Thread: Bad Ast Astro Van Build

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Your getting closer every day

Looks great Mark, moving right along on all that little stuff!

Worked on something other then wiring yesterday. Mel came out and we attacked the left front fender. I want to get both front fenders modified for tire clearance before we pull the body back off the chassis. We got the left front clecoed in place today. In order to get the width I need at full left lock we ended up trimming out the original wheel well lip back to the new inner fender line.
Doing some sketching and thinking. We had the tire in place with the suspension in full jounce and marked full lock left steer and full lock right steer on the wheel well lip.
http://images9.fotki.com/v131/photos...MVC067F-vi.jpg
Yea, this is kinda ugly... Just the initial cut. We will end up removing all of the lip and most of the flare by the time we are done.
http://images18.fotki.com/v270/photo...MVC069F-vi.jpg
Tire in place and positioned at full left lock
http://images41.fotki.com/v1577/phot...MVC071F-vi.jpg
My plans are to make this a "sorta" wide body mod. Clamming an additional fender right over the existing to get the tire covered by the flare at full jounce/left lock. Left lock is worst case by about a quarter inch over right lock.
Here is the "new" fender, Mel is cleaning it up with the grinder after we trimmed off all of the extra stuff and removed the inner bracing so we could set it on top of the original with no interference.
http://images114.fotki.com/v1606/pho...MVC075F-vi.jpg
Set in place with a couple of clecoes holding it on at the front. We let the tire hold it out in the middle and worked on the rear of the flare to get it to suck back in at the bottom.
http://images114.fotki.com/v271/phot...MVC076F-vi.jpg
This ended up being a lot easier then we thought it would be. A couple of passes through the shrinker dies brought it right back to the original flare.
http://images107.fotki.com/v1143/pho...MVC083F-vi.jpg
This angle gives you a good look at the mostly final shape. There is still a lot to do. I plan to fill the gap with screen so all of the flanges will have to be modified and shortened up to inset the screen about an inch or so into the fender opening.
http://images9.fotki.com/v120/photos...MVC086F-vi.jpg
The top will get closed in with a long pie shaped piece that will blend out to nothing at the front of the fender.
http://images18.fotki.com/v60/photos...MVC088F-vi.jpg
The new piece will have a bit of an angle on it. Blending it down from that little reveal to the new outer skin. I plan to keep the same sharp corners as the rest of the body lines.
http://images62.fotki.com/v1452/phot...MVC085F-vi.jpg
Well, that's what I did. Thanks for looking.
Mark

What's it going to be like with the BBC in there?? Lots of work making thing look like they belong but I'm sure you'll get it.

Whew! When I first saw the pic of the beginning cut I figured oh boy.. he's done it now!!!

But nope! You saved it. and it looks great!

Thanks Guys! Haven't had to much to report on but got some stuff done over the weekend. I had a five day weekend and spent 4 of them working on the van. Monday was lost due to the big storm...
Worked on the right front fender last Friday. Mel did some trimming with the plasma cutter on the original fender for tire clearance.
This is pretty much the same as the drivers side.
http://images116.fotki.com/v618/phot...MVC002F-vi.jpg
While Mel was working on that I gutted the donor fender and got it trimmed down to fit over the original.
http://images114.fotki.com/v145/phot...MVC008F-vi.jpg
Once it was clecoed in place I had to do a little shrinking to get the bottom to follow the shape of the original fender.
http://images62.fotki.com/v1482/phot...MVC010F-vi.jpg
After some shrinking it flowed nicely down to the bottom of the original. Doing some trimming on the flange let it snuggle right up to the original.
http://images114.fotki.com/v271/phot...MVC013F-vi.jpg
This gets the van to a point where we can pull the body back off to start finishing things. We will start prepping it to do that tomorrow.

I was planning to post this stuff Sunday afternoon but that big storm changed my plans... Power went out at 5:00 or so Sunday afternoon and finally came back on at 10:00 last night. Which is great because we were hearing Friday or Saturday would be the soonest. Thanks Consumers!
The plan to get the fenders clearanced was so we could get the van moved over to the hoist side. With the Passenger side fender cut up we could do the move. We pulled the front suspension to lighten the load and started raising the van so we could slip the trundle cart in place.
From the work height we raised it about a foot so the cart could slide under the trans crossmember.
http://images107.fotki.com/v780/phot...MVC002F-vi.jpg
I get kind of nervous taking a vehicle to the top of the jack stands...
http://images107.fotki.com/v780/phot...MVC008F-vi.jpg
It went well though and we had the van on the cart in just a few minutes.
http://images9.fotki.com/v1548/photo...MVC013F-vi.jpg
Just as we are setting the van on the cart a nice little downpour comes thru to get the grass and leaves nice and soaked.... Sitting a spinning. The Cubby couldn't drag the weight up that little incline to the driveway because of the wet grass and leaves...
http://images107.fotki.com/v70/photo...MVC014F-vi.jpg
We ended up hooking Mels '79 Parisienne to the cart and hauling it up to the driveway with that. Worked well and he didn't spin a tire... We pushed the van into place on the hoist side and called it a day.
http://images18.fotki.com/v270/photo...MVC018F-vi.jpg
http://images9.fotki.com/v1493/photo...MVC017F-vi.jpg
I did a bit of cleaning on the work side after Mel left but it was starting to get nasty, weather-wise, so I locked up the shop and went into the house.
Almost exactly two years since this space has been empty!
http://images45.fotki.com/v1451/phot...MVC016F-vi.jpg
I got the fender work posted Sunday but, by that time, the wind was really starting to kick up so I shut down the computer right before the power failed...
My plans to get the body off the chassis Monday were shot in the foot by the power outage so I'll get to that later this week...
Mark

Progress is good. Better safe than sorry. Did you get a lot of the storm there we just got wind with the power flickering once or twice.

Originally Posted by cffisher

Progress is good. Better safe than sorry. Did you get a lot of the storm there we just got wind with the power flickering once or twice.

Hey Charlie,
Yea, we got hit hard again. Straight line winds at around 60 or 65 MPH with hail and heavy rain for about 45 minutes. Lost a few more trees.

Got the body off the frame today. It was a two step process but it went smoothly. First lift was to get the van off the trundle cart. Raised it just enough so I could roll out the cart. Once the cart was out of the way I set up four jack stands to lower the frame onto. Once the I had the van on the stands I repositioned the arms to the body rails and hoisted her up, off the frame.
http://images116.fotki.com/v716/phot...jpg?1385241144
http://images19.fotki.com/v276/photo...jpg?1385241146
It'll be easy to set the frame back on the cart so I can roll it over to the working side. Need to finish up the cleaning first...

Where'd you get the sunshine from today. All I got was snow flurries and lots of wind

I had it special ordered just so I could get some pics..

Have a question for you guys...
With the current doghouse the engine cover to carb clearance is about an inch. I need to raise it for air cleaner clearance. What is the LEAST amount of carb to top of air cleaner do you guys feel I can live with and not restrict the intake. I am planning on 2 to 2 1/2 inches. This is going to impact the shifter position and cable routing.
This is the set up I was planning to run. I may just stay with it and rebuild the top of the doghouse to fit over it.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a3...D550/ry%3D400/
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a3...D550/ry%3D400/
The connector from the hat to the tube JUST fits over the thermostat housing.
This set up wreaks havoc with the front of the doghouse, which is what I am trying to avoid tearing up. I am using the front half of the original cover to seal the firewall as it was designed. The new cover actually seals to that and comes off without having to undo the firewall bolts. I'll take some measurements tomorrow to see how thing line up.
Knowing how high I have to be over the carb is key.
Thanks
Mark

I wouldn't want to see any less than what you had planned in the pictures. 2" inches isn't much, I think the dual carb setup filter I have is 1 3/4" and those are known to be restrictive, If I have enough room under the hood, I'm going to stack 2 filters to gain airflow. HTH's..

Mark,
Nothing I would hang my hat on, but if you start searching minimum hood to carb clearance the high performance crowd running hot Mustangs, Camaro's & the like seem to say 4" minimum from the top of carb to hood, and anything less starts starving it for air at the top end.