Ulu

I got that cross frame all finished up and painted and put it away to cure while I work on the bumper brackets. I figured out why I could never get the front bumper to look really straight with the fenders. One of the front bumper brackets was put in the brake crooked, and it doesn’t match the other one at all. These things are 1/8” steel plate, and I am not going to bend them easily nor will I be able to heat up the bend and hammer it into the correct orientation, so I cut the offending flange nearly loose and bent it into the correct orientation so I could weld it.

This is the frame which under-girdles the floorboards and connects them to the running boards, fender tips, seatbelts, and seat frame risers. I decided I should weld up all the unnecessary holes in this thing before I weld it up under the chassis. At least a dozen holes got relocated and there were about 30 holes in this that needed welding. There are a lot of corresponding holes in the floor boards that need to be welded up as well. I did this, again, by first clamping an aluminum chiller block underneath the work and then flipping it over to weld the backside. I find it if I leave the aluminum chiller on until the weld cools considerably, I don’t have any corrosion problem on the back of the weld, and they come out clean. I got about 3/4 through before I ran out of Argon and had to head for the welding shop. I will finish this up tomorrow and sand it and put some paint on it. Then I will put it away until it’s time to fit it on the chassis.

After many side projects and other delays I finally did finish cleaning up the suspension on the back of the Volkswagen. I degreased it and acid etched it and flipped it over so I could paint both sides. I painted everything that I had stripped to bare metal but I did not paint anything that I need to weld on yet. When this is dry I will cover it all up so the welding can continue.

I have been spending some time on little projects for my wife, but I did get the rest of the burnishing done on that suspension. At least that which I can get to with power tools. I am down to the little corners that you can only get with a little scraper. There’s a few more hours of that before I can degrease and paint, but it’s looking pretty good.

This is going to be at least its third assembly. ? Maybe more, because there’s 30 years of its history I don’t know about. Anyhow, it’s like any other custom car. Once you get it all together and running, you will decide you need to change something. In this case half the frame, LOL Who knows, maybe the whole frame. I’m not close to done yet.

I’m slowly cleaning all the corners in the rear suspension. This flame-cut block is the outer spindle bearing block. It’s MIG welded to the stamped suspension arm and there’s about 30 dingleberries remaining, even after stiff mechanized burnishing. I have been knocking dozens of these dingles off the chassis wherever I find them, because they prevent me from doing a good cleaning job, and just look messy. After knocking off most of the dingles with a small hammer and a nailset, it looks cleaner. I started out with a cold chisel, but that leaves marks, and isn’t necessary 99% of the time. It’s nearly ready, but I still need more solvent to degrease it all.

Curt, I feel sorry for some of those guys struggling with the unknown. I was lucky because when I was little my dad gave me his 1957 Motor’s manual which covered all the ‘40s cars. It was a big deal when I bought the P 15.

What a long and twisted tail this has been! I’m surprised you have kept at it. 99% of people never could. Except for my motorcycle, I have never owned a vehicle with rear disc brakes. I have worked on such for friends of mine, and found them troublesome and unnecessary.

The gauge in my 47 Plymouth always worked OK, when I was getting a good charge from the generator. When I was not, it would seem like I was low on gas. If I looked at my gas gauge while I was sitting at a traffic light idling it was likely to read low after a minute and then after driving for a few minutes it would be normal again. The bottom line is I never trusted it, and I always carried an extra gallon of gas in the trunk.

After two days with too much wind and humidity, it finally dried up and calmed down today, and I got my transmission painted. I had to do the last little bit of cleanup on the bench and then I put it on the hoist. I washed the whole thing down with acetone, and blew it off. There it is with several coats of self etching black paint.

Plymouthy, the most wonderful thing about this project is that I don’t have a deadline for it to be finished. I have other projects waiting, but if this one takes the rest of my life it’s not a problem. I have run out of photo space again, so until I delete some old photos all you get is the fuzzy little stuff.

Still no paint except for a few small parts involved in the transmission mounts. I’ve been scrubbing on the transaxle itself for about three days. It’s starting to look pretty good.

Thank God it’s not as ugly as the Bedford or the Powell. Does this have the engine crank that also runs the Jack up and down?

With these sturdy shock absorber supports, each suspension arm is practically its own jackstand. I also made a steel “horse” to support the nose. I did not want it just hanging from a chain. Essentially it’s standing on nine legs, plus I still have the chain on for safety.

We got swatted by hurricane Hillary four times in three days but everything is dry now and I am back on the case. I’m glad I fogged down all that shiny metal with oil, because the spots that I missed started to develop surface rust. Any rusty spots that I did not fog are now slightly rustier. Maybe I will be able to get some paint on this by next week.

Hurricane Hillary has hit Clovis, shutting down all progress for the immediate future. Normally in mid to late August we expect day after day of 100° temperatures. but the rain started with a cloud burst yesterday afternoon, continued on and off during the night, and started pouring about 5 AM. Fortunately I had not bothered to degrease anything as I wire brushed the chassis, and so nothing rusted from the humidity. But when this started up I went out there and covered every bit of shiny steel with a fog of anticorrosion oil. I have a jug of swimming pool cleaner, which is a heavy detergent mixed with water and phosphoric acid. When I decide it’s time to paint, I will hit it with that first, degreasing and converting all the rust. Right before I paint it I will degrease with gumout, then acetone. Finally I’m going to use a rust converting black paint on the bottom. I expect to do quite a bit of welding before any of that happens. Although it may currently be too wet to paint, I’m pretty sure I can TIG weld in this humidity without electrocuting myself. But I actually have quite a bit of grinding to do before that can start, plus I have to buy some more metal. I am not satisfied with my current collection.

I owned a 1961 International Harvester pick up truck, and it warms my heart to know that there was an uglier pick up truck built on this planet. Sorry but I wasn’t into photography back then, so no pictures of my Rusty pick up truck.

I got the transmission cleaned up pretty good so it was time to take it out of the chassis To finish cleaning and repaint. I built this rollover trunnion for the back end of the car. This was just built from random junk including an old trailer hitch & a piece of a tractor clutch. The front end I just suspended with a chain from the engine hoist as I rolled it. This is going to save me a lot of work not having to work overhead. Here it is inverted. It seems like this day has been a long time coming!

If you look at the $$,$$$,$$$ losses due to the recent fire aboard the car freighter Fremantle Highway, You can be sure that insurance and transportation costs will increase as well. Because one lithium car fire could not be extinguished, about 3500 cars and the entire ship will need to be scrapped. They’re towing it to a special shipyard for disposal of toxic and contaminated salvage. In addition, the ship burned for over five days on the North Sea, sending clouds of toxic pollution into the atmosphere. Insurers, and thus Electric car buyers, are going to be picking up the cost of this pollution in the future. Instead of getting more affordable, electric vehicles will be increasingly more expensive, as people figure out the true cost of their life cycle.

Temperatures have moderated from the 110°F range down to about 100°F. It only gets that hot for a time, and it hasn’t been as long as in previous years so the concrete is not staying as hot. I twisted my knee so I’ve been cramping around quite a bit but I still managed to get some more cleaning done on the car. The rear suspension is getting much cleaner and I have started cleaning up the transmission housing. I burnished the rear brake drums, then I burnished the clutch cable bracket & lug bolts and painted them. I had hoped to have this whole business painted last week but there were too many interruptions and on-the-job injuries. I picked up a few new wire brushes yesterday and today the burnishing continues. This collection is getting well used. I would’ve taken the rear suspension arms completely off for this business, and had them sandblasted, if they were not almost impossible to remove. You cannot get an air impact wrench in the necessary place to remove the pivot. That must be done with a 17 mm hex driver and a long breaker bar. If they are rusty internally, the only thing you can do is disassemble all the rubber parts from that area of the car and hit it with a torch. There is no access to drill those bolts out. Fortunately the pivot arm rubbers are low mileage and still in great condition.

I have been back to work on the Volkswagen chassis every day, and I have been stripping off all the dirt, grease, and old paint that’s on top of all the grease and dirt. There is more than I hoped for. I am trying hard to get the weird chassis and suspension ready for paint, but I am only 3/4 there. I took a couple breaks from this to do welding on my security doors and other household things. Also temperatures have been above 100° every afternoon so I am only outdoors until about 1 PM. Which is what it is now. See you soon.

I was just looking at my old books and I found the Andy Bernbaum catalog from 1990. Or thereabouts. It’s catalogue number 21 and it has the 1991 price supplement stapled in the front cover. It’s in a really nice shape and destined to become a collector’s item.

I did this myself because I have the same goggles Plymouthy shows in the foreground of his photo. I did not have quick access to surgical tubing (Our pharmacy is over half a mile away) but what I did have is silicone rubber airline that I bought for my aquariums.

Somehow I missed reading this thread, but it was of interest to me because I had a few transmissions with this balky shifting out of first gear. One was a ‘66 Ford custom 500 and its problem was a sloppy cheap aftermarket shifter. If you tried to shift it fast, it would go into second gear, but the shifter would go back into the neutral “gate”. You could not change gears without climbing under the car to manually put the shifter into second gear. One was a 1974 Dodge D100, and it’s problem was that the rubber engine and transmission mounts had sagged, causing the shifter to be out of line. One wrench adjustment under the hood and the owner was smiling. He didn’t want to change the rubber mounts but now that his truck would shift, that was all he needed. One was my ‘59 Edsel and the other was my ‘47 Plymouth, and both had the same problem: Balky shifting from first into second. In both cases the problem turned out to be worn out fingers on the shift forks. I had them welded up and dressed them down with a file, and the transmissions worked perfectly after that. Well, except that the Plymouth transmission was a rock, and you could beat the snot out of it and it did not care. The Ford transmission had a glass jaw, in that the first gear was very weak, and you could rip them up quite reliably even with the small 223 six cylinder engine. This is why I sold the Edsel. It had a great engine, I loved the outrageous styling, but the transmissions were poop.

These are the rear frame rails after welding and painting. I made these little standoffs so they could be securely clamped to the rear suspension torsion tube. Previously these just bolted right to the sheet metal floor pan with no brackets to attach them to the actual frame of the car.