Flintstone style '66 Thunderbird

Here is a very pleasant diversion from the usual stuff I work on:

(Funky angles avoiding the plate.) This is Chris' '66 Ford Tunderbird.

Why do I say it is Flintstone style?

I hope you can figure it out without me needing to explain it.

Here's the new 18g panel to get put in:

I was surprised by the interior:

What people say about things not being made how they used to be made is entirely true. This stuff is almost 50 years old . . . and it all still works and just needs some cleanup and polish, honestly. Let's see your 2012 model year car last 15, let alone 50.

Possibly the best part of the car:

I also really like the fuzzy dice. I'm weird like that.

Test fitting:

This was after a lot of cutting. Why more cutting? The floorpan had already been replaced some time in the past, and I had to take that layer off in order to get the floor pan to fit correctly. This took hours of careful trimming and prying to just get to the test fit point that you see in the above photo.

Marking, trimming, wash, rinse, repeat:

After a few more hours of carefully doing a little tweak hear, a touch more grinding there, I got the panel to fit well.

With the pan in place, I traced out the supports and then marked spaces to drill holes:

Pilot holes to verify measurements:

The holes matched up perfectly (thanks to careful measuring) so I popped the rest of the pilot holes:

All of them lined up with the flanges on the supports, so I drilled them out to about 1/4" in order to get a decent imitation spot weld:

The sun was setting, so I just busted out the rest of the welding and did some other patchwork underneath the car that I didn't get pictures of.

Here's the final product:

It's rock solid, with very, very little deflection even with all of my (fat) weight on it. It will last a very long time, too, especially with the right treatment of the panels. underneath and on top. 

Personal Project Start: Project Lazarus

I don't even know where to start about what has happened today. Something amazing. Without getting into the long and sordid backstory with me waxing emotional and retarded, my CRX has been hibernating for well over 5 years. Today, it was set free from the confines which formerly held it and held it back from running on its own. It still has a long journey ahead of it, but today was the start of something new and fresh. I know many of you reading have never seen this before, so I will just admit right off the front:

1. My CRX is a mess.

2. I love my CRX.

3. Everyone who knows me and my car knows that it is . . . special to me and overall. heh

Anyway . . . 

Thanks to Steve for helping tow my car. He went out of his way to help me out. I had a great day overall. I was so excited I barely slept. I hardly ever have that happen to me! 

Both of my cars:

 I had taken off the front bumper cover a long time ago to tow it from Maine to Staten Island:

What interior?

Half the door cards. heh

Now intercooler to be fitted:

Can't really tell from this pic, but the front brakes are pretty much done from rust:

Score another point for rear drums! They work just fine:

The last time my CRX was registered and inspected. It's been a while . . .

Faze vac/boost gauge:

I know, I know, but it was cheap and works perfectly fine.

Not too many miles for a CRX:

 I do hope to put many more miles on it!

Rear view:

I'll have to replace this eventually: I don't even know when this happened.

Passenger side rocker is a mess:

I have OEM lower rocker panels to weld in some time. The top panels are super easy.

Twisted up front bumper cover:

Does anyone have any tips for straightening something like that out? I'm pretty clueless when it comes to some aspects of bodywork.

The omnipresent smiley face quickly sprayed onto the hood.

I will ALWAYS have a black hood and a smiley face on my CRX. Always.

Missing some things?

Most guys will not know WTF I was thinking, but I assure you there was a plan, which got thrown out through the window and then beaten and kicked under a bus and left for dead. I just hope you see some of the early creativity years of problem solving have cultivated into a much finer art supported by much better skills I have now:

Yes, that is a copper line for the coolant supply:

I don't like using braided stainless lines. Ever. I will eventually use some annealed stainless tube and bend it up properly, but until then, the copper and braided stuff will likely stay since it works just fine.

This radiator is trashed:

I think the sunroof needs adjustment:

The hatch struts are failing, though it isn't surprising. They hold sometimes:

My first intercooler:

Some of you may recall that I had it installed on the exterior of the car. Laugh all you want, it worked extremely well. I may reuse this thing since I can now weld aluminum and, quite frankly, it is made better even with the dent than the cheap eBay bar and plate thing I can also play with.

This 20' section of 1/0 gauge welding wire was coiled up in spare tire:

 I had completely forgotten about it. I'm going to use that to wire in the amp I have for my Legend, and be able to power a local power transfer station at the same time. LOL!

I know I will get made fun of, have my credibility and sanity questioned, but . . . I sat in my CRX today for the first time in two years. I sat in it, and memories came flooding back. The worn out seats are so comfortable. The seat placement was as perfect as I remember it. The horn button I fabbed together fit perfectly under my left thumb. The view front and rear is nearly unimpeded. It feels like freedom to sit in a CRX, especially when compared to the claustrophobic messes that are designed today.

Little by little and piece by piece, I will be working to restore and improve my CRX. I'll remember a lot. You will learn much if you choose to read my journey with this car. This car was the starting point of many things that made me the man I am today. I cannot and will not forget it. Maybe by the time it gets back on the road again you will see a glimpse of what I see and feel. 

Hot, sweaty, dirty, chemically nasty fun!

Today was a busy day! I worked on a piece older than I am. It is an industrial sized hopper used for Mixing paints.

That is a 4' ladder standing next to the thing. It was about 5' wide. That's a lot of paint/chemicals!

Here's a view of the inside:

Today's goal was to patch the holes on the side of the thing, as the welds were done VERY poorly who knows how long ago and each hole provides a substantial leak. That is not usually good when it would waste product or cause a HAZMAT spill. 

Here's a closer look at the mess I was dealing with:

The whole thing HAD been sand blasted, but the welds themselves were in poor shape and all those holes/pitting/porosity in the welds were harboring whatever really nasty junk the hopper contained. I didn't grab a pick, but for each of the holes, I ground the perimeter back into a general V-shape, taking out as much of the interior weld as possible without getting too crazy. They were welded on the outside, so I wasn't too worried about grinding through, but I wanted to minimize the work needed to complete the job, while still putting a cork in the dam. 

After I got the holes ground as much as I thought was necessary, I took some 2.5" diameter 1/4" thick plates that I got from my father (he works in an industrial steel shop, they make the skeletons of buildings, I dork around with smaller things, heh) and beveled the edges to match the holes as closely as I could without getting too stupid about things. 

USE FLAP DISCS! Unless you are doing edge on or VERY heavy grinding, spend the extra money on flap discs. They are faster, smoother, and give you much finer control and WAY better surface finishes. Don't buy cheap ones, either. Norton is my favorite abrasives brand so far. Note, the disc you see in the pic above is NOT a Norton, but I am pretty sure it was made by Norton for another company (Radnor).

Here are a couple of pics of the plates in place, nice and flush with the holes! 

Yes, my stinger is on a short leash. That's what came with the dang TIG welder. I also despise, loathe, hate, and utterly detest twist-lock stingers. (A stinger is what holds the "stick" when doing SMAW, AKA, arc or stick welding.) I think I added on at least a half hour's work twisting and untwisting the dang thing. All complaints aside, it worked and I got the job done. I have a longer ground cable on order (it didn't come in on time) and a longer stinger lead and stinger will likely be the next thing I order when I have to do a job like this next.

After lots of grinding, this is what I was left with:

In the pic below, you'll notice some undercut and porosity. It's there. It's not perfect. The metal was so nasty in those areas that no matter how far I was welding out from the patch, the stuff just melted away. I also had changed to 7018 rods and didn't change the "arc force" or "dig" control from the setting I was using for the utter junk 6010 rods I bought to burn the junk off the metal. Those 6010 rods were a waste, but, at least I didn't have to pay for them. They were part of my quote for the job. 

The fourth hole on the slanted part of the hopper was so corroded you could see daylight around the weld. I did manage to plug it from the inside, but went around the worst parts of the outside just to be safe. Again, the welds are ugly because of the utter crap I was welding through. 

Then finally, I did a (poor looking but good enough) cover pass on the lower plate weld, as it was really in bad shape. 

I did all this right next to the boiler for the whole facility. I just missed getting rained on, too! If it had rained more than the misting that was going on in the morning, I wouldn't have been able to finish today, and that would have been annoying to me and the company, as they wanted it done by Wednesday. It was a hot, sweaty, muggy, stinky, nasty, black-booger inducing work. It was the first stick welding I've done in over two years. (Nice to know I can still manage to stick things together decently, though!) But . . . I LOVED it. 

The guys at the company were highly impressed. They liked my work ethic, expertise (I had to wire my welder directly to a panel, which is cake, but, I guess impressive if you don't know how to do that and/or don't like playing with electricity, especially 3-phase 220V off a 60A breaker . . . heh) and the results. One of the guys asked if I could do aluminum, which of course I can. I was told to expect more work in the future.

I was also asked to give them my business card. And, I don't have one. Yet. However . . . I have the start of a design with the help of a very artistic and awesome friend. I'll definitely be posting more about this in the future . . . YAHOO!