haha it does have good response, that's for sure. thanks guys, it will be fun for sure! I have already started a station wagon project for the family chores, hopefully it crawls its way up the list soon.
Well I'm neck deep in cleaning up my shop for my open house, but I've been enjoying the heck outta driving the T every day its not pouring rain... I pulled everything out of my shop friday, and did a deep clean and reorganization of the fabrication area. then I drove it a little over 50 miles to one of the local shows I do the T shirt art for, and on the way home I weighed the T at the MFA. any guesses? . I'll post up tomorrow.
That frame weights a ton but there’s not much there I’m gonna guess it’s right around 1700-1800 lbs but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more. I’m always shocked at the extremes it takes to get a car under a 1700 lbs
Hmmm, how much air do you carry in the tires? Straight water or coolant mix? Weight of oil? How many coats of paint wouldja say is on it?
No, it was never anything production. Information from Joey here on it. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/a-historical-oddball-or-the-tamale-wagon.1142420/
and the moment of truth! with a full tank pf gas, (10 gallons-ish or 60-ish pounds) 1900 pounds! @pprather got the closest! its right about where I figured it would be. .
Well, we had the best open house we've had yet. I got the new alternative wheels on the roadster on thursday night. (crappy photo through a screen at work) Saturday morning came, things fell into place, and after a month of either Blazing hot, or drenching rain, we got a perfect 78 degree day with a slight breeze. and the people showed up! we had a fun day talking and hanging out. I even convinced Mike to pull his old supercharged funny bike out hiding for the show. one of the best parts was when I got to let my buddy AJ drive the T. he's wanted a hot rod since I gave him a ride on my way to Minnesota last year. we've been gathering parts for awhile now, and I even started a thread HERE. he brought down some parts for it, and I should get going on the chassis soon. It was a great day, and even though it was a lot of work, it was worth the effort. and now I have a clean shop to work out of... and I wasted no time. Update to come soon on the speed coupe... HERE . .
UPDATE TIME! After I got the front wheels on, I felt something was still missing, and the front wheels didn't quite match the rears. so I went to my dad's shop and plucked these off the wall, Original cal custom spinner caps. They've been up there on the wall for probably 15 years or more. I had to order some new shorter lug nuts for the rear so them would fit. so I drove around for a couple days with just the front ones. But eventually a package came, and I was able to clean the car, and go take some better pictures. well, except for my windshield. but when I went out to mikes house to bend my panhard bar, he let me use some window cleaner. so on the way back out his gravel road it was clean. as always, all work has to be inspected. next up was to install the panhard bar I had bent up. I mounted one end to an unused spring mount hole, by welding a spacer into the perch. the other end I made a couple plates to mount it to the side/bottom of the frame kickup. the out of position welds on the frame are a little ugly, but are solid and should clean up ok. It made a good difference out on the road, as it used to move a little to the side in the rear under harder acceleration, but now its solid, it hooks and goes straight. it's getting pretty close to my vision for this version of the car. bout time to change it up again ... 1962 calling...
Well, I'm getting antsy. I've been hanging back at home this summer, while we await the arrival of our 2nd child. That got me thinking about a big trip. See below thread for a rundown. Gearing up for Getting down. . . Down to AZ that is. even though I've put over 11,000 mile on the old girl so far, I figured I could do some upgrades... the first being the seats I made a new seat base, that is a little tighter and nicer than the old one. then I disassembled the old seat, and cut a hole in the center of it, and added an upright angled piece for lumbar support. (also note the small piece in the front that makes the seat base tilt back) I then decided it would work better if there was a hole in the new baseboard. (its there, I just stapled a towel over it so it wouldn't get stuff down under the seat into the wiring.) In place with the old foam. So, in my usual way of getting into the work, I totally forgot to take pictures of the foam I added, but I added some to the width and some in the front edge of the seat to add more bolster to it. I also installed webbing into the base, so it had some give. here it is all buttoned up, with the seat base started on the passenger side Next on the agenda was figure out some tires/wheel that I could run the 2700 miles without to much worry. as much as I LOVE the current wheel/tire setup, the rear tires are older than me, and the fronts are probably closer to double my age. I just wanted something a little bit newer.... so my first thought was OBVIOUSLY slicks. so I borrowed some from a buddy, that I thought might fit. and while from some angles they looked good, some they just ... didn't. the wheels were too offset, and the slicks were just too big, heavy and they rode AWFUL. so, back to the drawing board. or, back to the old wheels for a few days. At some point i'll buck up and buy a fresh set of whitewalls, but boy howdee, have you looked at the prices lately? I figured if I used my 12 spokes on the front, they have new tires with only a few thousand miles on them. so I pulled some smaller Hurst recap slicks from my stash, these with a dirt track style tread cut in them, and grabbed the set of 15x7 5 spokes I got from @Anderson for my rambler project. They fit way better than the other slicks, and are very close in size to the whitewalls I usually run. and once I mounted them both up (by hand, on my tire mounting stool) I took it out for a drive, and it was smooth and felt good, so I think these are the ticket. but the wheels... just don't get it... well, at least not in the shiny form they were.. enter the magic Graphite spray. Oh yeah, that gets it. I also made myself some aluminum flat caps out of some thin aluminum and mounted them up. So there's my new rear wheels, and now on to some more bolt checks and some final things before the big trip. Oh yeah, and we're having a kid this week. never a dull moment. .
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