Thread: Project $ 3 K Is Underway

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In the last week or so we have really made some progress on Dan's RPU. I mentioned that he found a nice set of '40 Ford wheels on Ebay and that we took them to the powdercoaters last week. We have never had anything powdercoated, so we were anxious to see how they turned out. They did a great job, and even wrapped the wheels when they were done to protect them.

I took them to a friends auto repair place and had the new Firestone blackwalls mounted that he bought when we were in Daytona. His shop has a super duper balancer and he was able to get them all done with only one small weight on the back of each tire.

The next thing we wanted to tackle were the motor mounts. Because the 455 Olds weighs like 650 lbs and has a fair amount of torque, we decided to build a crossmember right under the engine and make the motor mounts bolt to that. We finally decided to build the crossmember by cutting a front side, a back side, and a top, and welding it all together. We worked on it all day yesterday (I finally left the shop at 2 AM and Dan stayed till 6 AM working on it) and today we finished it up. I think it really came out nice, especially after we punched it full of holes. Now we just have to do the same thing for the tranny crossmember.

Of course once we were done we had to put the engine back in and also install the body and bed to get the full effect. We also chopped his grille shell 4 and 1/2 inches and propped that and the two headlights on to see how it was going to look.

Here are some pictures. It's starting to look like he might actually have a running hot rod some day.



Don