Ace-Garageguy

Put me down fer all of 'em. Dem's my kinda vehicles.

I got past a landmark in my rehabilitation. The day started out as a frustrating mess, with multiple suppliers and the USPS all having issues simultaneously. So rather than sit and stew in anger, I slipped the leash and decided to see if I could accomplish a personal goal. Several years back, I'd allowed myself to really pork up, and when an old lawn chair I plopped down in collapsed under me, I cracked my pelvis. Chronic pain, partial immobility, and a pronounced limp followed...and it was the kind of break they really can't do much for, actually through the socket of the hip joint (but lucky for me, the crack wasn't all the way through, and the pieces stayed in alignment...pretty much. A few years prior to that, I'd been an avid hiker, and kept myself reasonably fit by hiking several times a week. But I let a bad attitude regarding the way some things in my life were going take the fun out of my days, and I packed on the pounds. I probably lost some bone density too, due to the lack of regular weight-bearing exercise...and that likely contributed to the hip fracture too. Anyway, after a few years of slowly taking off weight and building up my strength and pain tolerance again, today I was able to make it all the way to the top of Kennesaw Mountain, an 800 foot rise going up a 1.6 mile road. What used to take me less than 20 minutes took every bit of 40, but that's fine with me. If I can do it at all, I can certainly do it quicker. And I only needed two aspirin. http://www.georgiatrails.com/gt/Kennesaw_Mountain_Road

Yes...the only people who seem to have what I need new are dealers, but so far all I've found for this stuff is NOS. And I just got an e-mail that my order can't be filled due to "website problems".

Fine model. Missed it before somehow, glad I found it. These cars are so clean that they respond well to mild customizing, and the Caddy swap is an old-school natural I've seen done frequently in 1:1. My father agreed, and bought one to replace our '51. My mother, who was a designer herself (clothing mostly) loved the way it looked, but made the Old Man take it back because the much lower seating position bothered her so much.

Pan-fried 3/4 pound blue-cheese burger. Brown finely chopped onion and garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil. Plop the burger on, and the onion/garlic mixture forms a nice crispy crust. Flip it when it's time, and cover with crumbled blue cheese for the last minute or so of cooking, covered. I usually slather the bun with Hellman's mayo, a little Dijon mustard, and top with a juicy slice of heirloom tomato and cracked pepper. Sliced jalapenos are good too.

Illustrations in my old crash-books and online parts sellers don't clearly show a couple of the minor structural parts I need for the '96 Miata project I recently took on as a "quick turnaround" deal (or call out correct part numbers)...though I was lucky to find OEM front-end structural parts I definitely need, brand new.

Yeah baby...that's looking GOOD. Just an FYI...these things also ran 4-link front suspension WAY before it hit the street-rod scene. First photo reference I found dates back to '47 or '49.

Got a battered but readable factory manual on the GM 3-speed and 4-speed Hydramatics from the early 1960s. The 3-speed is the "Roto-Hydramatic" or "Slim Jim" that's in my '63 Olds 88 convertible. Though the plan is to convert the car to a stick, it's a kinda PITA, so being able to get the gearbox that's in her functioning is a big plus in the short term. The car last ran in the mid 1980s, so there's no telling what's in the gearbox now...but there are (thankfully) still sources for all the wear parts. The 4-speed Hydramatic was the basis for the famous B&M Hydrostick racing trans, and was in lots of production vehicles beginning in 1939, so this manual gives me a lot of potentially priceless info.

It all depends on who did the makeup of the batch of molten metal your particular model was cast from, and whether he allowed the contaminants in it that cause disintegration (lead, which can be sourced very cheaply from recycled batteries and incorporated in "zamak" by unscrupulous manufacturers). I have cast zinc and "zamak" model railroad locomotive shells, rolling stock, and parts from the 1940s through the '60s that have shown no sign whatsoever of coming apart, blistering, or anything else. They were, however, made in the US, Japan, or Korea.

Apparently, the metal mix was allowed to vary from batch to batch during production runs in some instances. I have one Danbury Franklin Mint Pontiac I bought for parts that's as bad as Ray's Cobra, and an identical one that's not deteriorated at all.

Freeman Manufacturing has a series of instructional videos to support their range of tooling, mold-making, and casting products too. https://www.freemansupply.com/video.htm So does Polytek. https://www.polytek.com/how-to/tutorials-videos I've used many of the materials both companies offer, and they're all first rate. Knowledge is power.

Sounds like some not particularly accurate over-generalizations to me. I build real cars for a living these days, carefully, by the engineering book most of the time. Which is why they work like real cars. There are some relatively simple calculations to run to size your radiator for your available space if you're in doubt. And if you run good quality shrouded fans of sufficient size in a puller configuration, you'll be fine. For instance, on a '47 Caddy I did several years back, with a 350HP LS1 swap, I had to use the OEM available space for the radiator for a variety of reasons. I had a custom 4-row aluminum cross-flow unit built (trans cooler integral) and ran a single 3400 CFM puller fan with a full shroud (that covered the entire core). Worked like a champ...even with the AC on in 90 degree weather. NOTE: The market is full of semi useless bee-fart fans, like the aftermarket "upgrade" ones I'm currently replacing in a DeLorean, that won't do much of anything (but suck).

First in-the-flesh, going-down-the-road C8. Nice car, but for the cheese they want for it (and the lack of a manual gearbox), I'd rather have a well-sorted-and-tuned 600HP C5 Z06, and use the considerable change for years of insurance and gas.

I'm using the stuff on all the custom "chrome" parts on the interior of the '66 Chevelle I'm finishing up. Things like switch bezels, chrome strips that tie the custom console into the styling of the OEM dash, etc. The net effect is that you look at the interior and it looks stock...unless you really know '66 Chevelles....just what the owner wanted, a low-key not-in-your-face-visually car. The finish is almost identical to the OEM "chrome" on interior plastic parts...and it's saved me a lot of grief, with not having to mill everything from aluminum and polish it.

Looking good. I bought several of those old Monogram midgets over the years to do exactly what you're doing..."big car" conversions, and reams and discs full of reference material. You have my attention.

It's my guess there's a suicide spring perch out in front of the radiator on the car referenced by the OP. This (below) is a mockup of such a spring perch on zeed A rails, with a dropped axle to boot. It takes a lot of drop to get as low as the OP's reference car... Of course, with a higher perch, not so much drop is required on the axle. Frame zeeing here...

Yes. I did a frame zeeing tutorial here years ago. HOWEVER...anything resembling a normal zee won't be enough. To get the rear that low, he's going to need to go considerably farther, constructing up-and-over rails like zo...

Geez...where to start. Besides the "unsectioning" of the body shell... ...the lengths of the door and rear quarter ahead of the fenders is different... ...the shapes, lengths, proportions, and curves of the fenders are different... ...the lower body shell of the Zephyr is molded to imply vestigial running boards... ...the roll at the door and quarter tops and into the cowl is different... Frankly, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be much easier to start with a '40 Ford convert and stretch the wheelbase the approximate 10" to get to the Zephyr's 122"... ...but there's still a WHOLE LOT OF DIFFERENCES, but to my eye, there are more similarities:

It's just a '30-'31 Model A coupe body. I seriously doubt the deck area has been stretched. Rather, it's an illusion caused by the extreme channeling & lowering job, plus the angle the photo is taken from that makes the tail appear longer. To get the slight up angle of the forward part of the frame, simply build it on '32 rails. You'll need the additional length to get the proportions anyway. Most of what you need is in the Revell (soon to be re-released?) kit...though you'll need to un-chop the top. The old stock-top Monogram kit in 1/24 is another possible starting point. Imagine this un-chopped, lower, and you're there. (It's the 1/24 Monogram body on a 1/25 '32 frame; work your proportions carefully, and you can get away with it)

Wish you a quick and complete recovery. Really bites to injure your hands. What were you doing?

That would be great. I'm always interested in how guys who got it right went about it.

The buffing aluminum was the one I used most, and I just bought enough cans and bottles of the stuff to last me the rest of my life, most likely. I've never seen another product that could do exactly what the buffing metalizers do, though there's some that look to be pretty close. And I never woulda thunk the stuff would ever go away just due to lack of interest on the part of the corporate parent. Here's one of those niche market opportunities just waiting for some enterprising person to step up and fill...

Me too...

Agreed wholeheartedly. I've been in both ends of American business...the dirty-hands hard-tech service end, and the engineering/product development end. In engineering, I've seen the efficiency of a highly experienced small team with a can-do attitude replaced with bloated staffs of people with little-to-no hands-on experience, reluctant to speak up and primarily focused on blame-spreading, making everything as needlessly complex as they possibly can. Much the same deterioration has occurred on the service end. If the computer in the vehicle can't tell a tech why the car is sick, they'll usually just keep throwing parts at it until it gets better...at the owner's expense...and a lot of today's "mechanics" don't really have a basic understanding of how engines, transmissions, and brakes actually work. But hopefully we'll see a return to rationality. It's not political to say that this Covid mess has pointed out the sheer stupidity of relying on China for so much of our manufacturing and goods. There's plenty of room for a reemergence of the "cottage industries" that underpinned much of the American economy in days past.