Everybody that is currently building a car...

Hi! Just got her back from the paint shop, looks great! Rust spots and chips on roof repaired and the hand pin stripping finished up nicely. Removed "the thing" from the center of the dash and had it pin stripped to match the rear image. Much nicer look in my opinion.

Spoke to the Radiator shop again, what he meant (He's Cuban so his English was limited.) by "too much pressure" was that the radiator itself was mounted to tightly to the frame and hood! When the body flexes, there's stress on the radiator which is why the seem split after I damaged the right fender in the blow out! In a normal sized radiator, such as in modern cars, it's not such an issue, he said, but with one as big as this, with an X-frame, it's an issue. I looked at the mount and will be adding some rubber pads and spring bolts to eliminate any problems in the future.

Put it up on the lift last night and went over her with my mechanic. Chassis looks nice and tight, well built! Ordered an adapter plate, universal push rod and access door for the dual brake booster/dual master cylinder and it looks like a fairly straight forward modification. Also replacing the front springs/shock with adjustable coil over's from speedwaymotors, replacing the washers on the rear coil over's with the proper rubbers (and raising the rear about 3/4") and replacing all suspension bushings as they are pretty well gone anyway. Pan hard bar needs some work, bushing and an adjustment. Will pull the rear disc's off when we do the rear coil over's and see what needs to be refreshed there, but it seems to be pretty well balanced on the braking so my quess is it's fine. Will do some compression tests and leak down on the engine sometime first part of next week, but the mechanic doesn't anticipate any engine issues…

Moving some of the hoses in the engine bay aside, the heater hose was melting against the exhaust manifold. Replacing the exhaust manifold with some chrome ones and wrapping the exhaust pipes where they come close to the starter and to the brake booster.

Had my upholsterer over as well, probably adding additional red and grey in the interior, building a small front console, under dash cover and adding a 50/50 bench seat in the back. Will send along pics when we start the interior for you to see. Moving away from the tweed to gray cloth/red vinyl and some sculptured inserts on the door panels. More "up to date" look. Adding SS cup holders in the rear arms and staggered in the front console..

Pics on my profile.

Nice 34! Looks like they did a great job on it; how far do you think until she's ready for a road test?

Well, here she is. Still needs a few things bolted on but it's pretty much together. Now back to work on the body; I hope to be ready to shoot some primer in the next month. Also found a guy on the HAMB who had a factory assembly manual for this thing. This is one cool dude; mailed me the book for nothing so I could have it copied. He said just mail it back when I'm done.

Engine looks good Falcon, neat color!!!! Them Oldsmobubbles sure do like a lot of bolts in the valve covers, huh???? Sure was nice of the guy to let you copy his book!

Thanks, Dave! I was looking for Olds metallic blue but couldn't find any. This is Pontiac metallic blue; just a shade lighter but still nice. This is the first Olds I put together; definately some different procedures than other engines I've done but I guess they all have their unique quirks about them.

what gears do you have in the rearend? with all the torque from that olds that little truck should run really good, and do some killer burnouts, that would be pretty cool to take camping ,,all the stuff would fit in back, and stay dry,

3:73 with a limited slip. I'm thinking the same: killer burnout machine! I'll definately do a video and post it.

X2 on that engine it looks great .

Man, it was tough to work out in the shop today. Just gettin over a bout of the stomach flu and I feel like I had the crap beat out of me. I made it about 3 hrs and had to call it quits. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow. I need a shifter as the old one was mounted on the dash and was junk. I had this old hurst ratchet shifter and this old truck shifter so I did a little slice and weld on the handle and came up with a ratchet shifter that will look like an old stocker. The floor was covered in rubber cement from the old factory mats so I spent a few hours with the little angle grinder and some 50 grit discs and got a pretty good size section cleaned up.

Yes I have tried and tried to post even one photo of my car and I keep getting told that my files are TOO BIG. So after pulling to much hair out of my dumb head I think I have worked out how to resize photos in my library.So here goes attempt number whatever.....

Didnt think ya had that much to pull out...:D:D
You got ya door openings cut out yet??:D

hmmmmm - the Kiwi's beat on each other.

Nice 'bucket Whiplash. I do recall mine very well!!

As far as photos - I finally gave up trying to resize and use Photobucket. You put a photo on that site, then just copy over to here. I'll put one here but with and without an error so you can see what they look like.

ERROR:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/Ir...d/Bucket23.jpg


WITHOUT the error:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i8...d/Bucket23.jpg

I use a package named Easy Thumbnails which is a free download and drop dead simple to use. Once I have the thumbnail I use the "manage attachments" feature in the message area to browse my computer to the right file, and attach the image.
http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/
My original files are generally too big to upload to PhotoBucket without making thumbnails of them, anyway.

I think the easiest one I've used is Microsft Picture Manager. It was already on my computer and has a "compress" picture option. A lot of computers already have it; just right click on a picture and go to "open with". If you've got it, it will be listed there.

You can also set your camera to a lower vsp setting which makes smaller pics also. Then they are small enough to use your "Paint" accessorie to reduce it.

I drop my pics. on Photobucket and it automatically sizes the pic.for use on message boards. My pics. start out as 42'' wide files.