If you have been reading the previous stuff, you have probably come to the conclusion that this car might need a thing or two repaired. Shimmying and shaking at highway speeds isn't the desired way to get down the road. I have done some medium level car work in the past. I have removed and installed engines and transmissions, rear ends, suspension components, etc. I can rebuild a carburetor or an engine. I have put together some medium powered stuff (Less than 500 horsepower) and haven't had any catastrophic failures (Yet...). I've never attempted to rebuild an automatic transmission . My welding is... well, it's crap. It's fine to stick together the wine bottle holder (because if it breaks, it doesn't make much difference to me because I am not much of a wine person). Now if it's a critical component on a chassis, well that's a much different story.
I realized that my chassis needed work. Lots of work - probably expensive. Okay, not probably - definitely. I have looked at the chassis prices in the catalogs.... $7000, $11,000, $14,000.... Name your price. Of course if you happen to be a skilled welder and have the know-how.. you can put one together much cheaper. Well, I barely trust my welding skills on wine that I could care less about. When the welding is in a (hopefully) 700 horsepower going down a track/road at well over a hundred miles an hour... I want to know that somebody that knew what they were doing was at the helm when the weld happened. Since I don't know any welders, the car pretty much sat. I overhorsepowered the car and didn't know what to do.
Now this is a predicament that can't be one that I am alone in. There are too many marginal cars out there that people buy and count on to be right that turn out to be "needy". Most guys I know see the car they are about to purchase for it's potential. I think women (thankfully) work this way on guys... "He's a fixer upper". I have been on the receiving end of many deals that ended up being shitty. It's buyer beware out there and it only takes one engine coming apart on you to tell you that you need to learn more. Now before I go off on a tangent here, most off the people out there selling stuff are honest people who will tell you exactly what they are trying to sell. And then there are the 10% of people who will dog the shit out of a motor/car/car part, fix it so it will run for 10 more minutes, and lie their asses off to get rid of it. Even the most scrutinizing inspections will sometimes come up short. I like to think that these people will "get theirs" someday, hopefully on a piece of medical equipment that keeps them from feeling pain. Sure buddy, a little old lady had it - barely used it. If you haven't been screwed buying used parts, then you are either extremely lucky or you haven't been doing this long. I don't care what your financial situation is, most hot rodders at some time or another end up buying something used.
I have this bad habit of keeping track of what's for sale on the internet. There is a deal that occaisionally pops up that doesn't last long and I like to be one of the first ones to see it. It sucks to find that object of desire that is priced right and miss owning it by a day or even minutes. It's more of a habit than anything else, plus it really gives me an idea of what stuff is selling for. I was bowsing through the ads one day and I ran across this sweet ride.... a 1934 Chevy Coupe. It was almost everything my car wasn't... blown big block, yellow paint, and it was reasonably priced. I started doing some addition in my mind... I couldn't possibly build this car for what it was being sold for.
Now, let me tell you what little knowledge I have about buying cars like this. There is always a reason the car is being sold. You have to be a good judge of character to really figure out what is going on with the deal. Not all cars are being sold so the proceeds can help cure cancer. If you get into this stuff, it's a good idea to be able to identify the people who are really selling their unfinished project because they have a kid going into college from the person who got a killer deal at some auction and are waiting for a sucker to come along and unload it on. A little investigation goes a long way. We are all looking for that person who is selling the car for less than it's really worth, but there are 10 people who are counting on that frame of mind to unload a piece of junk on. Plus, getting over the initial excitement and looking at everything as it is presented to you in a balanced way will save you from certain emotional and financial pain. Most people don't lie, they just don't tell you all of the facts. Knowing what questions to ask can be helpful at uncovering the covered information. For example, when I called about the car, I was told that it used to be the fastest 1934 Chevrolet coupe in the world. Wow, quite a pedigree. This was pretty effective is helping me rationalize what looked like shitty welding underneath the car (or at least some homemade ladder bars). Surely the car had to pass a technical inspection at a track before it was raced which means that it's a good start for a stout street car. Secondly I was told that a famous company made it's mold for their 1934 fiberglass cars off of this very car. This was a good way to convince me that the body was as good as it looked in the pictures. So far, I was actually liking what I heard. Now to ask about the engine. I got the "I don't know anything about the engine - I didn't build it" answer. On a car like this, the engine is the showpiece. It's probably worth as much as the car itself. To build an engine like this correctly would cost at least $10,000. A junk yard special could be put together for as little as $4000 or less. I didn't want to drive across the country and find out that this was the latter. Any person who owns a car like this will always be able to tell you details about the engine. Always. Even if they aren't experts, they can at least tell you basics or refer you to the shop of person that put it together. But to claim to know nothing about it is the same as saying that it is a junkyard piece of shit. This kind of person is hoping that you wil be blinded by the rest of the car, which was not worth the price if the engine turned out to be junk. The last clue came in one of the pictures. There was antifreeze on the pavement under the car in one of the pictures. This told me that the car either overheated in the short time it ran while pulling out of the garage, or it simply had a leak - not a good sign of faith, especially if you are about to spend so much money you won't have much left over to do any major repairs. I looked at what I had already and started to compare buying the Chevy and fixing up the Plymouth. To do either... some cash had to come into my life, which means that something had to go. The something in this case would be my motorcycle - which had been sitting most of the time since we moved to the Atlanta area. I put the ol' for sale sign on it and listed it on the internet too.
I thought that it would be easy to sell a motorcycle that cost me $20,000 and was only 2 years old with 3800 miles on it for $12,000. This bike was perfect, but it had one problem - it was a Victory brand motorcycle. "The new American Motorcycle". Yup, the one that loses 50% of it's value in 2 years or less. What a HUGE mistake that motorcycle was. I wrote more about it in the other article...
I think my price was a little too low. It seemed to scare more people away because they couldn't figure out why such a great bike was so cheap. (I originally tried to get what it was valued at ($15,000) with no luck at all). Finally a person stopped by and took the bike for a quick test ride and realized that I wasn't trying to rip anyone off. He wanted the bike. A week after we finalized the price, he called and let me know that there was a problem with his fianances... you know the rest. But wait, you don't. It so happens that this guy builds cars for a living. Old cars. Fast cars. How fast? Try 3500 horsepower 200+ mile an hour in the quarter mile fast. Yup, nostalgia top fuel funny cars. After more negotiating than a hostile takeover of AT&T, we finally reached a preliminary deal. He was going to fix my chassis and more. He was so reasonably priced that I would pay cash for his work if the deal couldn't get finalized. The car was disassembled and the engine was sold.
There's even a sidenote on the engine sale. This engine cost me $4500 to build. It's an aluminum headed 406 small block Chevy that makes about 450 horsepower and had only the best parts in it. I was selling it for $1500. It sold fast. They guy that bought it called me while I was at work in Macon, Georgia. (I live 100 miles away). We were trying to figure out how to get together to make the transaction when we realized that we were about 5 miles away from each other. After a short drive, a check was written and the next weekend the engine was gone.
The car was completely taken apart. Donnie (the guy who wanted the bike) and I agreed on the work to be done and a cash price in case the bike part of the deal fell through. The car was going to have the frame boxed. Normally, a car frame looks like the letter "C" just elongated. It's pretty strong, but it can still flex under severe loads. Boxing the frame is simply welding more metal on the frame to close the open part of the "C" and make it into more of a "D". This stiffens and strengthens the frame dramatically. The car was also going to have a new Ford 9" housing, Ladder bars, a 6 point roll bar, the body moved back 3" and up 1" (this was to allow a supercharged big block to fit in the chassis, and to give me an extra inch of badly needed headroom. The engine was also gong to be mounted to motor plates instead of motor mounts. This would get rid of any and all homemade crossmembers for good. Here is a picture of the work in progress:
The stripped car on it's way out.To state the obvious, this car isn't a concourse billet hot rod that has chrome everything on it. I hope it never becomes that, to be honest. The term "Ratrod" gets thrown around a lot nowadays, and I am not building one. People will still call it that and I'll always get the "What color are you going to paint it?" and "When's it going to be finished?" questions because of the flat black paint.
As I was dismantling everything, I was nervous about what I would find. We (we being family members) have purchased cars in the past with all kinds of "engineering", even including body panels being held on by that foam in a can stuff. I really expected to find some horrible surprises under the carpet. This is a 73 year old car after all. As I removed stuff, things started looking bad. Under the carpet was duct tape... under that, foam blocks. This was to help give the appearance of metal that just wasn't there. As it turned out, most of the bad stuff was cut out of the car..... leaving a pretty solid body. What a relief. The only damaged metal was on the inner wheel wells, which are being cut out anyway. Whew!
Here's the frame/chassis with the body off. Definately a "before" shot.
And here is the boxed frame with the 9" housing and ladder bars.Here is some of the stuff that came off the frame:
This is the rear that was under the car.... probably a 3.08 open 12 bolt.
And the body - the firewall and entire floor were going to be cut out. There was even a section of frame welded to the 1/8" thick floor! Talk about weight!
Next the cage was welded in and the body was reunited with the stronger and lighter frame. It started to look like a car again.
The Original deal consisted of a blown 427 Big block to be thrown in with all of the frame work, but I was looking at a lot more money to go into that engine. It was a block and heads with a blower. No ignition or carbs, etc. I was tempted to go with it because the engine was stout and I already had the ignition and a set of 850 douple pumper Holley's that came off of my 69 Chevelle blower motor. But still, it's the little things that get you... starter... Flywheel....it all starts to add up. So I declined on that engine. Donnie found a 454 that was complete and was 99% there. It was naturally aspirated, but it's a start. Plus I needed a cheap powerplant for now, and big blocks aren't the cheapest way to go. In it went.
Here is the car with the engine in it. This is how it came home from the shop. So far, the frame was boxed, new rear housing and ladderbars, roll bar installed, motor plates and engine installed.
Wow, my "to do" list is overwhelming: Brake system (even the pedal assembly), Wire the entire car, Find a transmission (The TH700R4 that came out isn't strong enough for the horsepower I plan to make). I had to buy axles and a center section.... rear brakes.... seats...interior.... Oh crap this is a lot of stuff!
Definitely a "To be continued"!
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