Thread: 1929 Essex Highboy

Tweet

Old rodder43--I haven't followed your post too closely---I've been off in "model steam engine world" for the past 9 months, as I had reached "burn out" on the whole hotrodding thing. However, I still cruise the hotrod websites to "Stay in touch". My "Wild Canary" will ride again, when and if we ever get rid of this damned cold weather and snow, come May. You are absolutely correct in your assumption---The little "towers" on top of my upper mount is designed to let me use a marginally longer shock, to get the rearend travel I need. There is no commercially available shock to work on the rear end that is short enough to fit between the upper and lower spring cup plates. The shocks that I used are Monroe, #5751ST 28-80283, purchased at Partsource. I just checked my "build book" and see that I have written that they are 8 1/2" retracted and 13 3/4" extended, with an optimum length of 11 1/8". I am not sure now, (its been 5 years) but I think those lengths are to the critical mounting surfaces where the top and bottom shafts end and the threaded shaft portion starts at each end. As far as the grill shell goes---Don't try and save $200 now, and then have to live with something ugly after the fact. You can pick up a fiberglass 32 grillshell for under $200 and build a very nice insert for about $20 worth of 1/4" cold rolled steel rod. I did a good thread on that when I built mine.
http://www.clubhotrod.com/forums/sho...d+grill+insert