1929fordhotrod.com
438 Victoria St. N7G3B8 Strathroy, ON, Canada

Yesterday I decided it was time to correct an over site when I made the steering shaft. You will notice on 2 pictures the yokes for the universals do not line up. Fortunately each end on both yokes had the yoke pressed fit onto a spline. The fix was easy. All I did was heat the yokes up to remove them and position them correctly. A bit of clean up afterwards on a wire wheel and a touch up with some paint and everything was as it should be. The finished repair is shown with the correct yoke alignment . As they say "the devil is in the details"

I decided to replace my lake style headers I made from a weld up kit with some stainless steel ones. Of course the fit was wrong which meant adjusting the side pipes. I still wanted to keep the side pipes on the outside of the chassis and under my he body to prevent the dreaded leg burn. After lots of fitting I figured something out and had to add almost 4" after the first 45 degree turn. With the headers having a longer collector tube and what I added this pushed the side pi...pes closer to the rear wheels. This is what I wanted with hopes of not getting the smell of exhaust fumes swirling back at me while driving. Now that the side pipes moved farther back, the frame mounting needed to change on the pipes. I also decided to weld a flange onto the side pipes. After lots of welding and grinding the pictures show what I ended up with. Next I will paint the side pipes with VHT till I make my powder coat oven and powder coat them. See more

A few weeks ago a finished making, adjusting and painting the 4' metal brake. Yesterday and today I was forming 18 gauge steel with the brake and doing a bit of bead rolling. I made 2 lower level compartments for the hot rod trunk. A floor with moveable covers will go over them. I'm not totally happy with the lower panel for the bigger compartment and may make a new one with a different bead roll pattern. Something to sleep on. I must say having a powered bead roller and the metal brake is making the design and fabrication of the trunk much easier.

The bead roller is finally painted, wired and finished ready to use. The x-box power supply is perfect to power the winch drive. No-load current was 3.2A and while rolling 18 gauge painted aluminum it was a bit over 5A. This is well under the 14A rating of the x-box power supply. If I find it necessary after I use this for a bit I'll add a variable speed control. After a second coat of paint on the metal brake tonight I'll be in business and ready to make the trunk for the hot rod.

I just finished the stand and making several changes to the 4' metal brake I made. It has a cam action to clamp the sheet metal. It still needs a few refinements but is now good enough to use for build the trunk for the hot rod. Today I lucked out at the thrift store a got a Xbox power supply for the bead roller. It's rated at 12v and a bit over 14amps. The best part was it only was $2. Tonight I started to wire it up with a reverse drive feature. I'll post more on this later. I never though building a trunk for the hot rod would be so time consuming and I haven't even started it yet because I built a metal brake and powered a bead roller.

Tonight I finished the basic part of the power conversion for the bead roller. My first stand was a waste of time and got cut apart and built a second version which I am much more happier with. I found with the v-belt drive I was getting a minor amount of slipping while beading some 18 gauge steel. I didn't like this so I converted the drive to use #35 roller chain. This is now much better. The next step is to install the electrics and make a guard for the chain and sprocket. Oh course I don't do anything easy so I will be dreaming up and making a few dies for this bead roller.

I'm working on motorizing an old bead roller that's been sitting in the shop for a while. I'm using a 1500lb winch for the drive. I machined a 2 1/2" aluminum pulley with a 1" bore for the winch spool. One side of the spool was machined off and turned down to 1". I took the hand crank off the bead roller and machined a 1" to 3/4" adapter so I could mount a 6" pulley I had in the shop. A 1/4" plate was welded to the bead roller so I could mount the modified winch drive. I'm using a 1/2" x 29" v-belt. I tested this out tonight on 18 gauge steel and the speed was perfect. Now I need to make a stand and foot pedal for the forward/reverse switch. My first test run was with a 3/8" v-belt but there was a bit of slippage. The 1/2" belt solved that problem. Once this is done I'll start making the labels for the hot rod trunk.

I needed to figure a better way of mounting my front license plate then having it hang off my steering rack under the rad. I gave this a bit of thought and decided to make a spreader bar, and a bracket for the license plate that would mount to the front of the frame. I used 1 1/2" heavy wall pipe for the project. Getting the angles right on the pipe had to be done carefully so it would look right. After a considerable amount of test fitting and grinding I felt I was ready to... weld up the two parts of the spreader bar together. Then I cut end caps, for the bar, drilled a 1/2" hole and welded a nut onto the end cap. I did this for both sides of the bar. The ends were then carefully welded to the bar and the welds ground smooth. Years ago when I designed and built the chassis, I welded a pipe inside the front frame horns having this in mind just for extra strength for when I mount the spreader bar. I drilled the holes in the frame and bolted the new spreader bar in place. I was happy with the fit. I used 1/8" plate for the license plate backing, made a mounting bracket for the chassis and used rivnuts for mounting bolts for the license plate. This only cost my time and I used materials I already had in the shop. At some point I'll machine a unique aluminum license plate frame. Maybe next weekend winter. See more

Well it's gotten cold and the snow has been blowing since yesterday. Last night I decided to mount the coil over shocks with the newly machined lower mounts. Before I did, I removed the lower control arms and drilled a new hole so I could move the shock in a bit closer and reduce its angle. This change has provided the exact ride height I want. Now I need to do a few calculations and save my pennies for new coil over shocks. The ones I'm using are from the rear of a Jaguar and were suppose to be only temporary.

While it's cold outside I decided to make some new aluminum lower shock mounts for the hot rod. When I originally started building the hot rod I didn't have a milling machine so I made some lower mounts out of 2" stainless steel tube. This past summer I also made out of things laying around in the shop a buffing/polishing machine using old furnace fan motors and 10" buffing wheels I had been finding on sale. It's nice to have a dedicated machine now for polishing the aluminum parts I fabricate.

Well I'm back at it. Too many projects and a big outside Reno on the house got in my way. Here is an interesting brake problem and how I solved it. I noticed that my front disk brakes on the outside part of the rotor wasn't making a complete contact with the discs. After looking at this too many times I finally noticed the caliber was worn at an angle causing the pad to wear unevenly. I decided to take the calibers off and correct this issue on the milling machine. There is... still lots of metal left after milling. One thing I did notice of pictures of rebuilt ones they appeared to be machined also but with more material removed. After this repair the pads and were making full contact with the rotors. Here are a few pictures. This was a slow process on the mill making many cuts to match the curvature of the caliber and was and interesting challenge mounting the caliber in the mill for machining. See more

As I promised, I am backing up a bit with the adventure of the hot rod build and how I got it on the road. Things never go easy. When it came to the brakes that was true. Since the brake calibers were sitting around for so long, two or the four bleeder screws seized in the calibers and broke off while attempting to bleed the brakes. Whoever thought of using steel bleeder screws in an aluminum caliber. The two metals react badly with each other. Oh well, now it came time to ...solve the problem. It would be easy to go out and buy rebuilt calibers but that didn't make sense. So what I decided to do is go back to basics. What I decided to do is machine a new insert for the the bleeder screw. This was a bit of a project. After 3 attempts I got it right! I used aluminum stock and turned and drilled out the profile I thought would work. Then I took the insert and set up the milling machine to create the hex head for the insert. The insert went back into the lathe to do both the inside and outside threads. Now it came time to drill out the broken bleeder screw and enlarge the hole for the new insert. I had to be very careful not to drill into the piston inside the caliber or crush it with the tap. With the new insert installed I was ready to start bleeding the brakes again. Now not everyone will have the metal lathe and milling machine to use. Instead you could use a solid brass pipe plug and drill it out on the drill press for the new bleeder screw. If you don't want to do that, there are kits available to purchase with pre-made inserts. Building anything especially a hot rod, you need to be able to solve problems and think outside of the box. Just another reason why the hot rod took so long to build. See more

https://www.facebook.com/The-Jalopy-Jam-Up-a-pre-64-Traditional-Hot-Rod-and-Custom-Car-Show-245140682301416/ Check this event out. Looks like one I will try to attend next year with the hot rod. Only one problem, I'm open wheeled and have independent suspension.