Hihg Skewl Teachor Iz What I Are.....

In an interesting turn of events, I am now the Welding/Metals teacher at the local high school.

Its a job I wanted last year when they hired the guy that quit. Good pay, great benefits and I can still work at the shop part time.

The kids seem like they are going to be alright and as long as we don't set one another on fire it should work out just fine.

Can't wait to get started.

Will be preaching the safety thing hardcore,,,,,  like this:

Bullsh--------!

Errrr, Bullfrog. Mom-in-Law wanted a handmade frog for Christmas.

Normally I don't do requests but I thought it would be a fun project. I was mistaken.

If I were charging shop rate its a $600 gorram frog.

 

 

From the bottom, The only machines used were my bead roller for the rib down the center and my welder. Everything else was hand formed or hammered to shape.

 



 

 

47 kabillion hammer blows in each leg,

 

 





3 color fade paint job,

 

And since I like sparkles, I added some metal effects clear,

 

 

It turned out decent considering I had no idea how to build a frog. In the future I will leave frog building to Mother Nature.

 

BTW I named him Jeremiah......

 





Todays Post is Brought to You by,,,,

The number 51,

The letter "C" for control arm and creeper

The letter "P" for pelvis,

And the letter "G" for gravity,,,


(sorry pix of gravity seem to be non-existent)


Add these together properly and you end up with this,

Which will make you say some of the lyrics to this song,,

and then you say,,

Thus endeth thy lesson of the day.

MGA final update.

Having finished up the MGA that by most accounts was "unfixable" I thought you'd enjoy some pix.

 

 

The rockers were installed shortly after these were taken. We had to get everything on the chassis and mostly llined up before they could go on.

 

 

Fenders were a bit low at the nose but adjusted up nearly perfectly, lots better than from the factory I'm sure.

 

 

The only panels on the car I did not have to repair or replace were the doors.

 

These are right after the body hit the chassis, BTW the chassis is from a different car. Add in the fact the all of the body mounts and surrounding areas were rusted or nonexistent I was surprised at how well it fit and how quickly we got it bolted down.

 

 

Chassis and driveline have been completely redone, motor is fresh and everything is painted or powdercoated.

 

 

Wheels and tires are also new, tires were made in the Ukraine, I mentioned that it was good he didn't wait to get the rubber as I'm fairly sure those folks are not interested in making tires right about now.

 

 

The nose was wrecked and rusty so the grill section came from another body and I had to replace the flanges where the fenders bolted to the car, the patches were 7 foot long and 5inches wide. that was 14 foot of weld per side.

 



 

 

I made the patches from scratch and made them fit the fenders better than the factory did.



 

 

The forward sections of the inner fenders were rotten so those were replaced from the same car that we got the grill from and they needed patched too.

The leading edge of the hood was way off so I had to rebuild it. whats another 3 foot of weld when you've already welded a couple miles...

 

A few random pics of my idea of overwhelming and underpaying....

 

 

 

 

 



 

Adding some better metal,,

 



Both rear door posts were made from scratch and the passenger side front door post was homemade too.

 

 

 

 

Not sure anyone can understand how much work went into this thing and I'm glad its over and done.

 

If you own an MGA,,, I feel for you and if you have one that needs this kind of work,, well kindly find another dumbass to fix it cause I'm fairly sure I'm not doing another one..

 

We do have enough cutup rusty parts to build a copy of this one as it was when we got it if your interested.....

 







Hectic Part 2!

Ok so the weekend was a blast!

Went north to Insanelandia, located in Crook County, to a Shindig, helped some good Folks raise 92500 pounds of pennies (ish) for some other good people.

I was there making panels for the artists to ply their trade upon. I made 14 or so but was to busy to get any pix. Da Mom may have some and I'll get her to email me a few and update this when I get em.

So anyway,, there were cars or something there,,

 

 

That's all I got of the cars, sorry to say not all that interested in what others do to the rides, keeps me free of undo influences. I don't read car mags or watch any of the Hot Rod type TV shows either.

 

 

Not much into bikes either but this one was parked like a foot and a half from my workstation (you can see my stuff in the background of the first pic) and it was hard to ignore.

 

 

 

This pic tells the story, man what a find!



While I was making up a panel I heard the Evil StepDad conversing with someone while they were watching me do my thing and when I looked over he introduced me to this Fella,, (here too). He's a big inspiration to me as he is still working, giving classes and chopping cars during shows.

In a sense giving back information he has so that the following generations can learn both the history and the techniques of the trade. Something I try to do as well.

He was really admiring the panel I had made so at the end of the show I took it over and presented it to him.

 

 

Inflated my ego when he complimented me and the panel so I could think of no better thing to do with it.

 

One of the airbrush guys from the Brushmasters blew some candy on it and really made it pop.

 

 

All in all a great weekend and for a great cause, will be going and doing it again next year!

.

Hobbies

Every couple years I get a special project from a friend of mine that is a rural mail carrier.

Right hand drive conversions on Ford Escapes. The last few she has gotten have been hybrids, which I'm not overly fond of, however for a mail carrier to get 40+ mpg on a mail route is outstanding.

I have over the years came up with a workable system for getting the pedals on the wrong side. If it was a Jeep they make all kinds of kits for this but they make nothing for a Ford.

We ended up buying a brake pedal kit for a Jeep and modifying to work.

Well,,, Ford no longer makes the Escape hybrid and the new Escapes are on a different platform than the old ones so my system had to be modified a bunch to work.

Since these things are fly by wire on the throttle its easier to make a long bellcrank that runs across from one side to the other. On the previous models it could run straight across and had plenty of space in front of the console to put it.

The new ones are much different, first off the console sides run all the way to the firewall and are one piece from the firewall to the rear of the console and there was a lot of parts removal just to get the sides off and once I got them off the big empty space that used to be behind them is now filled with heater box.

Add in the fact that there is only one place for the throttle shaft to run thru, which is half perfect, drivers side is fine but on the passenger side it would push the pedal assembly back 5-6" further back than it needed to be.

Since I am real good friends with Rube Goldberg I added a couple of U-joints and came up with this,,,

 

 

The brakes are Hydraulic with a master cylinder and pedal on the passenger side and a slave that pushes the pedal down on the drivers side, made for a Jeep and modified long ago to work in a Ford. The throttle pedal and mount I added as well. The traction tape was added by the owners.

 

 

 

 

 

This is how it connects with the go pedal. The shaft floats in bronze bushings so its nice and smooth.



 

The slave cylinder used to mount to the floor on some rather flimsy tube mounts and thankfully the new truck has an impact tube running across the bottom of the dash and I was able to mount the slave of it and its much stronger and was a lot easier to get in place.

 



 

 

 

 

I shot a vid of how it works, its a bit dark but at least you get the idea,,,

 

 



 

Of course the entire operation was done with direct supervision as shown at the end of the vid.

 

Since I am making a Mail truck I refer to this as a sex change.........

 

 

 

 

Welder challenge

Here's the last of the "I know a guy that can weld the edge of a razor blade" challenges.

Bead down the edge of a utility knife blade, 2 Xacto blades welded edge to edge and a bead down a Xacto blade. Once I finished the weld down the last one I had to take a file to it as it was still sharp.

Don't ask about welding aluminum cans, I've been doing that for years.

Someday I'll get good at this stuff.

Jus Sayin

Any day you find yourself on the floor with a new knot on your head and seeping a bit of blood from the same spot is not a good day.

For those of you mechanically inclined,, even though you have the hood prop rod securely in place and your going to be hammering around the hood opening, a backup rod might not be a bad idea.

Yep

 

2 utility knife blades welded edge to edge. Weld is .030 wide. Not nearly as hard as welding up aluminum soda cans. Challenge was issued, I was up for it.

Lets make a MGA from scratch, or not......

Current project is a 58 MGA that looks like it was left on a shotgun range since it was new.

It was also rear ended at some point and shoved into whatever was in front of it.

Every panel on this thing needs a patch and straightened.

The customer has supplied some new patches which don't fit and a few cutoffs from another car that are only half as rusty and fucked up as the ones already on the car.

Left inner fender,

 

 

Right inner fender,

 

 





Both of which needed this patch and another along the bottom edge,

Here's some the crash damage and the replacement panel that don't fit,,

I had to cut and shrink up a new lip for the front as the one on there is off by enough that it would never fit.

The black line is the cut line for the lip, 1" back from where the lip is supposed to be. The cat is just there to make sure the panel doesn't float away. The other feline is a backup in case the other one fails.

 

And the finished patch, a bit more tuning and it'll be fine,,

 

 





 

 

Lots more to go as this thing is rusty from one end to other. Woohooo!

 

Oh yeah, those pretty primered fenders were just as screwed up as the rest of it but I already waved the magic hammer over them and issued the proper profanity stream to make them whole again.

 

 

For you spades players,,, how would you bid this hand????

 

 

 



Told ya!

I make some cool stuff sometimes.

That's as far as I can go till after the chassis has been powdercoated. After that drill a bunch of holes and add a bunch of aircraft rivets to complete the look.