"....a m***ive burnout in front of the guys house....." PERFECT!!! I be tempted to do it about 2 in the morning till he comes out the door....
Damm... hope all is well of course. Now I'm thinking of a 60's modified approach to my spreader bar! Gary
Terrible Story Man , it's great to see you kept your head up during the trying time, it never ceases to amaze me the pain & anguish we can be put through by someones careless act. Your Hot Rod looked cool now it's going to be cooler , keep your optimistic approach to life & all will fall into place , a job is just around the corner. Good luck with the rebuild . Best wishes Steve
Good talking to you at the 50's,with your at***ude I don't think anything can beat you down.Good progress on the A. Good luck with everything. scoop
Just a quick update. The last time I posted in the thread, the frame was just about back to square. Well, we cut out the old front crossmember and threw it on the frame rack one more time. Dead on the nuts square now. As you can see we got the new crossmember and frame horns welded on too. I'm pretty happy with the way it's taking shape. I also had Matt at Ionia Hot Rod Shop make some boxing plates for the front frame horns. I'm really happy with the way they turned out. They'll look great once they're welded in. They'll look perfect with the drilled axle and swiss-cheesed visor. The visor I had Hot Rod Ch***is and Cycle punch full of holes. Love it! The guys at Wright County Collision got the headlight buckets back into shape for me too. I was convinced they were headed for the s**** pile! Before: After: They also got the door straightened out. As it stands, the frame is almost ready for re-***embly (before coming apart for paint and powdercoat). We still have to figure out the wishbone mounts but we'll do that once the new axle is in place. Right now I've got Limeworks working on one of their headlight/shock mount bars for me. Once I have that, I'll be able to mock everything up. In the meantime, the guys are slowly bringing the body back to shape. There's not a ton of work on the body left, but when I was hit a couple of the welds on the chop popped and some of the filler cracked, so we'll be taking it all down to bare metal to see exactly what we're working with. I'm excited and anxious to say the least. AND I finally landed a new job so I'll have some funds to play with again too!
And just for fun, here's a pic of my mangled front axle. Now who was it that said cast axles are prone to break upon impact? I talked to ***us about straightening it for me, but we both agreed it was better as a wall hanger now along with my twisted Deuce shell.
With any kind of luck I'll have two A Tudors on the road in the spring. Which one to drive? I'd love to have that problem. Especially now that my office will be 6 miles away from home on 2 lane country roads!
A LONG overdue update on Resurrection. The car is at my dad's body shop. He's been really busy with collision repair and a couple restoration projects. Unfortunately that means that my rebuild gets put on the back burner. Between projects they've managed to get the bodywork complete. The car should be in primer later this week with any kind of luck. (FYI, the date on the pics is wrong!)
Up again just cuz I went to the shop last night and was way excited to see my baby coming back to life again . . .
Glad to hear and see that everything is going to work out ! Looks good so far ! It was a very ugly mess last year but glad to here things are OK ! Keep the pics coming with the progress ! Retro Jim
Glad to see the progress, and glad to know i have the same axle under my Tudor Hope your healing is coming along well.. When did they allow blind people to drive?
About as good as it's going to get. Good days and bad days. On my good days I can do most everything I used to -- except run or kneel -- with mild pain. On bad days it hurts to walk . . . or sit still. Extreme cold and extreme humidity aren't fun. At the end of the day I just keep pushing. I managed to put 7000 (maybe more) miles on my roadster this year . . . somehow the pain doesn't seem to matter behind the wheel of a hot rod. I refuse to let it keep me down . . .
. . . and yet again more wishful thinking. BUT, I do have an update! While ***us and crew were busy thrashing on my other Tudor (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=371150), the body shop was slowly, but surely, working on getting this car straightened out. With the bodywork nearly complete, it was time to throw the body back on the frame for a look at things. While it looked good, there was something that always bugged me about the stance of the car. It just sat too high! So the car was packaged up and sent to ***us for some help. Towaholic once again provided his services as well. After some discussion with ***us, the body came off the frame (again) to get down to the business of making this baby sit right!
First order of business was the front end. While I had just replaced the twisted front spring with a new unit from Pete & Jakes, we determined that the car really needed their "low" dearched spring. To accomodate the spring, Jeff and his dad, RichB, got busy notching the rails at the crossmember. Nicely boxed and finished. New brake line tab welded on as well. The new front spring from Pete & Jakes showed up yesterday, so it will be going in shortly.
While the frame was flipped over to tackle the front crossmember project, a tear in the frame was discovered where the wishbone mounts were. ***us cut the torn rail section out and patched in a new section. Good as new.
Speaking of wishbones and mounts . . . Once the new mounts were welded on, I didn't care for how they looked. And with our new lower stance they wouldn't work anyway, so we cut them off. A new, simpler, set of mounts will be fabbed up. The wishbones themselves were a bit odd as well. Instead of using a set of deep dropped steering arms and running the cross steering set-up underneath the bones, the bones were pie cut and the steering went over the top side of the bones. This made for a set of bones that weren't very visually appealing. Perfectly functional, but we decided to change them up. ***us got to work splitting a set of bones. They will be drilled from front to back to match the drilled axle and sleeved for a cleaner look. You can see the old bones and mounts in these pics: The start of the new bones: Operation swiss-cheese: Layout. Pilot holes drilled:
With the work up front well underway, the rear was next. The rear coilover mounts were welded to the bottom of the rails. This made the rear of the car sit high even with the coilovers all the way bottomed out. To achieve the new lower stance, the mounts were cut off and flipped to the top of the rails. This brought the rear down a good 3-4 inches. You can see the mounts welded to the bottom of the rails here: Ahhh . . . much better! . . . stay tuned . . .
Glad to hear that all went well and hope Adam gets back on his feet asap. Really hate to see any hot rod get trashed out. We put so much TLC in these cars it almost like losing family . God Speed your recovery.
Damn you guys! I read ***us' original post and thought not again! But then I looked at the date, I'm dumb, and glad its Friday. Great progress Bull. Jeff
it appears that the basic construction of pre-fat fendered cars actually absorbs a lot of initial impact. i am annoyed at all the idiots on the road anymore.
You and me both! Been way too long for this car to be out of commission. I won't be able to put it all behind me until the car is makin' tracks again!
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