Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

Man, TONS of stuff to report from this weekend on the Somerset project. I can not believe how much work we accomplished in just a couple of days. So just to follow up on the earlier Sanderson Header "Mutilation" entry here is how it came out. Believe it or not, I went to Sanderson's website and downloaded a photo of the headers. It was a straight on shot of them from the side. Then I downloaded a Protractor from Google Images and placed both in photo shop. The down angle of the headers from the website was 60 degrees so I ordered a 3.5" - 60 degree elbow from Summit...





Check out the Austin's narrowed rear just ...barely...fitting on the lift.


Ready to Roar!

 

We addressed the headlight situation this weekend. The situation was we were not going to have headlights! The radiator ended up being just a couple of inches away and we had basically decided to put flat stainless covers over the light areas and engineer something on the lower front valance that was hinged and could be folded back up inside when not in use.

However while looking at the light buckets that went in there, I had an idea. They are sealed beam lights so there is no real reason to have the buckets. So I cut the inside out of them with the plasma cutter and cleaned them up with the grinder:
That made them about 1.5" deep and after putting them in place they had very nice clearance with the radiator, almost 3/4" of an inch. Just so you know in my world with this build, 3/4" is a mile!



All the factory stuff bolted right back on and wham bam...lights! Plenty of clearance on the inside after it was all said and done.

 

...and you might have noticed the original grill is in place (albeit with some customization in the lower area to allow the aluminum tank to inset a bit. I am really glad to be able to use the original lights!

I really love the Austin Flying Wheel Emblem. By the way I got this grill from a H.A.M.B.er way back when I started this build!

 

Those are rare grilles to find. I believe you can still get the emblem.

 

Well we had an annual car show in the park about 3 blocks from my house. We always attend but this year I noticed they had an unfinished class. So....we packed up the Austin and drug it over to the show and had a blast showing it off! If I heard one, "What the heck is this thing?" I heard a 100... What a great day!

Dad's Rod in the background there got a color change this Winter. It went from satin black to what I like to call "Ralph Mouth" Yellow....LOL! Still killer cool!

 

So lets talk about the blower. If you missed that reply to an earlier entry, I said spoiler alert there is a "Huffer" on the way. So Dad and I were sitting around just looking at the car a while back (mostly grinning)! Anyway, I said something like you know the old car has it all: Big Block, Straight axel, chopped top, Cragers, a clutch pedal....what else could you want? Maybe a blower, was his reply.

He was right you know. The vintage tunnel ram which nearly started this whole project was cool but the car really needed something more. It needed a couple more letters in its designation AA/GS....now that really sounds nice! Amazing what an extra "A" and an "S" can do for a gasser build.


Weiand is doing something really cool. They have re-designed the cases of their new blowers to look more like the original 671s from back in the day. They are just about ready to roll them out but have been struggling a bit with final production. I have had it on order for quite a while (I bought it through JEGS) they keep pushing the delivery date further and further back. Finally I talked to Weiand directly to find out if they had even a guess of when it might arrive. They really couldn't give me an answer so I asked if they could tell me, when they do go into production, how far down the list am I. After giving them my JEGS P.O. number they checked and said I am the first one. That's right blower number one is coming for the Austin...I am very stoked!

 

It appears the new rotors will be straight, is that correct.

 

You know I don't think anything is changing on the inside, my understanding is it just a change in the case to look more like the old 671 etc. But I could be wrong...This is the flyer JEGS sent me when I inquired about them...

 

So back to the build. In getting ready for the car show I decided to put the deck lid back on...and there was a small problem. It is called Whitworth! Any of you guys that have ever tore into a British car no what I am talking about. BSW stands for British Standard Whitworth and that is the Brits very own screw thread and head size. I discovered it after I had struggled tearing into this project and had tossed most of the nuts and bolts that I figured I would never use again. So now to the decklid. As you can see the hinges had studs in them (Whitworth of course). I had left the hinges bolted to the lid but when I put it back on, you guessed it, no nuts to attach it to the car. So I took the two nuts off of the portion of the hinge attached to the lid. I carefully welded those studs in place and then used the two bolts per side to fasten the other half of the hinge back to the body where it should be.

 

sensational car, man. I love Austin Gassers, and it's unusual to see one of these rather than the more common A40 Dorset. Love the rim and tyre combo and stance, looks like it's doing 100 miles per, just standing still!

 

Thank you.

 

OH BABY! Enough said...just look:

 

I just tossed the old bug catcher up there for grins...I have a Hilborn style on the way in plain finish...I can't wait to get it on there!

 

Sweeeeet!!!

 

Great car, the addition of the blower really takes it up another notch.

 

Thanks...I asked my Dad the same (is it missing anything question) last night after we sat the "Huffer" in place and stepped back. He said nope...now it has it all! Good answer...LOL

 

So I have been taking small swings at the rest of the chopped top body work. And YES that means I dug out the rest of the Model "A" exhaust tube for the other rear window. See below. Worked like a charm again. She is still in "Frankenstein" mode but slowly getting all filled in with initial spot welding. Even the rear window area (which was not chopped at all) is pretty much back in place...


But it has been the front doors that I have really been procrastinating. The other day, I just dove in!






As you can see we had to stretch the top of the door piece by about 3" but it went really well.

 

For me the key to putting the doors back together was cutting scrap pieces of sheet metal and hand bending them very close to the contour of the door pieces:


Then I slid them into the ends and tacked them in place leaving an inch or so sticking out that could slide into the adjoining door pieces:

Then when I was happy with angles and height etc., just a quick tack held it in place for further scrutiny...(there was a lot that going on). In the end, the passenger side was back together and overall I am pretty happy. We are about to start welding up the rear door seam and also the removed drip rail area above the doors.

 

Sorry to be skipping around so much lately. Since getting the thread restored there has been so much stuff to catch up. Plus the crazy blower shows up right in the middle and there was no way I could wait to show you guys that!!!

If you remember I was pretty proud of myself earlier in the thread when instead of paying a crazy price for ANCO coil overs I bought a new set of Monroe Matic 1200 pound overload coil over shocks for a Dodge Caravan. Several HAMBers warned me, saying they had tried similar schemes just to find out the overloads would not do the trick. They were right (as usual)! However, after fabricating and installing the quarter-eliptic leaf system for the car I popped the Monroe's back on:



Let me just say, after getting it back on the ground those worthless shocks (as I once called them) are absolutely perfect. Some suspension engineer that knew what they were doing couldn't have designed a more perfect combination. Now lets see just see if I am that optimistic after the first launch!!!

 

Speaking of launching...Something had to be done about the wheelie bars. This killer rear end came with an awesome set of bars. However the whole system originally came out of a 9 second 1958 Biscayne. It is hard to see, perspective wise, but the those things are sticking nearly 4 feet out the rear with little to no adjustment.


There would be no way to drive this thing on the street with these things practically on the ground from the get go. Even the slightest incline would lift the rear wheels. Not to mention the only reason we are building the thing is to stick the wheels in the air every once in a while.

So we simply cut them in half leaving us with the very strong "X" member section. After strengthening and reattaching the mounting Heims ends we went to install the new lower half on the car so we could decide the length of the upper bars. However the mounting points were off by almost an inch. Apparently the longer arms section we cut off could be flexed in a bit for mounting but our new shorter "X" member section had no flex at all. We were way too deep at the point to do any but cut them to fit.


Of course that meant cutting the "X" as well...you know the thing that gives it all its strength. Right. But check out that big solid steel donut that came out of the Austin's original steering systems!

We "tweaked" it just enough to hit the mounting points. Then put a steel pipe sleeve inside the cross member, made the final cut on the "X" pieces to fit the donut and welded her back solid. Note: In the above photo you can see the mounting Heims. These areas also got the steel pipe sleeve on the inside and then welded up etc. Stronger now than the original thin wall pipe construction.





Here is what we are hopping for in the near future!

 

Well you can forget about all the work we did fabricating the custom sheet metal radiator fan shroud in an earlier thread. It is in the "Cessna" pile this evening! It would not clear the new blower lower drive pulley or the belt. It was close, but no go. After scratching our heads for most the afternoon this what we came up with:


The radiator itself was fine, it was just the shroud and dual fans that were going to get in the way. So we went to shelves and dug out the original JEGS Radiator mount kit that we thought we were not going to be able to use. We took the two long legs with radiator gripping feet plus rubber pads, flipped them upside down and slid them down over the 1" square tubing uprights that the fan shroud had been mounted to.


You can just see an inch or so of the 1" tubing upright. The rest is sheathed in the aluminum leg. The radiator slid right back in place, we lowered the legs to grip the top and then screwed the aluminum legs to the uprights inside. Then we reinstalled the original top cap.


Easy Breezy Lemon Squeezy...sort of! So now there is plenty of room on the other side of the radiator for the blower pulley, the two high dollar Derale electric fans are hanging on the wall and a single Flex-a-light 16' pusher is on the way. It pushes 2500 cfm - not as much as the two pullers but it will just barely fit up front and it will have to do!

 

We learned a lot about blowers today as we did get it officially mounted in place. We had to do a bit of grinding on both the very top of the heads (intake side) and the same area on the new intake to get it to fit correctly. No big deal. Some assembly required right? I did notice however the completely inadequate instructions from Weiand did not include "grinder" in the list of suggested tools for installation. But they also left out so many other vital instructions I just assumed it was par for the course!
The intake side lip on those vintage M/T valve covers took a pretty heavy hit from the grinder as well!

 

Dad and I did the "now standard" sit and grin this evening and then I shot some photos. You know what they say, "a picture is worth a 1000 words!"

 

Maybe your car is their test vehicle, you did say that it was blower # 1 right.
Look'n good, so lucky to be involved with your dad on this project.
BTW, those M/T valve covers are my all-time faves for big blocks.

 

Looking good real good.

 

Found this bit of inspiration on the drag cars in motion thread. And yes I know it's not quite the same but it's close enough.

 

I know, I love those Dorsets! They are my all time favorite! ....Well used to be. LOL!

 

Thanks. Yes I am very lucky to have Dad around...However he does seem to cost me a lot of money! LOL!

 

AWESOME PROJECT

 

Thank you.