Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

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Well, we've had about a month long hiatus as I've been in VA for the day job. This also required some fabrication work, so I'll show a bit of that before we get back to the regularly scheduled program.




Part of our work involved repair of a safety rail up a ramp that was loose from the wall and has been moved around far too many times to find a fresh bolting location on the steel studs. I'm not much on lag bolts into steel studs, and this mess we found was the poster child. In order to bolt this solid, a once and for all repair, some brackets were made using 10 gauge steel and 3/8-16 machine nuts welded to the back side. Four holes allowed us to bolt to the steel studs and have a solid anchoring system for the hand rail before finishing off the wall covering.










On the lower ends the rail did not match up on the wall stud, so we made some brackets of 14 gauge steel that would span two studs and still have our machine screw threads for proper anchoring.








Next, the same lag bolt philosophy was used to attach the mounting brackets to the bottom of the safety rail (made of aluminum tubing), and most of these were loose as well. I had some riv-nuts we could install but they would not seat well to the round profile of the hand rail. We needed a counterbore, and did not have any local vendors that could fill the immediate need. So I found a new cutting tool to adapt to the Aloris tool holder on the Southbend, and we made a counterbore out of a 1/2" drill bit. After turning the pilot, the cutting edge was slightly backfaced to improve material feed.





Functional test of our new counterbore...





Lastly, we had a ceiling mounted PTZ camera to install that needed to be centered on the wall behind it in order to quell my OCD. This would require mounting on a ceiling grid rather than through a ceiling tile, as it had been done previously. A stainless bracket was fabricated out of 18 gauge in order to attach the factory mount to the ceiling, using press studs for less ceiling tile interference/allow attachment from the bottom side, and a hole up top for safety wire.





Finished version:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3GD2RXAA8




......and that should catch us up so we can get back to car stuff!

Back to some wagon progress, we made a sanding block for the drip rail, this will get some PSA paper applied and sand away!







We did have a back up and punt moment. The factory style radiator that we had from Be-Cool did not have quite enough room behind the core support to use a cooling fan. Plus, it was questionable if the size would be enough for the 383 cooling needs. So we are going to use a cross flow, specifically the aluminum version for a V8 S10 pickup. Of course, this will require modification of the core support.







Shown above mocked up with the splash pan, the stiffening edge along the c-channel follows the splash pan. We need to insure any future version also clears the splash pan. Also note the three drilled holes in the side adjacent to the blue sharpie. These were added for our version of the AC car battery tray, so having the new upright just outside the old will allow us to bolt to the new upright on the inside, and keep the battery tray in the same locaton.






So the hired help started grinding out the spot welds that hold the lower radiator baffle in place.







After some modification, one side is taking shape. We will likely add some rings to the weldment to route the water hoses to the front side of the core support.







Also took delivery on a shop manual for the car, it's nice to have people looking out for you..

Yesterday we got some seam sealer applied in the drip rail. I had tried a few different brands over the years and have to say I'm really liking the Norton 97121 epoxy sealer. Really smooths out well.













Spreader was modified to help get things consistent, as well as pull the sealer up into the hemmed edge...







.....and more progress on the core support, from this...







to this.... Note comparison to old core support, we've added 3" in width to the opening.







As with most changes we've done to the wagon, we try to keep them subtle enough that they could be mistaken for factory.







Like so.....











Still need to add mounting brackets for the radiator and fabricate a new baffle, but happy with the results so far..

Forgive my ignorance, but why the seam sealer if it will be painted? Just need to add info to my own project list!

There is a lapped joint inside where the roof skin's folded flange rests on the inside bottom of the drip rail, spot weld every half inch holds the roof on.. If this doesn't get sealed, you have water seepage / rust post haste.

Picture 625.JPG

first class work as usual!

Rich

Looking so nice!

Times 3.. as usual, beautiful.

So we had fabricated a duplicate of the 55 AC car battery tray to get the battery off the firewall. This bolts directly to the outside of the core supports "horseshoe".











So when we decided to widen the opening for a crossflow, the tubing had to be placed directly next to the old upright to locate our battery support in the same location.







This means the new uprights would also conflict with radiator necks. Dominoes, they do fall.... Core support now with relief holes for coolant hoses and lines. Thankfully side baffle plates will hide this ugliness!











Video Version:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRojQ4nWMhw





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Yep, looks like the same stuff I deal with on every conversion. (But your outcome always looks nicer) Great work on it.

Been going through too many sanding discs lately so I decided to pony up for the ceramic ones by 3M (especially since Jegs has them on sale...and free shipping over $100). The sanding discs I was getting locally were about $0.95 each and I would have used about three doing what I did tonight. The sale price on these 3M's worked out to just over $1.50 each. I'm still on the first one and it's still going strong. I think these are going to be another of those "getting what you paid for" type things. Should have bought these long time ago.

Robert I do the same with woodworking random orbital sand paper. I have yet to find anything better than Norton Premium sandpaper
it is blue in color 1 60 grit piece with outlast 5-10 ace hardware brand discs, it's so good in fact I've reused older worn pieces when I'm sanding something that will gum up the paper and it still better than the tradition paper new!

https://www.sears.com/norton-prosand...e=G2#Imagezoom

So this weekend the core support was mocked up and some "sample" radiator hoses bent out of 3/4" EMT. Once bent to fit, these samples were taken to the local NAPA store, where they have become used to me sizing up radiator hoses in the store room. The lower hose was from an S10 pickup or Blazer, but with the battery bracket in place, there was interference to the hose.











So our battery bracket is modified to provide clearance for the hose, and a "hem" added to the inside.



























The upper hose has no such obstacles, so we should have smooth sailing there.

Nice work. It's always a good idea to use an over the counter items that don't need to be modified to fit.

The bit of extra effort to use a nicely molded hose instead of any of those ugly ribbed (rubber or stainless) alternatives is well worth it. As we expect of you Robert.....nice work.