Projects 64 Comet Build for Sema.....Its build time....

Damn, let me try again....

This time from youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCMjZwyJfFg

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Sema Deadline 10-1-2011

Dateline 5 months till completion

Once we got the PSYCLONE home from Precision Automotive we were truely happy. The car really looks fantastic and is exactly what I wanted on the car for the targeted look.

We stuck it in its seperate shop stall and proceeded to lay out the sound proofing and pulling out the stainless to polish out.

While I was standing in the front of the car I couldn't help but see a small amount of rust pitting in the battery box and a small ripple in the radiator report. Both things I had not asked the guys at Precision to handle. So that meant it was on me. It was not at all possible to hide this so I knew it needed to be fixed, on a freshly painted car no less. this kind of stuff happens when you are full throttle on a project. Details get missed. This one was covered by splash guards and fender goop when it went to the body shop. It looks like it crunched the fender and was half repaired years ago.

I made the decision to fix this no matter if it puts me behind to the point of missing the goal. With the shop name at stake and the quality of the project it was really a no brainer. I hope we can still pull off the time frame though with little or no quarantee that there wont be another hiccup to further put us behind it is a gamble that needed to be taken. Here are the shots of the support wrinkle and the rust divots under the batt area. Now were on the hunt for a complete front end......

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Sema Deadline 10-1-2011

Dateline 5 months till completion


We found an awesome complete front radiator support and inner fender panels! Actually my best bud Erik Hudson (also a huge Ford and Mercury guy) had it stashed away in his side yard. It is from a 4 door air conditioning car so there will be some holes to fill. No Problem! Thanks a ton Erik! Erik is as detail concious as I am, and with over 15 years in body and paint experience, he is surely a good guy to have on your side as a guiding hand. Anyhow, we got it over to the shop and made a plan. Erik and I were both on the same page. We wanted there to be no evidence that there was ever a sheet metal change. The plan was to drill out the hundreds of spot welds that held the front together, remove it. Do the reverse on the panel that was to go on and there you go!.....We hope. I trust him, he knows what he's doing. This should turn out sweet.

The new/old front end went down to Monterey Peninsula Powder Coating for Gary to get it all clean and ready to trim. Here we go!

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Alright, trimming back the piece was a pain in the butt. Getting it all set and removing the correct spot welds took more time that I would have liked. It should be worth it in the end.

Then I mustered up the courage to cut the front supports from the car with Erik's guidance. It is very hard to do this on a painted ride, i'll either be an ass or a legend in my own mind when this is done. This took awhile too. The last thing you want to do is mess up the sheet metal that you will be using. Measure twice cut once here for sure.

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While I was in there I decided to put in the rack and pinion from Total Controll Products, a Chris Alston Company. It was a fairly straight forward install though with zero guidance in the kit it was up to us to figure out the install. We rebuilt the column with new shaft and all, cut the bottom and installed a bearing and bushing to the bottom. Then we got the rack up to the bottom of the frame rails and did our best in lining it up. We must have had this thing in and out 15 times. After we discovered that the stearing shaft was far to close to drivers inner frame rail we decided to make a simple cut to clearance the area for the DD joint. I needed to find the perfect concave piece of pipe or something to do it with. As I rummaged through the metal bin I noticed a power steering bracket from an old 64 Chevy six in there. It had the perfect shape. So for the Chevy guys, there is a bit of a Chevy in there. After cutting the piece, fitting it and fine tuning the fit I was ready to weld. It went fairly smooth. This was supposed to be a bolt on...I guess it made me feel better about having to redo my engine compartment anyway.

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Here's some pics of the rack install and frame notch....

 

Some more... Now its ready for when we dress the welds and prep the compartment for a respray.

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Here are a few pics from over the weekend replacing the sheetmetal. This is us with the full replacement piece uncleaned, then cleaned, then with some pregrind welds and then trimmed for a pre-fit.

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Here we are removing the damaged sheetmetal....Some was simply cutting and the rest was removing spot welds and really being sure we didn't mess anything up further.

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Here is a few more...for some reason itsonly letting me drop 2-3 pics at a time..

 

Yeah...I love trimming and 5 more hours of removing spot welds..

 

After I did some rough welding in of the AC condeser holes and some other hole filling at was time to seal the new piece so that we could really smooth it out with fiberglass filler, skimcoat and work towards primer. First well have to test fit the piece though.

 

Test fitting the sealed and roughed in panel...by now i've been really going over every panel in the engine compartment. Ive decided to really focus on smoothing out this aspect of the build and put quite a few hrs into this in the formof filling holes and modifying the shock tower braces. Tons of holes will be filled and quite a bit of detail will be streamlined into PSYCLONE.

 

Here's the radiator support dropping into place! Awesome! It's complete again. Now onto other details.

As you know this car will have Air Ride Technologies Ridetech shockwaves. The one area that I really am feeling needs some customizing are the flat shocktower mounts that are simply stainless plates. The parts I have are for a Mustang so I know there will be some fab work to getting all of this together.

Thanks Ridetech for stepping in to help me with a bunch of the products I've needed to ensure proper fitmant and function of the Ridetech Shockwaves for Product Psyclone.

So the mods next on the list are engine compartment related Stay tuned.

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Been watching this thread and am curious about the whole thing form a standpoint of where it will be featured and who it is being built for, other than your shop. You mentioned in the opening that "I have been asked to do a SEMA car by a few dealers that have participated in some of my past builds". Dealers? do you have products you sell? Or did you mean vendors? Is this car going to be in someones booth or is it going to be in the vast sea of "Show" cars that line the area outside the convention center?
Just wondering how it is to be featured and where.

 

The TCP instructions show that you have to cut the frame rail, just as you did. Looky here http://www.totalcontrolproducts.com/features/install/rackfalcon/index.html 2nd and 3rd page show it.

 

I reworked the area around the master cylinder to give it a better cleaner look. After that I laid in the items that would later attach to the firewall in there holes and welded up all of the holes that wouldn't be needed.

 

subscribed.

We're building a GTO for SEMA. Except it has to be done by the Indy 500!

 

Just found this build..I'm in.

My father and I are building a 64 Falcon convertible. Should be ready for paint in the next month or so.

 

Hotroddon- Dealers mostly meaning wholesalers, although we do make and sell products as well. The end goal is to build the car that we see best represents our overall focus on the project. We have quite a few great companies that have expressed a desire to be involved in the project as well as have us in their booth. Though this far out most companies somewhat hedge their bets to se what the best car they can land will be. As for us, I would rather continue our build focus rather than do a build specifically based on a "sponsor" companies veiw of how it should look. Our goal is to be inside and accept the offer of one of the great companies that we are supporting with this project and have expressed interest based on our view of the project. As far as the cars outside...Thats great too. Even though my personal goal is to be inside supporting specific product lines, the guys outside work extremely hard on their cars as well and therfore should be very proud of the work that they have done even though some of it may not be "my style" of ride. There are great rides both inside and out. With that said, most of the guys outside are grass roots guys like us. The inside cars as a rule the bigger shops, specialty cars or factory backed cars. Thanks for the question. Love the Anglia!

Django! Welcome to the madness! Love to see the Goat!

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Haroldd1963-Love those Falcons! Im sure it gonna be sweet, especially a drop top!

 

My front shockwave kit is based on a Mustang as I said, so these top plates just didn't fit the smaller Comet/Falcon towers as clean. The tower support was directly in the way of the piece fitting correctly on the flat surface. I first tried to chop a chunk out of one though it just looked very rough and not well thought out.

YUK

So the next option was to modify the shock tower support.

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Thanks, Like I say, was just curious. I have had many cars at SEMA over the years - In the early 90's I did 20+ cars for one year alone working in conjunction with A&A Specialties. It was madness shipping and then placing all the cars once they got there. All were inside - including the Ford Booth, our own A&A booth, Suspension Techniques booth, the main stairway aisles etc.

 

Here I sliced the shock tower brace to blend the large bump into a smoother transition at the shock tower.

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More.....

 

More tower mods

 

Hotroddon -

 

Oops Sorry, Ill try this again I pre-posted.....again...anyway

Hotroddon- Sounds crazy! You know what its all about then. Glad to have you aboard. Next time your in Nor Cal stop by!

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Ill throw in a handfull of the pics of over 50 hrs of body and paintwork that went into the engine comp.

 

More Engine compartment bodywork

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