Thread: 1950 chevy truck hot rod, old issues looking for ideas

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yeah I understand all the geometry you described, I did take my time setting it up and moved the entire thing through it's full travel range making sure nothing bound because I was concerned about the arc from the panhard, but it travelled fine.
Famous last words of course, because at the end of the day it clearly wasn't happy there and broke free.
Anyway, that thing will be history once my eye bolts arrive to hook up to my bed and I get that thing lifted.

I'm with Richard! All the ailments of a panhard bar can be eliminated by doing away with the panhard bar and installing Watts linkage! As a suggestion, perhaps when you were doing the design and mock up on your panhard bar you didn't take into account the side load forces on the bar when cornering, or just backing out of the garage and turning too sharp? I've seen a lot of suspension designs fail under load that worked perfect when the car (truck) is sitting still with none of the twisting, torquing, and turning forces applied to it.

The watts link is slick. Do the exterior mounting points need any particular location? Offset / level

What tire sizes/wheel widths you running? What air pressure?

testing my memory now
I think 245/55's rear and 235/55 up front on 17's.
and probably low 30's pressure
I'm not positive though, I recently changed my tire size to get more sidewall because I didn't like the look when they were really low profile

Originally Posted by firebird77clone

The watts link is slick. Do the exterior mounting points need any particular location? Offset / level

Not really, one bar high to one frame rail, the other one low to the other frame rail and a really smooth acting pivot in the center... Now, if you really want to study suspension geometry, check out a Jacob's Ladder on a sprint car!!!!!

To post #35: Good, I also dislike the O-ring tire look. Also, as sidewalls get shorter, the suspension has to get softer to absorb the ride.....since the sidewalls have little flex when the sidewall height is minimized. Newer cars with the short sidewalls have really soft suspensions.

yeah that's part of the reason I wanted more profile.
partly because I didn't like the look, and partly because I figured it would at least partially soften the suspension

IMG_20180218_171235.jpg

slight topic change, but now that I have the bed pulled and gas tank removed I decided to re-paint as well since I did primer black about 10 years ago and it did not hold up well being just primer.
So I'm touching up some body work and the worst part is my hood, where you can see I hit it with a sander to bring out the issues. Basically there are these two big creases in my hood. No clue how something like this happens, otherwise the hood is pretty much perfect.
Should I just try and hammer along these creases with a block under the hood?
Is there some other trick to getting something like this out?

Those hoods flop around a lot so minimal filler would be best. My hood got dollied and filed to where almost no filler was needed. The body shop did mine.

yeah I really need to find a good way to get those out.
My primer black really hid body issues since it was such a flat finish, but I'm doing a slight gloss this time around so it will keep me honest.
Those creases really stand out with a gloss.

I'm going to say hammer and dolly work with a shrinking wheel perhaps? Robert (MP&C) on here could give you the best advice and tell you how to get that out in no time. He's the man when it comes to metal work and fab.

Reviving this thread with a few new questions:

So I've replaced my gas tank and re-done the body work I'm trying to improve and I just put Urethane primer on this weekend. It has a pretty textured surface that I am going to sand before top coating to try and get a better finish than I did last time. Since my truck has such a curvy body style I was thinking of using those foam sanding blocks that are fairly rigid but give some flex.
I thought that may be good because the fenders have so much contour a block would be tough. Any suggestions in that area would help since I've never really done the sanding before. My last paint was just black epoxy primer so it looked good without anything, but this time I'm doing a urethane top coat.
That leads me to the next question. The paint can instructions say "allow 10 minute flash between coats"??????????
This is ultra confusing for me because it takes practically 45 minutes to do one full coat on the vehicle, or at least 30 at best. I just don't understand what that means because although I am certainly an amateur painter I know there's no way anybody could do that job in 10 minutes regardless of experience, so how does a 10 minute "flash" even apply to painting a car?
Does this mean I should just take a 10 minute break after finishing before starting the next coat or just continue because I already missed the 10 minute window?

between coats. i wait 30 min or more but i do not use urethane primer. i use epoxy and slicksand polyester .

When I was sanding my 53 I never did find anything real great to work with the curves. The best thing I had on hand that worked was a body filler applicator with the sand paper wrapped around that. It seemed to flex enough to follow the curve. I have the blocks that I think your talking about, they didn't work well on the fenders and corners, they were too stiff. I think the 10 minute thing is the minimum about of time between coats.