'36 Chevy Sedan "The PackRat Rod"

[RimSpoke]

I had to cut-down the passenger-side wind window just like the driver's side but the cast housing
for the gear-drive on the vent window crank was broken, allowing the worm gear to push itself
out of mesh whenever it was cranked.

Thoughts of just putting it in, inoperative, to get closer to completion crossed my mind
but they also didn't sit well and went by the wayside as I tried to come up with a fix.
Epoxying everything back together might hold, and then again it might not.

A better fix was to lengthen the rear backing plate, having it grab around the side to
keep the worm gear in mesh with the drive and also have it wrap around the bottom to hold the
broken housing together. Then drill out the top rivet and replace it with a bolt.

Cinching-down the bolt in the top rivet hole applies clamping forces to pull the rear support
bushing close to the drive and and pulls everything tight around the bottom at the same time.
Everything pulled right into place with the tightening of just the one bolt.

More importantly it stayed there while in operation. I can comfortably put this thing back
inside the door without having to worry about pulling it back apart later.

 

[RimSpoke]

Beginning of the front 'bumper'.
Once they're made, this piece will go between the two front nerf bars and carry the
bottom grille shell lines forward.

The piece in the top of the pictures is the interior windshield trim. It holds the windshield in and
I'm cutting it down to size. I'm also adding defrost to this car and the trim will cover the vents I
cut into the dash. I've just finished cutting some corresponding slots into the trim to direct airflow
to the front glass.

 

[RimSpoke]

Again With the Fire

Construction of this little quickie forge can be found around April 2015 with
the fabrication of the radius rods. It's just got a supply of compressed air
connected to the bottom with a valve for throttling and a few holes drilled to
disperse the air.

Here a small fire is being built with scrap wood pieces to form the nerf bars
out of some heavy-wall tubing. It gets the coals hot enough to quickly turn
the tubing cherry red. I could easily overheat it with this dumb little set-up.

The first one is already bent in the background.

Two identical bends cooling while the fire dies down:

The radius where the fenders used to meet the grill shell is the bend we were
after. The tube obviously won't mount back here. It's just being held here to
compare the curves.

The nerf bars will go directly in front of each frame horn. Like this:

It would have looked OK with just the uprights in front of each frame rail, but
we wanted to give things a little better look... besides there's metal and fire
going on. The tie piece is welded together and should bring the lines from
the bottom of the shell forward as planned.

Having had enough fun for one day, we're left with the mock-up.
Back in the day, you were the shizzle if you had your initial monogramed into
your custom bumper. This one is somewhat "em-ish" without - we think -
being overly gratuitous. The small pieces in the back will be cut into mounts.

 

[RimSpoke]

It was 18F outside (and in the unheated, detached garage) this passed Saturday, so I stayed inside and started rebuilding this thread to keep my head in the game... but I couldn't do it for two days straight.

Since it warmed-up to a balmy 23F on Sunday, I went out to make and add the brackets to the front bumper:

There's nothing like cold metal to suck the heat right out of your hands and I'd stay out until they started to hurt, go inside the house to warm-up for a bit, get a cup of coffee and get the feeling back, and then go back out for more of the same. I did this 2 or 3 times, finally ending-up with this:

 

[RimSpoke]

Previous Pages Are Working Again

A couple of nights ago after I got home from work, I sat down to finish rebuilding this thread. All the previous images and most of the links to videos are working again for anyone so inclined to go back in time.

Also, the Hot Rod Latches showed up:

So last night after work I told my wife I was going out to garage for a few.
"I shouldn't be long.", I said.

It was pretty cold and I didn't feel like going through the trouble of layering up.

"I'm just going to look to see how everything fits, maybe do some quick layout."


And that's just what I did:

But if you're gonna do that, you might as well get in a quick cut, just to see how it goes :

And once you get started... well, why would you stop cutting before you're done?:

As you'd expect (and probably do yourself) once you're this far you've got to
try a fit...
then tack it in place...

and the next thing you know some hours have gone by and:

But by then, the cold was coming through and I decided, even though mounting the post on the jamb required all the skill of drilling a hole, that the job would be better-off waiting, and I'd be better-off eating.

 

[smallfoot]

Nice work with the little impromptu forge!!! I made mine out of an old propane tank and a homemade Reil style burner and it hooks up with propane.

 

[bob w]

Thanks for the update. I'm learning a lot from your build.

 

[soltz]

rimspoke your one dedicated man
I like the way things are coming along. [cl

I came indoors when the temp went down to 39*

 

[Old Iron]

I'm a puss when it comes to cold weather so I have heat in my shop.
I run the heat at 58 degrees so I don't sweat while working.

 

[RimSpoke]

Nice work with the little impromptu forge!!! I made mine out of an old propane tank and a homemade Reil style burner and it hooks up with propane.

Smallfoot,
We do what we need to do, right?

Ron Reil has been a consistent - and significant - contributor to the Artist Blacksmith community for as long as I can remember. His standard design and the Mongo Series he subsequently developed when he needed even more heat are efficient & effective. I just prefer charcoal because I'm cheap and I can make my own when I need to ;^)

I had a better set-up some years ago (notice the different in hair color and weight) before we moved to Colorado. It was also charcoal based but would melt all the aluminum we could throw at it:

The one you see here was just one of those things I threw together out of what I had on hand because I was out of oxy-or-acetylene when I was making the radius rods:

 

[RimSpoke]

 

[RimSpoke]

rimspoke your one dedicated man

or maybe I should just be committed.

I'm a puss when it comes to cold weather so I have heat in my shop.
I run the heat at 58 degrees so I don't sweat while working.

"Puss" has nothing to do with it. If you've got it, use it.

My father used to tell me, long ago, on earlier projects, "You think you're going after this but the truth is it's got such a hold on you that you couldn't let it go if you wanted to." The longer I do this, the more I think he was right.

 

[DozerII]

Nice progress. Built a forge similar to yours years ago to bend some 5/8"x4" steel for a brush rake for our old Allis Chalmers HD5 dozer. We used an old shop vac for the blower, worked real good.

 

[RimSpoke]

If you recall back to Jan 2013 when I was raising the windshield after the chop, (fade to page 4 of this build) I showed there was no defroster available in this vehicle:

so I cut some holes for vents, knowing I'd eventually get around to putting some in:

In more modern vehicles, the channel for the rubber was formed into the windshield opening. Earlier on, like in this '36, the installation of the interior trim is what made the channel to hold the glass and rubber. Wanting to bolt the vents in directly below that trim necessitated my having the vents on-hand before I could go further with the glass.


Back to Now
Today turned out to be the day I was thinking about back then.

I recently picked up two defrost vents from a '53 Panel:

and it really wasn't going to take much more than drilling a couple of holes for each the right distance apart, but I also wanted to seal them against the underside of the dash with something to prevent any air leakage. I was picturing some of the foam that goes between a pickup truck cap and the bed sides. Lacking that, I used some garage door bottom weather-stripping I had left over:

Stuffing the camera up under the dash, you can see the mounting:

I cut the trim down to match the chop & still need to weld the pieces together, but it looks like this from the top-side:

 

[I-R-POPS]

Nice work. There's no end to the little things that matter.
I've got to do something for defrost vents when I put the heater in mine next week.

Looks good.

 

[RimSpoke]

So tell me, is this a shoebox?

or a glovebox?

The originals were cardboard and the aftermarket ones are cardboard... so I figured, "why not?" How much is a guy expected to pay for a cardboard box anyway?

I had some metalized tape in stock (found in the same aisle as the Peal-and-Seal ) and wrapped it around the edge where the bolts were going to go through for support:

Placing the bottom of the box between the glovebox door hinge and the base of the dash allowed the full length of the hinge to squoosh the bottom between two layers of metal. Much stronger than just the bolts themselves:

I guess what someone calls it just depends on the application.

 

[Gunzenrosa]

The car is coming together nicely. I wondered how many people paid good money for a cardboard glove box when building one is just that easy.
Good thinking on the shoe box.

 

[DozerII]

Nice job on the defrosters and the glove box

 

[RimSpoke]

There have been a few Homemade Tool threads put together by this ingenious bunch and some have shared the different ways they straighten brake or fuel line when purchased as a roll.

Regardless of how we go about doing it, I find it funny that we first straighten it [S :

only to go about bending it :

just to put it somewhere where very few people will ever see :

I've got mine mostly bent to fit but didn't clamp it in yet so it's not entirely squared-up... I'll probably pull it back out to paint it anyway so it's just flopping around loose at the moment.

 

[RimSpoke]

And one of the back half as viewed from under the rear, passenger-side wheel well:

It would have been shorter (and much easier) to run the line straight along the inside of the passenger frame rail, right up to the fuel pump - also on the passenger side - instead of crossing over to the driver's side and back again... but since the battery is also mounted inboard on the right side directly under the passenger's feet, I figured I'd just take the long way around.