Happy New Year and welcome to 2012 … this is the year where the rubber meets the road.

It’s been a long time coming but we actually do see some light at the end of the “car building” tunnel and it’s not an oncoming  train.  For all those folks that have wondered what’s been happening or worse, thought that I gave up, be assured that the project is alive and very much still moving forward.

In between, we did take time out to completely remodel a bath room to spa like form and function and included a family room that needed more than an update but didn’t get the complete overhaul treatment that the bathroom did.  They both turned out great but now our attention is turned back on, in earnest, to our LS1Chevy powered  ’33 Ford Vicky.

I promise to upload some pictures to help bring everyone up to date but let me just say, it’s a pretty good feeling to get as close as I am to lighting up that LS1 … finally!  Many trials and tribulations along the way, but it’s a custom built car …  a one off … a one of a kind if you will … so I’ll focus on the positive stuff and call the rest an education.

Here’s hoping that everyone has a very happy and blessed new year … more later.

We thought it would be good idea to revisit the brake situation since we disconnected the lines by the engine when we did the exhaust …

Yes, we did have to make a new bracket but I think we’re actually getting better at fabricating those bad boys.  We’re even getting a little creative – note the holes in the stiffener on the back of the bracket – sexy – eh?!  Well, maybe you had to be there …

 The original brake line came within a half inch of being able to be used again with the new bracket setup.  Oh well …

Gosh – it’s hard to believe that it’s August already; thought I’d be further along with the Vicky by now but so many interuptions too little time … 100+ degree temperatures haven’t helped much either (especially when the garage isn’t air conditioned).

My wife got me a mig welder for my birthday last month; it’s an Eastwood 135 and works pretty well – I like it!  It was one of those sweet surprises that only happens every great once and a while.  My thanks to Dave for lending a hand with his Miller 130 model all these months – couldn’t have gotten this far without his help.

The exhaust has been run on both sides with mufflers that aren’t supposed to resonate very much, if at all, so we’ll see how that goes.  We located the mufflers under the running boards (or at least as much as we could).  The running board supports have been notched slightly over an inch to raise the mufflers for additional ground clearance.  The notched areas were boxed and seal welded.

I had pipes made to run from the collectors to the mufflers.  Dave and I mocked up electrical conduit and I took it to a local custom mandrel bending shop.  Other pipe components in the system were bought as a do-it-yourself kit and pieced together.  I used aluminized pipe this time around so maybe I’ll go to stainless steel when it’s time for a replacement.  I think it looks pretty good.  The outlet end was left intentionally a little long until I see what it looks like with the body on the frame.

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.