Thread: Everybody that is currently building a car...

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Nice fit mooneye, room is not something you have alot of huh?

It looks good doesn't it cffischer, whats it worth?

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

Bob Parmenter has been watching over my shoulder regarding tastful construction so maybe he can comment on the stainless plate?

First of all, you have to love what you do to the car. Keep in mind, it's a custom built car...........by you. You've already got a lot of time and money in it, and finding good solutions that continue a theme and quality level are better than settling for something that's "good enough". That being said, the first impression I get when I see it, pretending I don't have a clue why you did it is...............it's a clunky patch! You could try to dress it up if you want, bead roll like Charlie says, round the corners to make it look less like a piece of scrap from the pile, and some button head fasteners to smooth it down some................but it'll just look like a patch gussied up. If a piece of stainless or aluminum were the best solution something larger that covered the entire flat section would look less like an afterthought and more like you intended to do it that way.

If it were me though, given your comments about temperatures, I'd go to an equipment rental shop and rent a heater to warm up the car/garage and reglass/recontour the repair area and then have the painter repair the paint to original color. It's some extra work, but as is often the case, in order to get something that looks "right" it takes some steps back to go forward. One of the design concepts to keep in mind is to not mix in too many colors/textures, it confuses the eye/mind. As an example, when looking in the engine compartment, you want the eye to be drawn to the engine and it's accessories, the firewall should be a non-intrusive backdrop. What you're playing with now will become the focal point any time the hood goes up, causing viewers brains to go........."what the hey??".

Just another example to continue the thought. A few years ago one of the guys here was getting near the end of his build on a '33 sedan that was bright red. He came on asking for interior color suggestions, he was leaning toward grey. Now grey generally would go well with red , but I'd noticed he already had his gauge set in the dash. The gauges were a cream colored face. It's a small thing, but had he gone grey, it would have added an extra range of color to the interior that would have "fought" with the gauge faces. Instead, he went with a complimentary toned "tan" interior that worked with both the red and the creme. It takes some practice to train your brain to conceive of these kinds of issues, but once learned it helps differentiate your choices from those done by someone who is just slapping randon "stuff" together.

One thing I wondered about is that maybe the car was painted too soon in the build process. I haven't been following this one from the beginning, but usually a car isn't painted until all of these little clearance and fit issues are done. It would scare me to death to be doing these sorts of jobs with pretty paint on the car. I usually get the car done in primer or bare metal and fiberglass, then blow it apart to paint it.

Just my opinion on the sequence.

Don

Itoldyouso is correct---Dons enthusiasm for a pretty painted car outweighed what common sense dictates. You don't paint your car untill everything else has been completely finished. that being said, its no bad reflection on Don. Sometimes we all like to "jump ahead" to see what our finished build will look like. Its only those of us who have had to shell out large amounts of money or work to have the car painted a second time at the end of the build that know this. Don knows now.

Don,I certainly don't want to get on your case,but that piece of metal bolted on there just looks horrible. You've been doing a wonderful job so far,just bite the bullet and reglass the whole area and smooth it all out.As long as I'm sticking my two cents in, I'd lose the parking brake lever too.I'm planning on using a caravan center seat in my 29,with an old fashioned T pull handle just sticking out from under the seat. Hank

What? You mean Frankenstein wasn't handsome? Look at all those nice hexhead capscrews that I filed down to remove the part logo! I have wracked my brain within what I consider the situation to be and the sequence was determined by when I could afford the paint job due to optional summer work and the schedule of the paint shop. Another problem Bob mentioned previously is that if I use a firewall mount for a gas pedal I have found that the firewall is incredibly thin and weak. At this point the problem is the half moon patch at the bottom of the firewall and the fact that I would have to unbolt the whole body to raise it up to get a spray gun behind the motor, although there is almost 6" of space when the distributor is not there. One possibility is to just paint the stainless plate the same color as the background. Another is, and remembering that I now have seven 1/4" holes in the firewall, I could put the plate on the INSIDE of the firewall for strength and try to patch the half moon at the bottom of the edge, assuming I can find those "button" fasteners Bob mentions (gaudy me would prefer shiny stainless buttons). After all if I mount a firewall gas pedal there will be some sort of evidence of fasteners on the engine side. Maybe if I can find some stainless carriage bolts and polish them they will look OK. I know where to get stainless carriage bolts and I can easily round off the square part but polishing them may not be easy. Hey, I could paint their heads before putting them in using some Duplicolor which is a close match! Then the main problem is to patch in that half moon at the bottom of the firewall so I will talk to the guy who painted the car and maybe he can get some sort of a small spray gun in there without unbolting the whole body. Well at least this discussion has given me the idea of putting the stainless plate INSIDE the firewall. Ironically, your seemingly severe criticism is less harsh than my own self-criticism. Maybe the interior plate will work if I can patch the bottom OK.
In fact it has been helpful to hear your views and ideas. Compared to the guy I worked with and who was my Chairman for some 20 years you guys are pussycats! (P.S. that is one factor of retirement I enjoy most!) Also the fad views of individual hot rodders are indeed childs play compared to the pressure of criticism in scientific meetings and I consider Bob's comments as useful constructive suggestions! Bob, I/we know you have the "eye" of what looks good and that is why I asked!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by brickman

Nice ride 50 bulletnose, I love the mellow little retro motor! It looks like it's going to be a great ride, taking your time to get everything working right is a good way to go.

I have found a new project I think, this chev for a grand. I think it has great potential for a wonderful street rod. What do you all think?

Don that looks like that will be plenty of hump and more room for you. well done.

That will make for a sweet ride, for a grand, I'd go for it.

As for the mellow little retro motor in my Stude, I'm not so sure you can call it mellow at 425 hp. Motor sports a 144 B&M blower with a Holley 700cfm double pumper, Turbo 350 / 3000 stall / B&M Pro-Ratchet shifter. Differential is a tri-angulated and shortened '57 Dodge 8 3/4 Posi Sure-Grip. These are just a few details in my project. The car has many trick features, remote linear actuated tilt front clip, shaved door handles with remote door poppers, computer controlled Air Ride Technologies Shockwave airsprings, 4 wheel 11" discs on
18" American Eagles just to name a few. But who's braggin'.

Back to the Frankenstein firewall. I unbolted it last night and put it on the INSIDE of the firewall. Fortunately there seem to be no scratches on the firewall paint except the holes are there and now they are filled with bolts that hold the plate on the inside. That will add a lot of strength to the firewall and maybe actually add a bit of light armour if anything ever flies off the engine at speed because the fiberglass firewall probably would not offer much resistance to flying objects since it is pretty thin. (I have had fan blades break off of water pump shafts on other cars.) Maybe it will provide a little EMF shielding for the radio too since it is between the HEI and the radio. Now a little work adapting round head stainless carriage bolts that are painted to match the body should hide the holes back in what is really a fairly dark cavern of the firewall indent. That leaves the horrible half moon cutout at the bottom of the firewall and I can get the fiberglass piece I fitted to the hole painted to match the body paint but along the way I chipped the bottom edge of the hole and need some touch up there. I plan to bring the guy who painted the body to look at it and see what he suggests.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Just a question. I've never had one of the bodies like yours that doesn't need plywood installed to finish off the floor and firewall. Do they just rely on the fiberglass firewall they supply for all the strength, or are you supposed to add some sort of inner support, like plywood?

Seems to me that just fiberglass alone in this area wouldn't be strong enough.

Just curious.

Don

Very cool Bullet nose, I figured the motor was mellow!!HeHeHe!

Don, that sounds like a good sure for the problem, even though you can't see it doesn't mean it's not doing it's job. Great thinking there.

My car is done for the season so the work begins, body work, paint and finish the interior. I am hoping to get the car completely finished this winter, with a little luck and time.

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Do they just rely on the fiberglass firewall they supply for all the strength, or are you supposed to add some sort of inner support, like plywood?

Not really that uncommon, and with it tied into the toe board/floor it gains some strength. That being said I've done one of two things in the past, either bonded a steel tubing structure to the backside (handy for attaching throttle pedal and lower column mount without exposed fasteners on the firewall, as well as fuse panel and so on) that also gets welded to the steel structure like most body manufacturers install, or laminate in a layer of coremat (build strength without adding too much thickness).

All the glass bodies that I have seen either A---come with no firewall and you make your own from 3/4" plywood and glass it into place, or B--come with a fiberglass firewall to which you laminate a full-size peice of plywood to the inner side to provide a mounting surface for gas pedal, fuse panel, steering column support, etc.

I would like the idea of the plywood or steel reinforcing of some kind, the fiberglass itself would be a little light. I have seen guys put stainless on firewalls too althought I don't know if just bolting a stainless plate to the firewall would add any strength, it would add safety.

I agree with you guys, I just wouldn't trust only a fiberglass firewall stength-wise. I've never really looked at one of the cars, like Spirit, that use the inner liner, so I'm not sure if they depend on just the inner liner for the strength, or if you also do some wood or steel subframing.

It would seem to me the inner liner alone would not he enough.


Don

The Bebops body has a 1" square tubing cross bar under the top of the cowl along with other framework in other parts of the body and includes a square bar and a T-bar from the front of the cowl to the bar under the edge of the 32-style dash but those bars are solid of about 7/16" square bar. I am not worried about the side play of the cowl, but rather the puncture resistance of the fiberglass "wheel barrow" indent. The plywood floor shown in my pictures was added because I cut out too much around the shifter and I need to seal off the center of the floor from splashes. If I do it again I would know how to cut the floor out more nearly the right shape; another factor is that I originally planned for a TH350 but switched to a longer 700R4 during construction. In principle the Bebops floor and fenders are all one unit but you still need to make cutouts for the shifter, and in my case the tall hand brake. Other than that there is no need for plywood. Another factor is that the iron bars along the sides of the inner body make a ledge relative to the fiberglass floor and so the plywood fills in that space to make the floor more level. As Bob mentioned, I considered adding a metal piece across the inside and attaching to the 1" square vertical bars but they are forward of the back part of the indent and I would have had to put a double bend of about 1" on each side to make that work. However that is secondary to my problem with filling in the dreaded half-moon hole. I had a chat today with the body man who did the paint job and we think we can just paint that small piece with the same color and clear as the body and add door edge molding to the edge and once the distributor is in there it will be hard to see the molding. We shall see.
Note added in edit mode. I got to thinking why I needed the plywood floor now and realized it is because when I cut out the tunnel the long cover over the floor cutout around the shifter was now gone. You can see the long cover in this old picture from when the body was delivered last summer. I'll have to post another reply to add the picture. This is just to answer the question of Itoldyouso in that actually no plywood at all would be needed if the Bebops trans tunnel is retained.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder