Thread: Followed Me Home, '33 Build

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Roger,

Buon pomeriggio da Napoli!

Looking good. What you have had to do is a good illustration of why the hair stands up on the backs of our necks when someone says "is that a kit car?" Like all we have to do is bolt the parts together.

Did Kansas ever pass the streetrod law? How about the requirement for saving receipts for everything down to the last nut and bolt? Are you going to end up with a big auto tax bill every year? (I might mention that I've had my '34 titled in VA for three years, and have never received a tax bill. )

Not that I'm coming back to Kansas, but I'm still curious.

Ciao,

Jack

Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

Roger,

Buon pomeriggio da Napoli!

Looking good. What you have had to do is a good illustration of why the hair stands up on the backs of our necks when someone says "is that a kit car?" Like all we have to do is bolt the parts together.

Did Kansas ever pass the streetrod law? How about the requirement for saving receipts for everything down to the last nut and bolt? Are you going to end up with a big auto tax bill every year? (I might mention that I've had my '34 titled in VA for three years, and have never received a tax bill. )

Not that I'm coming back to Kansas, but I'm still curious.

Ciao,

Jack

Jack,
It is great to see your name/avatar pop up here. I hope that your time in Italy (my mistake on Spain earlier) is everything you want it to be, and more!

Even though I started with a "roller package" where all of the major assembly work on the chassis was already done for me, I agree that the term "kit car" causes an emotion spike anytime I hear it My headlight adventure is nothing special, but it gives me a bit of pleasure to keep a look I wanted while gaining a functional feature.

The streetrod legislation in Kansas (SEMA laws) is a particular frustration for me. After the bill was allowed to die in a House transportation committee in the 2008 session I contacted the Representative that authored the bill (she and her husband have a street rod). From public record, the bill did not clear committee due to a letter from the Dept of Budget stating that it would require XX number of programming hours to rework the vehicle registration data base to recognize the new classifications of "street rod" and "custom car", and that the dollars to pay those expenses (less than $50k as I recall) had not been included in the budget for 2008. I was told that she had been assured that one of the junior members of the Transportation Committee would sponsor the bill for 2009 and push it through. About two months ago I went into the House of Representatives records and searched for the Bill by name and old number and found nothing. Long story short, with the health care and budget crises they "forgot" to introduce the SEMA legislation, and it is no longer possible to address it in this session. The Representative who authored the original bill asked me to "...send reminders to her, and to the junior representative who agreed to sponsor the bill in committee.." in mid-December this year to ensure that it was not forgotten again. I will do that, and I guess I understand that they have bigger fish to fry, but it is frustrating to have them not follow through with something, especially when it is seen as a process simplification.

For now we are playing under the same old rules - keep every receipt for things purchased for the car, including raw materials like bar stock and sheet metal, supposedly to prove that nothing is stolen property. I'm not sure about the annual property tax situation but will hopefully know in a couple of months.

Take care and enjoy the journey. When you get back maybe you can schedule a road trip to Kansas to visit old stomping grounds.

I know that there are at least two others that frequent this forum that are at similar points in their builds and have expressed interest in the way I tackle some of the things that are old hat to many of you, so I’m going to bore most of you with how I got the body off of the chassis single handed. Pictures follow at the end since there is no way to put them in line as I go. I used a Harbor Freight 2T picker with the boom extended out to the ½ T limit, still more than twice the capacity of the lift.
I had talked at length to Duane Noblett of N&N about how to lift the body, and following his advice I extended a single 2x6 front to back through the windshield/back window openings. I asked him specifically about any need to notch across the board to keep from putting load on the flat rim where the windshield glues in and adding a second 2x6 underneath to account for the relief cut, but it is a 1/8” thick lip and Duane said he had always just put a towel between them and had never had any problem. I decided on a five foot long board to provide some extension front & back hoping to minimize the strap to body rub a little, but there too a few layers of old sweat shirt material eliminated any friction. Rather than loop my strap and hook it around the two ends of the 2x6 (double strap through the hook, looped to each end) I decided to run the strap through the body and around the ends of my 2x6, since my strap had a safety factor of more than twenty for my nominal 500# lift. This allowed me to ratchet down the strap and keep my picker hook close to the roof, helping to eliminate concern with running out of picker lift capacity. I also put a little notch top and bottom on the ends of my board to take away any concern of the straps slipping off center. I marked my center point on the window openings for balance, put in several layers of T-shirt material as padding, tied the brake & clutch pedals all the way down clearing the firewall, removed the RR wheel so I did not have to lift over it and did a slow lift to check balance. I had the hook centered on the roof and it was quite back heavy. For mine, minus doors and trunk lid, the balance point was with the hook right at the rear edge of the door opening and I was able to move the hook very easily with the strap looped end to end. Small adjustments were by moving the whole board/strap. I only had to lift about ten inches to be well clear of the frame, pulled it back, rolled the stand underneath and slowly dropped it in place. After setting it on the simple frame I decided to add a bit more width to the frame at the mid-point, just to get the load out closer to the edge of the floor. Here are a few pictures of the process, which will likely be much easier to understand than my words.

Here are a few more, due to the five shot limit