Thread: I couldn't build it for $3 K either!

Tweet

Hope you make it on time for the show, Mike. You must have a lot quicker upholstery shop then I do, still don't have mine back for the pickup yet... Anxious to see the pics!! Been following your build all the way through,.

Thanks Dave.

It's going to be a real thrash, but at this point I'm confident I can get it done. That is if Burt Munro's "Gods of Speed" don't throw me any more curves!

Actually, the interior parts have been at the upholstery shop since shortly after my last post.

They trimmer is a young fellow in his twenties. His dad has been building street rods since before he was born.

He hasen't been doing it full time very long and doesn't have the huge back log most shops do. That will probably change though. I saw some of his work at Cruisin' the Coast and he seemed enthusiastic about doing the job. If it turns out as nice as the 27 T coupe he had on the coast, I'll be happy!.

Mike

Here are the pictures of the painted body as promised.

Like I stated earlier, this is my first complete paint job. I've painted frames and small parts, but never the finished body. I would like to say that it was easy, unfortunately , that wasn't the case.

Due to a malfunctioning paint gun (or bad technique), I wound up with some orange peel. In a few places, it was pretty bad. I called my buddy Brandon who is a pro painter and he said it was salvageable.

So my wife threw some burgers on the grill and Brandon brought his family and buffer over. I spent the rest of the evening getting lessons in color sanding and buffing paint.

I thought it was going to need a redo, but my buddy was right, it buffed up pretty good.

It's not perfect by any stretch, but I'm kinda proud of it, though. I still have a few places to work on. Now that I have a better idea about how to buff, I'll work most of them out.

Here is the body after the initial block sanding and body work:


Here it is after DP90 primer:


The final paint and buff:


A close-up of the firewall:


The firewall was made by Haneline from a pattern I sent them.

I''m hoping that I can get the body on the frame permanently next weekend. Then I can get started on wiring.

Mike

Mike,

I've never seen a paint job come out perfect in terms of orange-peel... every paint job I've seen needed to be color sanded (1500 grit then 2000 grit wet sanding) then 3 stage polished to perfection! I'm sure you did just fine, someone just forgot to mention that part of the process...

Thanks guys.

It's funny how some places were slick as glass before buffing, while others orange peeled like crazy. I did manage to get through the whole job without a single run.

JR - I've said it before. Great minds think alike!! I had a turned firewall cover in mind almost from the beginning. I think the first time
I saw one, it was on a classic car of some kind. Maybe a Bugatti. Just a timeless classic look.

25T - (Al, is that you?) I was hoping to get by without cutting and buffing. The buffing part always scared me. After a little instruction, I saw that it's not really that difficult. Have to be very careful about burning through, especially on edges.

Mike

Well, I did it!!! I FINALLY got to drive the T!!!

It was just around the block , but all I can say is WOW!!. I feel like a kid with a new toy. I can’t wait to drive it some more. I took my wife, my mother and my dad for rides. Everybody had a good time.

It has been a real thrash for the last few weeks, but it was worth it. There haven’t been any build updates for a while because I just didn’t have time. Between work and the T, I’ve been putting in 16 – 18 hour days to get it done in time for the upcoming car shows. The farther I got, the more I kept finding that needed doing and the longer my punch list got! Pretty frustrating to work all day and have the to do list longer than when you started. I didn’t want to rush and throw it together, so I just kept at it. Then it just clicked and everything fell into place.

Wiring was the real time killer. My keen powers of time under-estimation were working perfectly. What I thought could be done in 3 days turned into more than 5. I changed the air system controls at the last minute and added full manual controls (up, down, left, right) in addition to the auto controls. Except for AC and a radio, this car has about as much wiring as a Cadillac. Leave it to me to take the simplest of cars and make it complicated. Everything appears to work as it should, though.

The engine is running great. It pulls a solid 20” of vacuum at idle and is very strong and smooth. I couldn’t get on it very hard, but I think it’s going to be pretty stout. It was chirping the tires going into second and I wasn’t even trying. Actually, I was trying to go easy so Johnny Law wouldn’t take an interest in me.

The upholstery is finished. It just needs to be installed. That’s not going to be bad, because this car has a very simple interior.

I still need to glue the windshield into the frame and get that on the car before I can drive it very far.

I need some mufflers too, to keep local gendarme off my tail. It sure does sound good without them though (has a nice small block crackle). I have to go back to work so it looks like I have a few more late nights, but it looks llike I'm going to make my deadline.

I’m working on build pictures and I’ll get them up ASAP. In the meantime here’s a picture of a fat happy old guy with a bad case of roadster hair (what little of it there is)!!!

Well, look at you!!! Kinda hard to wipe that "first ride" smile off of your face isn't it? Mike, you did a great job and it has been fun going along with you during the build. Just a few little things to install and you will be putting lots of asphalt under those tires. Car looks fantastic.

Have fun Bud!!

Don

Congrats!!!!! Looks like all that hard work paid off! What a nice ride. It must have been a blast giving your folks a ride!

Very nice, Mike. Hey, I've been painting (off & on) for 44 years and I still get some (most of them) that are far from perfect. Also, black covers good, but it shows every little flaw. It really looks good; you have every right to be proud.

I like the firewall, too. Something about it seems vaguely familiar...

Great work Mike!!!! Gonna be a very nice car when you get it finished!

Yeah, what Dave said!!

Congratulations! That first ride is always a smile maker... Now you don't have to sit in it and make "vroom, vroom" sounds any more.

Have you ever noticed that guys who ride motorcycles and guys who drive roadsters have the same haircut? Straight back style, wind-blown look...

Hat's off to you HR46. Great looking car. Enjoy! Perley

Great job, it looks really nice. Need pics
Ken

As usual, I’m a little slow getting around to my updates. Here are the last of the build pics.



This is the remote fill cover for the master cylinder. It’s from Kugel Komponents. The remote reservoir is from a VW and mounts under the driver’s seat.





This is one of the last pics of the chassis before the body went on for the final time. As you can see in the background, my shop was starting to look like a small nuclear blast zone. It only got worse after this pic. I was using every minute I had to finish and wasn’t taking any time to clean the place up.



The body is going down for the final time in this shot. That’s my Dad looking things over.



The wiring turned out to be a longer job than I had planned. The automatic and manual controls for the air suspension added a lot of time. Keeping everything neat and hidden was a bear, too. The spiral wrap on the harness was a pain to put on, but it kept the wire bundles tight and compact. At times, I felt like I was trying to put 2 quarts in a 1 quart container, but eventually everything went in OK.





I used Molex plugs where I could to make service easier. The dash unplugs and comes out easily and that makes working under the cowl a lot better.



Here’s a shot of the finished cowl section.



Last thing was the muffler inserts. I used the ends of an old 3 ½” glass pack to make reducers. They fit perfectly into the expanded portion of the header extension right behind the header collector, so no hardware is needed to hold them in. The tubing is perforated stainless that I got off of EBAY. I wrapped the whole thing in fiberglass exhaust batting also off of EBAY.

They definitely mellowed the exhaust note down a bunch when cruising around, but sound off pretty good when you get down on it.