I have decided to make a few mods to my shoebox. The car is really solid but needs more than just paint, some pizaze! so today, the hood will be louvered, and hopefully next weekend the decklid will be, we'll see, I a posting a few pics to showw the progress.
I almost forgot, I have a few shoebox hood ornaments around if anyone needs one, send me a pm, I will take some pics of them when I get home, also the center mold, I wont need that anymore either.
OH MY GAWD!!! i can't believe you screwed up that nice paint to punch a bunch of stupid holes in the hood!!!!!
so it's done. here are some pics. i'll let Joe tell the story later. we're off to GMGrunt's shop in a minute... Joe layin out the louvers where he wants them... Joe and i concentrating REAL hard... AWWW ****!!! the louver press broke. guess thats all ya get Joe ... the proud papa of this baby... VIOLA!!!!! 114 louvers later....
can you post a good profile shot of the louvers? I might have some small things I need holes punched in.
i did'nt take any. maybe Joe can do it when he gets home. if his girl does'nt kill him for staying gone all day .
Hey guys, she cant kill me cause she's not home yet but when she gets here with my digital I will take some profile shots. I'll tell ya what, I like being creative and trying to do new things or change up the old, but punchin that first hole in my hood was scary stuff! I was glad when it was all over and cant thank mike and dan enough. I will post some more pics in a bit
MAN!! that magnetic layout strip looks like the cat's meow! that's a great idea, and a time saver i'm sure! nice touch Dan!!
Dan and i figure a guy can realy appreciate the work that goes into something like that if he has a hand it actually doin it. it can be a little nerve racking making sure you get everything lined up just right. you end up holding your breath and not realizing it till you start to turn blue . we've gotten more confident with every one and even our first one turned out pretty good as far as we were concerned. funny thing though. i've never gotten nervous about cutting ANYTHING up, weather it's mine or someone elses. i don't know why. glad you like it Joe. bring on that deck lid. won't be long now and you'll have a real hot rod shoebox on your hands.
ALRIGHT! as promised, follow up pics with it installed. Stay tuned, I am going to follow up throughtout the week with the **** lift my car will be receiving! as for now.....
Looks great! But the deck lid? That's a good way to **** in exhaust if they are in a low pressure area, which the back end of the trunk is. Just think about it a while before punching, that's all. Top of the trunk's probably ok. A guy died at the wheel of his Nomad from carbon monoxide just leaking in the "cracks" a few years ago about a mile from my house.
GOOD LORD! that had to be ALOT of carbon monoxide gettin in the car to actually kill the guy. was he sittin in the garage with the door closed and the car running for an hour??? Joe and i talked about the deck lid thing and he'd build a panel on the inside that would seal the trunk back up. they'd be for looks only and serve no other purpose.
Very nice work what can you tell me about that layout strip? I have abunch of strips punched with louvers to get initial patterns but do all my lay out with a straightedge square and tape measure. The strip you are using looks like it would sve time.
Thats good.. I didn't make it up, it was in the news. Carbon Monoxide builds up in the blood. So it might have come on gradually. Simply put, your blood normally exchanges carbon Dioxide with oxygen in the lungs and repeats over and over, but once carbon Monoxide attaches to a red blood cell it "sticks" to it permanently until either that cell gets replaced by normal blood regeneration or by a transfusion. They found the car stopped with the driver in it, but with the engine still running, on the street under a 405 freeway underp*** near the LB airport.
Awesome fellas , I was wonderin how that would look on mine .Now I know .Hope yer open for business! lol swaZZie P.S. Oh yah Great work and thanx for sharing this.
it's just a pattern to lay out all the lines in the right spots. it was Dan's idea and a great one at that. it saves HOURS of time. the first few we did we layed out the old fasioned way till Dan said "there has to be an easier way". he's a thinker that one. it is priceless in my opinion. SWAZZIE!!! just bring it on down and we'll punch it full of holes for ya. Dan only charges a buck a louver if you help. it takes 2 or 3 guys to hold the panel and move it around and make sure everything is in line and square.
It looks really good guys. Good job. I have one question though Joe. How far forward on the hood could you have put louvers? I've got an extra hood layin around and would love to do it for my sedan.
we could go just about as far forward as you want. on Joes hood we went as far BACK as we could till we ran out of throat depth on the press. that hood is longer than you think. thanks for the Help Eric.
you would however have to cut the bracing out in the front if you were to go much further forward. not a real big deal on that hood. we did that 59 Chevy hood and i had to cut ALOT out and then weld it back in. that was some work. same with the 2 80s Chevy truck hoods we did. i cut out and welded back in both of those hood's braces. you get spoiled on these hoods with bolt in or no bracing in the middle. we have a few hoods we are gonna louver so Dan can take em to the swaps and sell em. he wants to do it on a trade basis so he always has something to louver and sell. the chopped top flatbed he is nearly done with (did ya notice it is our work bench when we were layin out the lines? ) will be perfect for haulin this stuff to the swaps.
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