Projects Modified Lakester Build (THUNDERCASKET)

That is a nice hood! I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns our. You've made more progress than I have.

 

Loving the "beak" Gary

 

Thanks. Yeah, that's a somewhat temporary condition though. Once I get the hood pie cut down the center, trimmed, and tacked together to where it fits and I like it, I'm going to move on to fabricating the grille shell area out of sheet using my shrinker and my aircraft punches like I used on my seats. I'm going for something like a Chrisman Roadster type nose but punched and sharper, more like the Bill Niekamp 27 Roadster.

 

Rats... I was mentally sketching in the grille as 37 Ford-ish. Gary

 

I had actually considered doing that at one point, but I think it might add a bit too much heft to the shape and end up being a bit more complex of a project to get it to flow right for me on this car. Using the hood to provide a contour to follow just one arc is a lot less to chew than trying to get all that's going on in a 37 grille to fit what I've built. I also thought the 37 nose would be a bit too weighty and beefy looking on the T ultimately.

There's a 30/31 Sport Coupe out there that has a 37 nose on it. No idea whose it is though.

 

I've always liked the Chrisman coupe. I think they used two '40 Ford hoods. It would look good with a LaSale style grill insert.

 

Yeah, pretty sure it was made with a couple 40 hoods. I looked for one but winter is about here and I knew where this Hudson hood was so I went and got it. I also think a LaSalle nose would be nice but that's another part I never came across.

But really, I always wanted to try to fabricate the nose on this anyway, and all I need to do it is some sheet metal instead of tracking down more old parts. The Hudson hood gives me a shape to form to and cuts out a lot of time trying to form the nose cap.

I've just gotta get this thing cut correctly and tacked back together now. I've concluded I need to lift the body up flush with the frame from the 3/4" channel it's sitting at currently so my hood will sit flat to angled down-ish a degree or so.

I've also gotta get my radiator support setup finished and decide how I'm going to support the front of the hood. The radiator cap may require a relief hole and I know the carbs will too since the engine sits a bit high and I'm planning for some 1" carb spacers and/or stacks.

 

Sounds great. I'll be watching for your up dates.

 

So, I cut the hood up over the long weekend. I think I borked the nose up some, but I'm working on a fix to get the sides aligned up front just right. I'm going to have to draw a grid on both sides and use my contour gauge.

I also bought an English Wheel after wearing myself out hammering on the first of the bullet dents. I went and got the HF unit because I could have it RIGHT NOW and had a coupon.

It did in about 20 minutes what would have taken hours if not days of hammering by hand. I've got all the bullet holes and dents handled and have started re-contouring the way it sits against the firewall.

It looks worse than it is.

 

Not a lot of shop time or progress this weekend for reasons.

But I did decide to tack it together to figure out where I stand. I seem to have stretched the metal a bit on the side that had all the bullet holes and dents. I've got some high spots that i'm trying to figure out how I want to handle. I hit it with a torch and a wet rag once but I'm not sure how effective it was.

The nose looks OK though.

 

The problem is the dents and bullet holes were stretched to begin with. Running it through the wheel further stretched it. Next time you can shrink just the dent areas and then bump them back into shape.

For now you can strategically place heat shrinks and rapid cools like you said... But I prefer a shrinking disc. Order one on ebay or take a drive to charlton and buy one from Wray Schelin directly.

 

Yeah, I didn't use a lot of compression on the wheel, but you are correct, I did stretch the material and make my own mess.

I've seen shrinking wheels but I don't know much about using them. I'll watch some YouTube videos today though. Thanks for the tip!

 

you didnt necessarly create your own mess... dents by nature are stretch. Compression on the wheel or not, dents are adding area to the panel. they will need to be shrunk at some point...

 

Thanks! I did get a little excited with the wheel since I hadn't had access to one in years. I at least hammered the worst one on the nose in almost completely using the hammer off dolly technique. But that's actually what wore me out enough to say tohellwithit and go buy that wheel.

Honestly, the wheel did do a lot of work that needed doing quite quickly. I just seem to have traded off a little more stretching of the metal than I had anticipated.

I'm going to try to use my HF stud welder to make hot spots to shrink next. I've seen some videos of guys using them with success. The MAPP torch seems to work but it heats a large area. It will be a continued learning experience if nothing else.

I have already looked at the big sheet of 20ga I've got on hand as a go to if I need to cut the top out entirely, which I'd prefer to avoid.

 

Took a long break and spent all last week on the car. I got the hood to stop oil-canning. It still needs some smoothing, but it's close enough to work with now.

So then it was on to the nose! Which is probably what everyone is most anxious to see, myself included. So I made a template to grab the curves first but then discovered that I needed to put a floor in and get the body up another 3/4" to chase out the bucktooth slope in the hood. So I cut one out of plywood and spent a whole day fighting with it to get it under the body, tucked up into my subframe, and bolted down.



THAT didn't do it, so it was time to re-assess the radiator placement. With some advice from Paul Gangi, my neighbor, I decided to put it in at a mild angle and bring it forward and down. I did it by putting a 1" spreader up front and tacking a piece of angle in to start the radiator support and built up from there.




I even played around with these 41 marker lights a little.

 

Oh, and I'm going to actually roll this thing out into the driveway soon, weather permitting, and get an idea what it actually looks like. It's hard even for me to see it in my tight little shop but it's starting to look like SOMETHING (just not something I've seen before for sure).

 

I know the odds of finding one is slim, but do you think a 38ish grille could work? Maybe even a 40/41?

 

I had a 40 but I sold it. A 37 MIGHT work but I'm really better off fabricating the nose myself to get exactly what I'm going for. The car has a heavy rake, remember.

Also, $700+ for a real nice 37 nose that I'd cut vs. $40 for some 20ga!

I need to find the good, thick craft paper to make templates now. the stuff they sell at the arts & crafts stores is crap (too small and too thin). I need to go to an art supply store I guess. When I was a kid, you could get the good posterboard at the grocery store.

 

That is looking very nice. Thanks for the detailed explanation and pictures.

 

Surely! As far as process and precision though, it's mostly a tape measure, sharpie, and an eyeball at this stage.

I used 1.5" x 1/8" strap for the radiator support and the top I just bent around the radiator by hand, somehow dead centering it. THen I marked the sides with the hood down after welding it in, measured for consistency, and bent the tabs up at the correct angle and height. They'll get lopped off eventually, but they give me a level plane to work off of and likely put isolators on to help control the hood once it's tied down.



I'm going to do some work with rod stock to further reinforce it. Then run some flat stock out off the bottom of the chin forward to start building out the lower grille support.

 

I stole these from another thread. The noses made me think of your build

.

 

NICE!

I like the first one A LOT! My neighbor suggested the possibility of building one out with rod as an alternative to doing it all in sheet with aircraft punches, but that's the plan I'm sticking with for now. If it doesn't do it for me, this kind of thing will be plan B.

And it THAT fails, I may lop off part of the hood and blend in a 59 Edsel grille shell.

 

Well, I burnt up my last tip on my welder and only got 4 hours in the shop this weekend, but I made some progress on the nose structure. I've got 2 pieces on there that I can start building the shape structure off of now.

I had just gotten into stiffening it up with rod stock (not pictured) when I burned by tip up. If I had some nozzle gel I could have gotten back into it, but I went to Salem for a burger and beers with a friend instead because it was really sunny out and I was mad at it anyway.

 

I'm going to break this update into 2 posts here, because it's really two things, so, here's the rest of the radiator and hood support all braced up:

 

So, with that out of the way, I actually rolled the Thundercasket out of the shop and into the light on Saturday since it was a perfect day for it.

Now we can all see what I've built here. It's impossible to really see it in my little shop; I've been worried I was building a wonky black banana in there all this time but now I'm very happy with where this is going.

HERE IT IS!:










I actually cleaned some of the shop too while I was at it!

 

Its BELCOM time. Relax and enjoy the progress, but looks long and a little goofy with the long nose and no chin.
I'm looking forward to the underpart, I thing it will balance it out nicely.

 

It's difficult to see in the pictures for sure.

I have a template made, but it wouldn't fit in there with the structure in place without cutting on it, which I did not want to do Saturday (and cleaned the bay out with the time instead).

 

Black bananas make the best ice cream. It is looking good and you have a good eye. Any issues you see you'll fix. It is great to see it outside in the space where it will live. It is going to look fast.

 

THANKS!

Yeah, I've made liberal use of the cutoff wheel already on this build. I'm sure I should probably get another stack because I may need them before I'm through!

I gotta get the center nose support dialed in a little better. To do that I'm going to need to get the template in use and get some curves shrunk for the perimeter. Then I'll have something to attach the template paper to and we'll be able to see where I'm going for real then.

At some point I'll fill the center panels up I promise I've got the panels made already.

 

Here, I made a quick trace in Illustrator to get a better idea of what I've got: