rat_rod_russell

Oh, also picked up a cheep front bumper and slapped some powder on it along with the side trim. The center caps on the wheels were screwed too so they all got the black powder coat treatment that the center grill got and it really brought the whole front end together. Go figure I'd wash the wheels and it would rain the next day but I'll take the cool weather in the Texas summer for having to wash a car or two, hands down. It was 102°F Today it was 78°F. DONE!



I'll get some good photos when the tropical storm finishes blowing through.

Later
-Russell

rat_rod_russell

Took her out to the Luling Watermelon Thump Car Show while I cleaned the shop some.





We've been plugging floor board holes, and tweaking the fuel vent line. Dad's building a cover for the vintage air box under the dash and I'm tuning the shift points and VE table for some isolated knocking. More of that when I get the photos off my big camera.

Later
-Russell

rat_rod_russell

Getting closer to wrapping up. Added a vacuum accumulator to help the little booster out and got some simple seat belts in. Better than nothing, which is what I've been doing. Sorry guys, I would work faster but the customer's asked me to slow up a bit for now due to some family health problems. So suspension tuning it is! I'm going for closer to Cadillac than Corvette. Now to play with it but more than likely I'm going to need to fit longer shocks on the V2 frame to make that really happen. I'm looking into cutting down the bump stops some as well. Handling is on point (especially now that I can go around corners without holding onto the door) but its solidly on the firm side. The seat handles a good deal of it but I'd like to have a recipe for better ride for customers looking for that finish.







Later
-Russell

rat_rod_russell

Ah yes, been one of those weeks.

First we had to clean out the AC lines because of a cross over mistake under the dash by one of my team. It happens, get upside down and backwards and this kind of thing just happens. Not the customers problem so its all out of pocket.

Dryer replaced because any water in them and they are toast so that got replaced as well.

Clean all the systems out and now the heater valve is "ticking". Also drawing 2 amps of power when the car is turned off. Vintage Air systems have their own circuit wired to the battery so all that current isn't going through the key. Makes since but this mean it can draw if necessary. I email into Vintage and they had a new one over to me the next day. They are only an hour drive from my shop in reality, but they should still be commended for getting that part out the door the same day as my question came in. So new on goes on and we add a heat shield just for good measure just to make sure that won't be a problem in the future.

We go to charge the system and two of the high pressure lines start leaking. Turns out the local shop didn't use the right dies in their machine when crimping these lines. Everyone there knew that they had the equipment to crimp AC lines but not everyone knew the procedure. It wasn't malicious and they gave me free hose to replace the bad parts so I was only out the ends to get it re done. And time but again that's my problem, not the customers. Turns out their machine was too big to crimp the 130° bends so I had to go visit a friend in Bastrop (45 minute trip one way) to use his tool to do it. I learned a bit about the "Lizard Skin" spray in insulation and sound deadened as well as some quick connect ends for the AC lines I'll be using in the future so thing won't be a problem ever again, so there's always a silver lining and we add more to the knowledge base.

I get back. My younger bother had moved the truck out of the way to work on his fiancees's car. I go to drive the truck back in the shop and............. rod knock............. at least that's what I'm pretty sure it is at this point from our inspection. Just sitting there, I have no clue what could have happened to make that start. I've never seen rod knock on an LS engine so there's a new one. We'll get her on the lift next week and take the pan off to confirm for sure.

Oh, and its been in the high 100's all week with 50-75% humidity in the area. Like I said, been one of those weeks. But we'll get it taken care of and next time **** hits the fan we can just reminder ourselves, "yeah, but it wasn't as bad as the summer of 18".

Back to the sauna, I mean shop.

Photo from us hoping it was a collapsed lifter or bad rocker arm and doing a compression test as well as bore scoping it from the top.



Later
-Russell