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  • Cap, it would take a whole bunch of new junk showing up in this yard for anybody to notice...

    I love your van, it's not a whole lot different than what I spent many miles in, in my youth. Mom and Dad's Ford covered ground between Alaska and the Panama Canal, still lives around back.
    ...

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    • Originally posted by Loren View Post
      Cap, it would take a whole bunch of new junk showing up in this yard for anybody to notice...
      You remind me of my friend (who owned a towing company) who kept dumping 3rd gen Camaros in my dad's yard. Nothing cool, but he knew I was building one and decided (without telling me) to continue building my stash. I bought 4, sold 11 when I cleaned up.... that's actually not even the real number because I bought 4, fixed 5 and sold 11. The last 2 would make one car, but their only value was one had a running motor in it (2.8). I advertised as a package and lost several sales when I told them they had to take the car without the motor first before they could haul the last out. Even the guy who bought them tried to get the 'good' one without the junker first* I get to my dad's house as the 'friend who was picking up the car' was starting to load the good car - I stopped him, and because he 'wasn't told that' told him that he was also supposed to take 40 junk tires with the first load. He did. The guy who bought them called me and said "I had to try but please don't send more tires with the next car."


      *one had been a theft recovery, the other was telephone pole wrecked - between the 2 there was one car.
      Doing it all wrong since 1966

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      • I've junked-up pretty much wherever I've been. I'll tell you though, if I had much of that "junk" back it would fetch some good money now. I'll save everyone having to wince and leave stories for another time. The current stock is getting me down though (61 is too old for this) and much will go, at-least scrap prices are up from the zero they were at a while back.
        ...

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        • Originally posted by Loren View Post
          I've junked-up pretty much wherever I've been. I'll tell you though, if I had much of that "junk" back it would fetch some good money now. I'll save everyone having to wince and leave stories for another time. The current stock is getting me down though (61 is too old for this) and much will go, at-least scrap prices are up from the zero they were at a while back.
          The “nice” but dirty cars I crushed while running the crusher, needing maybe tuneup or oil change etc. will make most wince.
          Most of my derby cars and my kid’s early ones were “tune up and drive”

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          • I have one that hopefully ya'll won't mind me sharing. In a previous life I lived near Marysville OH - and the girl I was with at the time was a pilot - the little municipal airport had a "crew car" that everyone laughed about being and "old beater". Well, one day it wouldn't start, and knowing I was a Ford guy - they called me and said - bring $75 and get it the hell out of here.
            So - I did.
            What really made them mad was that I didn't show up with a trailer and a winch - I showed up with a friend and a couple tool boxes.
            AFTER I'd paid the guy and he'd signed over the title, with about 30 minutes of tinkering, I started the '72 Mercury Monterey up and drove it home - doing burn outs at every country road intersection I stopped at - the engine?
            351C-2V - and I still have it - carb to oil pan. LOL
            There's always something new to learn.

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            • This third itineration of a parts set to adapt C4 Corvette front crossmember/suspension to a C2-3 frame ('63-82) has been through a lot of analysis & criticism but I think this is it; 12- and 10-ga formed steel parts make new spliced-in rails and various parts, there is also an inner reinforcement rail stretching from front to back inside the orig. rails, unseen in photos. LS motor mounts have a reach, but tie in to crossmember and clear steering and exhaust. Now to get it in a car and pound on it 'til it breaks...or not.

              -----------------

              Below: The splice is the b*tch. It's jig-cut and assembled, and plated on the inside, meant to all just look like it could be stock when finished. You can see a little of motor mount that uses F-body parts and should be good on NVH.

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              Up front it accepts stock bumper brackets and clears stock fiberglass.


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              Where it gets thin there is reinforcement. You can see where I still have a little fine-tuning to do and of-course welding is not complete.

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              Once it's dialed-in, you can buy the chassis from a friend of mine.
              ...

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              • WOW
                YOU Fiberglass Car Guys Go ALL OUT,
                on making Right....

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                • Originally posted by Loren View Post
                  This third itineration of a parts set to adapt C4 Corvette front crossmember/suspension to a C2-3 frame ('63-82) has been through a lot of analysis & criticism but I think this is it; 12- and 10-ga formed steel parts make new spliced-in rails and various parts, there is also an inner reinforcement rail stretching from front to back inside the orig. rails, unseen in photos. LS motor mounts have a reach, but tie in to crossmember and clear steering and exhaust. Now to get it in a car and pound on it 'til it breaks...or not.

                  -----------------

                  Below: The splice is the b*tch. It's jig-cut and assembled, and plated on the inside, meant to all just look like it could be stock when finished. You can see a little of motor mount that uses F-body parts and should be good on NVH.



                  Once it's dialed-in, you can buy the chassis from a friend of mine.
                  Beautiful work as always!

                  Dan

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                  • Thanks, and you should see some of the beautiful work that's gone into my scrap barrel too! I guess I'm kinda in it to make stuff, when something's done and I turn out to not like it it gets made over.

                    So when am I gonna race it? Unfortunately the answer is "not likely", I sure had fun in my teen and twenties on Mulholland Drive and in the Malibu and Angeles Nat'l Forest roads in the L.A. area, ask anyone who knew me at the time, but having vision and what I guess you'd call "processing speed" and multiple-target acquisition abilities deteriorate plus once having a year-long neck-ache from an incident with a guardrail (what, no HANS device in 1982?) left me being more interested in the machinery and less into driving at the edge. A couple rides with my insurance agent a while back, up and down the hill here and doing an autocross in his Porsche, and I know I'm not near to being at a necessary level. However I believe I can still toss a car around enough to get a chassis worked out.

                    I'll throw in a pic of the other fab project, the mid- and rear-sections of which were shown a long time ago on page 4 of this thread. It has become the world's slowest-moving deal, sidelined again and again, and I don't believe I'll be able to touch it again now until Summer. In any event, this is as far as the front end got, with the control arms to be finished up next. Dig the upper a-arms, formed in a mandrel bender then flattened into oval for strength in the plane they need it. The lower arms still have a ways to go and will get struts going either forward or rearward depending on how the engine and exhaust package up. There is the Magnuson-blown (520hp) six-speed '06 GTO in the driveway waiting to be dismantled for driveline and systems for this, again it's being a long wait. Crazy project, it'll just happen as it happens.

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                    ...

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                    • popular statement these days "so good I did it twice" (fabrats)

                      if I was making the stuff for a day-job, I'd be ashamed at how long and how much scrap I make.... now I'm just proud I make it....
                      Doing it all wrong since 1966

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                      • Feb '22

                        The Beer Can Welding Challenge: FAIL

                        My daughter passed along a photo of two beer cans tig-welded together at the bottom, apparently a way for people to demonstrate they can weld thin aluminum. They had done a pretty neat job. Oh yeah? I used to do A/C lines sometimes, let's give it a try. Turns out it's not easy of-course, the whole can gets hot within seconds and soon you're just burning holes no-matter what. I'll try this again later with maybe some water in the cans to absorb heat, and using thinner rod than the 1/16" I have around.

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                        Around ten years ago I was posting about a '67 Camaro I'd had since 1995, doing cage work and body panel-aligning and stripping/primer. That unfortunately was right about when the stuff hit the fan around here in a number of areas of life, health and income, and the project was shelved indefinitely. Lately while waiting for a pile of parts I need for the 'Vette (which is what happens when you buy a basket-case project) and getting tired of just staring at it, I dragged the 'ol Camaro back out. Since I've got bodywork to do on both cars why not do them at once?

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                        First thing was the trunk lid, rotted bad from sitting out under a tree for years and having leaves clog up gaps. Check out the 1980 Car Craft Street Machine Nat'ls sticker...I wonder if I can save that somehow.

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                        I bought another old deck lid off Craigslist, (trying to avoid using re-pop parts) which then also sat for years...finally getting to it, it turns out the paint it had was over rust and bondo and somebody must have used it for a dancing floor. Also holes for the deck spoiler were in the wrong positions by about a half-inch, who does that? I welded and re-drilled the holes, metalworked the thing pretty flat and did the rest with filler, went to mount it and found it didn't fit worth crap along the edges (check fit FIRST, dumb-ass) and got back at it with the hammer, then had to re-work it some more. Good enough.

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                        I'd picked up a pair of 295/50-15s to see if there was a way I could fit them with just hammer-work...nope, ain't gonna happen. This would work for a drag car but not a canyon-racer, 275-50s will have to do. Later.

                        A buddy had purchased a Harbor Freight stud welder and found it didn't work too well for him. In case it was just a bad unit, he bought another...and found it was his garage wiring that was no good and both welders were fine. So he gave me the first one, oh yes, I love this thing. The Camaro has a few areas that can really use it, such as ahead of the right rear wheel although there is limited access behind. Nails are cheap, use 'em up. The duck-bill vice grips welded to a slide hammer enable pulling on multiple studs at once when useful. When you're done with them the studs clip and grind off easily.

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                        In trying to de-vehicle the yard a little I've decided to trade off this beige Jeep Cherokee that was given to me years ago w/ bad engine. Steve, it's previous owner, had a seriously bad-ass street G-body El Camino w/ 6-71-blown and bug-catcher-injected 454 who could clean my clock in the Challenger due to his being a better launching car (4.88s and Hoosiers vs. my 3.90s and M/Ts, otherwise a NA Hemi keeps up with a blown Chevy "so-there"). Unfortunately we lost him about a year ago to health issues. I've kept the Chero for a spare 'til now, the stocker makes an interesting comparison with our desert day-cruiser I've done a bit of work on over time.

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                        -Loren
















                        ...

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                        • I suspect there is more to the beer can challenge - both in cleanliness and which cans to use. If there is any ink in your weld path, that will blow out. Random factoid, they run used, aluminum cans under a propane flame to scorch the ink otherwise the ink will light on fire and the can will burn up when they throw it in the melting pot. This is also why your local recycler will pay you less for aluminum cans then he will for wheels....
                          Doing it all wrong since 1966

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                          • Seems to me like some cans are-indeed thicker...for example I tried a pair of soda cans next and they came out worse, then it was time to get back to productive work (ha). No matter what, there will need to be more heat-sink. I did wire-brush the bottoms, as we have to do with aluminum in any event. Beverage cans certainly have a coating on them whether in decorated areas or not. In CA they crush used cans into a tight block for transport without cleaning but returns are more for redemption value (i.e. a "litter" reduction scheme) than actual usefulness as scrap...I wonder what they do about impurities then, it's pretty hard to get facts about some of the realities of recycling.
                            ...

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                            • Originally posted by Loren View Post
                              Seems to me like some cans are-indeed thicker...for example I tried a pair of soda cans next and they came out worse, then it was time to get back to productive work (ha). No matter what, there will need to be more heat-sink. I did wire-brush the bottoms, as we have to do with aluminum in any event. Beverage cans certainly have a coating on them whether in decorated areas or not. In CA they crush used cans into a tight block for transport without cleaning but returns are more for redemption value (i.e. a "litter" reduction scheme) than actual usefulness as scrap...I wonder what they do about impurities then, it's pretty hard to get facts about some of the realities of recycling.
                              the heating of the cans removes the problematic impurities - then it's just a matter of melting and removing doss.

                              I haven't looked in 20 years, but when I worked for Coca Cola - the production manager at the bottling plant said (thus hearsay) that there is only one company who manufacturers aluminum cans in the US (Ball Glass IIRC)... just check with me when you need other, utterly useless information... I have more

                              In Washington, there is no 'deposit' on cans - people on the border used to take them to Oregon and get 5 cents, then those deposit machines which scan took care of most of that.... but also, the consumer pays all of this but the bottler collects the deposit when they sell to the retail outlet. That deposit is sent wholly (100%) to the recycling company, who also charges for recycling the returns.... the people who make money in this.... of course, the recyclers... Pepsi in the area I was at, also owned the recycling company - so Coca Cola was cutting a check to their competitor to deal with their recycling. It really was pretty ironic.
                              Last edited by SuperBuickGuy; February 9, 2022, 10:43 AM.
                              Doing it all wrong since 1966

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                              • You don't see them much anymore at the swap meets, but there still selling them, aluminum soldering rods. And surprisingly they work. I wouldn't use them on a Space Shuttle Build, but they worked for me fixing the back of diecast body emblems.

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