Thread: I couldn't build it for $3 K either!

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You're right about the long welds! I had a pretty stiff back and neck from staying bent over in one spot for so long. Guess I'm not as limber as I used to be!

Mike

Not very much to report this week. I have a lot of small stuff to take care of and most of it just isn't "newsworthy". The biggest project I worked on was the cover for the bed.

It's made of 3/4" plywood and banded in solid wood. I wanted to round the edges over and plywood just doesn't work very well for that. In the picture, I haven't sanded or rounded the corners yet.

The gas filler is a sealed(no vent) aluminum marine unit and the hinges are chromed brass, also marine items. The LED third brake light is off of a Mitsubishi pickup. Sorry, I don't know the year.

This brings up a point about "traditional styling" and safety. I'll be the first to admit that I don't like the looks of third brake lights, but I also try to be practical. Our hot rodding forefathers didn't have to share the road with today's crop of hyper-distracted drivers. They lived in a time when you could get by with hand signals. Try that for very long today and you'll probably loose an arm! Also, the current generation of drivers grew up looking at these cyclops eyes and have come to expect them. Nope, I don't like 'em, but I guess they're a good idea in the 21st century.

I still don't know how I'm going to finish the cover. I'm kicking around covering it in fiberglass and painting it to match the body instead of having it upholstered. I also need to pick up and install a latch.

Nice work! And that is a nice unobtrusive place to put the 3rd brake light.

I agree with you; I would rather not have to have them, but I want people behind me to notice if I'm stopping. My coupe has a 3rd brakelight in the rear window. I don't know where I'll put one on the roadster, but it will have one somewhere...

Nice how those marine items fit our builds, huh Mike? When I worked in the business I would dig around on the shelves and find lots of stuff that would cross over to a hot rod...........and the parts are corrosion resistant too.

I really like your bed cover. and that is a perfect place for the 3rd brake light. Tradition is one thing but safety is another thing. You are being smart. If we truly want to drive our cars we have to make some concessions. I have no problems using modern stuff like alternators and electric fans on otherwise old timey looking cars. I want to use my car and not have problems.

With some of the inattentive drivers today gabbing away on their cell phones you need all the help you can get.

Don

Thanks guys.

About the marine stuff working good on hot rods. I think the old Stewart Warner instrument panels and streamlined windshield frames like the Duval were carryovers too.

Mike

I knew early on I would want a third brake light and I had resigned myself to putting something in the back window or mounted on the trunk. But when I was looking at some pictures of a stock 37 LaSalle I noticed the sergeant bars on the back and that gave me an idea. It reminded me of the taillights on a 40 ford. So thanks to ebay I was able to find a good cheap 40 ford tailight and I will eventually fench it or modify it somehow to fit where the original stainless steel trim went.
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37 Caddy

Great idea! Should look nice frenched in.

Mike

That IS a good idea. Living here in Florida, with lots of little old lady drivers who can't see over the steering wheel, and lots of teen agers using cell phones, I should have put a 3rd light on too.

Don

Another one of those small projects is the lower radiator hose. The rad sits pretty close to the engine. So close in fact, that the fan bolts directly to the water pump with no spacer. The radiator is a Speedway item(from Ron Davis) for their 4 1/2" chopped 32 shell and the lower connection is angled out slightly toward the frame for some reason. Must be something specific to their 32 Low Boy kit. All this meant that the lower hose was going to have some strange tight bends. I decided to make one up out of steel tubing.

The tubing is just a 1 3/4" "J" bend. I turned a couple of oversize ends to keep the hose from slipping off under pressure.

I saw this happen on a video of a dyno run and it looked pretty hairy since hot water and steam went everywhere. I would hate to have that happen going down the road or worse yet, while I was standing over it.

It's a pretty tight fit, but came out OK.

I also finally got around to finalizing the shock lever setup. There are several things I did when I started this project that I'm just not satisfied with and the pivots for the shock levers is one of them. I'm planning on clearing these little things up in the next few weeks.

The original pivot was just a short bronze bushing that turned on a 1/2" bolt. I had to add the teflon washers to stabilize the levers, otherwise the levers would just move sideways instead of up and down. The short bushing just wasn't enough. This just made the setup a friction shock with a hydraulic shock added to the top. I also knew the little bushing wasn't going to last very long even with regular greasing.

I have to admit that I sketched out some pretty elaborate "solutions" for this problem. That's easy to do when you're just working on paper! In the end, I kept to the "KISS" principle and used poly end link bushings. They are readily available and need little lubrication. I converted a couple of 3/4" bolts to shoulder bolts to use as "axles". These are welded to the levers. It all works good now and should give good service without much maintenance.

Here are the pieces that made up the original setup. This rig was going to cause problems. Keeping everything tight and lubricated was going to take a lot of maintenance.

Here are the new pieces. The sleeve is welded in the frame and the shoulder bolt is welded to the lever.

This is the setup I used to cut the holes in the frame for the sleeve. It's a simple setup, but it does help when you have to do it by hand. The hole in the wood block is done in the drill press, so it's square.

I finally got around to mounting the headlights. I had to wait on finalizing the shock and radiator mounting before I could get the lights done.

The headlights are from The Hot Rod Company. They are repros of the old Guide 682's. I have never seen a pair of the originals in person, so I can't comment on how authentic they are. They are very close to the pictures I've seen, but have been modernized with LED signals.

The lights come with mounting cups for a flat surface, but I didn't use them. Instead, I made some mounts out of 1 1/2" pipe. A 60 degree bevel on the inside made a solid cup for the light. I welded a plate inside for the bolt and fabbed covers for the bottom.

It's pretty tight around the shocks and that limited what kind of bracket I could use. After making some cardboard patterns, I cut the brackets out of 3/8" plate. They wound up being kind of convoluted to get around they shocks. I may add a couple of small gussets just to be on the safe side, but they are pretty solid now.

I had hoped to get the lights a little lower, but they had to be high enough to clear the drag link at full suspension compression. I have clearance for 3" of up travel at the wheel and that should be more than enough.

Thought I would take time for a few quick updates.

I've been working at redoing some of the original parts of the car that I don't like. When I started this project, my intentions were to build everything I could out of material I either had on hand or could get locally without special order. Lately, I started to rethink some of my early desicions from a safety standpoint. I felt that some of those early parts were just too light to be durable. The main items were the batwings and the front and rear four-bars.

The batwings were originally made from 1/8" plate that I had on hand. I remade them with 3/16" plate. The tapered perch bolt bushings and the C shaped pieces they mount to are from The Welder Series. I made these pieces on the originals, but the ready made parts were cheap enough that I couldn't justify the time to make them myself. You can see that the new batwings are quite a bit heavier that the old parts.