If it weren't for bad luck....

You know the rest. F@#king UPS! I finally found another transmission after getting jerked around for a month by some ass on racingjunk - a used Mike's Ultimate TH400 competition transmission. It was just freshened and cost me $1300 so far. Not bad considering that it's a $2200 piece new. Stout enough for a 3800 pound low 9 second car! I was dealing with an honest person (nice for a change) in California. He paid $140 for the UPS Store to package and ship this to me.





I arrived home at about 8:30pm from a long day at work to find a good sized box waiting for me in the driveway. Hmmm, cardboard with transmission fliud all over it. I carted it down to the garage and opened it up. After the first flap was opened, it was obvious that swomeone didn't know what the hell they were doing. The transmission was packaged in STYROFOAM and 2 cardboard boxes!!!! Frank (They guy I bought it from) told me that he paid the money and even gave them the hardware to mount it to a wooden frame. At least there is some liability on their part. Needless to say at this point that the transmission was destroyed completely. Thanks you F@#king UPS Store idiots. This is going to set everything back even further. Great!



Well, a week later... The UPS driver came and picked up the destroyed tranny. I was left with a slip of paper with a phone number on it. I called the number the next day at 10:30 in the morning, but I somehow missed the damage clerk. They were probably too busy damaging stuff. SInce I was calling from home, I'll reserve judgement on working hours. I left my number and waited for the return call... and waited....and waited. After 24 hours, I called again. As my good luck would have it, I was connected with the damage clerk. She was as disinterested in helping me as possible. Oh yes, complete with sighs and one word answers to complicated questions. After grilling her about the process, I found out that UPS will happily destroy something they ship and return it to the original shipper, and even refund the original shipper. Apparently getting my money back was "my problem, not theirs". Can you say FEDEX? I will next time.



Luckily, I am dealing with a truly stand up person in California. He is going to get the refund money and see if the transmission can be re-cased or have a super bell housing installed and send it back to me. Wow, there are good people left in the world. He has sworn off of UPS as well. Hey UPS, it's called customer service. Brown can do nothing for me anymore.



After a quick call to Donnie, we are going to find a junkyard TH400 so he can install the crossmember and driveshaft loop and get the car back to me. I'm not about to rush him - it's been 100+ degrees outside and his shop doesn't have AC.



Stay tuned as the saga continues.

Hot Rod Part 4: Christmas in August

Man, this is going to take a lot of parts.... If you have ever built or modified a car, I'm sure this might seem eerily familiar. I started reading Summit/Jeg's/Speedway catalogs like they were sacred manuscripts and the sky had just turned purple. I had lists and lists all over the place. Plumbing diagrams, part numbers, prices, everything compared... kits versus individual parts - even from seperate vendors. There was a lot of research on the internet too. How did we live without it? Oh yeah, we communicated with other people... went to the track and local shops and talked with the people who knew. I started looking for all kinds of parts that were top notch yet affordable. (You could even say used).

Patience and perseverance have paid off. My first project was the radiator. If you have ever had a car that likes to overheat, it sucks the fun out of driving it instantly. Atlanta isn't the place to have a marginal cooling system, either. Considering that I was running the original radiator in this car was enough gambling on the car's drivability. Fortunately, finding a radiator for this kind of car is pretty easy. Finding one that can cool a high strung big block is a little more difficult - especially if spending $600 on one is out of the question. I was saved by Racingjunk.com! There was an ad for an aluminum radiator... $279 or best offer. It looked like it would fit, but there was just one "thing". This brand new radiator had 4 of these 1/2"NPT threaded holes in the top instead of the large single outlet. I looked at the ad and went to work figuring out if I could make it work. I finally figured out a way, but it took a lot of research. I found a place that sells stainless steel thermostat housings for boats, and the housing has...4 1/2" NPT holes in it. Sweet! Now, instead of 1 radiator hose between my engine and radiator, I am going to have 4 small ones. It's going to be different for sure. The bonus here was the price had dropped while I was figgering... got it delivered for $200 even. Thanks Racingjunk!

Next was some bodywork (Yawn, I know). Let's just say it took me a week to fix the trunk lid. It had some cracks on the inner supports and glue stuff all over it. I ended up finally buying a cheap sandblaster to help (after a few hours of paint thinner and a wire brush on a drill...). I can tell you that as a novice welder, you can distinctly hear the sound as the weld goes through the 73 year old sheetmetal.

I finally acted on my now very detailed list. I had researched every fitting and component of the brake system. Since I was planning on running a brake pedal assembly that was under the floor, I had to buy 2 lb residual pressure valves (for front and rear disc brakes - fyi rear drums need the higher pressure ones). Sorry, I am liable to throw in little facts that I learned on the way. Back to the list.... It was done. Fuel system, check. Electrical system, check. Steering, braking, engine brackets, flywheel, transmission shims and cooler....check. Double check the prices...check. Wake up after adding up the total... check. Man, that was a big number.

In the parts order went. This took about a week, because every time I finished an order, about 400 things I'd forgotten jumped into my head. Hardware... damn. Plus, I needed to have some parts installed before I could order the next round. A prime example is figuring out how to mount the alternator when the water pump was changed from a long style to a short one. Sure, one of those low mount block-hugging ones would be killer - if I didn't have motorplates on the front of the engine. Man alive, this is getting complicated. I have the steering system change to deal with too...

I started working on the car while I waited for parts to come trickling in. I went for the low hanging fruit by starting on the rear end housing. It was covered in a nice coat of surface rust and generally looked bad. This was just a matter of spending some time with a grinder and a wire brush. After a few hours, it was sprayed down with some black epoxy based primer. It ended up being semi-gloss. Nice. That was going to be the topcoat for the frame. It looks good, clean without too much gloss. It'll practically sparkle under that flat black body.

Here is the rear back in the car.

Parts started trickling in. It took me 3 or 4 phone calls to Moser Engineering to get all of the measurements and pertinent information that I needed. I already had a 3.50 geared center section all ready to go. It had a brand new spool (this locks the axles together mechanically - it's not really the way to go for a street car, especially on curves or in the rain). You see, when a car goes around a curve, the inner wheel turns slower than the outer. If the axles are mechanically linked, the tire will chirp and screech it's way around the corner. If it's wet and you hit the gas... it's hello other direction. After numerous discussions with the tech people, I was talked into a spool and back out of it. I opted for a nodular center section (better metal than the housing that I had) and 35 spline axles, also with a locker. This is going to be one stout "bulletproof" rear. I do plan on throwing some slicks on this thing and heading out to the dragstrip at some point and I don't want to spray parts down the track.... This was expensive peace of mind.

I also opted for a serpentine belt system for the engine. Here's my thinking.... Every time the 406 hit the rev limiter (at 5800 rpms), it had a nasty habit of pitching the one and only accessory belt. This wasn't obvious until the car overheated, which sucked. Carrying a spare belt helped, but doing a monster burnout and having to pull over to check the belt (or watch the temperature gauge closely) just didn't fit in to my idea of fun. Plus (this is true) I went to the local (and closest auto parts store for 20 miles) O'Reilly store for a new belt. I approached the counter and told the clerk that I needed a V belt that was 45 inches long. Of course his reply was.... you know it... "What vehicle is this in?". Ummmm, I tried again and got the same question repeated back at me. After informing him that it's not going to be on his computer, he said "Try me". Okay, here goes. "It's a 72 model 400 small block with an Edelbrock long water pump in a 1934 Plymouth coupe". Deer in the headlights looking back at me. Finally, he disappeared into the shelving abyss. Later, he came out carrying a serpentine belt. To make matters even worse, it was 6 feet long! After informing him that I needed a V belt, he came back with a double V belt that was for some lawnmower (It was green). This back and forth continued until I finally gave up. This took 15 minutes out of my life, which is a very long time in an auto parts store line. I figure that I'll find out what Honda takes the same size serpentine belt and save my self some trouble in the future. I am sure the service would have been better if I was asking what neon kit would fit my Hyundai or what chrome coffee can exhaust tip I could put on my Mustang.

My rear end parts came in and instantly I went into a panic. The axles looked WAY too long. I am a newbie to Ford 9" rear ends, and I had just learned that the axles were different lengths (That was call #3 to Moser - figuring out what my pinion offset was). Since the measurements they had me take were only 3/4" different, I expected the axles to be 3/4" different. They weren't. They were like 8" different. I was all set to send them back when I decided to go ahead and mock up an axle and see how it was going to fit. Frustration again - it didn't even go all the way in. Th bearing that was pressed on to it was exactly the same size as the housing end. After a little honing (careful measuring found that the housing end was a little egg shaped) the axle went right in. The same with the other side. After I got them in, I noticed that they were practically touching. In my mind, this verified that they were too long. I even remeasured the whole rear end housing to make sure I had given the original measurements to them correctly. Yup, still 49".

I took a look at the center section and I could now plainly see that this was how the axles were supposed to be. Man, am I ever glad I didn't make that call back to Moser. I try to limit my exposure to the world as a dumbass, and every time it's avoided, it's a small victory for me.

I pulled the intake manifold off (It was in need of some cleaning). To do this, the distributor has to come out. When I pulled it out and laid it on the workbench, it started hemorrhaging oil from the distributor cap. Not good. No HEI for the ol' rod. As luck has it, I happen to have a Joe Hunt magneto. A little more nostalgic.... and buzzing the hell out of radios at stoplights only adds to the effect I am going for. I hope it causes check engine lights to go off in every car within a mile when I fire it up.... I have to send it out for a checkup and have an advance mechanism installed (it's locked out for the previous blower motor). Anyway, the intake was in very poor condition, so I sandblasted it. At some point the battery in the previous owner's car exploded, or something equally corrosive sat on the front half of it for a year. The first clue that I needed to take a closer look at the engine was the fact that the chrome 1 wire alternator on it was flaking chrome off of it like a bad dandruff commercial. Now I had looked the engine over, but I was more concerned with cam lobes and rod bearings, so the cosmetic stuff barely got a glance. It'll work for now, but a tunnel ran or blower are in the future for this engine anyway.

Here's the engine after I cleaned it up and painted it:

This is how the car left the garage. I have the parts to plumb the brakes, plumb the cooling (except the funky curved lower radiator hose I have to come up with), plumb the transmission, etc.

Here's some of the other lessons I have learned. Don't shim your starter until you bolt the flexplate on to the engine. Um, it flexes and moves about 1/4" after its bolted down. That lesson only cost me $10 for the shim kit and I now know how to shim the inner workings of a CSR high torque starter.

Here's the CNC brake pedal assembly I am going with:

I also took a picture with the fuel cell sitting in place.

So, as it sits now, the car is back at Donnies getting the seat brackets welded in. He's also going to mount the brake pedal assembly and make a driveshaft loop. I finally have a transmission on it's way (A used Mike's TH400 that'll handle 1000 horsepower). The sidepipe headers that I got didn't fit, so Donnie is going to lengthen the primary tubes so they'll go on the car. I'm planning on coating them with this shiny black coating..... He's also going to mount the new Vega style steering box too. Then it's back to me for rear end assembly, driveshaft measuring and installation, wiring the car (a Painless wiring system is waiting...), plumbing the brakes, plumbing the fuel system, and a few other things like figuring out the steering components. I'll start doing some detailed and a little more technical stuff on here for those things - if anything interesting pops up. Stay tuned!

Hot Rod Part 3: Destroying a perfectly good 1934 Coupe

It takes a brave person to drive a fast car. It takes an even braver one to cut one up into pieces and try to make it faster. .... or maybe just an insane one. Either way, this is exactly what I did. I took my dream car and took it apart... not just a little bit, but I took it apart as far as it goes. Yes, blow torches and cutting implements were used. I have plans to put it back together. Better, faster, stronger.... and certainly under a 6 million dollar budget.



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"!