Projects Modified Lakester Build (THUNDERCASKET)

I'd be getting that engine sitting level, if that is the intake & carbs you want to use. Or do you have the tranny sitting low so you have clearances to work on the body & subrails?

 

Yeah, I'm still working on getting the engine and trans position sorted out. The trans was in the way until I cut the front cross I had in the subframe. It is in a GENERAL location at present which I'm not entirely satisfied with. I have the trans propped up with a jack underneath it and the engine is sitting on spacers but my TT is still around 0° so I've got some work to do. This may mean I switch to the weld-in frame adapters that I got from RJays a while back to gain a half inch and relocate the block a bit up and forward/rearward.

BUT I have had to wait on doing all that until I had the body a bit more together, otherwise I wouldn't be able to move it around without resetting it every time. I'll probably get the whole body blocked out and then work on installing the F1 center and work forward from there. I've completely forgotten where the engine is sitting at this point and it's settled on the rubber biscuits at this point anyway.

 

Got a little work in after the food coma. I got the F1 crossmember roughed in as best I could. I'm still waiting on the transmission support and I forgot to get bolts for the clamshell, so I could only go so far.

I found that cutting 3" in on each side measured from the top edge put me just about where I think I gotta be, so I used the last remaining life saver sized cutoff wheels I had cutting that out. I have since made a trip to the store for fresh wheels.



It looks like my frame rails are bowing out under the weight of the engine, so I picked up a 48" clamp while I was out. I had removed the center crossmember some time ago. I'll run bracing or leave it in the next time I do one of these.

 

I will be blending the bottom up to the rail, BTW, before anyone asks. Just roughing in at this point. I'm hoping the MC placement can stay; I've seen it left there on an AV8 build before though that wasn't with a T cowl on top.

 

Hey boss, did you end up needing a non model a clamshell? I tried to line up the holes on my A clamshell to the 38 trans and the bolt size on the clamshell was much smaller- it don't help you cant take the bolts out of the transmission side neither...

 

My 39 came with its correct clam. I don't have a spare but I will keep an eye out.

 

Spoke a little too soon on the clamshell (48-4520). One half of it seems to have been crushed and won't line up. I tried bending it back into position, but I do not have confidence that will yield a usable part. I got it most of the way there before I plum ran out of steam this weekend.

I did get the trans mount on the crossmember at least. Not really sure what order these should be assembled in as far as accessing the bolt heads/nuts though.

 

SO, my clamshell turned out to be damaged and I was not able to repair it. I found a guy that had one, but it doesn't have the grease fitting. SO, at best, I can at least mock up, right? WRONG, the nut and washers for one side of the bolt kit went missing. SO, I ended up spending an hour searching the Home Despot hardware aisle and coming up with a single grade 5 FN thread nut. Alternately I can use a coarse grade 8 I suppose but the important part is it ate up my time and I didn't end up getting anything done on the car.

I'm in the mad dash before the snow time of the year now and I'm having to focus on getting my property squared away and improving the situation in my shop as far as workability in the winter. SO, heating the shop has been what I've been working on instead of my build lately. I'm building apassive solar air heater out of some fresh lumber, insulation and some old screen and windows. I don't expect it to do much more than take the edge off on sunny days but with my only other option being electric units lacking the BTU output to heat a space that big, every little bit helps.

 

looks like your making some good progress, keep it up!!

 

Thanks! Good to see you back on the HAMB Millrat.

I'm traveling home and looking to get the crossmember and mount situation sorted this week with any luck.

I left things pretty close before I flew out for Christmas. I have the clam shell on the trans n tube now. Gotta straighten things out and tightened back up.

 

Life keeps getting in the way of Hot Rods. All is good though, maybe see you in Candia this year. My 32 is in Hopkinton NH. I spend the summers up there (High School Teacher)

 

Time to start planning!!!

Pat, you're chugging right along; isn't it fun trying to get all the hot rod parts working in unison?
Looks good though- you and Mr. Ben are doing great!

 

How's progress on the build coming along?

 

Got back Monday night and haven't turned a wrench yet. Had to replace my kitchen faucet, which ate up 2 days because that's how those things go for me (should have taken about an hour). I spent today cleaning and organizing the shop though. I'll need a day or so more of that. Transmission is mated to the tube now so I am closer to progress once I get back on it.

 

Got into the shop the past couple weekends. Did some things.

• The solar heater seems to be taking the edge off the cold just enough to have kept it from freezing in there so I'm happy with that and may make another one.
• I actually started cleaning. I got some more of those black and yellow bins and put my flathead parts in them, stacked 3 high on a dolly. I also got a little Rubbermaid bin set on a dolly and put my cutoffs in that instead of ALL OVER THE EFFING FLOOR, so I've got room to work again.
• After that, I ACTUALLY WORKED ON THE CAR!

I got the calmshell on there and bolted to the F1 Crossmember. I'm still going to need another top clamshell; the one I ended up with is a bottom without the zerk.

BUT I got it on there and got things sorta straightened out enough to start seeing what's happening. I took it as an oppurtunity to see what's NOT going to work... The F1 pedals will have to move inward and I apparently need a F1 Clutch pedal, as the one I bought on ePay months ago was actually for a passenger car and won't work. I figured this out only after disassembling the bracket so that took an hour to get back together...

The shifter went back on and seems to clear. I'll fool with that after I sort the pedal and steering situations.



After piddling around with that stuff and dropping the body back down without grievous injury, I took to cutting on some foam-core and playing with the radiator location using some bungees and a block of wood as a spacer.



It seems like I'm sitting lower than the firewall but with the rake of the car, I'm having a little trouble seeing. BUT this is just a place to start. I can raise the body some and/or lower the radiator by dropping it in front of the crossmember (which is far more complicated than raising the body).

 

https://m.facebook.com/doug.trudel/...093004541&cached_data=false&ftid=u_3k_f&mdf=1

 

Hey, ahhhhhmmmm, Pat, whats the deal with those front wheels? The rubber any good? they would look pissah on the back of my roadster.

 

I am intent on keeping those front snow tires because they are full on beast mode for this car and still look good. they are 29" and I'm running 32's out back. If I decide I need to step down in sizes, I may consider parting with them but my wife wouldn't be happy about it since she loves them too. Those are spats, not actual whitewalls btw.

@bct I can't view that link.

 

cool man

 

Got sidetracked by a flat tire on my little tractor this weekend. I had to re seat the bead on the wheel and I did the starter fluid/torch/explosion method. I was pretty pleased with myself but I'll be glad to not do it again any time soon; there's only so much tempting fate I like to do and the novelty's worn off that one now.

I did manage to start trying to work on my engine leveling, @oj , I found that with the trans crossmember installed like it is, sitting 1/8" higher than the rail on tabs, that I'm definitely sitting tilted front. If I wasn't running the frame raked I might be OK but, I'm not. My angle finder shat its magnet out so all I've got is my bubble level.

I dug out the original stock intake because pulling one carb is easier than three. That also told me I've got a Fan problem - the one on there doesn't line up with the pulleys on the pumps and it interferes with the radiator as it sits. It suddenly dawned on me that I don't know anything about fans on flatheads. What are my options?

Anyway, I'm thinking I'm going to raise the front of the engine rather than lower the trans mount any. It's arguably the easier option and I have enough trouble getting the torque tube to sit with an angle with the 32" tires and the rake of the whole car being what it is. I did not have 2x2x1/8" box tube handy so I didn't end up making new spacers.

This has me pondering my options.
Should I put different mounts in, flush with the rail or higher?
If so or regardless, I'm considering pulling the boxing channel plates and cutting my own basic plates or just buying some from Wolfe.
Is the rake too much and is it worthwhile to cut the tacks out back and add a spacer to increase the kick-up?

 

Looks like the "bullet" is a wee bit high in the front, Pat. Most mounts are flush w/ upper frame rail and then 1 in. rubber sandwiched between motor and mounts

 

Ye, pat, as I see it, you have more than enough tt angle. At the end of the day, you are going to go somewhere and park on a hill. They knew that when designing the car, so any angle better than flat is enough I believe. Same with engine.

I ain't a pro as you know, but that is how I look at it. It ain't going to stop running when you go up or down a hill.

BTW, I want to see some mock up hood with paper. Would be cool to just kinda see it...

 

I'm going to put 3/4" spacers under the body and try again. the fan situation is a problem though. I need to find out what my options are.

 

Just scored a set of 41 signal lights. I'm thinking I can mount them to the sides of the hood/nose; they look like they have just the right curve to them. I can see it in my head but we shall see if that works. I cracked a tooth this morning so I needed some old Ford junk retail therapy.

 

SO, FANS... I'm still trying to figure out what my options are.

I looked into Fles-a-Lite fans. I do not know if they can be mounted to a Ford pulley or not yet (I'm still totally ignorant on the subject, HELP!) but there are some options to start with at least.

My radiator is only 12" wide, so I'm assuming I don't want a fan that's any much wider. I found a few candidates so we can at least maybe argue about how traditional they are

There's a 14 inch Nylon fan:

and a 12-inch Flex Fan:

Which caught my eye.

 

Put in a hefty amount of shop time this weekend.

I picked up some 1x4's so I could put 3/4" spacers under the subframe (because wood is strange and 1x4" really means 3/4"x3-1/2"). That was mostly uneventful thankfully. I also cut up a piece of 3/4" plywood and got that laid in for at least a partial floor so I have something to sit on and mock up seats to. This is a major improvement for working inside the body.



I pulled the F1 pedal bracket and disassembled it along with the other one I bought just for the clutch pedal. I had to cut off a secondary arm someone had welded onto it at some point (I can only assume for a trans swap). Got that cleaned up and assembled; going to need new bushings. Got that mounted back up and I think I'll need to shorten and maybe bend the pedal arms. They seem to want to arc out past the firewall and the brake wants to knock into the bellhousing, which confounds me a bit. I guess I may be overestimating the range of travel.



I moved my focus to the radiator after that. I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere just trying to PLAN what I was going to do so I actually DID SOMETHING. So I went through my steel and after some fiddling with a level, settled on a piece of tubing and a piece of angle out front of the crossmember. This seems to set the radiator where it wants to be.




The stock 16" fan on the 8BA ALMOST clears and might indeed clear if it's dropped down a couple inches. It's set as high as it can go on the bracket currently. I'm not sure the 16" fan on the 12" radiator is gonna work out or not yet but it's close.



I decided on making a mount that will hold the radiator rather than soldering bracketry to the radiator itself. This seems to be how the radiator was designed to be used as it has no evidence of any tabs on it. I've got the side brackets bent up and mounted. No, the bungee cord is not permanent. I'm thinking some kind of strap & latch for the top and a band around the bottom with a sheet of cork to isolate it from the steel tubing a bit.

Once I was happy with where that was for the day, I pushed on and started on the rear of the body. I discovered that a machine screw through the bottom top hinge mount hole lines up very close to perfectly with the top hole for the latch striker plate hold on the rear quarter of the T touring, almost as if Henry designed it to be so. Furthermore, I discovered that, Once I removed the back panel from the front half of the car, the top mounting holes for that panel seem to line up nicely with holes in the back of the structure of the rear quarters. This put the back of the cab about where I think I've always wanted it. I tossed my roll bar back in there and called it a day.

 

Puttered around the shop for an hour after work. I think I have to switch directions on steering. I don't think I like where the GM box seems to want to sit.

I've got a couple 40 cross steering boxes and I had the presence of mind not to cut on my pass side arm yet. Now I need to figure out where it needs to sit as far as angle and distance in relation to the axle.

 

Ok, to expand on the post I made from the can last night on my phone, here are the rest of the pictures from the evening's dicking around.

Here's the GM box set up to the firewall. It clears between the pedals and MIGHT work but it's pretty tight and a bit dubious. What do y'all think?


Would totally work if I wanted to sit on the back of the seats...


Seats are still too big too.

The E-Brake looks like I can probably make it work however.






Then I tried one of the 40 or 41 boxes I had out back. I still need to know where it needs to be located along the rail. I know I'm pretty far back still.

 

Got a fair bit of work done this weekend, primarily on the F1 crossmember. I scored a master cylinder adapter plate and a later MC off epay cheep. Long story short, I need 3 longer fasteners because the kit was for a different bracket presumably, but I got the crossmember cut and the cylinder mocked into place. I also put a tab on there to catch the upper right hole on the F1 bracket and decided that I like my general E-Brake handle and location.

...it was more fun than it looks. Yes, I hit my head.

...The subframe crossmember interferes with easy access to the MC unfortunately.

I also determined that cutting down the original rear panel would work out fine as far as closing off the tub. I'm not sure there's much if any difference in the width back there by moving up the width of the doors and if there is, It still seems to work. At least I've got a complete tub to work with rather than floppy panels now.

 

I did some playing around with tape on the "roof" too. Whether or not it ever gets a top, I think it's an important tool for visualizing what needs to happen as far as the windshield.



So, I've got these big 4" x 4' 3" flange mufflers. I didn't think they'd be an option on this build until the other day, looking at where the body seems to be going, I decided to give them a try and trudge through the snow to the shed to fetch one. The more I look at them, the more I think I'm going to give them a shot. The hangers will need to be... robust...


Currently, this configuration where the muffler flange mounts directly to the header rather than a dump tube is my favorite (and Wife approved as well).


I also played around with the nose and hood some more. I have discovered that my carbs will need to have a cowl, scoop, or cutout in the hood. I dropped my 59 Edsel shell on there just for kicks.