Thread: Roadster pickup getting closer

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Purty neat now - phew

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Anyway, here are some pictures of Dan's frame..............again! This thread is getting like Groundhog Day, I feel we have been in this exact spot a few times before. But this time I think we are good to go.
Don

Or as Yogi would say "looks like it's Deja-vu all over again".

Wow it looks fluid! I'm glad to hear they stuck by their work and everyone is happy. Shame to cover it with a body.

Glad to hear everything in back on track

Looks great, can't wait to see it all done!!

I know Dan will be listening for those little cracking sounds as we bolt stuff on. That is how we knew we had a problem last time..........you could hear the clear cracking as you tightened stuff down.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but the pc guy told us he just had another job do the same thing. He says in all the years they have been doing this it has never happened before..........lucky us. He is still blaming it on defective clear, but I don't think so.

Don

Pix of the frame are looking good Don.

Can't wait on the assembly progress shots.

Paul

Thanks guys. Tonight we got the rearend assembled, at least as far as getting the pumpkin installed. We also got the housing installed into the frame. This time it looks like the coating is sticking fine, we just ran a Dremel around each bolt hole and the bolts would go right in.

Hey Streetwerkz, does it hurt the temper of leaf springs to powder coat them? Dan has heard it does, and his have been coated one time already (actually three bakings, one for primer one for black one for clear. Now he needs to have them blasted again to get the clear and black off and he is afraid to have them coated again. He is thinking of spraying them black. Are his fears founded? I'm not sure if 400 degrees is enough to hurt them or not.

Don

To the best of my limited spring knowledge it will not hurt them.
When I started coating I was asked the same thing, and call several spring repair shops, and a manufacture for dump truck leaf's who all said it would not hurt typical springs.

coil, or leaf I have never heard of or experienced any problems

However you know there could always be that one spring company doing something "Special" that could change that.

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Thanks Brian. I actually saw a smile on his face last night, so I guess the pain of the last 2 months is somewhat forgotten. This is such a FUN hobby sometimes.

Don

I think the pain will slip into a distant memory when the rolling chassis goes back together. I'm glad this episode is behind you guys now.

Josh, I phoned Posies Monday and asked them that questions, if the heat would hurt them, especially since this will be the second go-round for each leaf. They said as long as you don't exceed 400 degrees you are ok. I asked the PC what temp they use and they said 400 and when they do springs they do a "slow bake" whatever that means. But they said they do springs all the time so they take that precaution.

Based on that info we took them back to be PC'd and are supposed to pick them up this PM. These are the last pieces holding us back from reassembling the frame back to a roller. That is our plan for this weekend, to get back to where we were 2 months ago.

Bill, we are happy to put this one behind us too. There is an upside though. All the grinding and refilling has left the frame a lot better than the first time around, and we like the look of the parts without the clear on top........more natural somehow.

In a weird, related story, Dan came home the other day and told me he had to go to the eye doctor. He has been getting some irritation in his left eye. The Doctor started looking at his eye and said "wow, this is very strange, there is some little piece of something in there, but I've never seen anything like that...........it is small and jagged, and CLEAR." They had to grind it out, and when he got it out it ended up being a small piece of clear powder coating! Dan had worn goggles last Sunday while blowing clear powder coating dust off of the springs before we took them back for recoating, and evidently a small piece got into his eye.

I guess we are going to have to sweep and scrub the shop down to get rid of that stuff.

Don

not trying to make light of it.... but this is turning into a script for a horror movie

Originally Posted by STREETWERKZ

not trying to make light of it.... but this is turning into a script for a horror movie

Tell me about it! I sure hope it's smooth sailing from here on in. Dan picked up the springs yesterday afternoon, and last night we got the rear end completely installed. However, the owner of the PC shop called and said they forgot one spring leaf in the booth, but luckily it was for the front spring, so it didn't hold us back. They met me at the shop this AM and I got that one last piece and today we are going to get the front end back under the car. That will put us back where we were two months ago.

What a difference this time..............parts are going together like they should, only minor dremeling of the holes and the bolts slip right in. Last time the coating was so thick we had to grind and grind, this time a few seconds and we are done. It was actually fun assembling the parts last night as we didn't have to worry about that cracking sound. Everything looks so much better this time too without the clear on them, so much more natural.

We even snapped on the rear hubcaps last night, Dan went with '40 Ford caps to match the '40 Ford wheels. The sides of the car needed some bling as all that black dominated everything, but the caps helped a lot. I'll snap some pictures tonight when we get it back to a roller.

Plan for tomorrow is that Dan will start making up dummy brake lines so we can order the real ones in stainless steel, and I am going to continue stripping the motor down so we can change the color. He hasn't finalized the body color yet, so we can't repaint the motor until he does that.

Maybe in the next month or so we can have the engine in the car and test fire it.

Don

Oh, we took extra pains this time to triangulate the rear axle to the frame. Didn't want a repeat of the goof up we made on Don's car where the wheelbase was off side to side a little. Lesson to be learned, don't line up a car when you are dead tired!

Wow, I just went back and read most of this thread..........I didn't realize how long it had been running and how little progress we made in the past year or so. In May of 08 I was talking about trying to make Daytona in November..........THAT worked out real well ! Oh well, Rome wasn't built in a day.

BTW Bob Parmenter, you posted some pictures of your roadster you were building at that time.............how about some current pictures and an update? Looks like a great car coming along there. Here is what you posted a year ago.

Don

This was a VERY productive weekend. Not only did we get Dan's car up on wheels, but we pushed his car and mine out into the sunshine for some pictures. We also tore down his 455 Olds engine so we could strip the paint off of it to change the color.

We built that engine 4 years ago and it has never been fired, but it has been sitting in a dusty shop for so long we are going to go all the way through it again. It is going to the machine shop for hot tanking and new cam bearings, plus a touch up hone on the cylinders. We may step up the compression ratio a little too, the forged TRW's we originally used came in at around 9 to 1, we want to move up a point to 10 to 1, and maybe go to a different cam too. The one he has is fairly radical, but we are going to talk to Comp Cams and see what they have that might be better for this combination.

He's running a 4:00 trac Lock rear with a 2800 stall converter, so bottom end should be no problem. We might want to take a bit of that bottom end power off to give the skinny 16 inch tires a chance.

We still have some machining to do on the Buick drums to clear the 39 Lincoln backing plates, and will try to get that done this week. It's starting to look like a car, and once the motor and transmission are painted and in it should really take a leap forward.

Here are some pictures from today.

Don

Lookin sharp Don! Must be exciting doing these two together. Have the cats jumped onto the rolling chasis yet? They seem to love getting onto stuff we'd rather to keep them off of.