I did a thing involving an iconic car

In reply to Recon1342 :

Speaking from living with them, i love the Wartburg, but I LOOOOOOOVE the 57.  Completely different reasons.  I wanted the Wartburg the second I saw it but didn't know wtf it was.  I wanted the 57 the second I saw it and I had a super chevy subscription when i was 7-8 and wanted a 2 door post 57 since then.  Everything on the Wartburg is touched by me. I made most of the chassis, the suspension, the firewall, changed stuff on the body.  I'm not touching a ton on the 57.  I'm going to fix the crash damage, put discs and a dual power master conversion because no dying, and do an engine/trans/wheels.  Honestly some black 15x8 plain steelies on back with retro "slicks" would make me happier than anything.  
 

fender with a bolt in it, and i hit the top front of the door with compound by hand.  Color is close enough, obviously it doesn't have 63 years of fade on it.  One day I'll do the body and paint in the same original dusk pearl metallic, but until then I'll enjoy the hell out of it.  
 

I have wood.

Patrick (Forum Supporter)  

Got the paint from paintscratch.com in 4 spray cans. 

Argh.  Where was this place when I was trying to find paint to fix some underhood spots on my '81?

Of course they list my color.

The recoup has begun

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

Whatcha gonna put in it?

In reply to Recon1342 :

The LS1/4L65-E combo from my 95 impala ss, then i can sell the impala down the road as a roller or (would make me sick to do this but) part it on ebay.  Not gonna give away a 0 rust southern impala, but I'm emotionally done with it and learned a lot and did what i wanted to with it.  

That was quick.  When you have 900 pounds of cast iron sold and he asks if he can drive out from delaware to get it tomorrow, you say yes please that's great see you tomorrow.  
 

it's going into a gorgeous 46 chevy truck to replace the low pressure babbit bearing 216.  
 

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

Awesome!!

pics of the truck pls

things are afoot

Soaked everything with purple power and let it sit while i got the pressure washer hooked up.  30 or so minutes with that leaves us here, mostly clean enough to work on without even getting my hands dirty. 
 

and just so some people will freak out, i cleared the firewall and underside of the hood to preserve it because i have no intentions of a full tear down and respray anytime soon or maybe not ever.  
 

next to do:  remove factory shift linkage for ebay and chop off the transmission mounts, unbolt and toss single master cylinder, and strip the frame from the firewall forward to clean and paint

this is all in the name of "that engine and transmission and all those parts will take up less room installed than they do sitting in the floor/shelf" 

I do like the idea of the Atlas LL8 swap. They have a decent following and make good power. DOHC I-6 and it stays in the family. You could probably figure out some sort of an A/C system too.

Can't go wrong with a Tri-5 Chevy, I'd love to see a carb'd big block old school build with a ridiculous cam. That car is a true survivor.

Do I see a hornet or wasp nest up the heater air intake????

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

 

things are afoot

I think this car would look perfect with some narrow vintage Cragars and one inch whitewalls. 

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Many.  Going to scrape them and shop vac the ducts.  Guessing heater core is trash so will likely bypass for now.  
 

woody i actually have some vintage cragar tru spoke wires with bias ply tires that i may see the look of, not run the tires obviously because ancient, but to see how it looks.  The other thought is black 15x8 stock car wheels and 245/60 tires.  
 

i am not used to a car that they make stuff for and where E36 M3 bolts on and i can just throw money at stuff and save countless fabrication hours.  Case in point, this went in during a couple small breaks today 

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn

 

Tell me more about this foray.....cup brush /flapperdisc check ?......rust  inhibitor check (brand?)  ....primer ? ....how long did this take.?...not that i'm up against the CLOCK?

Pressure washer, scraper and wire brush, whatever rust killer they have at tractor supply, rustoleum red oxide primer.  I'm in it about 3.5 hours to this point, painted with bedliner for durability and texture over the pitting

total hours spent actually working on the car is right at 9.  Maybe i'll be like Robbie and track myself.  Will be interesting to see the time difference on a car where they actually make parts for it versus a car i am making everything custom for.

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:i am not used to a car that they make stuff for and where E36 M3 bolts on and i can just throw money at stuff and save countless fabrication hours.

One thing I do not miss is having to modify parts and/or cars so that aftermarket components that are supposed to just bolt on, will actually work.

My "favorite" was removing a Ford big block from a 60s Ford, so I could retap all of the exhaust holes in the heads, after finding out that the very expensive aftermarket heads had said holes tapped with a worn out tap, so a bolt would not actually thread in.  This after wrestling with trying to get bolts started on three piece headers in an extremely cramped engine bay.

Of course, the headers had to go on after the transmission was installed, so I had to pull the T56 trans with its inaccessible bolts, and the scattershield with its eleventy billion nut and bolts around the circumference, back out before I could pull the engine back out...

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

"Bolt in" brake kit needed 2 studs on the booster cut down because they tried to occupy the same space as the stock studs the bracket bolts to.  Relatively tame compared to what i'm used to.  
 

also tried searching for accessory drive info, man those tri-5 forums can keep their lack of knowledge.  There's talk of art morrison frames, thousands of dollars in billet accessory drives.  Holy E36 M3 i'll just figure this out myself.  Like "need to notch frame for ac compressor because why bother going modern engine if not going ac too" and "why bother going fuel injected and not converting to power steering" and hooooo boy 2 threads and i'm out.  There are dozens of "just buy the $1000 coated headers from X" and I'm sitting here like "motherberkeleyer i only paid $1100 for the whole Ls1 i'm not doing that"

The tri five guy i helped briefly here in town ran aftermarket accessories. However,  it looks like truck stuff will fit fine based upon my vague understanding and general eyeballing woth no real reference material 

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

Yuuuup.  On the other hand, you also have a chassis which is generally priced out of the range of mere mortals, and up into the area where thousands of dollars for a billet accessory drive makes economic sense.

And yes in perpective, the amount of fabrication you will be facing IS rather tame.  But it's still annoying to have to, say, oval out the holes in a starter, because Lakewood put the welded-in nuts for the starter bolts in the wrong place.

Pat, though an Atlas would be a unique  venture, your declaration to family, makes the "plug n play" LS conversion($$$$) the most sense by far. When I come for the p1800 I dearly want to see this.   

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Well, thankfully i'm just a really lucky mere mortal.  I'm not throwing numbers around, but after selling the original engine and trans the starting point is only 3 digits

You can go right on and berkeley yourself. LOL

Also, for future reference, that TSC "Rust Kutter" is garbage compared to Ospho. You have to agitate with a wire brush or you just get the very top layer of rust converted and still have rust trapped underneath. 

I had a bunch of stuff from my flatbed that I'd prep with Kutter, and later go to grind a spot for welding and have a halo of rust dust blow around from under the black phosphate on the top. 

You're probably ok, having wire wheeled first, but if hate to see something more critical have problems because of that citrus flavored stuff.

In reply to Crackers :

This is the old pre citrus stuff that one drop makes enough fumes to destroy your eyes.