Thread: 41 Willys Gasser project

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That frame is looking real cool and sort of makes your firewall tag obsolete I think.

Originally Posted by Whiplash23T

That frame is looking real cool and sort of makes your firewall tag obsolete I think.

Honestly Whip its not to my usual standard, everything looks good in pictures

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Originally Posted by roadster32

Honestly Whip its not to my usual standard, everything looks good in pictures

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Looks pretty kool from where I'm sitting,too,Steve..Love it..

Man it's looks nice with all the new paint chrome and stainless parts! The red shocks really jump out too. Nice looking tyres too!

Originally Posted by stovens

Man it's looks nice with all the new paint chrome and stainless parts! The red shocks really jump out too. Nice looking tyres too!

Cheers Steve, Its finally started coming together.

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P1ssing down again yesterday so I decided to put my rear brakes together in the workshop, I have a stash of 11" Ford drum parts and a new pair of drums so it looked an easy job

First problem I came across was I have New big ford axle ends but out of the 5 pairs of backplates I had all were old ford fitting Only thing to do was to modify them to fit.

I had a pair of new ford bearing axle end housings so turned up a mandrel from a lump of aluminium to align the backplate with the housing, then I scribed the holes as they are slightly different.

Once the holes lined up I clamped it all together and ran a drill through each hole to clean them up.

I now had elongated holes in the backplates, answer was to weld on some large diameter thick washers.

Everything was going very smoothly until I started to assemble the brakes then I suddenly realised I was missing the parking brake levers Couldn't find any in my stash so I've asked my mates to have a look and see if they have any laying around otherwise its order from the states which is gonna hold me up yet again

Oh well 2 steps forward and one step back

























This is the parts i'm missing just incase any one has a pair hanging around, they are for 11" diameter brakes






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I'm starting to think they are out to get me !!!

Finally sorted the backplate bits and pieces and pulled the drums out of the boxes and guess what ? Wrong stud pattern

Anyway I decided to use them and just redrill, heres how the job went.

First I turned up a spigot from a lump of aluminium round bar to align the centre hole of the drum, then a aluminium spacer I had was fitted to it, everything clamped up and then I drilled through the stud holes in the spacer, Fairly straight forward job but I could of done without it to be honest.

I cleaned off the very thin coat factory paint with a zip wheel and epoxy primed them and then gave them 2 coats of 2K Jedi black.




















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Originally Posted by roadster32

I'm starting to think they are out to get me !!!

I know the feeling!! Are you quite sure that Sue's not slipping out to the shop and swapping stuff in the boxes, just to see your reaction??

In all seriousness, another problem solved in a unique way, and yet another push for me to look for a metal lathe!! Thanks for posting!!

Originally Posted by rspears

I know the feeling!! Are you quite sure that Sue's not slipping out to the shop and swapping stuff in the boxes, just to see your reaction??

In all seriousness, another problem solved in a unique way, and yet another push for me to look for a metal lathe!! Thanks for posting!!

You got me wondering now Roger

Yeah a lathe is invaluable

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Well ain't gonna make the Hotrod Drags so decided not to rush the build now, will just plod on and get it done.

Decided to sort a couple of modifications I had planned for the winter.

First I have decided to go with solid motor mounts but wanted it to still look ordinary so I machined up some copies of the rubber mounts in aluminium, I'm going to paint them satin black so they will still look like rubber.










Next modification was to the ladder bars, The installation of double adjusters will allow me to preload the suspension and plant both tyres equally on launch, Out of interest i played with the adjustment to see what it would do and found 1 complete turn on the adjuster moves 1" at the end of the bar.

I thought about doing this when I initially made them but decided against it, don't know why because it makes a lot of sense really and makes it all adjustable.

I had to shorten the bar to accomodate the double adjusters which meant making up a couple new thread bungs, These were made from 1" steel bar, the ends are turned down to fit inside the tube snugly and rosette welded on all 4 sides.

Normally the double adjusters would be in the lower leg of the ladder bar but i didn't want them to show, they will do the same job.
















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Sorry to see you miss the drags, but now the decision is made and the pressure is off so you concentrate on all these things at your own pace. Great work on both the mounts and the adjustable links. Bought from a specialty vendor would probably not be nearly as good!

Originally Posted by rspears

Sorry to see you miss the drags, but now the decision is made and the pressure is off so you concentrate on all these things at your own pace. Great work on both the mounts and the adjustable links. Bought from a specialty vendor would probably not be nearly as good!

Roger here in England we don't get a choice so we have to make stuff especially speciality parts, I would say 99% of hotrod parts have to come from the USA

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Steve, is having a rigid mount engine on a dragster, anything like a rigid mount engine on a Harley? I imagine you will get a ton of vibration through the frame if it is?

Originally Posted by stovens

Steve, is having a rigid mount engine on a dragster, anything like a rigid mount engine on a Harley? I imagine you will get a ton of vibration through the frame if it is?

Not quite the same thing Steve as the Harley is a V twin isn't it ???
I have run solid mounts before and not noticed any big difference really.

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Well what a brilliant sunny day we have had here today, real hotrod working weather

First job was to rebuild my Land Rover steering box, you can get any small part for these and for peanuts too, armed with £12 ($19) worth of gaskets, shims & bearings the rebuild commenced, 1 hour later it was done & mounted.








Next up was to sort out the pitman arm, I had sorted these bits previously but now there is no rush i decided to get them chromed, the track rod end goes in from the other side on the LR box and I needed it the other way around, the answer was to drill out the arm and weld in a bung I had turned up earlier, this puts the rose joint i'm using back in the same plane as the trackrod end but on the other side, Pics of stock arm and my modified arm, I also removed the big lumps off it ready for chroming.












Next job was to make the drag link arm up in stainless tube, 2 threaded bungs were turned up in 316L S/S and threaded. Then they were seam welded and rosette welded into the tube, finally it got a quick polish.









Next I needed a steering arm, I've used a Speedway hoop arm and modified it to suit, as I have 32 spindles and the arm is designed for 37-41 spindles the arms needed to be slightly closer together, I warmed them up and tweaked them to suit, The threaded ends were cut off and holes were carefully drilled in the centre of each leg and threaded to take 10mm Hi Tensile countersunk bolts. Also added 2 small pieces of tube to the legs to give them more stability, i.e. larger area.








Made an infill panel to weld in next time the steering arm is off for chroming, this is where I got a bit carried away and forgot to allow for the thickness of the caliper bracket so a small shortening modification was done to the offending leg

Put it right quickly though
While the pitman arm and steering arm are being chromed I will paint the calipers etc etc.