Man what a bunch of work. Nice looking, cant wait to see it finished. maybe you're not a professional fabricator, but you should be. Nice work .
Awesome! Looks really cool! I've been seeing a few of those pop up on Craigslist for cheap lately...but I don't think I have the skill you do to them what you have! Plus I sold my '95 9/C1 a few moths ago.....
All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!!! Amazing amount of work and it WORKS! Here's a cartoon I did of one about 10 years ago in a slightly different vein.
Just looking at the pics again and there's one small criticism I have. The roof chop looks cool, great proportions and not 'over chopped' but I reckon you've lost some of the Kaiser identity by removing the return angle of the rear door frame. I know it would be a prick to reshape that area, but if you pulled it off, it would look great.
Believe me I thought about that. The kick in the rear window is signature Kaiser. However, I would have lost a lot of the rear window by adding the kick and it would have looked too small so I chose to go without it. I also kinda dig how the side window line just flows as one continuous line. At least I didn't put a plain Ford or Chevy windshield in right?
Fair enough. Good to hear that you thought about it at least. I did mean to congratulate you on keeping the Kaiser front window shape. Very cool. Keep us posted, will be very interesting to see it done.
For seats, go take a walk through a salvage yard. Pay attention to the front buckets from late 90's early 2K Mercury Cougars. Pull the head rests, and I think you'll like what you see. Medium width and nice shape without the head rests. You could score all 4 for less than 500 bucks. To see a pic, search ebay. There are some Cougar buckets on there right now.
Installing the headers and need some advice. Do I need to heat-wrap these spark plug wire boots? I already wrapped the wires to tuck them against the block and protect them. Should I use these metal protectors? They come stock on LT1's.
First: WOW!!! Second: Many curved windshields don't survive the cutting, and the project is abandoned. Did you have a glass man cut yours? How far into the project? Were you nervous? Third:WOW!!!
Thanks! The windshield and rear glass are stock. The windshield is recessed behind the dash and the rear glass is leaned forward. The only glass that will have to be cut is the flat side windows.
Making progress... I filled the holes in the firewall where the glass comes through. Installed Borla headers and cat-back. Added a hood ornament and swapped hoods for one that fit better. Also took the front end apart and beadblasted all the rust off then painted all the brackets black. I used all SS BHCS for reassembly, they don't strip like Phillips screws. Waiting on a new grille bar to show up, mine is mangled. Rebuilt and installed turn signals and made some fillers for the front of the fenders so they don't look incomplete.
Turn signal rebuild, took lots of pics because I thought someone might find it useful. I replaced the socket with a modern 1157 socket I found at AutoZone for $3. Nice fingerprints on the black paint huh? I got impatient!
Beautiful so far. I love Kaisers and would never have thought you could start out with a 4-door and end up with such a beauty! I don't supppose you have any photos of how you recessed the windshield, do you?
Man I didn't even know such a thing as a Kaiser Manhattan existed before 5 minutes ago!!! Yours is just tooo cool Some awesome fab work going on there. Great job mate!!
Frenched the plate. I love the stock Kaiser trunk handle/light so I kept it. It was tricky to french the plate but have it integrate with the trunk handle. I didn't want it to look like a box stuck under a trunk handle. I hammered a compound curve into the sheetmetal that would be the back of the box so it matched the trunk. Next I used a shrinker/stretcher to make the edges. Still need to get some nice fasteners for the plate. Probably SS BHCS like the rest of the car.
Nope, that's top secret! Really its as simple as cutting out the ledge that the glass sits on and welding it to the inside of the firewall.
Got the rear bumper on. I flipped it, filled the bolt holes, and shortened the ends because I didn't like how far forward it went. It took a lot of finessing to get it to match the curve of the body. Usually these bumpers hang way off the car but I wanted it tucked tight to the body so the curve had to match. Before shortening:
After shortening, shaved bolt holes and flip: My favorite part: This is why they call them taildraggers: How long until I drag the bumper off?
I had the stock Caprice filler neck sticking through the trunk and it needed to go away so I filled the hole and mounted this aluminum flip-top filler. It is smack-dab in the middle of the trunk, should be a nice detail with the trunk all cleaned up and carpeted.
Next I'm working on seam-sealing the interior, installing insulation courtesy of Lobucrod, chassis rewiring courtesy of Painless (getting rid of the rats nest Caprice harness), then mounting the dash and figuring out the gauges. Anyone know if I can run the stock Kaiser positive ground 6v gauges on a modern 12v system? Time for research!
The Jalopy Journal
