Hot Rods The (mis) Adventures of a Compulsive Tinkerer

You can see our Morris woody in the above picture and you can just catch the corner of the rear fender - IN PAINT!! I mixed a color that the wife and I agreed on and shot the rear fenders. We like it so I’m finishing up the bodywork on the cab portion (ugh, I hate bodywork) and hope to have some color on the rest of the car soon.


I intend to run 14” wheels (gloss black) with thin whitewalls and baby moon hubcaps. So to be sure it would look like I hoped, I painted a white wall on the old tires with Rustoleum peel coat. It works great. Don’t know how long it will look good but it’s better than searching for and buying new tires and not liking the look.

The rear part of the roof is aluminum. I scuffed the existing primer and tried Eastwood Roll-on primer in black. I won’t use it again. Used as directed, it did not flow out and it’s going to need a bunch of sanding. Luckily, it will get a vinyl top in that area so it might not need to be paint perfect.

 

I had a feeling that I might have to sacrifice one or two projects, trying to be more realistic about my time/energy. So I looked at my ‘33 pickup to see what I should do to get it ready in case I decided to sell it. Welding in the floor and securing the rear cab wall was #1. #2 was to get a front axle in it so it’s a roller. A friend had a nice dropped Ford axle and split wishbones that I scooped up and prepped for installation.
I had forgotten how nice the F1 pedal****embly worked out. I didn’t weld it in because the boxing needs to be reworked in that area.



I did a little cleanup on the bones and welded in the bungs.

 

I’ve been helping a friend build a chopped and channeled ‘29 Tudor. It’s been slow progress due to his budget and the fact that I live in NorCal and we’re building it in the garage at my home in LA. The wife and I are down in LA for a little vacation and home maintenance so I put in some time on his sedan.
I have been bugging him to bring the body over so I can get busy mounting it and he finally found some help and they dropped it off. So the task for this trip was to get the body sitting on the frame.


Looks a bit shaky but I’m a one man band and my tools and equipment at this house are limited. So I had to improvise. My lovely wife was right there to help and call 911 if things went south. I think she thinks I’m crazy but now she’s convinced. lol.
I trimmed out the firewall where someone had hacked it up, the upper butchery will go away when we install the new cowl/tank. He wants to run a stock tank.


Someone hacked the floor out of the poor old beast, that’s ok because he wants it channeled the width of the frame anyway. Just setting it on the frame with 2x6s feels inspirational to me. I’ll bring down my welder and stuff next time. Meanwhile, I’ll have him get some box tubing and stuff for next time.
The engine, a ‘41 Ford flathead, and T5 transmission are done and ready to install. I wanted to get the body mounted without working around that stuff.
Hard to beat the profile of Henry’s old sedans…..

 

Looking good Bob

 

I have been posting on my Studebaker truck thread about the****embly of the new ‘62 389 Pontiac. It’s mostly together and while I was waiting for TriPower parts to arrive I did some shop clean up and rearranging so I could get to my 33 pu. The idea was to****ess the project and decide if it goes or stays. I think it’s going to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
From the firewall forward there are a lot of unnecessary holes so I put a fender on and marked the important ones. It shouldn’t be too bad to fill them, pretty routine. There’s these and three more on the top.

They did butcher the front crossmember and replaced the rivets with bolts. I’ll never understand that.

The passenger side front frame horn is tweaked in about a half an inch.

 

It has a 59” wide 8” Ford rear end in it. It was hung on parallel leaf springs of unknown origin, not a bad setup except they just put them where they fell on the frame instead of correctly positioning the springs on the frame and moving the pads to match. They just cut notches in the running boards to clear the front mounts. Ugh.

I will be swapping in a 9”and I could fix the leaf springs, or use P&J ladder bars and coil overs, or….. go with my original wacky idea

‘49 Olds trailing arms, with either Corvair coil springs or coil overs and a Panhard bar. Straight outa the old magazines, very old school. So far everything else is pretty much old stuff on this truck.

 

Before ordering a rear end I need to establish the correct width. To do that, I need the wheels and tires that I want to use.
I found a good deal on a pair of 10.00-15 Radir slicks just like the ones on my roadster. I’ll pick them up on Monday. I also have another pair of Halibrands that I’ve been saving for the little pickup. Just like these….

I have matching front Halibrands, I just need to buy tires for them. If (when) I decide to put my steel wheels on it, I can have the wheel guy down in LA change the back space as required.

 

I picked up the Radir slicks today and got down my Halibrands. I’ll probably order a pair of tubes for them and then break out my Arm-strong tire machine. I don’t trust any of the local tire shops and most of them won’t touch them anyway.

I have matching fronts but I need tires. Turns out the guy I bought the slicks from has almost new 5.60-15 Firestones from Coker that he will be selling as soon as he gets his new drag fronts.
Also, I installed the radiator and took a bunch of critical measurements.

 

I pulled out the Buick engine and trans.
I have three excellent candidates for a power plant:
The 425 Buick w/switch pitch turbo.

A thumping 400 inch Pontiac with a TH400 or 4 spd.

And a 392 Chrysler with a TH400 or 4 spd. It was in my boat with a blower and a Powerglide.

The Pontiac and the Hemi would both get 2x4 intakes with early AFBs. The Buick has the factory 2x4 setup.
The Pontiac is the rowdier of the bunch with 10.5:1 compression and a big Crower cam. The Buick and the Hemi are more sedate. I lean towards an automatic trans because my wife still likes to drive my old relics to work occasionally and I’m not sure her knee would like stomping a clutch pedal.