Very impressive. Watching your progress has been very interesting and I truly appreciate your inventiveness. I have fallen behind on my own build thread, 37 Cadillac LaSalle, but now I am anxious to get back to the garage.
Keep it up!!
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Very impressive. Watching your progress has been very interesting and I truly appreciate your inventiveness. I have fallen behind on my own build thread, 37 Cadillac LaSalle, but now I am anxious to get back to the garage.
Keep it up!!
Very interesting to read differing opinions on builds and such. All in all I call it an outstanding job of craftsmanship. I for one am benefiting greatly from the input on all of the build threads. But then when one knows nothing, it's easy to learn! And to ScooterCO, I'd sure like to have your pit crew! haahaa perley oldrodder43
I agree with Dave about the use of rod ends on the street. I have used them for years also. The only problem is lubrication and that can be solved easly by greasing the ball, or buying the ones with intergral zerk, and using the rubber seals. Speedway has the seals for $2 each (for 5/8").
John
Beautiful job on the chop/channel; this is going to be an awesome ride when it's finished!!
Not a ton of time on the chubby, but managed to get a couple hours this evening. Plan was to fab up some mounts to weld to the frame to mount the 1.5" x 1" tubing I am going span the floor out of.
Pretty straight forward. Cut some 1/8" x 2" flat stock 4.5" long and bent it 90 degrees 1.5" from the end. Then cut some more 3" x 1/8" flat stock to match the angle. Welded it solid and then ground the back and top smooth to make sure the mount will fit up against the frame flush. I'll use a straight edge to make sure the top of the mount is flush with the top of the frame.
I'm going to make 8, but ran out of 2" flat stock, so only 7 got made tonight.:o
Hoping to get that floor made on Saturday and get the doors cut loose.
Matt
awesome this stuff is what inspires me everyday!i hope that one day i can meet most of you guys on the rod road some where!!!
Got a solid 10 hours on the chubby today. Basicly it was a day of fabbing up the floor tubing. Pics pretty much say it all. Took a lot of time to keep crawling back and forth from underneath it. But, needed to do that before I cut the doors loose. Towards the end of the day I had 10 mounting points tacked and bolted in and everything pretty much squared up so I was able to cut the doors loose. That was a lot nicer to do some more work without having to crawl underneath it anymore.
I cut and welded pieces down the center for the driveshaft, that should work out pretty decent. Once welded solid I will cut the lower portion of the tube out. Not real happy with how the front x tube looks that goes over the tranny. I guess it seems like it should work, but just seems like there should be a better way to do that?? Everything is tacked to together so if I come up with something different in the next day or so, I'll redo it.
Lot of snow fell today, so my morning tomorrow is going be spent plowing snow. But after that I hope to get going on it again. I think tomorrow I am going to start working on getting the doors swinging....that is going to take some time drilling and tapping plates.
Matt
2 more pics of the fun today
Are you going to put any rubber between the metal's of the body mounts in the final assembly?
Got in about 6 hours today on the chubby. I pissed away about half of the day getting my plow truck started and plowing snow. Spent pretty much that time getting the doors mounted back up and swinging.....I think it's pretty cool that it has probably been 50+ years since the last time those doors swung open. Took a pic of the backing plates I made. Drilled and tapped them to 1/4"-20 and used a counter sunk machine bolts in the hinges. The orginal ones were countersunk also, but they were wood screws:)
Doesn't seem like much to get done today, but drilling and tapping those plates and then I had to drill through the 3/16" flat stock on the A pillar I had made a few weeks ago. After installed they actually fit pretty decent. I did fire up the gas ax and heat the hinges in a couple spots and massage them a bit to gain an 1/8" here and there in the door openings.
I had boughten a couple door handles throught speedway, along with some bearjaw door latches last week. I spent a couple extra minutes and installed those handles in the doors, I think they look pretty good. Hopefully this week I can get some more time in and start fabbing up the bear jaw latches and striker pins.
Matt
Quote:
Originally Posted by brickman
Yes, I am planning on it. I have some rubber belting here about an 1/8" thick that I am going to cut up and mount in between the body and frame. Not a lot, but figure it might help take some of the vibration out. And, that's what I have laying around. :)
Matt
Looking good
Buck some great work you have done in the past few months. Stay with it and dont forget YouTube will let us hear it run when you get it ready .
Cool, I would imagine that it will help with keeping it from squeeking too huh?
I like the way the outside door handles look, very cool. Do they work nice and easy too?
Quote:
Originally Posted by brickman
The handles rotate nice and easy, but I have no latches in yet so really don't have a good feel for that yet.
Hopefully I can get some time in on it this weekend. I have the bear jaw latches and pins. Probably take a good day to get them installed.
Matt
Looking really nice Matt man!
I am really looking forward to making it up to your place for a weekend!
Hopefully there are all sorts of fun projects to get after… :cool:
You pretty much just designed your frame to fit the body you have the best way, how did you come up with the length demention?
In that one pic I have the body, drivetrain and radiator layed out on the floor. I actually traced the outside and inside of the body, roughly penciled out the motor and traced the radiator...I had the the fan on and got the distributor 1" from the firewall. I picked everything up and marked everything out, snapped a few chalk lines and started cutting.Quote:
Originally Posted by brickman
Hope that helped, Matt
Thats Cool Buck, I love the simple stuff. Everything is coming along nice, I am wondering if there would be enough room for a 6'2" man with lets just say a "Mature" stature to drive the car. Just wondering for my own build which way to go body wise.
It doesn't matter how "mature" your stature is with a sedan. you just move the seat back untill there is room to get the "mature" part of your stature between the steering wheel and the seat.:LOL: :LOL: And generally, tall men and short men are all the same height from their arse to the top of their head, when seated.Quote:
Originally Posted by brickman
Good point Brian, that is excellant food for thought considering I can pick up sedan bodys fairly reasonable.
Two door sedans are perfect for us "Mature statured" men. When I built the roadster pickup (see avatar) I made the length from the dashrail to the back of the cockpit 6" longer than Henry Fords roadster pickup and pickup, and put in a tilt steering column. And if my stature gets any damn "maturer" than it already is, I'm going to need a big can opener---
We'll I hope it's big enough for a man of stature....I'm 6'9" :D Not skinny, but not to wide..about 280.
That was a concern of mine before I chopped the top, head room. I had it tacked together and I was sitting inside with boards stacked up, calculating the 4" channel and chop. Kinda came up with 3.5" chop for that reason also. I am planning on using the orginal seats and they pretty much sit on the floor.
I was actually sitting in there tonight with a couple boards stacked up. With the seat in the right position and decent angle to it...I seem to fit in there just fine.
Matt
thumbs up for another early 30's original Chevy owner! we're rare
Figure I better post up some pics of some progress. Took some photos of the last month and I'll do my best to rememeber how it went and what I did. Probably be a lot like the begining of my thread, couple months behind :D
And, thanks to Brent for getting such a great site back up and running :)
Pics below I think are of some bear jaw door latches I welded in. I ordered the latches and the plates that fit the latches..makes it much easier just to weld in the plates.
Few more pics of the door action. I cut apart the pin assembly itself and welded the cage and nut to the back of my B pillar. Jigged up a temporary door assembly to link it together.....just so I could close the doors :)
I should have taken some more pics of this, but I didn't.....sorry. Got the radiator fabbed in. I bought a new 1976 Ford F-100 6 cyl. radiator for $120 bucks. I had to cut the front flanges off, and then fab up some new rear mounts and weld those in. I used some expanded steel for the grill. I used a couple pieces of angle iron on the grill, welded them to the expanded sheet metal and tapped them into the tin on the radiator. I had a new tranny cooler on the shelf and made a couple brackets out of some flat stock that spanned the rear of the radiator.
Also made a couple brackets that bolt into the lower support through the factory holes on the orginal grill shell. Then welded 3/16" flat stock to that and tapped those into the bottom of the frame to support the radiator and shell.
Mounted the visor in. It used to screw up into a piece of wood, but obviously that wasn't there anymore. I used a piece of 1/8" flat stock, welded it on the inside and drilled / tapped some 10/32 pan heads to hold it up.
Also tack welded a couple brackets in and got the dash mounted. There was an aluminum piece that ran in between the A pillars. That also used to thread into a piece of wood. I had to weld in another piece of 2" flat stock and drill /tap that into the flat stock..worked very well.
Few pics of my temporary steering column...just so I can figure out what length I needed. Also pics of my brake M/C and pedal arm. I had to heat up the arm with the torch and do a little bending.....you should be able to see how I formed it about 2" to the left to clear where the steering column is going to go.
Also one pic of the floor area. I welded in some X bracing off the tranny x-member and tapped 1/2" grade 8 bolts into the frame.
I really didn't take any pics...but welded the floor in. I used 14 ga. which is pretty thick, used a hand shear on that and fit all the lower and rear pieces. I was able to get my new 36" column mounted in and U jointed to my mustang steering box. Also mounted my acc. pedal. The pedal is out of that 75 truck I bought for the engine and tranny. Nothing special, but price was right..:)
Had to get the thing off the jack stands and wanted to clean out the shop, so pushed it outside and took a few glamour shots.
Finally decided to fab up a permanent front perch mount since I had a pretty good idea of the weight on the front of the vehicle. I am really glad I waited until now to make the mount. I had changed the height of it 3x's until now..and I actually mounted the spring on the bottom vs the top to get another 1.5" of height out of it. Very happy with where the height ended up.
Buck, I'll tell you, not only are you resourseful, you are also FAST !! I can't believe how far you've progressed in such a short period of time.
:D
Keep the pictures and info coming.
Don
Made up some shock tower mounts. I had looked at a lot of pics of shock towers in the mags, catalogs, internet...etc.. Didn't really like anything I saw, so decided to sorta make up my own thing.
I used some 3/8" flat stock to make the towers themselves. I bought some 1/2" bushing stock material and machined a couple bushings up in the lathe, drill through the towers and weld the bushings in. I used some 1/4" flat stock and triangulated back to the frame.
I made up a jig to simulate the shock ride height at 12", so I could weld in the lower mounting points the same on both sides.
Nothing special here, but a few pics of the shocks mounted.
I used some 3/16" flat stock and made some tear drop shape mounts. Nothing real special, but after I welded them in I thought they got the job done.
I am using the original 9" headlamps...figured I better take a few pics with those on.
Matt
Quote:
Originally Posted by Itoldyouso
Hey Don,
I don't know about fast, but I will agree with resourceful.. I'm really trying to use what I have and trying to keep it as low buck as possible, but I want something decent looking and safe as well.
That is about as far as I am for now, those headlight pics were taken about 5 days ago. I am planning to pull the doors off in the next couple days and I have some work to do on the A and B pillars. Few other misc. things, but I am hoping to strip it down the frame in the next week or 2, finish up some welding and sandblast the frame, axles and get them into paint and start putting everything back together.
I am going to get the body zip wheeled down to bare steel and back into primer and then start smoothing that out. This rig is probably going to be moving this spring, but I'm sure it won't be done by any means. Plan on driving the summer and then back into the garage next fall for more work.
Thanks, Matt
Your car is looking great Matt, I see alot of welding the mockup now, but everything is looking really cool.
Got a few hours in the on the chubby tonight. Nothing really special. The tin that used to cover the wood on the A pillar was missing on most of the pillar. Some was on the bottom so I continued off of that. Not totally necessary, but I wanted to keep it clean and cover up the 3/16" piece of flat stock that was welded in where the wood was. I used some 20 ga. I had and used my shear and brake to bend it up.
Anyway...few pics.
Matt
WOW....Great build, your car is looking great, and thanks for giving me some good ideas...Keep up the good work
Not a lot to show, but got a couple half days of work on the chubby this weekend.
Didn't really take any pics because the majority of the work was tearing it apart. Almost all of Sunday's work was spent welding everything solid, since almost everything was tacked together.
Took couple pics of the frame outside on sawhorses later in the day.
Matt