was off just alittle. doesnt look like it will be to bad for ya

 

It's lookin' good. And, yes, use the old repair panel. You'll have just as big of a headache & expense with a new one. It's shaping up...little by little. By the way, do I remember some incredible vintage decals under the hood of your car (or am I having another senior moment)?

 

I'm hoping for the best . The gap(s) on the fenders-to-doors look a whole lot worse in person , but I think I can pull it off .

I'm certainly try my best to re-use the old panels . I figure that the new ones will require work to fit right anyways . These old panels are made from some serious metal , that's for sure ... 16 ga. easily !

The old decals are on Craig's car , the lucky bastard . All old water-float decals (that have been cleared over , IIRC) . Here's a pic - the old underhood gauges aren't hooked up , BTW . No need for 'em anymore , since it's now a street car .

 

well, where are ya? it's been awhile.

 

Man that's a nasty fender you got there. Tough fix but i'm sure you'll get it in the end. To bad your so far away i have a nice rt fender with a clean edge.

 

I'm here , lol . I've been working on it , but just not making any noteworthy progress .

Yea , nasty all right ... both of the front fender repairs were botched like that .

I did make a bit of progress since my last post . I got the patch fitting pretty good , but was very dissatisfied with repairs that were previously done behind the patch (when they tried to repair the attatching bracket) , so I got rid of it & made my own bracket section , where the fender bolts to the car . I'm about done with it - just have to drill the holes , so I can bolt it to the car , then it's done & I'm off to the driver's side !
Here's a pic of my progress - the fender/door gap looks MUCH better now . Once it's bolted on down bottom , it'll line up better at the rocker .



We did fool around a bit with Craig's shoebox the other night as well . Craig had frenched the antenna into the front fender , and wanted to fiddle with doing some leadwork , so I brought some leadworking tools along & we got to work (I didn't bring the fancy torch though ) . It's been a while since he did any leadslinging , so I made him do it to keep his skills alive . I did help a bit , but he did most of it while I shot pics . Here are a few pics of his work .

Here he is , working the lead (don't mind my heap in the background )





Roughed-in shape



The placement on his fender



Here he is , starting to file it (we used a few different files I brought)



And here's how it turned out ... not too bad



I'm going to do something similar on my car (he just neat me to it) , but I'm not sure of the placement . I may do a double antenna setup with the flame licks/teardrops ... we'll see . It's tough enough to get 2 antennas pointing exactly the same direction , let alone 2 lead teardrops looking the same , ha ha !!!

More updates to come !

 

Nice sculpuring it lead and puter

/Stefan

 

Looks like it might be easier to make the teardrop for yours with a hammerform. That way both would match. If you like, make a template and send it over with Jerry and I'll do two for you to graft in out of 18ga.

Just a thought.

Lookin' great! Can't wait until we can make a run together.

 

LOL...Grinder???

 

Thanks , Stefan . I may get a bit more trick with mine ... we'll see .

Thanks for the idea , Koz . I was thinking I may make a stencil (of sorts) to keep them similar - maybe lay it over each as I work them into shape with lead . I could also cheat & cut some pieces out of 1/8" with the plasma cutter & weld 'em to the fenders & smooth out the edges with lead ... just kidding !

You'll be on the road way before me . Maybe my next one will be a 30's roadster or coupe - they seem MUCH more simple & easier to get on the road in a timely fashion . That might be for me , lol !!

The chisel was from Harbor Freight ... it isn't really much of a chisel , trust me , ha ha !!!

 

I was thinking I could do a shoebox for my next one to get it on the road faster! Only kidding, but you'll find that the amount of fabrication on an earlier car is probably about the same if not more than the later ones. I'm having a helluva' time getting the fine waves out of my 70 year old body, (the car, not me), so I can sympathize.

Keep banging and we'll both be at Checkers Cruise Night before you know it.

 

The only way it could be harder to do a 30's roadster than a later custom is if you take a car that's a sedan , cut it all apart , shorten it ,change the back to a turtle deck , make a custom hand-riveted removable aluminum top , totally mess around with a custom frame , make your own custom headers & stuff , make a custom belly pan ... stuff like that . But who would do something silly like that ?!?!
But seriously what I meant was , on a "normal" roadtser build (i.e. NOT a Koz custom ) , you'll most likely not have to deal with things like door gaps (overlapping panels) , fender gaps (or even fenders , for that matter) , hell , ya may not even have a hood on it (to make fit right) . Most likely it'd have a pretty spartan interior too ... not to mention the body's about half the size of a full-size car custom when it comes time to make/fit/bodywork repair panels , lol !! Believe me , my car's a 49 , that makes it 63 years-old ... it's PLENTY imperfect and in need of repair , ha ha !! At the end of a night's worth of work , even I feel 70 years-old , especially after working on cars all day at work . Some days it's pretty tough to go & work on my car . Once I get to see this tank drive around on it's own power I'll be re-energized . I just need to keep moving forward .
My next car will be a Model A - either a sedan or a closed cab truck . That's what I really was into before starting on a more family-friendly mild custom project . I hope I live long enough !!

Can't wait till we can all go to a cruise or meet together - that'll make my day .

 

First off... Thank you Mr. Palumbo for this great build thread!

I'm working on a 50' sedan and the pictures at the start of this thread covering frenching tail lights was very helpful. I want to share one thing I added regarding this section which might be of interest.

I welded 3 short lenghts of allthread to the back of the new roundbar bezels so when the bezels are welded to the body, I could easily attach the tail light housing from within the trunk (see pics below).

I also used the Lee Lenses with 3/8" roundbar (soft steel = red color coded).

Regards,
X

 

Thanks for the kudos !

The roundbar pieces look good & I like the idea of the studs out the back . It may be a bit more difficult to seal the area between the Lee Lens & the body with your method , but it should work great to align everything . Great job !

 

Any updates?

 

nice work

 

Unfortunately , no updates on my ride . Sorry I've been MIA lately - I had to lay off to re-group a bit on the homefront ...

On the other hand , Legend544's '50 tudor is about roadworthy though - we painted it a couple weeks ago and it's just about reassembled .

Thanks a lot - it'll feel good to get back on the project - hopefully soon.

 

Thanks Buddy for the info I think I will do just like you said

 

My pleasure - keep plugging away .

Hopefully I'll soon be back on my project in some sort of way , shape or form . I need to push on !

 

Any updates?

 

Subscribed!! It's better than watching American Hot Rod re-runs (less drama)

 

Sorry , Daddio - no new updates . I've got a couple small things in the works for the car right now at my place , but the main bit's been sidelined at Craig's (Legend544) place for a bit . Hopefully I'll have it back up in his shop again really soon . I need to make some progress or it'll NEVER get done , lol !! Once we get the main bits done , it'll come back to my joint whereI can finish up stuff like wiring , leadwork , interior , (gasp ) bodywork ...

Thanks . Like I said above , hopefully you'll see some progress soon . I believe I'll shoot some videos of some leadwork & interesting stuff . That should mix it up a bit !

 

HA HA He may be defiling the wood chisel, but man it works good .........sandy

 

It really works easy using a wood chisel . I went to Harbor Freight & bought a really cheap chisel & it took literally only a couple minutes to have all of the seam moldings off . It took a lot longer to weld 'em all up , jumping all around & stuff . Should only take a skim of lead to finish it all off .

On a different note , I actually made some progress on something , LOL !!! I took my speedometer & clock all apart & cleaned everything up all spiffy . I did it with a twist , though ... you'll see in a minute . I wish I'd have taken before pics - they were a REAL friggin' MESS !!

All cleaned up :





Wait for it ...

POW !!!





It was a real bitch to get a shot of the clock in total darkness , so that's as good as it gets , lol ! Keep in mind , this is at full blast . My car will have a new wiring harness with dimmable dash lamps , so I can fine tune 'em .

Here's the speedo lit up with the shop lights on :



The car's gonna be a dark copper color , so I figured the red bulb covers would look pretty cool in contrast . The wife's modern ride has red gauges , and it's pretty easy on the eyes at night , so that'll be nice too . I have enough covers to light up my Mooneyes triple gauges too , so everything will match .

And , YES , the gauges still glow in the dark too . I wish I could get a good pic of that !

 

Nice!