Willow Springs, Spring Fling, MATS 1600 mile road trip

[hezzel]

 

[lemming303]

Lookin good man. Can't wait to see it done!

[ntstlgl1970]

Rainy day today, worked on the intake a little. Hope to have some parts welded together tomorrow..

[ntstlgl1970]

A few pics, got some parts welded together, it's starting to look nice...

[hemiken]

Hey Eric,  I see you decided to go larger with the plenum design.   Looks chunky and mean will look sinister all welded up finished.

[ntstlgl1970]

Unfortunately this material is right at the limit of what my welder can do, and I don't have much experience welding thick aluminum (this material is all 1/4") not to mention I didn't have the welder setup correctly (had the gas flow too low when I started off). I was figuring that I would sand some of the welds down once the manifold is all together and paint it. All in all I'm glad that I was able to get this far tonight, I was pretty frustrated sunday when things were looking ugly. Hey, I can always sand a bunch off and start over, it's just metal right? 

[dutch]

looks like it`s a bit too heavy work for your welder     did you weld tig or mig?  I`d tag things in place and get someone with a powerfull tigwelder to finish it... every time you open the hood you will be reminded....
I`m looking forward to see the enginebay finished 

[ntstlgl1970]

I used a TIG, I still have to do the inside. I might try mig on that in spray transfer and "if" that works out ok, I would go back, clean up the outside and use the mig there too. I would take it somewhere as a last resort (trying the save all my money for the bodywork/paint). I won't be leaving the intake natural anyway at least that is my thought at this point.

[ntstlgl1970]

UGH! back to square one on the painting thing, guy I took it to today didn't seem interested in painting it after all. Another couple of months down the drain talking back and forth. At least I got the car blasted and in epoxy, but now I'm on the hunt for a body shop again. I started seriously trying to get the car in somewhere in May(ish) and still no luck.

 

I don't get it. If you want to paint it, paint it.  If you're not interested just say so.

[hemiken]

That  set back really sucks Eric......... Thought you were all set to go.  Oh well, ggod luck finding another painter old mate.  It has to get color sooner or late

[conv340]

I really don't understand body shops. I have been going though a lot of that my self. I'll let you know how this guy I'm talking to now turn out but S.J. is kinda far and labor is more here, those are negatives. The good news is he only does hot rods no insurance jobs. he also only does a couple cars at a time. So if they don't get done then he don't get paid!  I have to say the cars I've seen are beautiful but he charges acordingly.
best of luck in you search. ( I know your like me and have a hard time letting other work on your car. ) Finding some one you can trust with your "best friend" is realy tough.

[ntstlgl1970]

Well I've got it narrowed down to 3 shops, one I talked to today, another I may talk to tomorrow and one on Monday. Seems like guesstimates are around 200 man hours so I've been cutting the bs and one of the first questions I ask a place after "do you do completes" is what their labor rate is. Seems like the labor rate is between 70-80@hr here so it's a chunk of change. Meanwhile I mounted my mirrors today and put more of the front end back on. Looks pretty sinister in black. Now If I can get someone to paint it.....

[Grancoupe]

Did you ever consider posting in Craig's list for someone that may need to work on the side. I know there are guys out there that have lost their jobs lately and maybe there is one that is looking for work? Cash deal and personal attention, it might be a relationship worth looking for...

[buddydog]

With the work you have shown you are capable of, move out the welder and tools, set yourself up a makeshift booth and spray the mother! A good compressor and gun wouldn't set you back too much and you could charge yourself whatever you want!

Good luck with the shop hunting though! I know what it's like and even though things are slowing down there is very little if any drop in price these days.

Geoff

[ntstlgl1970]

Thanks for the encouragement. There aren't any deals to be had in my circle of friends. I went down the "guy on the side" road couple times already. One guy strung me along for 4 months then flaked on me (luckily before my car went to his house) another guy I talked to changed his mind once I towed the car to him (again lucky I didn't just drop the car off). Actually I've had zero, and I mean 0 luck with craigslist for anything selling or buying - though I've looked there and in the penny saver. The last thing I want to do is have the car somewhere that doesn't have insurance and have something happen. It would be nice to do it myself, but I realistically don't have enough spare time or experience to paint it and have it come out as nice as I would like it to. If you look at all my previous posts, it took me almost a year to get one side of the car into "shape" and put some epoxy on a trunklid. With the cost of paint I would hate to mess it up and be out a couple grand in material. I have a good compressor and HVLP gun and I seriously thought of spraying the outside of the car in my garage, but the airflow would not work well at all. All I have is a side window and the big garage door -at a 90 degree angle to each other- I even thought about knocking out a window opening in the back wall and going about it that way. I'll probably spray the undersides of the fenders and inside of the car myself since those areas don't matter if you get dirt and stuff in them. But in the end, I don't want to practice my first paint job on this car - it's too valuable and too much a part of me to just half a__ it. It's worth it to me to have a pro do it right the first time. The 3 shops I have my list down to will all be able to use the paint I bought already so I'll save a little there. A bonus will be having the car out of the garage for a couple of months  (I've read all the other resto threads too, but I hope it will only be a couple of months) so I can get the rest of the dirty, oily, gritty stuff done without worrying about messing up new paint. Ideally I would like to have the k member/engine/trans assembled and wired etc. before the body comes back and drop the body over the kmember.

Wow, that was a long rambling answer.

Have to talk to one of the guys on the list of 3 tomorrow. I really, really hope he can do the car because I've seen his work and it is nice but he might be out of my price range.