Technical UPDATE looking for somebody with a lathe and mill to make me a fan spacer adapter for a Flathead 8BA

Haha! The reality based on my recent visit last fall to NY state, is that Americans are paying about almost as much or as much as we are for things these days even when you factor in the exch rate.

 

The Chrome fan was an original GM that was used And is the same blade count and shape And I just wanted to use a new one. That I had in a box just to make sure There was no vibration problems. I paced the radiator Forward a little and I've got a quarter inch of clearance which I think is fine.

 

Yup!

 

As a old school machinist’s it hard to compete with modern technology CNC and water jets, the good thing is manual machining still has its place . Small guys don’t have the huge over head as the big joints so 50 bucks a hour versus 150 or better.
I think it’s cool to have a place like send cut send . The time it would take to make some of the parts manually is minutes in the CNC world. I don’t know how you guys build the amazing things without a Bridgeport or a lathe

 

When I moved from Connecticut to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, about 25 minutes west of Carlisle. I had to look for a new machinist, and a new welding shop to do work for me. I found a welding shop that does good work on farm implements, but not so good on precise things, so I still send my critical parts back to Connecticut for welding. Yes, I pay the shipping costs, but the satisfaction of getting things done correctly is worth the cost of shipping. As for machining, in Connecticut I had several sources, but in Pennsylvania it took a while to find a good "onesy-twosey " shop. I found one about 20minutes from my house. He does GREAT work at a reasonable cost. his shop is his 2 car garage attached to his house, hence, not much overhead cost. If anyone is interested, PM me for his info.

 

Nick not a lot of shops want to help a single project and looking for high production numbers.
I was looking to get a number of parts water jetted and nobody wanted to do it around here with out a huge minimum. I know at the old shop We helped the inventors. model makers and car enthusiast for that reason . I can program a part in a few minutes if simple x y and zip it out. I wish I would have kept a CNC machine but space didn’t allow it. I too now work out of a small fabrication shop by myself. Shoot me a call next time you need something I work for greasy burgers, ice cream and old ford parts..
Funny thing I went to pickup materials yesterday 3 inch CR bead roller and found a 8 foot length of 1 inch hexagon stock . I needed to make a fuel log for the model A . I just need 4 inches but have 8 feet and didn’t want to buy a Chinese one so got enough for my lifetime lol

 

My neighbor across the back alley comes from a family of machinists but even he can't get his brother to make things within a reasonable time frame so he gets one off parts made in China.