Mission accomplished!  The headers now have room to breath…                                                                                           

We cut the frame with the engine still installed.  I originally didn’t think that we could do it that way but it worked just fine.  Afterwards, we pulled the engine and welded in the supporting pieces and boxed the open ends complete with a primer coat to keep it from rusting while we take care of other business.

I’ve tried four sets of headers from cast iron OEM to the tubular hi-performance variety and all refuse to be installed without a fuss as a simple bolt-on.  They all seem to have their own little quirks about inferring with something that would prefer to be left alone; but, no one ever said that building a custom street rod would be easy.  Well, actually there were one or two people but I’m considering a new motto, i.e., don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  Actually, I’m kidding about that because I’d be absolutely lost without my family’s help and support  plus my friends’ invaluable assistance (advice, knowledge, ”been-there-done-that” wisdom  and turning wrenches combined) – thank you all.

I now have a rather nice set of Sanderson headers to use on my LS-1 that were developed for an LS-10.  They dump toward the back like I need, perhaps too much, so I will have to finesse a couple of things to use them as well.  Hopefully, the overall plan will be less expensive than custom designed/fabricated headers …

We’ll pull the engine this weekend in order to deal with those pesky interfering frame stiffening members.  Stephen already has 1″ x 3″ rectangular tubing at the ready for reinforcing the frame post necessary modifications.  It’s going to be awesome!

With the engine pulled, it will give me a chance to clean up [its] aluminum block a bit.  Additionally, I still had a little grinding to do yet where the OEM A/C compressor resides.  Anyway, I’ll take this step backward as an opportunity and turn it into two or three steps forward!

Here is a shot of the plumbing job we did just today … My wife, Janet, loves it that I finally put something on this car that is of Edelbrock origin, albeit the “Russell” braided hose fittings.  Russell is an Edelbrock Company.

Down and to the right is a shot of the installed fuel filter and braided line that we ran through the frame and on up toward the engine.  We hand fabricated the brackets that hold the pump and the filter because we couldn’t find anything commercially available in the size or that would simply do what we needed them to do.  As my friend Dave always says – “we have the technology”!  My son-in-law Stephen even helped out today so thank you everyone – it was a big help.  Oh yeah, don’t go far, there’s a lot more to do. ;-)

And, yes, I’m aware that we still need a braided line fitting at the filter for all you really observent folks out there who caught that in the pictrure that I posted.

We also measured to maybe like have some custom headers fabricated because I just couldn’t find a pair of anything to work well enough with the clearance issues we face.  It has to do with where we located the LS’ motor mounts versus a very narrow frame rail setup.  More on that later … it’s all part of the fun – right?!

Any questions?

Okay … so we tell everyone that Baltimore has mild winters.  For most years that’s pretty much the case but this year we’ve had record snow falls – 2 and 3 feet at a time!  Where’s that global warming thing when we could make use of it?!

Well, we’re almost out of it now and we’ve begun again working on the Vicky project car.   More to come, I promise …

Forgot to mention that Santa was pretty good to Don … he brought a few more tools and a better place to organize the ones I already had too!  You can never have enough tools …

Thank you Santa!

 I threw in a shot of the steering column mocked up (not a final install).  The steering shafts and sundry parts to make it all work are on order.  I’ll share more on the installation when I get them installed.

Is it 2010 already?!  I must have slept through 2009 because it certainly went by quickly.

 I’ve received a couple of requests for status updates and the like so with that as inspiration, I’ll try and bring everyone up to date again … and, BTW – thanks for all of the support and hanging in there with me; it’s good to know that someone is out there anxiously awaiting for the big day when I can light that baby up on the street.  The planned inaugural test drive is August of this year.  Lots to do yet for sure plus it won’t be finish painted and I doubt that the interior will be completely done but never say never.

Yes, we’re still at it in case there were any doubters out there and yes, we’ll see it through until we’re riding off into the sunset to the distinctive rumble from the exhaust,and yes, that is definitely music to our ears!

Building a car like this is like putting a three dimensional puzzle together without a picture to go by – everything is custom.  There are no off-the-shelf bolt-it-on parts to be found anywhere on this baby (or at least it seems that way).  It has parts from a whole bunch of years, makes, and models of cars and even a truck.  And, it’s definitely a  time and money dependent project – neither of which is in abundance at any given moment.  I think I might have said that before but it’s worth repeating.

I’ll add a post or two with pictures (once I figure out how to do that again) to show that we did get a few things done over the holidays albeit not a lot.  This coming weekend we just might do the final bolt up of the transmission to the engine and put it back into the car.  Now that could be exciting 

I found a set of plain Ford wheels that I want to use during the ”mount-the-body” phase of the build process in order to turn the frame into a rolling chassis.  They work great in the back but get hung up on the front disc brake hubs.  The wheel’s center hole diameter is a hair too small … and I mean hair (about 0.1″)  In other words, they don’t seat against the hub properly.  I’ll have to ponder on that one for a bit.

Once I figure out what to do about it, I’ll mount the tires so that it will be ready to roll.  It’s always something but I’m making progress albeit very slowly some days.

We have arrived at a point in time when selecting a steering column is in order.  My friend Jim loaned me three GM steering columns with different features from which to see which type might work best.  The one on the right is a short version from a van with some very nice options contained within the column.  The middle unit has slightly less features than the van model and the one on the left is a fairly simple and straight forward design.

Earlier in the project, Jim suggested a tilt-telescopic model from an 8O-something Cadillac so this is a great way to see what might work and what doesn’t.  I liked the tilt-telescopic idea a lot and hope that I’ll be able to go that route but we’ll see.

Here is a picture of the Z06 intake manifold installed on the engine.  I actually did this a while ago but just recently had the camera with me …

I picked up a set of Mustang seats over the weekend.  Saw them on Craigslist, did a little back and forth emailing with their owner, went to see them, settled on price, and came away quite pleased with my purchase and everybody happy.

They are in real nice condition (look even better than pictures on Craigslist portrayed) plus they sit down right comfortable.  Driver side is powered and seat tracks came with them.

While I was there, I noticed the guy had a set of wheels with decent tread tires for sale as well.   Believe it or not, the front ones were 14s and the rear ones were 15s just like I would like to have on the Vicky.  One problem – the rear wheels were 10″ wide and too wide for my application.  They would have been sweet but I don’t have it in mind to tub the rear and shorten the axle.