Harold

Nice work on one of my favorite Fords. Hinged the trunk- nice touch.

Maybe the race engine is being chauffered to the track.

Instead of scrapping old cars, why don't we just start scrapping these idjit legislators?....

Thanks, guys. Man, did this project throw me for a loop. I thought, yeah, I already have the stretched frame, so two days, piece of cake. Then, well, OK, three days will do....then four, five.....Something kept cropping up. I mentioned that I'd placed the trans crossmember too far forward, so now instead of two frame halves and a crossmember, I now have to cut a scale 5' section from the back frame half and attach them to the front haf whil keeping everything square. Then I had to reatach the two frame halves together with the trans mount sandwiched between them (again) while keepin everything square. My 45 degree triangle got quite a workout. So, I now have a frame that wants to keep coming apart. Fortunately, after epoxying it to the floorpan it's staying put. This car originally had a tweak to the right front fender that I'd never been able to straighten, and I wasn't about to try heating up a car wearing a six year old paint job. When I removed the engine compartment from the Chevy and lengthened it. I then added strip plastic perpendicular to the engine compartment walls so I could have some solid attachment points to mate with the body. Epoxy and patience (plus a whole day) got the body, interior, frame and floorpan together, and then it was building and installing the 425 nailhead/auto setup from the '66 Riviera. This was by far the easiest part of the build. After the engine was installed and the front wheels epoxied to the spindles, it was a matter of using a drum sander and a Dremel and grinding away enough material from the front of the Chevy core support and the rear of the floorpan to get the bumpers in place. Whew!

It's from a TV show called The Hero starring Richard Mulligan. The car is a '66 Imperial.

Yeah, George, we used to build the darn things here (old Buick Main, Hamilton and James P. Cole). The bodies were finished at Fisher 2 on South Saginaw street (GM shuttered it and turned it into a yuppy mall twenty years ago) and trundled off to Buick on car carriers. Now Buick City is leveled, and for the last four years has been a vacant wasteland. The 445 name was taken from the engine's torque rating. The engine was the old nailhead maxed out to 425 cubes. The one in mine has the two quads.

Is that you in the pic. or is that the pilot after yet another crash landing? Any landing you can walk away from is a good one....

Hmmmmmmm...................... Lindberg F-150 with AMT box Revell F-150 mostly box stock 1962 Ranchero (a rebuild of yet another older one) 1984 Thunderbird 1989 Mustang This is my list so far- we'll see what happens over the next twelve months.

Sweet Buick- I'll trade you an ex-wife for it . Those are some really clean builds.

Here's one of my older builds that I just spent a week 'Overhaulin'. It's the old AMT '66 Buick to which I've added the floorpan and a stretched frame from AMT's '67 Impala (the Wildcat was a 'B' body on the longer Electra chassis) and the engine and trans from the AMT '66 Riviera. The body was left untouched through this whole process (I still have a couple foil touch-ups to do, though). The hood was never really finished (though I'll be fixing that this weekend). Here's the new chassis next to an unstretched one that's going under a '65 Grand Prix (note the Pontiac wheels and engine). Here's all the parts marshalled together for final assembly. This conversion went together quite nicely. All I had to do to the Buick interior was to remove the floor and it dropped right onto the Chevy floorpan. To stretch the chassis, I cut right across the trans mount on the Buick chassis. That crossmember is how much you stretch the frame. I originally had it in the same position as the frame it came off of, however, the Buick has a four- speed, so I had to dismantle the frame and put the crossmember further back to accept the Riv's transmission. The second crossmember was cut from between the frame rails of the Buick chassis and mounted in the same spot on the Chevy frame. The engine compartment was removed from the Impala body and stretched a scale 5" between the firewall and fenderwells. The seats were raised up with some wheel inners from the parts box and the console was removed from the old floorboard and installed on the Chevy floorpan. The body is painted Dupli-Color Milano Red from their Import Colors line, and I used the same color on the engine. As soon as I get the proper diameter solder, I'llbe able to tie in the exhaust (and I'll add the driveshaft at that time). That's the old Buick chassis next to the new one. This was a fun project. This Buick had always been one of my favorite models, and I was glad that I could pull of the switcheroo on the frame to give this car what I feel it deserves. Full frame, poseable steering and full engine compartment detail. Plus, those Pegasus wheels and wide and wider Gatorbacks from a Corvette are just the icing on the cake.

Gorgeous- simply gorgeous. Either that car is really small, or you've been hanging around the core at the nuclear plant.

yeah, Harry. the market here is so depressed that not even Prozac would help it. However, you can pick up some decent properties in this burg for less than 30k, but you need to be mindful of which part of town it's in. Ever since GM started bending us over years ago, the market continues it's free fall.

Does that mean exorcism is the other 1/10?

Well, I have one more semester here, so I'm hanging on 'til at least the first week of May. I have some friends that headed off to Oregon two years ago, and they keep telling me to come out there. Apparently, there are actually jobs there, but I still want that UM stamp on my degree before I do anything else. Besides, the longer I stay here, the bigger my escrow account becomes, which will give me some cash to move on when I do. No one is really sure who owns the property now, and nobodies come out to serve me with eviction papers. The trick when I move, though, is finding someplace where I can have my dog with me.

Yeah, our 'Acting' police chief here in Flint can't do anything about homicides and burglaries, so he's busting kids for saggy pants and decreeing that detectives have to wear a uniform while on duty. Maybe the guy should take some acting lessons...

Well, Merry Christmas, y'all. I slogged through another semester at UM/Flint (seven down, one to go). I hope to finish up a couple projects during my Christmas break, and soon I'll have to look at moving. My erstwhile land (slum) lord was supposed to be covering my utilities, and he had for almost two years. Then, the first week of October, I came home from class only to find out I had no power. Well, my upstairs neighbor let me run an extension cord from his apartment so I could at least keep the fridge going. The next day, I went checking around the city and county offices, and at the register of deeds office, I found out the weasel had signed a quit claim on the property in July (and I was still handing this jerk money through that time period.). Anywho, the powers on and I opened an escrow account at my bank so no one can accuse me of squatting. What really gets my goat is the fact that he never had the cajones to come and talk with me about the situation. So, there's four units here and I'm the only one left. I went and secured all the other apartments with new locks to keep the street people out and to keep the local crackheads from ripping all the copper out of the building. I hope to have some progress pics on my quick rebuild of one of my favorite models up tomorrow.

As an old grump. even I get tired of the whining. So what if the thing has a one piece chassis- find a newer kit of a similar vehicled and swap the chassis. Hole in the block? Fill it, swap engines or maybe have some fun with a scale piston emerging from the hole in the engine. Just quit the carping. BTW: Merry Christmas, everyone !

Of course, with their history of meddling in the auto industry for the last forty years, how much does it add to the price of a car to meet all the regulations the gummint has heaped on over the years? There are many things that are necessary, but can we maybe get rid of the umb stuff? Example- if the CHMSL is so great, how come we always have rear-end collisions?

Actually, the wagons weren't prone to exploding, as the rear overhang of the car was 10" longer than the sedan or hatchback, giving more crush space between the bumper and the tank.

And so here we are- the prez has gone and okayed the bailout package (one of his few rational acts) because, hey, who wants to be the guy that sunk a major sector of the economy. What a lot of the pundits and politicos can't seem to grasp is this: if we lose the auto industry, who's going to make our munitions and equipment if we again have a WWII style call to arms? America's industrial might, led by the auto industry, was one of the determining factors in fighting that war in both theaters. Would you want to depend on Mexico, Malaysia, Taiwan, China or India to produce our arms for us? Also, if we lose the auto industry, what are we going to replace these jobs with? More 'service economy' nonsense where you wear a paper hat and hand out ketchup packets?

What's really funny is Senator Chris Dodd saying that Wagonner should go as a stipulation for the bailout money. He predicates this on the fact that the money shouldn't just be thrown down a bottomless, unaccounted for pit. Maybe he feels they'd be too much competiton for the government.

Right you are, Komradeski!

Actually, the 460 was a new 'thinwall' design big block in the '385' series, but I still enjoy all the stuff you've written over the years . Merry Christmas.

Here's something you don't see every day.....

I have to disagree that all NASCAR drivers are the same- heck, Tony Stewart is never afraid to speak his mind (and he's an accomplished driver in other forms of racing), Carl Edwards is a great driver who isn't afraid to throw a punch at his teammates. Vickers and Biffle are hard chargers, and as for crew chiefs, well, Jimmie Johnson ain't my favorite driver, but Chad Knaus could crew chief a drunk monkey to a championship. I do agree, however, that the common bodyshell has got to go. Maybe it could be more like the German or Japanese touring car series (you'll never mistake a BMW for an Audi TT). As for the greed factor, well, Bernie Ecclestone wrote the book on greed in motorsports. NASCAR is just following the formula.