Gas, tires, oil.

Phill remarks on my post showing some of my cars in the woods “That car kinda makes me sad…”, referring to my ‘68 Lemans:

Well, it makes me sad too, but the fact is, when I bought the car for $100 some 20 years ago, it wasn’t in such good shape either.

It had a bad motor, some surface rust and had been sitting for years.

But I built a 455 Pontiac motor for it that had amazing power (here I am in 1988 putting that motor together, the first motor I ever rebuilt)

And I know it’s familiar story, you see an old car in the woods and when you ask the owner if he wants to sell it, he says, “No, I’m going to fix that car up one of these days” and you know he never will. One day it will just disapear.
But do those guys have a stack of fenders, doors and trunk lids tucked away?

Or extra cowls, floors, wheel housings and trunk floors?

A fender, 6x heads and a tripower intake (I know, the tripower is from ‘65, but a 455 and a tripower make a great combo).

A GTO enduro bumper to replace the bent steel bumper currently on the car.

And even some quarter panels cut out of a junkyard car…

All I need now is time and money (though the main problem is living 3000 mi. away).

I made a little progress on the trike last weekend. I got the oil lines hooked up and the tank bolted back down.

I also installed the chain and tensioner. I hooked up the battery, that spool of primary wire is for the lead up to the switch.

Next I need to put some oil in the tank, then I can try cranking the engine.

I got to talk to Mr. Jalopy at the MakeFaire and he said that even though I had a lot of projects, he had me beat. He said that he had 8 or 9 cars at the time, I said that I probably had that many if you count the ones in the woods back on the farm. To which he replied, “You’ve got woods!”

Yeah, I’ve got a few cars in the woods.

I’m actually back east this week to see family and snapped these pics of my poor old ‘68 Lemans.

More to come…

Last weekend I pulled the exhaust off my ‘89 Sportster (to get to the sprocket cover, but that’s another story) and noticed that there was a crack around where the crossover pipe is welded on. The fact is, chroming can make steel brittle (this is why you shouldn’t chrome steering components).

I decided to weld it up with my acetylene torch. Now, I could have mig welded or brazed it or even arc welded it, but gas welding works great for stuff like this. No spatter like arc or mig and once you braze something you can never go back and weld it.

You can fill holes easily by gas welding, you don’t have to worry about starting and stop an arc and you can regulate the heat by just pulling away (sure, a tig welder with a pedal would do better, but not for the price of my torch and no sunburn). I am actually using tig rods and brazing flux, but it works.

Next time I’ll put a shade 5 lens in front of the camera so the actual welding can be seen better.

A 4 1/2″ angler grinder is really one of the most useful tools to have: it’s nessesary for weld prep and in an emergency you can cut with it.

But keep your fingers away from it, I notched mine pretty good here cleaning up a shock mount that I had torched off the old axle. Even more dangerous is when they get caught in your shirt, happen at a friends shop. It caught this guy’s tee shirt and wound it up and cut the guy at the same time. He got it turned off right when it was at his throat, but he still needed stitches from his belt buckle to his shirt collar.