Willowbilly3
A *real* tin magnet
MY Buddy Jim is building this car
View attachment 100721
other than the engine and tires... he bought it pretty much looking exactly as it looks now.
And he has had to have EVERYTHING re worked
I wish I had pictures.
Some guy in west Iowa was building it for himself (or sayign he was) and then put it up for sale as a rolling shell with no drivetrain
I'm not sayign that it wasn't worht the 4k that jim paid for it
It has an aftermarket narrowed 12 bolt under there that's worth a grand and the tube frame was already installed
It has the 12" rotors up front the manual steering gearbox... the manual brake conversion...
I was giving it a good look over before he had the tubs and the back half job reworked
In my opinion it looks like someone started with top quality work then halfway through did a rush job.
Only the visible parts of the tubes were welded... approximately 60% weld coverage of the joints over half the car with iffy welds and 100% coverage with top notch welds over the other half of the car
the 4 links for the rear axle were too short and were at one time longer then cut and butt welded
Whoever cut out the floors when they did the back half job got all crazy with the sawzall and took out way too much it all had to be filled in.
some of the sheetmetal inside between the sub rails for the jegs kit was laid on top of small channel iron that was scabbed to the rails and not even cut to length (I absofreakinglootly hate prefab chassis kits)
jegs rails look like they are designed to fit in anything no matter how bad they look...total waste of space the tubes just don't go where the car's design implies they should.
it ends up looking like Micky Mouse hands photoshopped into a photo of a supermodel [ddd
That's why I'm going to get rectangular dies made up for my tube bender.
Anyways he is having alot of this chassis work done by another guy with good skills at considerable expense but we all still consider Jim's building this car he didn't buy it done, it's his design, his money.
Kinda like when an author hires a ghost writer. The author didn't technically write the book but it was written to his specifications under his authority.
recently he got the engine running right.
Jim bought a fresh used crate engine and got rid of the peanut port heads.
The guy who built the big ovals for him and reassembled the engine got it right the first time but the thing was leaking antifreeze out the exhaust
Turns out the guy used the wrong valve guides
Builder said he forgot the old heads had the valve guides passing through the water jacket so he re did the guides on his own nickle
Then it didn't run right
Turns out the valve settings were off but you can't fault the guy he knew right he just made mistakes
Whoever finished jim's chassis... didn't know right but he had to have known he was doing it wrong.
I started to think the seller had put a rush on it to throw it together to sell but the more I think about it I'm thinking he ran out of money or something and finished it himself then realized it would be easier to start over then to redo it all.
Up in charter oak IA I bought a 79 firebird like that. had the quarter panels pop riveted on and glued with epoxy...
Guy said he wanted a firebird a little older
I think he just go to be a better bodyman and wanted to run away from his learning curve.
I traded him his rolling shell for my 73. Mine had been patched and bondoed up in the past but had never had large areas removed. to him it was still virgin whereas the 79 was hopelessly borked.
i wanted all the goodies off it
I had picked up a rust free 78 at the police auction that had been stripped so his doors, front clip, trunk, and misc stuff was enough to flesh out the auction car... the shell I got from him I couldn't give it away and it ended up over the scale.
It was purdy but OMG it had so much putty in it and the pop rivets... They looked like flowers... he used like 3" pop rivets to rivet the quarters to the car I don't know why....
What the hell is wrong with people gluing cars together anyway didn't we outgrow that?
Your buddy is pretty darn good, that looks almost like a Chevy!!
