I saw another thread on homemade aluminum parts,so i thought i would post one of mine on here, this is a recycling coolant tank, it was made from raw stock, and one vented gas cap and gas cap ring. Thanks a million to Bobby Brock for his great Tig welding skills, this wouldn't exist without them,or a lot of my parts, I make em,he welds em together. this is a two part post part 1
couple more, the piece that my fuel pressure regulator bolts to, i had it originally on my old manifold, but with the new ones,i moved it to the inner strut tower, and cutoff and modified part of it. thats a holley low pressure regulator. in the other pictures, this is my radiator hose standoff, I made this from a scrap block of aluminum. I have to add some cork on the inside to protect the hose,but holds the hose nicely off of the oil cooler. here's the fitting at the radiator end, turned it out of aluminum,then a piece of rubber tubing fits inside of it, this twists on over the hose barb end, and the back end is threaded at 1/8 npt. the hose seals the barb to the fitting. much better then a hose clamp.
?? i'm not posting what it's off of i'm talking about homemade parts, there is a difference between store bought crap and making something yourself,and no matter what it's off of the parts are still made by someone by hand. I never buy anything store bought, If i can't make it I don't use it. I really enjoy looking at a piece of aluminum that might be a leftover and thinking what i can make from it. I have something like 500 unique pieces on this car, a lot of them are painted flat black and you wouldn't even know they are aluminum at all unless I said something. NO CNC everything is made on old worn out and well loved manual machines.
I like it. Not appropriate on a period-correct banger-powered, red Kelsey-Hays-wheeled, Lincoln-geared prewar roadster... But it does have a purposeful, aircraft/racecar kinda feel. Like something a guy who works for Northrup Grumman or Lockheed Martin would've fabricated for his hot rod in the '60's.
well i was working in an aircraft plant before i got laid off again. it's amazing what you can do with the junk that is discarded in a place like that. I really don't pay any attention to whats correct and not correct, this will be one to be driven and enjoyed. in that sense it will be correct,since i built it the way i wanted, I enjoy seeing other peoples stuff they have built from scratch also, it seems to be a dying art though, everyone wants to buy stuff and have it now.
no, no one seems to sell it. been looking for it but no luck. just coolant is all. it can be a pain to take pictures of aluminum sometimes though.
I guess people object to the pics of the engine it's going on? All I know is that is a killer looking part and the workmanship is impressive. I only wish I could make stuff like that! Thanks for reminding me what a hack I am! ;-)
Got any pics of the manual tools you used to make those parts? Finished product looks good from here!
I mostly use a 1920's bridgeport and an old amura lathe from the 80's, A lot of times I just like to use a diamond shaped insert and holder for a lot of my cuts,that and a standard cutoff blade. plus the usual assortment of taps,drill bits etc. I had a good teacher when i started out at the plant, I thought I knew some stuff before, but he taught me how to do all kinds of stuff with minimal tooling. still blows my mind at some of the stuff he can make on these old machines. I have an old totally worn out clausing there too, no one else even messes with it, but I guess it likes me. has so much play in the cross feed you can't let go of the handle, but somehow i've figured out how to get it to do precision cuts. it wa one of the first machines they got over 40 years ago. it's plenty older then that,but thats how long they've had it. it's nice to be laid off but still be able to go out to the plant at night and make stuff. keeps me from going nuts i guess.
this one here, bored it on the mill from a block,used the center hole on a center in the lathe jaws, used a mushroom shaped center to put pressure on it from the tail stock, and turned it down with an insert tool,then squared the edges in the mill, drilled the holes, counter bored them, then split it on the band saw, after it was split the cut sides were squared, then one side of the holes were tapped,and the other drilled large enough for the cap screw threads to pass through. the bottom side was drilled and tapped for the mounting screws,and it was polished with red scotch brite.
Oh the slots that are cut in some of the parts are just ordinary end mills, I could have used a ball end mill, but i wanted more of a flat slot. I can't remember exactly how i turned the bracket for the overflow can,but I believe i used a wide cut off tool with a carbide insert. this is an old shop,so you use what you can find, no modern fancy stuff. the most high tech thing we have is a DRO on the index mill,it's so old, that when an encoder went out, we had to buy an adaptor to convert the encoder signal from digital to analog so the box could read it. here's a video with the old bridge port in it. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6360582766050716236&hl=en
The Jalopy Journal
