Hot Rods The Belly Button Bucket Build Thread

Nothing to add other than I love breakfast pizza. Carry on.

 

12 years to to build the most simple of hot rods........you gotta be kidding me

 

Not sure who this is directed at, but.. Thank you? I’m reading this post as shock and awe - full of wonder and amazement - likely tears of joy streaming down your face as you type…

 

There's building / creating & there's bolting together a prescribed , predetermined pile of parts , building / creating takes a bit longer . Besides , I wasn't aware it was a contest .

 

Yeah, he could have bought a stage 4 kit and had it running in a month.
It has gone through refinement on many things, many 2 or 3 or more times.
This isn't reality TV or You tube.
This site doesn't pay for views, everyone who posts is volunteering to stop, take pictures, write text and share their project.

Life is more important than hobbies or entertainment.
If you want something you can pick 2; Cheap, Fast or Good. Tim's is free and great.

All the above applies to any naysayers. @rdynes01 to get personal, you have posted a total of 3 times since Feb 2022. You have one feature thread about painting with tractor paint. What have you done lately?

 

Twelve years, I wish!
Yeh, in the real world you start a project, life gets in the way, you stop for a while, you get back at it................
Television car show builds, about two episodes, bam!

 

Ahh, I remember those days! Cold pizza and warm beer for breakfast. Usually hadn't been to bed yet either. Late teens, early 20s. And I wasn't married yet. Hadn't been to college either. Usually that was Saturday morning after Friday night at one track, and repairing the car for the coming night.

Mmm, mmm, fine dining at its best

 

I have met people that brag that they build their rod in 4 weeks and 500 dollar. ( but in swedish money)
I look at the pile of junk and see 4 wasted weeks and money. Whats the point?

With that said i am close to 12 year in on my build to.
I thought it would take me 3-5 year when i started.

 

Let's see, in reality how many years do I have in the Whatever project? I was given the Winter's quickchange in exchange for a used set of Hilborns in about 2012. But that wasn't the 1st thing.

The front axle is a tube axle I made when the lab purchased a Wilton knee mill around 2007. But before that, I was given the 327 that will ultimately be in the Whatever project, around 2002.

But even that is years, nay decades after the 1st parts started to collect. There's a set of 37-40 Ford passenger car spindles I got from Laverne Nance in 1975 or 76. So we're talking just about 50 years! Yes, I'm slow. But there were extenuating circumstances.

Marriage, college, moving to various cities, getting involved in SCCA sporty car type activities, moving again, more college, moving again, a couple of new houses, life in general. And various other vehicles in the interim...

Yup, I'm a slacker!

 

Today, I am a sculptor. I know the finish work is going to take eleventy billion years, so I’m gonna sprinkle some of that in here and there, so I don’t decide to suck start a revolver one day when the monotony gets the best of me. Dramatic I know. Still got a couple more rounds of filler to go, but these pieces are getting close (rear of trans tunnel will be reworked as I have some dead space underneath there I want to take advantage of).

I also got the interior mostly stripped down in preparation for fiberglass festivities. Came inside to take a break from sanding- will go out after dinner and optimistically get the firewall brace bonded to the body before bed.

 

Nice looking pieces Tim, I'd say you've got the hang of it, nice and thick tunnel, should be a good heat insulator for your foot and leg.

 

Got the firewall brace glued in and filled all of the previous sins I could reach without having the body off the frame. I used some wood screws and fender washers to suck up the brace to the firewall after giving the firewall a coat of fiberglass filler. Once this is all sanded smooth, I’ll tab it in with matte and cloth. The screw holes will be filled after the filler cures. My various sanding projects are still tacky, so I’m calling it for tonight.

 

Today’s progress was slower than I would have liked - somehow the filler I had applied on the trans tunnel and rear crossmember cover from yesterday were still gummy… I guess I didn’t use enough hardener or something. Took me about 4 hours to scrape/sandpaper clog my way through the transmission tunnel.

After looking at the rear crossmember cover and struggling with it for an hour, I’m leaning towards remaking it…. For one, super gummy filler. For another, unnecessarily bulky. Lastly, when I did the layup the first time, somehow the heat maybe?… anyway somehow the flange warped in such a way that it doesn’t sit flat. I’d like to think I can do better than that, so I just set it aside.

I managed to get the firewall sanded on both sides reasonably smooth…. NOTE TO SELF: FIND THE MISSING DRYWALL SCREW YOU DROPPED. I was removing the construction screws, one of them dropped to the ground. Found the washer, crawled around for 10 mins and never found the screw. It was about this time that my motivation was rapidly fading, so I called it for the day.

Spent the evening looking at parts I’ve purchased that aren’t ready for a forum debut yet, but let me just say that I’m really excited to show them off when the time comes. Hopefully tomorrow has more to show.

 

Tim, did I rub off on you? Leaving notes to future self? Whatever works. If I had a glass windshield, I'd leave tape notes on it. I've had some bad experiences with tape left too long, so it's gotta be a surface that can handle scraping.

Waiting with anticipation!

 

I’ve used this thread as an online journal, that I reference often. Usually it’s just pictures I want to revisit, sometimes a part number, sometimes I just want to re-read my thought process when I’ve taken a break for awhile. It’s been extremely helpful to have a build thread to reference.

I am bothered I couldn’t find a gold colored construction screw, though. I worry it may have bounced off the clutch fork on the way down and found its way inside the bellhousing…. As improbable as that sounds, I could not find that dang screw on the ground. I’ve found air bleeds and idle feed restrictors that fell under the workbench into the realm of arachnids the scientific community has yet to discover, but I could not find that 1” long gold construction screw. It’s either in the bellhousing or directly underneath a tire, point side up, waiting for the next time I move the car. Maybe today when I run out of motivation, I’ll crawl around and look some more.

I think today will be spent focusing on the dash- hopefully science-ing out defrost vents from a comfortable working position. I have a bad habit of doing this leaning/weight bias thing when I bend over, due to a previous skateboarding knee injury (and ankle on the same leg) and not trusting that knee (or ankle), which is stupid because both are fine now, and leads to sharp lower back pain on the opposite side. Bending over to sand a transmission tunnel the last couple days has reminded me that I have this issue- moving slow today. Usually I am able to solve it with a night of sleeping on the floor, so that’s what I’ll do tonight if I’m still feeling it.

 

That's probably when you'll find that missing screw!

 

When I drop something and can't find it I shine a flashlight across the floor horizontially and that will show a shadow by the dropped screw, makes it much easier to find it!

 

I tried that! Gonna do some tidying up and run a magnet around. Maybe snake a magnet into the bellhousing, just to rule that out lol

 

Just think, the worst that can happen is that it bounced up in the air, did a couple of laps around the garage, got kicked out of the way and eventually fell at 32 feet per second squared into the open maw of a waiting carburetor throat, bounding down into a waiting intake port, where, unfortunately, the intake valve is at maximum lift, just right for the screw to find its way to a new home inside of the cylinder, until, upon starting the engine, as you are unaware of the impending doom and destruction of the engine, it lodges in the dome of your bespoke, extremely expensive, custom one-off pistons, precipitating the rapid dynamic disassembly of your engine!

Okay, I'll go back on my meds now...

 

Found it:


And a couple pictures that have spoken to me recently:

 

You will sleep well tonight!

 

I gotta log in for a meeting in a bit, so I’ve been just puttering around trying not to get too far out into the weeds yet. I decided I need a way to test fit and be able remove the dash several times to get everything to fit, so I refined my temporary mounting technique by filing some half-round slots in the dash and cowl. Now I can scheme up defrost vents, sub-dash mounting locations, heater mounting, heater hose and vent routing, etc. I really like the idea of the dash being removable. I just need to make sure I have an adequate structure to support the cowl if that’s the case. It is all sorts of wet noodle without the dash in - although the firewall brace helped immensely.

 

One at each end ought to do it!

 

Consider some way to "tension" your dash reinforcement Tim as things will settle over time and you could still end up with a bit of a jiggle in your dash.
A little surprising was my Wescott bodied deuce roadster came with no dash support so after putting in a one inch square steel brace behind the lower dash flange I made an adjustable support rod with 1/4" rod ends mounted in the center connecting to the cowl inner steel structure, easier now than later.

 

I have some foggy, vague idea of doing the same. Some sort of adjustable strut rod thing.

 

And another thing I'll have to ruminate on. I've got a support structure for the way overkill firewall/rear engine mount assembly. I could tie into it for the dash side of the cowl, I guess. I'm looking forward to seeing how you do the next few steps...

 

Slow start to the day, but ended at a good place. Super stoked to be confident moving forward with the defrost vents. I’ll need to make the vent passages underneath the dash in that rolled edge to join the defrost vents together. I started with some Old Air Products vents, then hacked them down to fit the space, then cut some slots in the dash until they were where they needed to be. Once the underside channel is figured out, I’ll mold these vents into the dash with fiberglass and mount the little grilles (not pictured).

 

Here's the one that is not exactly a template, but exudes simple, powerful, clean

 

Well I am happy to report the heater is mounted in the car. I had to make a pretty crazy bracket, which triangulates the bottom of the dash to the firewall, using the frame of the heater box and the mount of the wiper motor. Gauges still fit, now to get the lower dash built and figure out the defrost/dash/floor vent routing. Took me two days to figure out how to get the heater stuffed in there lol. You could not slide a piece of paper in between the pieces. Tight fit! I’ll get a couple better pictures tomorrow with it out of the car.

 

Here are a couple pictures of the heater mount. I decided to incorporate the riv-nuts holding the heater core to the box as mounting locations, using longer bolts and some spacers, I was able to make that work.

For the mounting bracket, I started making it out of steel, but after several hours in, decided it was wayyyyy overkill and transferred to aluminum. I feel like I can fabricate better with aluminum, but I don’t weld aluminum very well, so I was nervous going in. It required notching the dash, notching the bracket, some creative bends, and a little gusseted tab to triangulate things, but this solves several things at once. This ties the lower part of the dash to the firewall, triangulates the heater, and triangulates the windshield wiper motor. Even without the dash mounted in the car, it is noticeably stiff now. I’m happy. Came inside to get some lunch - will probably tidy up my mess and call it for the day. Overall, pretty good progress I feel.