I didn’t trust it to actually drive the 4 miles to the show seeing how it has only been running about 20 minutes total. It was a good thing I put it on my jeep and towed it there. I drove it on the trailer fine and backing off the trailer it made it another [...]
Author Archives: Rick Thompson
It started!!!!!!! no pics though it looks the same as before it just smokes a lot now :)
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Pulled the car out from under carport and cleaned it up for the show, Still no starter so it doesn’t run.
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Bunch of random parts bolted back on, and the dashboard is in.
Well I tried to get it to start but it doesn’t seem to want to start. The main problem I am having right now is the starter is shot and will barely turn the engine over. I got a new one ordered but will be saturday before it comes in so it looks like it [...]
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Radiator and battery tray mounted in the front.
Things are starting to come together. I kind of figured I would start at the front and work my way back putting things together that it needs to be able to start and drive around. Once I get most of the basic stuff put on and working then I can start on cleaning up the [...]
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Gas tank, trans cooler, and body back on.
Well the gas tank was easy to put on once I got it back. I just cut out some straps and put it together. I will have to pick up some rubber and put under the straps but it will do for right now. The trans cooler ended up being in a slightly strange place [...]
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Gas tank put together and test fitted in place.
I got all the fittings on the gas tank and stuck it in place to see how well it fits. There is plenty of room around it so mounting all the rest of the junk back there should be no problem. I might even have enough room to put the side windows back around the [...]
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Rear suspension finally put together and working right.
The first pic just shows what the car looks like as of now, it is kind of a mess. The easiest thing to do with all the tools when working on it is just throw them inside the car so it probably has 200lbs of tools and scrap laying on the floor of it now. [...]
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Brake lines and radiator pipe installed.
Well it was a tight squeeze getting those copper lines ran in the side of the car but I think they will work out just fine like they are, I just need to attach them and not leave them laying loose in the side of the body. The brake lines were a pain to get [...]
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Gas tank cut out and ready to weld.
well I finally decided on the size of the tank. I made it hold 14 gallons of gas. Instead of making it thinner and keeping it at the same height as the cardboard one I made it shorter and kept the same size bottom. It looks like it will work out pretty good like that [...]
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Throttle cable and shifter cable installed and working.
I had a hard time finding a cable for the throttle, I called around bike shops and nobody had 15ft cables. I found a few places that sold a 50ft roll of cable housing but they didnt have any cable. I finally found out by trial and error that #2 and #3 picture hanging wire [...]
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gas tank designed and test fitting new back wheels and brakes.
I tried to make a cardboard gas tank and see how well it fits. with a tank this size I will have plenty of gas but I haven’t added up its size yet to see how much gas it will really hold. I am trying to get 15 gallons so if it is more than [...]
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front brakes installed, pedals installed, rear springs sort of installed.
On the first two pictures you can see where I planned on mounting the brake and throttle pedals. I ended up cutting part of the tube to allow the master cylinder to mount. I was thinking it might be a bad place to cut the tube but considering all the other tubes right around that [...]
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New Floorpan installed and test fitting body again.
The top row pictures show the new floorpan. I cut it out of 16 ga. steel. instead of welding it on the car I bolted it by drilling and threading holes in the lower frame tube. That way I can bolt it on and it is as strong as welding but it can be taken [...]
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Rear suspension is assembled and some paint on the frame rails to protect it.
The frame has some paint on it now at least so it is protected and won’t rust to bad I hope. I used some paint I had laying around and decided that it looked decent with all those bright colors on it. I didn’t have enough yellow to do much more than the front suspension [...]
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The car is finally home.
well the car is finally home now. I got the radiator yesterday so after gettting the body off the car and on its side I can try and figure out the best way to mount it. I think where it is at will be good but there is no way a fan is going to [...]
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A few pictures of the new transmission mount and other things.
well the frame looks almost exactly the same as last time but there has been a lot of work done to it. All the welding is done now, the trans mount is solid and all the tubes are welded together. The floorpan should be in tomorrow and it won’t take much to weld it together [...]
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The frame is now complete and only needing a few details to finish it.
Finally done Well maybe not completely finished but all the rails are in place now, The only thing left is to finish up a few welds and wait for the sheet of metal that is to be used for the floor pan. The floor is going to be made of 16 ga. steel and welded [...]
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The rotors are mounted and wheels put on.
the frame hasn’t changed much but a lot of other odds and ends have been taken care of. I got the front rotors with a chevy bolt pattern on it and the rear rotors have been redrilled to a standard chevy pattern. once I got those rotors mounted, I put the wheels on it so [...]
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Pictures of the roll bar and more frame braces.
Here are a few shots of the progress on the roll bar. the bar fits just behind the body and the trunk lid will shut on it. The engine subframe is finally getting some extra strength added to it and the car feels good and solid the way it is now but the side bars [...]
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The body is temporarily placed on the frame to see how it is coming.
Don’t drool to hard looking at these pics The body is placed on it to see how things are going. Just imagine what this thing is going to be capable of considering the power to weight ratio. I know it looks terrible with all the old grease and rust on it but first things first. [...]
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Here is the bottom of the frame finished and located properly.
Here is where it starts to look good now The lower part of the frame is attached and solid now. the rest of it is just adding the roll cage and reinforcing the frame. the rear is only attached in one point so far and there is no way it can take the power. The [...]
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I have my camera fixed and here are a few pictures of the frame that show some more detail. next week it should start coming together a lot faster.
I gave up on getting my camera to work, it was the battery holder that was wore out. I used a sealed lead acid battery from a power wheels car and wired it up to the camera, now I can take thousands of pictures on a single charge, beats taking 30-40 pics on a single [...]
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I have to fix my camera it is starting to mess up, but here are 2 pictures of my frame I took as we started on putting the lower rails together.
There isn’t much to see yet but those 2 lower rails were hard to get just right. The old VW frame is sitting beside it for reference. They are tack welded to the front crossmember in the wrong spot in these pictures, but we needed to do that to make sure the rest of it [...]
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I got the last things out of the Pinto I might need so now it is time to have fun with the car before it goes to the junkyard.
Ok so this has nothing to do with a building a car but it isn’t often that I get to do this kind of stuff with my old jeep. Besides it makes it easier on the crusher, there is less there to crush now
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Pictures of a 75 pinto that I cut up and got the front end out.
here are some shots of a old pinto I picked up real cheap, it was a piece of crap though so it wasn’t a bad deal. I rolled it over on it’s side using my jeep and using a torch cut the front crossmember and suspension mounts out. while it was on it’s side I [...]
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after cutting the caddy in half and pressure washing the drivetrain.
here is what a caddy looks like after being beat up and cut on with a torch I cleaned as much grease as possible off the engine but you would not belive how much grease a 20 year old car can build up. I don’t plan on doing any work to the engine except for [...]
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right after finishing up the paint job
I always thought it was nice that the camera didnt show how bad the car really was but now i wish it could show up better since it looks real good now
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Start of Fiberglass work
Here is where I am starting with the fiberglass work, it is amazing how many cracks the trunk lid had. I also have it parked beside the old Eldorado so you can get a general idea how easy it is going to be to fit that drivetrain into it.
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Finally an update :) Pictures of the car before getting ready to repair and repaint. trying to show what condition the stripes are in and what they looked like.
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First time driving the car under its own power and detailed pics of the shaky jake pinstripes
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finishing up the motor details and putting a delco alternator on it.
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Re-installing the body
Body is finally back on the car and waiting for a hinge setup to be made on the rear and the engine to be put together and all my new chrome parts added to it.
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Pics of the 76 Eldorado to be used in the future engine swap
In case anyone is wondering if I painted it blue this is the cadillac I got that has a 500 cubic inch engine and front wheel drive setup that would be real nice to put in the car right away but I wan’t the car running by this summer not 3 summers from now so [...]
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Pictures of the Subaru EA-82 engine before removal
I decided this engine needed some work to get it running. I tried to make some sense out of it. I managed to get the timing belts installed on it and some of the covers even looked like they could fit without much trouble. I started to look closely at the engine wiring and decided [...]
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Checking the layout with the Steering Wheel and wiring the gauges
Once the gauges where all set where I thought they should be I needed to check and make sure they all were seen with the steering wheel in front of them so I stuck the body back on the car and tried it out. It all fit and worked out almost perfect. the signal indicators [...]
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test fitting the gauges in the new layout
Once I got the holes cut I put the gauges back in the holes to see how well they lined up. You can see that I also moved the radio into a normal spot.
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Filling in the old gauge holes in the dash
I didn’t like the layout of the dash, all the gauges were way to far apart and took up to much room. as well as no room for a cd player or any other junk I might want to add. I filled in all the old holes with fiberglass and will cut new ones when [...]
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Removing the old wiring from the dash
Here is where the fun finally starts. I took the wire looms off the dash wiring. now you can see what a mess the wiring was. it always looks nicer inside wire looms I quickly gave up on keeping the wiring and decided to redo most of it, if it wasn’t an obvious wire and [...]
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Detailed pics of the body and frame
Here are some random pictures I took to try and show what all of the parts of the car looked like. I had it took apart enough to start rebuilding it and getting it running again so I figured this was a good time to take lots of pictures in case I needed before and [...]
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stripping the body off the frame
Here are some Pictures of right after I took the body off the frame I was hoping with the body off the wiring would make some sort of sense but it was almost completely insane from what I could tell. there were 4 switches on the dashboard side and 2 of them seemed to control [...]
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Making a mold of the broke drivers window
Here is a mold I tried to make out of the broken drivers side window. It looked good and would have probably worked but I didn’t have any oven big enough to put the new window in. I gave up and just fixed a new window up the best way I could think of.
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Detailed Pics of the car’s problems
These are some pictures I took to try and get a general idea of what was going to be needed to get this thing in some sort of running condition. There was no interior to speak of and the person who wired it must have had stock in the crimp on connector company, there were [...]
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Right after getting the car home
Here is what the car looked like when I got it off the truck it was shipped on. It looks pretty good and I was suprised how good it looked compared to what the description I got of it was. I thought I would have it made and have the car running in a month [...]
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