Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

Thank you. That really means a lot to me. Sometimes I don't know whether to thank or curse guys like you. You see it was from your creations and innovations back in the day that I caught this terrible infliction. It is a sickness really. You know I see normal people walking down the street everyday. I see people drive right by a car show or drag strip and never even cast a glance. I see them and wonder what it would be like to be normal. To not be obsessed with speed. To not be sitting in a car at 2 a.m. on jack stands with no motor, gripping the wheel and peering towards a future finish line. To not grab a shift knob in a car that does not even have a clutch pedal yet and rip through the gears in your mind. To not run your hand down a cars body line as if it were a sensual hip of a super model. To hear a car in the neighborhood rev up or burn out and have to fight the impulse to fly out the door in hopes of just a fleeting glance. Not to be so addicted that before you leave for work you open the door to the shop to take a quick look and a deep breath of the aroma of things to come. Oh it is a terrible thing your generation has done to me. Lets just pray I can pass it on as well and that no one ever discovers a cure.

 

I have the same disease. Thank god there is no cure for the addiction! I just wanna get worse!

 

Look what came in the mail today. I am very excited to get out to the shop and decide where to place it!

 

It has been a week or two since we have had time to work on the Austin. With the biggest part of the initial body work done on the driver's side we decided to test out the contraption we built a few posts back for removing the body. We ran the lift with the body up high enough to run one of the cross members through the door windows and put a four by four on top of it for the roll cage to sit on.


Then we set the rear cross member above the trunk area and attached straps to the rear roll cage bars. Then we slowly low lowered the lift out from under it leaving the body hanging.


Then we simply rolled the chassis on the lift.


We lined up the chassis and then ran the lift up until it touched body mounting points. Then by going up an inch or so higher we lifted the body off the crossmember supports. Now sitting back on the chassis we removed both crossmember pieces and lowered the entire car back down.


We rolled the car out, spun it around and then back on the lift backwards exposing the passenger side for body work.


Then right back up, cross members back in place and then we dropped the chassis back down and rolled it off the lift.


The we ran the lift back up and got the body. It worked like a charm. The whole exchange took maybe 30 minutes.

 

Ingenuity rules!

 

My Grandad always said work smart, not hard!

 

Looking good man
I would take some time looking at the rear wheel wells those things just have that Go Man GO look to them

 

What did you bait that trap with?!! Seriously that was pretty smart. This is a sweet build.

 

That is funny, now that you mention it, it does kind of look like some sort of big trap! We reset it this afternoon, maybe we will catch an A/FX car tonight! LOL

 

Thank you...I am a bit bummed out as I wanted to take a few photos of the driver's side back on the chassis with the new bodywork. But we were so excited about how the new apparatus worked, it was back on the lift before I thought about it.

 

Did a little body work today on the passenger side. Welded up the rear door opening and did some initial grinding.

While I was waiting for the fender to cool between tack runs, I also created a pattern and then cut out sheet metal to fill the rear inner door area that will be visible when the passenger door is open. As you can see, with out this panel the hinges would be a dead give away that this little gasser used to be a four door.


Originally between the doors there was a flip out signal light. However we lost most of that area when we chopped the top. But we still have an odd looking body line (or gap) in that area.


So I drew some nice straight lines (basically making a rectangle around the area) and carefully cut it out with the plasma cutter. Then we took sheet metal and folded it over to make a rolled matching edge. After some grinding and fit work, we tacked it in place and then did some initial grinding. This work will obviously get duplicated on the door to make a nice straight gap. Then back to the driver's side.

 

I have been out with a little minor surgery, nothing serious just not able to be in the shop for the past few days. I did however go back and snag one of the photoshop versions and updated the blower, exhaust and ladder bars etc. Sometimes when a project is blown apart in a million pieces it is nice to have something to focus on besides piles of parts. I just noticed I forgot the moon tank on the nose...oh well

 

Need to photo shop the lettering on the tires maybe something like Bad Year

 

Actually in the real world, I am going to take the lettering off of the tires but that is funny. I have also seen Drag Cars with "DADDY" chalked on the tires after the word "HOOSIER"...LOL!

 

Just had rotator cuff surgery yesterday and got yelled at for housing down a outside wall of the house!

 

Yes...you should never try a hose job right after surgery. LOL!

 

And here I thought he got bitch slapped for taking a wall down in his "house".

 

Now just to be clear, I was just assuming he meant to say hosing down an outside wall...LOL!

 

Still medicated

 

That's what I meant

 

I thought so. The only reason I could read it was I am medicated too....LOL!

 

There is thread here on the HAMB about the 2015 Drag week and new rules etc. They are going to have two gasser classes starting this year adding the second for Supercharged Cars. However after reading through the rules I guess I am a bit bummed out. Technically speaking, they do not mention that an Austin is a car legal to run while they do several other such as Thames and Fordson etc. They will also not allow a chopped top. So I guess we are out of that show. But as I pointed out in that thread, that means the Jim Oddy car and Big John Mazmanian's Football wouldn't be able to play either (not that they are coming)... Just saying.

 

HOLY COW!

I feel a bit like Noah...for the past 40 days and 40 nights it has been like the old cliche "when it rains it pours" on the engine front. As I mentioned in an earlier post when I tore down the 454 to upgrade to a forged crank, I found we were missing some high end parts. Instead of forged pistons and I-beam rods I found a set of cheap Speed-Pro Hypereutectics and mismatched stock rods.

I called the builder who acted surprised and apologized for the situation. At that point, June 29th, they ordered the missing parts plus an Eagle Forged Crank for me. Over the next 40 days there has been one issue after another with their arrival. Then after confirming they had arrived there were issues with getting them balanced. Finally last Monday I called and said don't worry about shipping them, I was going to be in the area and I would pick the parts up. They said they were balancing them that afternoon so pop in around 4 p.m. I did to find nothing was balanced. They were scrambling to get it done right quick while we waited but surprise, surprise they discovered the rod ends were the wrong side. They would have to order another set.

They said the rods would be over nighted and they would have all the stuff to me Wednesday afternoon...no show. After calling them they said they had issues and missed the shipping deadline. So no problem, I will have them Thursday...no show. On Friday morning I called and got more apologies and more excuses but a promise that they were done and ready for the courier. About that same time I talked to a friend that was going right through there around Noon and arranged for him to pick the stuff up instead. I was afraid something might happen to the courier service, like UFO abduction or something.

Low and behold my friend returned with three boxes. I was very excited thinking maybe we could finally spend a weekend on the final assembly on the motor. He had the crank, he had the rods and he had the pistons....but no rings. I called the machine shop to see if my friend accidentally left the rings or what? They said (after having the pistons for two weeks) they just noticed they did not come with the rings. They said they ordered them and you guessed it, they will be in next week. I simply said don't bother. I just ordered a set of Seal Pro Hell Fire Rings from Summit.

At this point, I am a fairly PO OP! If the parts hadn't been owed me, I would have ordered them from JEGS or Summit and had all of them in 3 days or less. I would also have ordered the right rods the first time and I am fairly sure I would not have forgotten to order rings!

 

This is where I'd have called and told them I wanted my money back. All of it. Nobody accidentally puts the wrong rods and pistons in an engine build. Whoever is running this shop is willing to steal from you and cannot be trusted. You should probably assume any work they "did" was done wrong and either check it yourself or get somebody that isn't a crook to check it.

 

Agreed. It is kind of a long story though. Never-the-less, the entire rotating assembly including the flywheel and dampner are all at another shop getting balanced. I ordered my own rings and Clevite bearings.

 

I hate when you get promised things or things done that weren't. I'm willing to pay for things as long as they get done, but to get potentially ripped off like you did.... I had recommended a machine shop to a girl that wanted to get her 327 engine machined. The machine shop used to do a lot of work for our shop, so I trusted them. Took for ever, with a lot of promising and missed due dates to finally get the engine back. We did and while reassembling it, something wasn't right. Checking the i.d. number indicated it was a 307! wth? Mentioned it to the shop and they could not explain it. I felt bad for Andi and asked her if I could make it up to her. She didn't blame me though. Still sucked.

 

Feeling good again (or at least as good you can feel in my position). I called a friend who has his own machine shop (I got to know him a year or so after this whole saga started. I talked with him this morning and said he wanted to balance it for me. So FYI (especially when talking about an externally balanced 454) this is what you want to hear from the guy doing the work: "Bring me the Crank, Flywheel, Dampner, Rods, Pistons, and Rings!" We also added Clevite Coated 77 Tri Armor Main and Rod bearings plus Speed Pro Hell Fire Piston Rings to the ever growing parts list on this build. More importantly, added a bit of peace of mind that things are getting done right. Finally.

 

OKAY enough with small talk and whining, we have a project to finish, so back to the build...

BRAKES! We have spent a lot of time talking about go fast goodies but none of that is worth anything if you can't stop and then go fast again! I decided this morning to start assembling the brake lines. But there were a couple of issues. One, I must have spent an hour looking for the front brake lines from Speedway which I did not find. And two, take a look at the photo below. Just before heading to O'Reilly to try and figure it out what to use, I decided to take the bolt and banjo fitting out to take with me (always a good idea). But that is as far as it would back out. The Steering arm was in the way.


So I took the arm off and removed the fitting and headed off. However, after staring at the brake line they handed me at the counter for a bit, I decided there was no way it was going to work. So my first thought (with a caliper with IMCA forged on the side) was Metric Chevrolet. So I asked for a 1985 Monte Carlo line .....and bing....perfect. That thing fit like a glove. Well almost.


The Monte Carlo line is below on the left and the Speedway Banjo fitting is on the right. Same basic idea but the Monte Carlo banjo end had a 3/8" hole (or metric equivalent) and the Caliper needed 7/16 (or metric equivalent). But the Chevy line fit so perfect and looked so clean. - Sooooo... I drilled it out. I first took some very careful measurements to insure the hole in the Speedway banjo bolt would align itself with the hole in the line (accounting for the copper washer etc). After I was sure it would work, I drilled the Monte Carlo line out and installed it with the Speedway banjo bolt! I was also very careful to make sure there were no shavings in the fitting hole or line etc.


When the line was in place I found the steering arm would not go back on because the new brake hose fitting was in the way. Not much, but just enough to keep the front bolt hole from aligning. So I did just enough grinding on the flange to clear the fitting and then put it back in place.


I even had to notch the washer but the lock nut went back on with at least 1/16" clearance (or its metric equivalent)!


Now I am off to duplicate the task on the other side and then start placing the hardlines.

 

You see those two rubber hoses on either side just aft of the shocks. Thats right, she has front brakes.