My radiator has the offset fill that will sit under the hood so i needed to fab up a little hold down for the radiator cap on the grill it self. I had a piece of scrap left from some sheet that I was hole sawing out. Cleaned up the edges and welded on a threaded piece and took the cap screw out to the threaded part allowing the cap to rest threaded on the radiator. Nothing fancy but I'm happy with the radiator shell it is too nice for this car.
Over the Holiday break I built my light bar. Had some help from my little nephew. He is 8 and in return he asked me to show him how to mig. Light bar took me a few days of heating and bending and looking over and over. Not to mention getting it level was hard, but it came together pretty well. Only issue I had was I ran out of gas on the Friday prior to the Holiday. Luckily my wife is a jeweler and she has some acetylene at her shop. I have a pair of 903 guides and a pair of 904s. I always thought i was gonna like the 904s most but I am leaning to the 903s. They are smaller and look better on this tore down sweaty roadster.
Harbor Freight Special!!!! its actually a really nice cart. I have three machines on it and its so sturdy.
Being my first hotrod I’ve made so many mistakes i had to fix later. Next car I hope will go smoother. Can’t believe how much I’ve learned from this forum and just being hands on with this car.
Got my Shocks on this weekend. Amazing how much stiffer the car is now with them on. I bought the SoCal closed tube shocks. I like the look of them alot.
Finished up the Parking Brake yesterday. The mounting is straight from Tradel/Bishop book. Angle Iron around the detent and welded on stems or spacers. For the rod I used the left over rod from the mechanical brakes that were on the car when I got it. I was able to use one end of the eyelets from the brake rod as a keep on the back side of the crossmember. Couple of brakes and taps in the rod and it was in the car and working great, we seems to be working well. Parking on a hill will be the real test.
You experiance and photo's are going to be helping a lot of new builders get along with their project - thanks for posting !
Man I hope so. I often feel odd posting every little thing being that so many AV8 builds prior on here are superior and doing the same thing but better. But then I think of a bunch of stuff I posted on here, mistakes and all, hopefully will help. If nothing else i hope anyone wanting to build a car like this sees this thread and can see you can still build traditional hotrods on a shoe string budget while learning the entire way to the finish line. Cant apricate the folks like yourself who motivated me via kind words.
Actually you'll be helping those one car guys that get scared off by those big shows and showie stuff !
Started tackling the passenger side exhaust run. My plan is to use 35/36 driveshaft for tips but ill need to make some connection runs down to the side of the frame. My goal is to make the tips visible but not gaudy. I am still learning to tig too so this was a bit of challenge, but I made the best of it. I bought the headers from Havlir House of Fabrication. Cant recommend these enough. Took all the hard work out of this part of the build. Honestly Dave is the only part of the car I outsourced, but i am so glad I did. I purchased a set of mandrel bend steel pipes from speedway and began planning and cut it up. The passenger side is pretty easy being that nothing is in the way. I can tell the driver side is gonna be a challenge for me. Dave included some exhaust flanges for me to attach where i wanted. The tips extend out so i needed to install the flanges to be able to take the exhaust tips out if needed at a later time. I don't have any of the exhaust clamp holds to allow yourself to plan these easier. I just used stich magnets to hold everything in place while i made marks where to tack, then finish weld at a later time. You can see where I used two jack stands to place the driveshaft tips to get the look I wanted and build off that area.
The hanger was my next challenge for these little tips. After chatting with a few friends and looking at how others have hung them I wanted to make the mount disappear which meant I needed to hit the back side of the pipe but not attach to the frame. I was able to make it work off the Model A cross member i left in the car just behind the F1 crossmember I used to mount the trans and master and pedals. If I ever end up going this route again I will not purchase a hanger I will just make one. I got this one from Speedway it was not cheap and its stainless, which was a little bit of challenge for me to weld to the steel tip. I used 308 fill rod and it worked ok. The silicon cups are where its at with these. You can buy them separate. I had to alter my hanger a little to fit in the place I wanted it but nothing fancy or hard here.
Looks great! All the little details coming together. I really like the headlight bar and headlight position. I like that battery box too. If you need to vent it, you might check out some old appliances, lots of old dryers and stoves and stuff had little louvered pieces on the back, even microwaves. Cut a little louver patch out of something, cut a hole in the box and rivet the louvers on over the top. Would look old-timey and be functional.
Drivers side was much harder and actually took me two times to make it work. I am only using basic traces on cardboard and magnets to hold pieces together, but i made it work. My clutch bar is pretty high and being that the steering and master cylinder are all in this location its pretty cramped. First try i went way too low making it look ugly, second round i got it tucked more but still allowing for some heat room. I used the same hangers i used for the passenger side and am very happy with them.
As you can see from the photos my NEWB came out big time. But I remade the connection and it turned out much nicer on the eyes while still providing room enough to allow for some heat distance.
Fired the motor this weekend for the first time since the overhaul. I was using a temp fuel source from just gravity feed from sitting on the cowl. Need to hook up a fuel pump to get it to idle and set timing, but no coolant running Im not gonna run it long. Nephew came over again to give me a hand.
Was able to get it idling this weekend and timed. I dont have any exhaust gaskets in the manifolds so its loud up front but all good I am planning on changing heads and intake. Also I didn't run it long to not overheat, maybe 2 minutes. Pretty happy.
After getting the motor running and idling i decided to take it back out and paint it. I went with Bill Hirsch paint. Cant recommend this product enough. I used a bit of the brush on method and some small spots with the spray paint. Degreasing that motor wasn't too bad being that i had done most of the cleaning prior when i had overhauled the motor some.
The Jalopy Journal
