Thread: Kustom Car Metal!

Hi Ash,

Sorry for the delay. As requested here is the plan for the English Wheel. You will see in the top of the exploded drawing the profiles for the anvils which will be required to be machined up.

Have fun,

Glen.

And..

Hi,

Just found and joined the forum, I'm about to begin owner building a new garage / workshop so that I can build my hot rod.

If you want to have a look at some interesting car metal work, have a look at the Metalshapers Association web site, at http://allshops.org/

A warning though, don't expect to come back for a while, some of the stuff on there is amazing. In particular, have a look at the albums (or anything) by Jim Bailie, a true genius who works out of a shed in his back yard.

You can see why I've been researching there if you have a look at the car I'm building here http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jjoh...sHomePage.html

regards,

John

Originally Posted by johnno402002

You can see why I've been researching there if you have a look at the car I'm building here

The 30's fords look pretty cool open wheeled IMHO
See attached picof a Canadian (I think) guys 32 ford finished by brushing on engine oil (not even a drying oil)
Have you seen www.hopupmag.com ???- they use words like "daddy-o" - coooool

Many Moons ago it seems i use to pro drag an old LC Torana rans 10.1's
but there was a HB that use to race out there that had a Turbo charged 350 chev shoehorned into it
way to much power for it
Ran a 10's pass and got wheel spin the whole 1/4 mile
what a monstar

Originally Posted by capedcrusader

The 30's fords look pretty cool open wheeled IMHO
See attached picof a Canadian (I think) guys 32 ford finished by brushing on engine oil (not even a drying oil)
Have you seen www.hopupmag.com ???- they use words like "daddy-o" - coooool

I think the sort of car you like is imprinted on you at some point early in your life, sort of like when a chicken latches onto the first thing it see's when it hatches. My imprint for the hotrod happened in the 80's, and I'm sort of stuck there.

The stuff in hopupmag is based on 50's & 60's styling, which I never really connected with, cause in the 80's we were trying to do something new and better, and we were reacting against the earlier stuff. The style I like is almost completely out of fashion at the moment, but that's OK, because it will be ten years before it hits the streets, and the curent fad then may have swung back to 80's styles.

On the subject of HB torana's, a friend of mine had one set up for drag racing, it had a 392 chrysler hemi in it, and was left hand drive to get the drivers weight onto the side of the car the engine was trying to throw into the air. It had a fibreglass front from a later torrie on it, it looked pretty good, but I never heard it start

HB torrana's are a cool base for a street machine, you are on the right track, but get the engineer involved early. I'll see if I can dig up some photo's of the one my friend had and post them.

regards,

John

Went to my car clubs 1st show yesterday, had a huge burnout comp... a black HB torrie took out the 6 cyl class(from whyalla I think)unsure on what 6 it runs def a holden6 tho judging buy the rocker cover.
A local lad(club member) blew out a MT slick in about 30sec's flat... 600bhp 10ish second clevo does that(XBGT), and its street registered!
We had a good turn out I guessing at least 3500 people turned up(not bad for first show).

Originally Posted by johnno402002

The stuff in hopupmag is based on 50's & 60's styling,

I think the hopup guys are into the original 50's zero budget rodder mindset which was to get cheap 30 year old flathead v8 (250 CI I think) cars and bolt superchargers onto them with the emphasis being on spending the most on the supercharger but yep well finished rods/customs are cool.

Hmm, this was a good hobby years ago when fuel had some serious octane and the price of petrol was 18cents per litre (or less if your older than I can remember LOL). Since then we have been more environmentally friendly by the introduction of unleaded fuel and emmission control standards that has more plumbing, and sensors, vacuum switches to make anyone "DIZZY" to say the least!

I think that these days you have to really think wisely and consider whether or not all these clever modifications on a classic is really worth the work and serious effort not to mention State regulations. To do a chop of anycar without the use of photoshop is a bit risky. If you intend on building a car thats for everyday use and you like the classic era then thats fine. But, to spend all that money and labour on building something that sooner or later will become impracticle to run is a bit dicey. I like the falcons , monaros of the classic era but would not pay 35000 $ for a car that sits around for show and tell has had panel beating all over it with bog levelling and a fuel usage that requires a Skase sharehold in petrolleum bowsers. The more the steel has been worked the more brittle it becomes and stretched far beyound the original spec's.

These cars are no doubt wonderful but back in the days of LEADED petrol with octane rating to maker you shiver. BRRRRRRRRRRR!

Modifications take a lot of effort but all Im saying IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?
Anyway I like tinkering on cars myself but only if it gets put to everyday use!
5.8's and 5.0 litres with all the speed restrictions,,,,red light intersections at every say 800metres or less and speed camera's just DIEING for revenue,, I think I can get there faster on a pushbike nowadays. Oh well this is just my 35000$ or pennies for thought.

Ill keep my money well invested than depreciated by piston slap! You can get for $15000 a recent model v8 commodore or falcon without all that hard elbow grease. I personally like Mercedes Benz.

Interesting observations violincrafter, and I'm sure your thoughts would be inline with most peoples ideas as well. Some of the issues you raise are not as bad as you may think though. I had to go through all these issues ( and a lot more) when deciding to start collecting bits for my 1930 model A ford hotrod project, below are some of the answers I found.

Originally Posted by violincrafter

Hmm, this was a good hobby years ago when fuel had some serious octane and the price of petrol was 18cents per litre (or less if your older than I can remember LOL). Since then we have been more environmentally friendly by the introduction of unleaded fuel and emmission control standards that has more plumbing, and sensors, vacuum switches to make anyone "DIZZY" to say the least!

That's certainly an issue, but pretty easy to fix. In my case, I am considering using a front cut from a Toyota Lexus as the source of the drive train. For around $3500 - $4000 I can get a relatively recent power plant, with every thing attached. These engines are the best engineered production V8 out there at the moment. They run on unleaded fuel, and comply with emmission control standards, and go like a scalded cat. The introduction of computers into engine management has somewhat simplified things from the time when they were trying to control emmissions using carbies, a lot of the vacuum thingies have gone.

You do have to get your head around a whole new technology, but I enjoy learning new stuff. And there is a tremendous amount of stuff out there on fuel injection and engine management, here for instance http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html is a fuel injection computer. I have built one and bench tested it, it's unbelievable, and so is the support from the online community attached to it.

Originally Posted by violincrafter

I think that these days you have to really think wisely and consider whether or not all these clever modifications on a classic is really worth the work and serious effort not to mention State regulations.

State regulations are a serious issue, no use building the thing if you can't drive it. Recently there have been guidelines for street rod registration implemented nationally, and all states except NSW have accepted them. NSW has some issues with reproduction chassis that they won't budge on, apart from that it's not too hard to get a street rod regoed. Street Machines, on the other hand, are yet to get together and start seroiusly lobbying for the same stuff, and at the moment a classic Monaro is more at risk of being becoming an off road vehicle than a street rod.

I like the falcons , monaros of the classic era but would not pay 35000 $ for a car that sits around for show and tell has had panel beating all over it with bog levelling and a fuel usage that requires a Skase sharehold in petrolleum bowsers. The more the steel has been worked the more brittle it becomes and stretched far beyound the original spec's.

One way to get around the brittle steel problem is to replace it, and it doesn't have involve using bog. Once again the internet is coming to the rescue of old crafts, and sites like Metalshapers.org are a terrific environment for learning how to do this sort of stuff. Have a look at this for instance http://allshops.org/cgi-bin/communit...=9990083442279

Modifications take a lot of effort but all Im saying IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?

I can't really answer that. For some reason I developed a disease that I just can't seem to get cured of, so I try to keep it satisfied without it taking over my whole life. It seems to be linked to that other insidious disease I have but can't shake, tool disease, the unquenchable thirst for new tools. :eek: Sometimes I think my hot rod is just an excuse to buy new tools.

I think this is a core question you could ask of any hobby or for that matter any anything else we do. If I were to take a purely rational view of my house, for instance, I may conclude that the best thing would be to move my family permanently into a F1 motel

5.8's and 5.0 litres with all the speed restrictions,,,,red light intersections at every say 800metres or less and speed camera's just DIEING for revenue,, I think I can get there faster on a pushbike nowadays.

I always thought it interesting that we have speed restrictions, but no limit on acceleration. I mean, you don't need a V8 to break the speed limit, I can do that in a clapped out oil burning Camira. Red lights are usually followed by green ones

Ill keep my money well invested than depreciated by piston slap! You can get for $15000 a recent model v8 commodore or falcon without all that hard elbow grease. I personally like Mercedes Benz.

The first model A I invested in, a pile of rusty crap my brother called it, doubled in value with no work what so ever in two years, made my super fund look pretty sick. You won't get that sort of return from a late model falcon or commodore, quite the opposite actually. One of the main reasons for me investing in a model A rather than something late model is that they are such a good investment. If I were to pay everyone to do everything it needs to have done to it, then it would be no good, but most of my fun comes from doing stuff, rather than driving it anyway. I guess most people are around the other way.

HB torana's have definitely gone through the bottom of their value trough, and are climbing back up in value as well.

I think you have raised some good issues here violincrafter, certainly got me thinking anyway.

regards,

John

Originally Posted by Johnno

HB torana's have definitely gone through the bottom of their value trough, and are climbing back up in value as well.

Ah thats good the 67 2 dr HB I've got still has the original factory paint and trims!
Most cars once they hit over 30yrs old start going up in price... HQ's even there was so many made, now they are getting very rare in unmodified condition they can fetch big dollars.(up to 5-10 times the original price new... if you can find one!)