I'm back!!! (Well, really, I never left.)

Finally, the snow is beginning to melt, and my hotrod blood is starting to flow again. I have been away a lot the last year, in the world of model steam engine building. I was getting burned out on hotrodding in general, so decided to purchase a lathe and a mill and learn to use them somewhat competently. I have been checking the Club Hotrod forum periodically to stay in touch, and keep an eye on Don's sons incredible roadster pickup/powder paint debacle. I do have some work planned for my roadster pickup this coming season, mainly changing out the stock front 1940 drum brakes for an aftermarket disc brake kit.--Yes, I will use a complete front end brake swap kit, and I will take pictures and document it as I move thu it. (Hopefully, this will all be basically "Bolt on" stuff, and I will still use my existing Kelsey Hays 14" front wheels.) -----Brian

hey Brian i know how you feel. sort of burned out on working on my car too. we lost power here a couple weeks back from a snow/ice storm for 18 hours. It was miserable here for awhile. i vowed to never let that happen again. i am looking into converting my garage and house to run off of solar and wind power or to at least use it as a backup. really interesting stuff. On the other hand my son finally got his 350 to build. Began tearing it down and cleaning it up for the new parts when we can afford them.

Brian,good to see you survived the winter.Sounds like the blood is starting to flow again (rod project) .After seeing the pics.of your equipment,I got the bug to do a complete Mini-Shop.It's hard to get the things out of your mind that were so much a challenge and satisfying when you were making a living.I miss my Tooling and Mfg. Engrng. business as it was most interesting.

I bought a Vertical Mill,Lathe,Drill Press,Bead Blast Cabinet,and lots of tooling to go with it.I added a RPM Digital Tach,XYZ DRO and Power Feed for the Mill.The equipment is of a good quality even though it is made in China.

I was wondering a while back if you got the Cookie Dough Contract,as I was ready to come up and let you pick my brain.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoy driving the Coupe and tinkering with it but no major projects at this time.

Hi Don---Good to hear from you. It sounds like your new shop is far more sophisticated than mine. Yes, I did indeed get the Cookie dough machine contract, and therein lies a strange story. It was a good design contract, and accounted for about 20% of my net earnings last year. Then after I had finished the design and went out for quotes, the price for a finished machine came in at around $150,000---and my principal decided that he couldn't afford to pay that much to have it built. He paid me, with no problems, and the project died. Then about a month ago, I got a call from him, saying that he had bought a complete cookie dough line out of the General Foods plant that had shut down in Trenton, Ontario.----But---he wanted me to come down to Oakville, look at what he had, redesign some of it, and design a reciprocating shuttle conveyor to load the product (Two 16" square sheets of parchment paper with 36 cookies on each sheet, setting side by side) into boxes. So---for the last 3 weeks I have been designing a shuttle conveyor. ---Brian
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...leconveyor.jpg

So, do we all get a discount on cookies now? :D Glad to see you are back at it after what must have been a tough winter. Looks like you have decided to go with some better brakes on Tweedy, huh? Don't toss those old 40 brakes out, there are lots of guys like me who can't resist them on Ebay.:D:D

Don