Colorado Melons

It seems that I went to the big swap meet in Denver a couple weeks ago.  You know that it’s going to be really interesting when a story starts like that.  None of my boys could make it.  Something about sorting socks in the sock drawer or something of equal importance.  My wife wanted to go to a sewing and fabric show that was just up the street from the swap meet.  The result was that I was turned loose in the biggest swap meet of the year with no adult supervision.  And I had a pocket full of cash, a really bad combination. Continue Reading »

From Norm on Jan 31 @ 8:04PM:

I actually got a little time to work on the ‘51 this weekend.

After setting the upper cowl section on the lower sections I found that there was a misalignment between them.  Although I expected some misalignment the difference was a lot more than I had planned on.
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Hi,

I have been busy in spite of the snow. I had to fix the cowl area (the panel in front of the doors) on both sides. The doors had been opened too far and had put large dents into the cowl. I expect to make some kind of door stops to prevent future occurrences.

The cowl is not accessible from the inside so I had to remove them to pound out the dents. I checked the cowl on my parts cab but they were all rusted and so were not usable, drat.

After I got the driver’s side off I discovered that I was not the first tourist to work on the cowl. It had at least 1/4″ of lead filling some dents and creases. There also was a little lead on the passenger side. The inner kick panels were in pretty rough shape on both cabs so I expect that I will have to make new ones when I get that far.

I actually managed to get the cowls done without any serious damage to myself but ruined a bunch of light bulbs. I’ll let you know if I manage to figure out how to keep from breaking the light bulbs.

I am using compact fluorescent bulbs because they can be dropped (usually) without breaking them. I have found that dropping an incandescent bulb (even the rough service type) results in turning them into a “dark”. The problem with CFL bulbs is that if they are hit with a piece of welding or grinding slag it ruins them. I like to hold the drop light in one hand close enough to the work that I can see the work through the welding hood. Then I weld with the other hand. This puts the bulb pretty close to the welding splatter, and at a couple bucks a pop it can get expensive. I currently have a 20 watt CFL bulb that has a cover that makes it look like a regular incandescent bulb. Hopefully the cover will protect the bulb.

I like the CFL bulbs because besides being pretty rugged they don’t get hot, I get burned enough with out getting toasted by the drop light. They also put out good light (after they warm up that is) and the light is spread out in the bulb enough that it doesn’t cause spots in my eyes if I happen to look directly at the bulb.

More Pictures in Norm’s ‘51 Gallery

More From Norm on his ‘51:

Been working on the ‘51.  I put in patch panels on the cab corners, you know where they all rust out.  Then I dropped the part and put a big dent in the middle of the patch panel.  Sigh.

I didn’t take any pictures of the dent ’cause I couldn’t focus the camera through the tears.

As is the case with most diversions, we meet all kinds of people when customizing vehicles to suit our own tastes – from creative people of character and substance to the pretenders who pathologically lie to take credit for work they haven’t done, speaking of how good they used to be when they were in Astronaut School or whatever – and I have had recent contact with both extremes, the latter helping me to appreciate the former all that much more.

Norm, a man whom I’ve written about previously, belongs to the “creative & substantive” group of individuals and with his permission I’m appreciatively able to share one of his current projects.

Having conveyed his mental picture to me in the form of a scale model ’51 GMC, I’ve got to admit some admiration here for not only his inventive vision but also the flat-out cajones it takes to start and persevere through an undertaking of this scope. I know this man capable of seeing this project through to its successful completion so I’ll let him take it from here through some excerpts of his emails:

Hi,

I thought that you might be interested in a few photos of my ‘51 GMC truck project. I’m doing a 3″ chop and 4″ section. I’m also lowering the roof crown about 2″. All this is resulting in having to lower the floor about 5″ to have at least a little head room. I’m also cutting the cab crossways and extending the doors 4″. The whole affair is on an ‘80 Buick chassis.

The spots that you see around the windows are from drilling out the spot welds that held the inner shell to the outer skin. I used a spot weld cutter like a 3/8″ hole saw and works pretty well. The problem is that they put a million spot welds in the truck. The dashboard was welded to the windshield frame in the same manner.

I took the firewall out for the section job. I am also thinking about putting in a new one that is properly recessed for the giant engine that is going into the truck. In fact putting the engine/trans in is the first step in putting the truck back together. I want to be sure that the floor and firewall fit around the running gear.

While grinding on the welds I had plenty of time to think of various things. Things like what is accuracy anyway?  I read a book awhile back on building the Dobson telescope and he was making mirrors in his back yard that were accurate to one half of the wave length of visible light. He was only using hand made forms and abrasive compound.

Anyway I call this one vice grip envy.

This is where I left off the other day, it is actually starting to look like a vehicle part.

I have a bunch of other pictures if there is any particular detail that you want to see more of.

Enjoy,

Norm

The pictures will get bigger if you click them.

This front cross-member was originally from the Dodge Project frame. The idea was that since the engine sat so high in the frame and we had adequate suspension clearance below, that we should just drop the center of the cross-member 3″ to allow the engine to sit further down between the frame rails. 

  Continue Reading »

Although it felt better in the heat of the shop during the build, I’m paying for wearing only a short sleeve shirt during all of that welding.

All that’s left in the front is to weld up a flat bracket on the cross-member for the motor mount to bolt through. Once motor is mounted with the frame sitting at "ride stance", the proper height of the tranny mount can be determined placing a level on the intake manifold and a jack under the tailshaft. As you probably know, the carbs have to be level for the floats to work right and this will be the done by trans mount location.

Once the drive-line angle is dictated (again, from the tranny mount) you’re able to determine the rear-end pinion angle and drive-shaft length. From there it’s just one relaxing, fun time after another of nuts, bolts, lines & wiring.

The body isn’t sitting on any mounts yet because I think the owner is still considering enough of a channel-job to hide the rails, but that’ll be dictated by his interior room comfort level. I think he’s in the thought process of sitting in it & trying it on "as-is" since we delivered it back to his hangar. (Maybe even making "Vroom, Vroom" noises 8-) )

Whichever way he goes with the channel will really have nothing to do with the running-gear work already mentioned and can be done at his leisure.

and a few more pics in The Gallery.