Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

Chip, I think that's the first full profile I've seen of you RPU. That thing is killer!
BF, sorry for your loss, we lost our daxie 2 years ago, remarkable how the smallest creature in the room was ALWAYS the biggest personality.

 

Condolences BF, there is always a great gap in your life when a loved pet passes.

 

Well, I just ordered 4 - 5/8" Heim retaining washers for the 4 heim ends I am using on the frame end mounts of my front and rear wishbones. Better safe than sorry
BF, sorry to hear of Daisy's passing, but she is not suffering now and you will always remember her.
We have 2 little Miniature Dachshunds Oscar and Jasper and we love them a lot.
Weiner dogs are awesome pets and so much fun.
Larry

 

Hi BF.Sorry to hear of your loss.Have lost many pets over the years.Don`t make things any easier.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

BF Sorry for the loss. I feel your pain.

 

BF, same from me, they are true family members. JW

 

Blownfuel, sorry for your loss. My dogs are family too.

 

Thank you! I have to get back to my truck one of these days. It has one awkward angle that I just haven't been able to work my way around quite yet, but when stuff clams down a bit I'll take another stab at it, then it'll be game on! I've got a TON of work into to this point though...

 

Blownfuel---Our two dogs are the light of our lives....Hang in there-- I`m glad you had Daisy in your life for such a long time. I think they do more for us than we do for them.. Chip--you have to try to do only one car at a time. I work on enough projects concurrently for customers without getting all wound up on my own fleet. I have three starts, but am going to finish the one mentioned on this thread.....



Boy--that Roadster Pickup is cool, though.....

 

Thing that's killing me Kiwi, is that I have three in my fleet that would be finished, drivable cars with about 2 months of work each... Trying to find that 2 months for each is the problem! I have a hard time just concentrating on one car after concentrating on one customer's car all day. My brain wants to go 200mph and get on to the next thing, even if it's just to see what it'll look like!

 

Hey John, didn't see this until now. The touring body belongs to my perennial customer and buddy Roy, and no it's not for sale. You can't see it in the rat tangle mess of my shop area, but I have his chassis just about done for a full fendered car that is loosely based on Norm Grabowski's from the late fifties.

 

Chip, thanks for the reply. I dream of building one like you describe your friend is building....John

 

BF, sorry for your loss - for many, and I'm one of them, pets ARE family and can never be replaced. I'm glad you got to spend so many years with her in your life.

Chip, front pan looks great!

Steve

 

Chip......Or Anyone!! Are any of you there?....

 

Yup! Just busy. I have some breaking news tonight though...

 

I was thinkin the same thing. I've been working on the Poncho at left, so pretty f'n far from a T bucket...

 

I'm here but the roadster is put away until it quits raining and it warms up a bit.

Where are the photo's you promised us Tinbender?

 

Chip, is it nite time over there yet? JW

 

Ya, just stumbled in the door, boiled three hot dogs and made a Gin And Tonic. The world can now continue....

Well I said I have breaking news, just not HUGE breaking news! I bought all of my upholstery stuff today! That means in the next couple of days, I'll be doing fun things like making the Masonite inner liner fit better and gluing carpet padding and vinyl to the backing. Judy has been much nicer lately, so I webbed the passenger side of the seat, too. Although, I'm sure the time line on this will be pretty quick, as the fabric and padding and such is sitting on the dining room table, and she is already bitching about that a bit...

 

Oh, I guess I can kinda see what she is a bit upset with... Fresh painted Honda fender, Upholstery stuff and dog jackets. Probably not every woman's dream dining room experience.

The fabric is "Really White" from a company called Merit. Cost 9.95 a yard at my fabric wholesaler, and I got four yards. They had another product I'm going to be purchasing this next week, a rubber floor matting that has ribs running along it's length and is 48" wide. 2' of this and I'll have my whole floor matted. It will be held in the corners with snaps so that if things get wet it can be easily removed to dry.

 

Boy, Chip----You are taking your life in your hands with all that stuff on the dining table. I`m lucky if I can maintain a small pile of Magazines on the Coffee table! As for pics, Gary, I`M NOT ANYWHERE NEAR READY YET!! I have to start on the Suspension end of things this week. Gary--looks like a T spring on the rear for you. I have a 9 leaf A spring I think I will use. Not plated though, so I won`t have that `relaxed via plating` ride. Need a better front main leaf, some new shackles, perches, U bolts--you know the drill. I have some pieces in stock, Axle, spindles, brakes and so on, but I`m still gathering parts. May order a perch and U bolts from Speedway......have to call a few local contacts to see what I can beg..........Did I mention I am doing this on the (ultra) cheap?

 

Chip glad to hear/see you are forging ahead on the not as UGLY T. I was wondering how long it would take to to web the passenger side of the seat. That natural color will look great against any orange paint.
And Timbender YOU DON'T HAVE TO YELL AT ME!! Just kidding. It is a lot harder to build a vintage rod as you can't just buy all of the parts from a catalog. That's one reason it took me ten years to finish mine. That and I can be a LAZY FUCK! A lot of my chrome is old swap finds. The rear T spring is just one of them. $20. If you look close to it, and a lot of the other chrome on my roadster it is flawed. All four 97s are old chrome swap finds as the nicks on top will attest to. I keep waiting for one of them to flood over but to date none have. My roadster also started out to be and really still is a cheap build. The beehive oil filter was payment for some welding I did on a friends 29 A roadster. Don't know about chrome relaxing a spring. Mine isn't relaxed at all, although with a 200 + lb person next to me it does move a little and yes I can tell the difference in ride with a passenger.

Gary

 

You like living dangerously don't you Chip Wonder how long Judy will put up with that stuff on the table before she starts using guerilla tactics to get rid of it

 

And I'm back....First I want to thank all of you for the heartfelt condolences! It's gonna be a while before things get back to normal around here. I thought I saw her lying in here usual spot I the hall this morning on the way to the bathroom, but it was her son. Weird, he's almost never out of bed that early in morning, and he doesn't look anything like her! Funny how the mind can see something that isn't there. I had to stop and take a double take aft.er I processed what my mind "thought" it had just seen! Anyway, back to the T stuff! I made it back down to the shop Wed. night and took a better look at the radiator. The bracket is actually the outer side of the entire radiator. The mount is connected to it, so it's pretty important. That being said, it REALLY looks like it was epoxied into place rather than soldered. This first pic is if the damaged left side

 

This is the right side that's coming loose

 

and this is the epoxy looking stuff that was holding it on ( it looks gray like solder in the pic, but that's just the light, it's much darker gray almost black in person, and it has little air bubbles and sharp edges on it that look a lot more like epoxy than solder).

 

Gary...I hear you. I have a couple of calls to make today. I helped build a T in New Zealand about 30 years ago that had a Y Block and ran a VW bus Steering box. I put one in my Model A when I built it here about 10 years ago, and I think I know where one can be had. I want to be driving this car next summer though, so the long term isn`t going to be as long as your build. Blownfuel....That Radiator is REALLY ugly. I would jerk that out and get it fixed right now. I bet if you cleaned it up really well, you could solder it back together yourself.....Like most of the Automotive Trades, Radiator Shops don`t seem to be as proficient, careful and reasonably priced as they used to be...

 

That looks bad. At the risk of stating the obvious, the rad will have to be removed and fixed properly.
Of course if it was soldered it was poorly done.
If it was epoxied then all that needs to be removed and a nice clean surface prepared to make the fix.

My repair to that would involve removing everything and cleaning to spotless, then I would silver braze the brackets on rather than ordinary solder or anything else for that matter.
That would be a permanent fix.

 

I also pulled the pan, oil pump, and rear main cap to see if I could see anything wrong that would account for the loss of oil pressure. The results were inconclusive. The rear main bearing looked pretty darn good, but when I pulled the cap, the anti drain back check valve assembly fell out on the floor in pieces. It definitely isn't supposed to do that! It's supposed to be a tight (almost pressed) fit to securely hold it in place, and the check ball is supposed to be encapsulated in the cage. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be spring loaded as well. I might have found my culprit. If this valve moves up a little to far in the passage, it starts to block off the return from the oil filter, and thats just where the oil supply frown the pump is going to push it. I ordered one of the replacement assemblies your supposed to run when you convert to a remote filter, but further reading and talking to a couple of people WAY more knowledgeable on early hemi's than me say to just knock a suitably sized plug in it, being careful to ensure it stops right between the two oil filter feed holes. Think I'm just gonna go that route.

 

Hmmm.....the Hamb app is being difficult again