Projects Recreating the jesse lopez coupe

What size wheels did the car have Jer?
Torchie.

 

16" Would be my guess...

 

Jesse ran 15".

 

Kind of what I figured Jer. Helps get it down a little more plus didn't he run Caddy wheel covers on it?
Thanks for the reply.
Torchie.

 

Norm is a crew chief at American Airlines. He attracts a lot of the car guys to himself and his shop is where they sometimes "hang". This is Mike helping out with the brakes.

Jesse did run Cad sombrero's.

 

This is John (norm's pal) and Norm. John just towed Norm back up the street behind his '55.

 

Rollin' looking good!

 

Hey guys, I need some help. How is the lower door hinge pin removed? The hinge pin remover that I have won't give me enough room on the bottom to push up on that pin. It looks like I can't grind the head off and punch it out because it looks like the top of the pin is larger than the bottom. Help!

 

Well OK...I'll take this lack of response from people that know to mean that these doors stay on. I can do that. I would much rather do this with the doors off. Jr's car never had the doors off but, Jesse's car did. More detailed, finished than Jr's. Painting the doors, hood and trunk separate makes this job much easier but, I can do this with at least the doors on.

 

Aren't the door hinges held on to the cowl section with screws?
It's been a while but I believe that's how I took the doors off my 41.

I thought that you wanted to replace the hinge pins due to damage. Hence the pin removal.
Torchie.

 

Yes as a matter of fact they are. I'm debating whether or not to squirt all that bolt loosener stuff all over everything.

 

I used one of those hand held-hit with a hammer impact tools Jer. Worked fine and all the screws came out clean. (Disclaimer. Those doors are heavier than heck. So have some help handy)
I don't really think the spray stuff works but when I have some of the younger guys around helping I tell them to "spray it" when ever they are having a hard time with a nut or bolt. Then I take over and when I get the bolt out they think it was the spray.
Torchie.

 

I needed a good running 59A for Jesse's car. I saw a CL ad for one and when I called it Chris at Shoebox Ford answered the phone. He said that this was Ray's (Marler) deal and put him on the line. Ray said that this engine came out of a'47 Ford that had a sbc transplant done. Ray had driven the car with this engine and it was a good used unit with good compression etc. Ray had it on an engine stand with a radiator and I saw and heard it run online.
We made a deal for the engine trading all my remaining Jr Conway parts. I told Ray that I would ship him the correct heads/intake and wanted him to install them along with a stout camshaft. I wanted to come up from Fort Worth and pick it up and hear/see it run on the stand. The deal was made and my wife and I went up to get it. This is early this year, way before all the drama at SBF.

Well, the pics I took of all this won't upload. This ain't cool.

 

This has been sitting in the corner of the shop for months.

 

In we go.

 

At some time in it's life this 59A was a factory rebuild.

 

Frd Jones Ford in Ok City... huge dealer and the Ford parts rebuilder in Oklahoma.

 

I have had luck getting those old screws out with a hand held impact driver. But there is a trick that I found out by mistake that works great.

The secret is to set the driver to tighten them first and give it a few good whacks then set it to the correct way to remove them and they USUALLY come out easy.

Yep I found out the hard way by trying to remove them with it set to tighten as all this driver had was real small arrows to set it and had it wrong.

Those came out nice and easy after setting it correctly. Never gave it a thought until using it correctly on the next ones and they wouldn't come out so the light bulb went on and I though well those last ones came out when I turned them the wrong way first let's try it again and it worked.

Now I always give them a shot or two set to tighten first and then the right way and they end up coming right out.

 

Thanks for the input guy's. I have used that tool and I think I have it here somewhere. With the doors being as heavy as they are and the lack of convenient help I'm going to leave em' on.

 

Awhile back my conversation came back to that exhaust system that Jesse had mentioned at the start of all the info gathering. He said that he had a guy build lakester roadster type headers with megaphones and gate valves. This enabled him to arrive at the race site, get out of the car, reach underneath and open those gate valves which opened the headers.

I assumed he meant 2" gate valves (on R.) which are very common and attainable which I immediately was able to find . Oh no, he meant 3" gate valves which are huge and, I spent months finding these (on L.).

 

Wow. Hafta say I keep learnin' new stuff all the time. I'm not familiar with this approach, but I will be watching with great interest to see how these get incorporated in the build.

-Dave

 

Me to........

 

With all the company's in Texas connected to oil and transferring it, I finally landed at the right one that helped with putting this together. I sawed the coupler in half which enables me to have something that I can weld to the megaphone and screw the valve into.

You can see the valve screwed into that coupler here.

 

This is the kind of detail that separates re-creations from cars that pay homage. Very impressive attention to detail (no surprise here), and probably would have been one of the details that no one would have really known about other than Jesse

 

Me three. Cool.

 

Thanks Todd for the kind words, they are appreciated. I do feel that a good part of this type of thing is the man (kid) behind the car.

Sadly after another decade a lot of these guy's will be gone along with these kinds of "details".

 

I thought that finding the right person to fab up these headers would be easy. I was wrong. My traditional exhaust guy that did Jr’s car told me in no uncertain terms that he did NOT do headers.

OK, I started looking at all the “custom” exhaust shops that are local and on the net. No luck. As I asked around I finally found somebody that had a name. A guy named Mike Miller. His business is called Miller Performance in Haltom City which is right next door. He’s in an automotive complex that has a lot of specialty shops.
I contacted Mike to find out he’s greybeard360 here on the HAMB. A good guy with lots of experience doing a lot of stuff. I explained to him what I was doing and we made a deal.

Here is the chassis going into the shop.

 

Seems like a lot of exhaust shops don't want to mess with headers Jer. Especially when it comes to welding them. One guy told me it was because there was too high a probability of the welds cracking. Don't know if that is the reason or if they just don't want to be bothered.
Torchie.

 

I had the same problem here in CA.
I wanted to do some isky-T style side pipes on my T and nobody wanted to do it. I ended up just making zoomie pipes myself..
I guess they'd rather stick to their bread and butter of doing catalytic converters and mufflers on Toyotas, then to spend a bunch of hours figuring it out