Thread: The Mighty Ford 400?

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$15 bucks for the diamond plate that's all? Where did you buy it at? I need some of that stuff if I can get it THAT cheap. At Lowes it's like 40 bucks for a tiny peice of that.

Try your local metal supplier, if you have one. If you don't, there are quite a few online suppliers. Just do a search on treadbrite aluminum and see what you come up with. Typically online places ship it in 4'x4' pieces. However, the shipping can be a little spendy. You could try Shapiro's metal supply, they are online. I bought a sheet, used it for various things, and used about $15 worth on my firewall. Yes, Lowes is way expensive on this stuff. You have to go through a big supplier, you will save a ton.

53fatfndr, Nice truck, and a clean motor! The diamond pattern aluminum is expensive around here. At one point I looked into putting it on the floor of my bed. Depending upon the thickness, it was $160.00 and $240.00, for a 4 foot wide by 6.5 foot wide piece.

How thick is the kind you used on your firewall? I think it looks good. I always seen machined turned firewalls and always wondered how it would look with the diamond plate because I planned to put diamond plate floors in my golf cart and thought that it would be sweet to do to the 48 but then I looked at the price and all at Lowes and it was way too much so I didn't do the golf cart floors.

I went with the .063, as it is easier to form and was strictly for looks. Here's a link for Shapiro. I went with the 4'x4' sheets. The price has gone up a bit, but it is still cheaper than Lowe's. Shipping will be a little bit of $$ too. The .125 (1/8 inch) will be hard to form. I had a fairly tough time forming what I got for my dash and roll pan. Look in my gallery and you'll see what all I did. I believe all of my treadbrite cost about $120 to do what I did, with the door panels taking most of the material. Some people think the interior is a little over done, but I wanted something that nobody has ever done before....at least I've never seen door panels like mine. The diamond plating adds to the thickness, so say that .100 is the thickness around the diamonds on the smooth parts, then at the diamonds you are looking at probably .125+ thickness. Also, I just overlayed it over my stock firewall I didn't cut the old one out. It is really easy to do.

http://www.shapirosupply.com/catalog/Page8.html

i'm not the mechanic or tech that my father was, but he built one fine 400 with a set of cleveland 4v heads. i still drive the car. mind you the best time we ever pushed out of her was 13.8 in a quarter, but the first 1/16th of the track was all wheel spin. nitto drag radials, traction bars, subframe connectors, tried all kinds of stuff. you can get the motor to perform, it just takes alot of dedication to the build.

now money wise, the build on took him every penny he had over about 16 years. the only thing that helped him was he was the lead tech at the local ford dealership back home, and was able to get alot of stuff NOS/NIB that had gotten lost over the years.