Really love what your doing to the truck, though my heart stopped when you mentioned a chop. Glad you've had a re-think. Keep up the good work, without the chequebook and catalogues.
Had to show this video my sister took of me pulling the Camino out of Boise Roadster Show building. She had never heard it before! Crank it up!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OroWTZRZGBw
I had to turn the speakers up on my computer the second time so it would shake the house. That thing is baaaadddddd!!!!
Hey Woog, thanks for covering me! Here's something simple I just whipped up! I hate the stock Chevy dust caps on the rotors. They won't work with how I want the look. I found some trailer caps (kinda look like early style caps) at a shop and grabbed 4 of them at $2 a piece. A chrome guy owed me a little favor, so I had him chrome these to match the wheels unlike the stock zinc coating (stock on the left new ones on the right) Now the new ones are too small to fit into the rotor. No problem! I cut the lip off the factory one and slid it onto the new cap (it fits snug too) a few tack welds around the perimeter and Bam, looks like new/old!
I'm almost done with the engine, but figured I better get a couple things done before it gets dropped into the frame. The firewall looked pretty bad on the truck (Peeling paint, holes, etc.) and my friend Alex was on my case to make it look as nice as the engine will. So ok, ugghh... time to fix the firewall! After welding up 58, yes 58 freakin' holes I took it all down to bare metal with a DA sander and a wire wheel on a drill for the tough to reach areas. A little bondo to make it all smooth. I'll have it ready to prime shortly and then paint it semi-gloss/flat black. After all is dry, I'm going to pinstripe the snot out of it and make it really look the part!
Dude! nice to see you back on it! Now if I could figure out how to post pictures I could show some of the progress around here. Our '55 first series should be down here at some point soon, got get a customer car out so I can bring it in. It now has a bed though... so the never ending cycle continues...
Awesome build.......you have "nailed" it. Outstanding skills !! You have proven that "low buck" doesn't mean half-assed with your craftmanship........I salute you sir.
Sprayed it yesterday morning and just finished striping it a few minutes ago. Looks a little better than it did! I'm hoping my heads get finished up today so I can button the motor up and get it in!
great build thread, I just found it! did you ever find the window glass? might have one out of my 53 in the garage
Went to look at a really cool underdash old AC unit with my friend Alex yesterday for his truck and stumbled onto these awesome mid 30's Cadillac Lasalle gauges! The guy ended up giving them to me and I love the old art deco look to them! I need to find some convex 5" glass and a 12 volt quartz clock conversion or send it out if anybody knows who does it. Also need to get new guts for the speedo. Any ideas where to find stuff like that? What do you think? I'm stoked!
That firewall looks killer. I want to get some pin striping brushes so i can do mine up when i get to it. Seen it done and looks pretty easy. I used to draw alot, do tattoo's and played around with air brushing. I think i could handle striping.
More stuff on the never-ending, cheap-ass, hot rod truck! Last week after discussing it over with my friend Alex, We decided it still needed more striping under the hood to tie in with the orange on the motor Looking better, still may add more!
Now on to what I think is the cool stuff. Everyone knows I always try to do things cheap, or shall I say inexpensively. It doesn't always work out that way, but I try my best. After aquiring these gauges, I sat down and did a little thinking. How much do I feel like spending on gauges that are part of a low budget, do-it-yourself build? Very little! So here we go. First thing I did was take the gauges apart. Pretty simple, just take your time, take pictures and put EVERYTHING in ziplock bags! Took the face plates off and cleaned them up with some warm water and detergent. Other than some 70+ year old stains, they look like new! I looked into the 12 volt quartz clock adapters (starting at around $85 just for the clock) and decided I could do better. I went down to our local Michaels Art & Crafts store and bought a AA battery quartz clock kit for $8 bucks! If those can keep time for a couple years on a little battery, then who am I to argue?! Took the factory clock back and marked where I'd have to cut it to fit the box. Here are the original needles on the left and new ones on the right So I cut the original ones to where they widen out and cut the new ones to about 1/2" from the base. I mixed up some 4 minute epoxy and glued the old on top of the new I then carefully ground down the backside of the machined top and glued the serrated nut to screw down the new/old clock hands Now I just need to clean up the glue, mix up some maroon/red and they'll look like new!
WOW is all I can say! I may have a chance at a 52 5w and this will help a lot. Any more info on the wipers? Thanks Robert
After blasting all the rust off both speedo and clock backing plates (and finishing up all the rough edges on my cuts) I sprayed them both in aluminum Rustoleum. I set the cardboard insert back in place and set it aside. I took the original clock took apart the guts and with my diegrinder, cut everything off flush. Now all that remained was the flat piece and the stands that the face screws onto. I drilled a bigger hole into the center of the plate and slid in on the clock, which was then tightened down. I screwed the faceplate onto the clock with the little factory screws put the clock arms on on set it back in the base! I already found and ordered 2 pieces of convex glass on Ebay for $20 for the pair. I need to go to Radio Shack and find an AA battery holder with some wires and solder those to the clock, to make it easier to change out. Need 2 5" square edge O-rings to put between the tapered piece on the glass that rests on the gauge face itself. When finished, I'll have about $25 and a few hours time for a perfectly running clock. I rebuilt the speedo guts myself and everything purrs smoothly and a total of about $15 into it. I'll put pics up shortly once they are back together completely.
Absolutely bitchin'! Now for your speedo - I have had good luck adapting the guts from Autometer gauges into early stuff. I've done three of them this way in the last couple of years, and spent allot of time taking all the different brands apart. Autometer across the board was the most adaptable.
Needed to get the gauges mocked up into place before I put them together. Since the two gauges (factory and LaSalle) have differently clocked mounting brackets, I needed to figure this out. Instead of making some round steel brackets, I thought about what would be out there that I could already use. I ran over and saw my friend Larry at the local transmission shop and told him what I needed and he told me to look in the back room. I grabbed a couple of old, wore out steels that are part of the clutch from an automatic. Perfect! I then chopped them up with my angle grinder and and bolted them to the original location in the dash. I then set the new gauges up there, marked the holes and drilled them to line up with the old gauges Here they are ready to be finished and bolted in for good!
The Jalopy Journal
