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Big ol' 1/8 '32 Roadster, Channeled: As of 4/2/18, she's going to be 1:1.


Ace-Garageguy

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Ok, this is obviously the old Revell Big Deuce kit. I've accumulated a few of these over the years in various states of gluebombiness and a couple of virgins. Picked up some parts and a sealed Big T too, so here goes.

The chassis I'm starting with for this one had the crossmembers glued with at least half a tube. No salvaging them clean.

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Here, the front crossmember has been cut out so I could get an axle under the thing to figure out what I'll need to do to get the stance I want. The smallblock Chebby and '39-ish Ford trans is from the Big T kit, but this won't be another cookie-cutter '32 with a Chebby. The body shell had had one of the doors hacked open and the opening was also un-salvageable. The cowl was cracked through as well, so I glassed everything in place on the backside. Welded-door cars need to get the stance just right so you can hop over the side without looking too much like a fool. As I've found a ratty 'glass 1:1 '32 roadster shell to go with my American Stamping rails, this build may very well come to be a real car.

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First profile mockup shot, with a width-of-frame channel and significant rubber rake.

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Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the interest, gentlemen. :D

Not a lot has happened, because I was waiting to figure out just exactly what I want to stuff under the hood. I'd like to do a blown car, but I didn't know what would fit and frankly, I was just too damm lazy to measure and scale up from a little car.

So...I scored this. All kinds of goodies for a smallblock Chebby and now I can start fiddling the fit...

 

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Thanks again for the interest in this thing. 

Bob, this one is supposed to be a streetable car, and keep the "traditional" look on non-stretched rails. From that standpoint, the front-driven blower setup wouldn't work. It's just too long to go in the available engine bay. 

I've been picking up odds and ends of 1/8 stuff for several tears as it's become available, and I found a set of American mags for the rear (not the rear rims in the photo above) and much wider slicks. The wide slicks really make me want to do a blown car now...and they'd be silly overkill on a naturally aspirated car anyway. So...if I can fit the top-blown rig under the hood with the width-of-frame channel job (the blower WILL fit if it's not channeled), that's the way we'll go. If not, it's back to narrower slicks and three 2-barrels. B)

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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  • 2 weeks later...

Only Three Twos ? There's six of 'em in that Customizing Engine kit and a Hilborn Fuel injection set up as well. :D

:D Well, this is supposed to be a model of something relatively easily street drivable (and fairly inexpensive), and may very well be a model of my next personal 1:1 full build. Though it's entirely possible to set up Hilborn mechanical injection for street use (not common, but possible), or to run six 2-barrels, it's overkill in my mind. A car weighing less than 2000 pounds with a nicely blueprinted 327 and a 3X2 setup and a roller cam with lift and overlap numbers similar to a factory L-79 stick ought to make more power than can be really used on the street anyway...which is why the model has quite wide slicks at this point. I'll groove them to represent barely street-legal cheaters. 350HP is easily doable with the reliability of a stone ax, and 350 real flywheel horsepower in a 2000 pound car is seriously fast, even by today's standards.

I'll save the Hilborn and 6X2 setups for period drag or Bonneville-style cars. B) 

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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I had three two's on a '60 El Camino 283 four speed, most fun ever with a car. Oh yea " They're really NOT hard to synchronize." No "synchronize" to it. Just select where you want the last two to kick in. :P

:D  Exactly. I've often wondered why folks seem to have so much trouble making them run right. It sure helps to understand, like you obviously do, what you're trying to do. The only "synchronizing" part is making sure WOT occurs on all 3 carbs simultaneously.

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That's it, and what a kick.

Waiting for a new battery install at the local Sears store back in the day ( Life Time Batteries :lol: )

A man standing next to me looking  at the three two set up when his wife comes up. "What's that ? " 

" I don't know. But I bet it runs like a striped ass ape." :lol:

Edited by Greg Myers
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  • 1 month later...

A lot of people made the mistake of picking up three two barrel carbs and putting them on the aftermarket (or factory option in some cases) and trying to adjust the idle on ALL THREE carbs to match, or at least run smoothly. What most don't know is that only the center carb is supposed to even have an idle circuit, and on factory setups there isn't even provisions for it, but you CAN cheat and use production standard two barrel carbs, just screw the air bleed adjustment screws ALL the way in then adjust your center carb so the engine idles right. 

My younger brother had a blown Chrysler in a flat bottom Sanger that had been a fuel flat bottom drag boat that had been detuned for a ski boat and the big thing they did was remove the injection and put two 750 competition Edelbrock carbs on the blower but he always had a problem with not getting it to idle slow enough to go through marinas and launch areas, and it would on occasion load up and foul a plug or two if you tried to idle into a long cove and I told him I'd fix it if he'd listen. I just shut the idle screws down to one of the carbs and it made it as docile as a little lamb, it would slow right down to 5 mph, wouldn't load up, and when skiing all you had to do was bump the starter when your skier was ready and it would fire up instantly and pop your skier right out of the water (direct drive V drive) since both carbs went directly into the blower it didn't know how many carbs or what was putting air and fuel into the engine it would mix it equally and dump it where needed. Another friend had a T bucket roadster with a 283 and powerglide with six twos and it was so simple to make a mild street driver, we just put sheet metal pieces cut to the gasket shapes under the front and rear carbs and didn't put set screws in the linkage on those four, it ran just fine on the center two carbs and no one ever figured out how we made it idle and drive so clean on a stock little motor.

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A lot of people made the mistake of picking up three two barrel carbs and putting them on the aftermarket (or factory option in some cases) and trying to adjust the idle on ALL THREE carbs to match, or at least run smoothly...

Exactly. I've seen guys who were reputed to be "experts" do the same thing with 3X2 setups on flatheads, and get so frustrated they just blanked off the end carbs rather than realizing the poor little engine could only idle on the center one, and that the opening of the secondary carbs needed to be carefully matched to the cam characteristics too. The real tuning wizards are the ones who simply have a good understanding of how engines work. There's a little "science" involved that some folks never bother to learn, but once you get the science down, and understand the 'why', that's when experience and 'feel' for the things can really come into play and make your car faster than the guy in the next lane...even if he has a lot more money in equipment.

One setup that IS a real bugger to get to run right on the street and still make full power is the old Man A Fre 4X2. Even though there is a large balance chamber in the manifold that tries to smooth out the vacuum signal the carbs read, each port still has its own carb throat, and the adjacent cylinder firing timing isn't equal on all the port pairs. Compounding the tuning difficulty is that all 4 carb throttle plates have to open simultaneously and hit WOT simultaneously, and getting every cylinder an equal mixture when the carbs are seeing different amounts of vacuum and differently timed "suck" pulses can take a lot of work with emulsion tubes, accelerator-pump squirt and jetting.

Conventional wisdom is also that the old Hilborn mechanical injection can't be made to run on the street either. It can...it just takes an understanding of exactly how it works and what it needs to do differently to be streetable.

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Oh darn, I thought Bill was gonna post some more WIP photos.  ;)

Having a rather base level knowledge of motor mechanics, based on engine specs/build parameters, there is only so much air/fuel that will pass thru a motor, too much fuel totally ruins the "magical" fuel/air mixture ratio the same as too little.

I had a stock Firebird 400 that kept up with a friends warmed over Lemans with 455 in it because he underfed it with too small carb.

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Oh darn, I thought Bill was gonna post some more WIP photos.  ;)

We try to oblige.  :D

We knew going in that the rear of the frame was going to have to be zeed to get the stance I'm after, so here we go.

Leveled the frame and marked it for a 45o cut. If you remember, cutting on a 45 and stacking the cut-off part on top of the original rails leaves you with a stock wheelbase if you go straight up with the cut piece. Since this thing is so big, getting everything measured and close matters.

The cut.

Reattached and jigged.

The wire wheels are from the Big Jag kit, and they're too small to fit the smallest tires I have. They fall through the centers.

The solution will be to attach a strip of stock to the inside of the plastic whitewall insert and fill the resulting groove.

The rear Americans I have are also on the small side for the slicks I want to run.

A larger outer rim machined down will give exactly the old-school look I'm after.

This build is based on a gluebomb, the first large-scale model I ever bought...quite a few years back. It was cheap, and I wanted to see what these kits were like before I spent any real money or started collecting parts. I was pretty impressed, so I've been slowly putting together a parts-stash to pick from when I finally got around to building something big. This body shell had had one door cut out with something like the old Auto World hot-knife, and the cowl was broken through. Way more f'glass than I usually use, but it's as stout as it needs to be for really aggressive bodywork.

I was able to get close to finish-shape on the cowl with no filler. The vent may bet cut open, or it may get filled.

Quite close on the bodywork on the driver's side too. This body is going to represent a shell with welded-shut doors, and that's one of the big reasons for channeling it...so somebody could hop over the side relatively easily.

Thanks for looking.    :D

 

 

 

 

 

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The engine block I'm using isn't the one that goes with the rest of the neat old engine kit. The block, trans and heads are from a Big T kit. The t-sourced Chebby engine has a blobular timing cover molded to the front of the block. Removing it, 'machining' the flange down, and using the engine kit timing cover is a big improvement.

The block doesn't have any other casting details on the front either. I made some water pump flanges from .040 stock, and then 'machined' them down to the same level as the timing case flange, just like real.

After bobbing the rear of the rough-zeed frame to fit up inside the channeled body shell, the frame got a tubular crossmember that the tube shocks will mount to, and the beginnings of a fabricated front crossmember that will allow the spring perch to rise relative to the rest of the chassis, dropping the nose more than just what's available from the kit's dropped axle.

\

First fitup of the engine to see where it needs to go relative to the old K-member.

 

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Got the body sitting down on the zeed and bobbed rails close to right and got the firewall rough-trimmed to allow the trans to go in where it needs to be, and trimmed a little off of the K-member to get it all a little lower. This is the close-to-final location of the engine relative to the body. One thing that's very apparent is that the carbs will need to be leveled once the engine install is finalized. The float bowls need to be as close to level at rest as possible, and the rake, plus allowing for a reasonable pinion-angle, will mean the carb flanges on the manifold will need to be 'machined'.

Another thing we do know at this point is that there'll be plenty of hood clearance over the carbs for air cleaners. This can be a problem with channeled cars, and you never know fo' sho' until you fit it all up. The headers will be reworked from these shown (made for a Pontiac engine). Because the doors are 'welded' shut, the megaphones can extend rearwards more than they could if the doors had to open.

I was kinda hoping I could get away with running a 2-pot Hilborn injected GMC 4-71 blower without having to cut the hood. While it looks like it may just be possible, it would leave no room for a scoop or air filter, and you really don't want to suck a lot of abrasive dust through your expensive and close-tolerance blower impellers, pistons and rings.

So,we have a slightly revised idea of how the car will look with the engine in and the hood on. The stance will stay exactly as originally envisioned, and the task of modifying and fabbing crossmembers to achieve that starts now.

 

 

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