Stuff my dog says; on second thought I'll just build a race car

Radiator shroud is aluminum, .040" thickness. The sheath is really just too weak. The return spring that is on the carb that is there right now isn't all that stiff and is causing problems. I'm probably going to just run a real light weight spring for now just to get the car mobile but it's not a long term solution.
 
The reason I asked about the shroud material is the stiffener beads. Did you have to anneal the aluminum before rolling in the beads or is that alloy/thickness formable without annealing? Most aluminum I've worked with is pretty brittle.
 
It's not something I've ever had a problem with doing fan shrouds like this. I've honestly no clue what type of aluminum it is as it came with a lot of random sheets and pieces of metal a few years back. One of the guys who used to work here had done some other more decorative pieces with it too and didn't have any trouble but I don't know that we've ever tried it in high stress or vibration situations.
Other stuff I can think off the top of my head is heat/AC vents, a shift boot tower, a shift boot trim ring, and a "chin spoiler" that really was more a lower valence extension and not subject to any actual downforce creation.
 
Hmm. Interesting. Thanks for getting back to me.

Remember I'm no kind of authority on that kind of stuff, that's just my experiences.

Did some weighing with an eye toward ordering springs tonight. Weight distribution especially came out interesting with me sitting in the seat.

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Once I double checked everything was set up correctly I decided that's probably close enough for a first effort at a full custom.
 
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Been a busy day but this is the only picture. Doing the random gasket stuff I need done to put water in the engine soon. Did find out that the water pump gasket I got in my master gasket kit doesn't actually go to this engine...which is weird. Other than that I also primed the fuel system and dropped in a couple gallons of gas which showed me the fuel pump does work its just a bit more noisy than you would think a 7psi pump could be.
I also remembered messing with the water pump that I've never actually bought the longer crank pulley bolt I need. So that's another 20 dollars gone on one admittedly rather large bolt.
Upper radiator hose is on the way and may see it tomorrow. Springs are on order but I've no clue when they will actually show up. Unsurprisingly springs for this thing aren't something that people just keep in stock. That kinda sucks because that's going to end up being the limitation for taking it anything above walking speed.
I did get my bearing and seals and brake cylinder put in last night so I can fill the rear end, plus I've got four wheel braking now so that's cool.
 
With finally being able to work the throttle from in the seat I noticed a couple things. One, the manifold pressure gauge was actually dead. It was stuck at about 10 inches of mercury and didn't react when blipping the throttle. Two the voltage gauge goes bananas when the car is revved with or without the alternator turned on.
The gauge I was able to take apart and get working as it's a mechanical gauge. The return spring for the needle was bent and dragging on the bar that holds the needle keeping it stuck. Unbending that allowed the needle to move freely and return but it returned to about 5 inches of mercury. The vacuum tube has a brass elbow soldered to the end of it which is linked to the needle mechanism by a plastic link, this elbow can be bent to adjust zero so that's what I did. I'm honest not too concerned with the vacuum side but I was able to verify readings on the pressure side with a hand pump. The vacuum side reads slightly low but that isn't really a concern. I did marr up the ring on my otherwise brand new gaunge though.
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The voltage reading is more problematic as I'm guessing the voltage regulator in the alternator is toast. Double checked with a volt/ohm meter and it's not the gauge the voltage on the car goes screwy. Like bouncing to full field and back screwy. Unsurprisingly the AFR doesn't like this and it's reading goes fluttery too. I need to do more digging to see what I can get by with in the mean time, bouncing off 17 volts clearly isn't good for things. With no water in the engine yet though I've hit my limit of run time for a while though.
The one slight bit of forward progress for the morning is I finally put bolts in the shift cover. It wasn't my best work back then so the bolts aren't spaced well. I didn't leave enough of a flange with the bead roller way back when so the nutserts went the only place they could go which leaves the bolts too close to the edge of the cover to be esthetically pleasing. Certainly isn't getting changed now though so it'll do just fine.
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Well, i wasn't as productive as i thought I would be today but I wasn't completely unproductive. When I got out of bed this morning my plan was to cowl in around the radiator so the air coming through the grill wouldn't just go around it. I lost two hours this afternoon semi-rescueing this though.
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Truck is one we had finished a while back, we took it to the race track with us as a matter of fact. The owner was driving around today though and said it starting making a horrible squealing noise. Turned out it had just randomly snapped a brake caliper bracket bolt and the bolt head wedged itself between the rotor and bracket effectively locking the wheel. They towed it to the shop but I had to drill the broken bolt and get the wheel turning again to get it inside.
Anyway, even after that I didn't get a while lot done but I did ext extend the lower radiator mounts to go around the fan shroud too and got the bottom edge radiator cowling pieces made and tacked in place.
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Oh yeah, verified the alternator still charges crazy with the plug out of it, so that's gonna have to be rebuilt. And I'll have to disconnect the battery cable from it in the mean time so it doesn't screw anything up pegging the voltage gauge.
 
$20 bolt...ouch!

What's the bolt for?
3/4-16x3 grade 8 bolt for the harmonic balancer/crank pulley. Having the adapter and supercharger drive pulley the original bolt for the balancer is too short now. Nothing really special about it, just a big grade 8 bolt and that stuff is really expensive any more.
 
3/4-16x3 grade 8 bolt for the harmonic balancer/crank pulley. Having the adapter and supercharger drive pulley the original bolt for the balancer is too short now. Nothing really special about it, just a big grade 8 bolt and that stuff is really expensive any more.
If you don't need a fully threaded bolt I would think any good hardware store would have a bolt for much less.
 
So I got an email yesterday showing an updated shipping estimate for the front springs of January. To go with the estimate for the rear of the end of September. I put in a cancel request for that order today and tried to get some 25 pounds per inch lighter all four corners that show to be in stock. So we will see how that plays out.
 
Somewhat happy with this arch for the top of the core support. No longer happy with the arch atop the firewall, it looks terrible now.
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Concerned with the fact the radiator leaked on the driver side where I welded the bracket on when I tried to fill it.
 
If you don't need a fully threaded bolt I would think any good hardware store would have a bolt for much less.
Just did some checking on that bolt out of curiosity and found a grade 8 Cat bolt part number 0S1575 that goes for all of $5.65. Only differences is this one has 1 1/4 inches unthreaded area under the head, not fully threaded like yours and is black oxide as compared to the zinc chromate finish that yours appears to have.

PS Hope you can fix that radiator leak without too much trouble!
 
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