Hot Rods The Belly Button Bucket Build Thread

I love the side shot of the car with something other than the typical "Roadster" headers!

Perhaps it's been addressed earlier in the thread, but what is the wheelbase of your T? I am a fan of short wheelbase cars and your's is spot on!

Lynn

 

Thank you! I really appreciate that. The wheelbase is 88”.

 

I see you’re planning for opening doors. Are you going to do both sides? Very cool little roadster I also like the exhaust treatment it looks slick.

 

Thank you; the exhaust was/is one of the things I felt needed improvement. I'm currently looking for a muffler that is both compact and quiet-ish, but not gonna kill a ton of power. My thoughts are, verify steering will work first, then worry about exhaust.

I do plan to have both doors open. I have no idea what I'm doing on that, but I'm slowly getting more courage to get out the various cutting tools and make it happen. Right now my priority is to finish tinkering on the new daily, then sell current daily, which frees up some room in the space/budget to do some hot rod stuff.

After pushing the car out, I really want to get back on this. Appreciate the thread bump for motivation, guys.

 

When I started I had a picture in my mind of the exhaust system for the Whatever project running just outside of the lower frame tubes with the headers almost exactly like yours. With 90 degree bends in those down pipes, the slight modifications mentioned, I can bring the headers thru the frame between the 2x3 rails and the lower 1.5 inch tubing. The exhaust should then clear from front to back below the rear axle. Some slip in muffler inserts, and Bob's yer uncle.

So you just saved me a bunch of fabrication time. THANKS!

 

I don't remember what I paid, but I got a pretty good deal on them through a seller blowing out stock on ebay.

 

Thanks for the update, glad the HAMB comes through again with the motivation!
Really looking sharp, I dig the lean more toward the altered vibe rather than the dirt track vibe that seems to be more HAMB historic as relating to T-buckets. I like both styles, but you are really building to a resonance that hums, i.e., peak rod!
BTW, you can shoot from a distance for the focal effect and still crop the shot so the car fills the frame.

 

I’m sure you may have seen this from the pictures of what you have already done but if not take a look at this: https://www.tbucketplans.com/how-to-put-a-door-in-a-t-bucket/

 

I’m happy to report I’ve been making some progress on the T. For mental health reasons, I’m putting the house nightmare aside for a bit to focus on getting the T on the road.

One of the first things I needed to do, but didn’t want to do, was soften the ride a bit. Both front and rear springs were way too stiff, so I removed 3 leaves in the front spring and 2 in the rear. In the rear, I want to re-work the leaf spring spacer arrangement, but what is in there works for now…. I have no photos of this. Let’s just say it was a fight to get that thing wrangled in there solo.

For the front, I had a cascading effect of basically gaining suspension travel at the cost of shorter shock mounting distance. Long story longer, I decided to use this as an opportunity to upgrade the shocks and spaced the upper shock mounts up to accommodate that. I didn’t want to mess with the powdercoated frame, so I made some brackets that use the original shock mount locations and radiator mount. I also used this opportunity to incorporate a small, but very bright LED turn signal. Pics below more or less explain the process. I also had to re-work the lower shock mounts, which I didn’t want to do, but I have suspension travel now and nice shocks, so it’s fine lol. Additionally, I polished the windshield frame and had glass made. I’ll update with another post when I get a little further.

 

JMO , A drivers side door in a '23-'25 T body is pretty much useless due to the steering wheel / seat placement . Unless you have. an extra reverse bend knee below your normal knee ( or very short legs) , entering or exiting would be ,at best , challenging .

 

So did the changes work like you wanted?

 

Great car. Glad to see you're back on it.

 

I hear you, but I'm gonna try to make it work with the removable steering wheel. I don't mind climbing over with the top off, but with the top on, it would be nice to be able to squeeze in through a door.

Indeed. I have a great bounce now with plenty of travel. Well worth the effort to ditch the dump truck feel.

Thank you, much appreciated.

 

Forgot to add the pictures of re-working the lower shock mounts, which needed to scoot down 1/2”, and I took the opportunity to make them stronger.

 

There a reason you can't use the passenger door with the top on ?

 

Generally speaking, I wanna move towards a split bench situation, and I will hopefully have a post on that in the next few weeks. This is conceptually what I'm shooting for (CAD snip), pulling inspiration from these modern interiors, but with styling queues of C2 Corvette interior:

 

Honestly Tim, I’ll wish you good luck with the interior concept you’re thinking about.
If you think the interior of the T is cramped now just wait till you try that idea.

 

I will need more than luck, but initial seat time tests with two people have proven promising. My main focus is to squeeze in some creature comforts everywhere space is not being used for a butt, back, or a pair of feet.

 

Oh to be young again........and skinny, not that I was ever skinny!
Tim, I sure like the way you give your mounts that "I-Beam" look.

 

I'm following with great interest! I think a track-T in this vein is in my future, and definitely want a comfortable interior with a 5-speed!

 

I've definitely kicked around the idea of a future track T, with full hood, track nose, maybe some sort of wheel pants fenders, aero top.... maybe someday. If you build one, please start a thread.

In my opinion, the T5 is a great solution for a trans in a T. It is small, light, and there's a bunch of them out there. Do your research on the WC vs NWC, and S10 vs Camaro/Mustang gears, and V8 vs V6 gears and you'll be good to go.

 

In building my 26 RPU I found that first of all I needed all the space I could find just for my feet and a gas pedal and brake pedal. The clutch would have been difficult, I don’t have tiny feet.

I’m also not a skinny youngster either and I have hip joints that don’t like manual transmissions.

So given all that I was quite happy to put a C4 behind my Tim Mcmaster built Y Block.

 

Yeah I hear you. I'm 6'2", 210lbs, size 11 shoes, so I'm not exactly petite, either. I need to be wearing my skate shoes to easily get to the clutch and brake pedals - they are like a pair of socks with a sole. As for the hips and knees being stiff - I got those too but I'm making an effort to maintain physical health and mobility. Dating a dancer has brought this to my attention - I don't have to feel broke off as a baseline. One thing I will say that was a game changer for me - I went to see a rolfer, who by some sort of magic was able to revive my ankle and knee in a 90 minute session, that 6 months of physical therapy was unable to do, so I would highly recommend going to get a full body tune-up if you're able to.

 

Somebody's been searching and saving pictures...

 

Ok, I am 6’2” 220 lbs - what he hell is a rolfer? I need the cure

 

https://www.rolf.org/rolfing.php#:~:text=A Rolfer works with the,tissue network as a whole.

 

Basically a rolfer will watch you move around the room and ask you a few questions about your pain or stiffness, then work on “fascial release” in certain areas to increase your mobility/release pain. It feels like someone pulling a wetsuit over your skin- mildly unpleasant but not painful. The way it was explained to me is your fascia is like thin skin of an orange slice that holds all the juicy part together, and when you experience an injury, your fascia can over-compensate in a way initially intended to protect you from getting hurt worse, but sometimes it doesn’t recognize your body has healed. So you release it, like pulling out wrinkles in your bedsheet. Sounds really weird, but I heard about it in a couple skateboarding podcasts, then my girlfriend told me about it/suggested I try. Highly recommend. Ask around to find a good one - if you’re in Portland/Seattle areas and interested, send me a PM and I’ll let you know who we have tried with great results.

 

Tim
I will PM you later, I've known about it (and needed it) for years, never pulled the trigger.

 

I don’t remember if I captured this, but at one point I decided to weigh the car. I made a lever to be able to corner weigh one wheel at a time using a bathroom scale. After I leveled/weighed each corner and totaled, I decided that since I still needed to buy various things for the 32, I could just upgrade the parts on the T for lighter weight ones, one of which being the alternator, especially now that the car has a mid-late 60s vibe.

 

Small update - I was able to get the wishbones and new upper shock mounts off to the powdercoater, and with the front end all apart, I decided to move to the rear end. I mentioned earlier I was unhappy with the rear leaf spring spacer arrangement, so I re-made that height necessary using a fabbed 1/4” plate tube spacer, which greatly simplified install and shaved 13lbs.



Also, since I needed a 3rd member for the 32, I decided when I was in Boise earlier this spring to surprise my mom for her birthday, that I would stop in at Dutchman and order an aluminum 3rd member for the T.

While swapping it in, I noticed a couple fails on my part- one, I had to lift the body off the frame to have enough clearance to sneak the old one out and new one in, so I think I will make some sort of access panel to get around that in the future. The second fail was I had the adjuster facing the wrong way on the passenger side axle. Not sure what happened there lol. The good news is the aluminum 3rd member shaved another 13lbs.