Updating the Super Street Mopar

[ckessel]

I was going to move my springs into the corner too. The shackles I sacrificed were the offset ones I bought just for that. Had a new FF frame mount sway bar. Had the spring perches welded to the new position when I got the Strange diff from the Doc years ago. THEN I changed directions. Moved the springs into the frame with the USCT pack, minitubs, changed the perch location accordingly, notched the frame in the back since I didn't want to raise the height over oe on the shackle re-location, had to get a different sway bar as the FF unit would be in the way of any tire/wheel combo. Snowball time. Its all good!

 

[icetech]

I was going to move my springs into the corner too. The shackles I sacrificed were the offset ones I bought just for that. Had a new FF frame mount sway bar. Had the spring perches welded to the new position when I got the Strange diff from the Doc years ago. THEN I changed directions. Moved the springs into the frame with the USCT pack, minitubs, changed the perch location accordingly, notched the frame in the back since I didn't want to raise the height over oe on the shackle re-location, had to get a different sway bar as the FF unit would be in the way of any tire/wheel combo. Snowball time. Its all good!

yeah, i have a thing bout not cutting up too much, if i get bored of gears and noise i wanna be able to put the 14s and hubcaps on one day and make it a old man car again I use the 1.7" longer hangers to move my axle back (a 62 thing) and i moved them into the frame and up tight against the floor, i thought these springs would sit a bit higher, so my front mount is actually like 3/4" higher than stock.. my own fault but it looks cool if i cut up the inner wheel wells on the outside it would maybe give me 3/16 which isn't worth it.

What's funny is how big the 10.5x30's look off the car then on i wish they were 12's

 

[ckessel]

Today I cleared off the potential cut area at the back of the trunk. My current thinking is to come off of the flat area and connect to the tank nest. The tank nest will get trimmed down at least on the sides and rear. Not sure about front just yet. I dropped the whole deal down another 1/2" to give me additional clearance over the top of the tank for a flat access panel.

 

[ckessel]

I marked potential cut lines on the nest, then marked and cut out the back section of the floor. Before I cut the nest, I need to check the angle of the dangle to see how the filler neck may line up without re-doing the existing tunnel for it.

 

[ckessel]

I've been tossing some ideas back and forth on what to do for a lid over the tank. Keep it flat and not trim down the sides or trim the sides and figure out a way to do the lid. If I don't trim, it's kind of ugly with a rectangle lump sticking up out of the floor. Trim it and have it look cleaner. So I had and idea last night, while in the shower, about making a frame for the lid to attach to. So I pull out a piece of 1/2" square tube for an experiment. Tried to contour it over a wheel but got nothing. Put it in my English wheel, same result. So I lit up the hot wrench and gave that a whirl. Bingo! The contours aren't really sharp so there was no kinking. I went ahead and made a couple of templates, 1 rh and 1 lh, cut those out and transferred the lines to some wood. Cut some material and proceeded to do some gentle bending on 4 pieces. Got them pretty decent so my next move will be to trim down the sides of the nest, get the frames clamped in and make two more straight ones for the east/west portion of the nest, weld them up. From there I'll form up the lid that will weld to the frame work.

 

[ckessel]

Today I trimmed the tank nest down. Plenty of room over the top of the tank. On the fill neck supplied with the tank, there will be an issue with the angle, 30*. They make one thats 20* so I put a spacer between the top edge of the filler to give it another 10* on the down angle. That will be the ticket to keep the hose etc just under the edge of the nest.

 

[ckessel]

Today I spent some time on the inner lid frame pieces that I made. It looks like, for the one in the front, I need to use an angle piece for the frame and not the square. I priced out a piece of 1/2" angle but it's $10, so I'll just slit some of my left over square and then cut a piece of sheet to cover the open gap. I marked out on my 20ga sheet for pieces to cut tomorrow on a stomp shear. I'll take in the rear frame square piece and see if I can get a nice arc to it, to follow the nest counter, using his slip roller.

 

[ckessel]

Yesterday I cut some material on Ben's stomp shear. While I was there, I tried running the square tube through the slip roller to see if I could get my arc going. Bupkis. So I laid out the arc on a piece of lumber, cut that on the bandsaw, then proceeded to work the tube using the torch and several clamps. Good to go with that now. The cut pieces from yesterday got cleaned, abraded then hit with Ospho. Still trying to get the filler neck figured out too.

 

[ckessel]

Got some more knocked out after lunch. The back piece is pretty close. I'm going to trim the nest down so they match up. I made up the two side units. They'll get welded on the outer sides and these will be the main supports to hang the nest from once they get welded to the floor. I worked on the filler neck puzzle and it looks like if I use their short 2" straight spud off the tank, then get the 60* hose they make, trim it down on one leg to the spud, I think all will be great. That will get me through the vertical wall of the nest and from there it will be a 45* which will land me in the original fill area behind the license plate.

 

[ckessel]

After punching a bunch of holes for welds, I got the side pieces welded to the nest. Got the welds dressed down then used the cutoff wheel to slice the square tube, diagonally, in half. This piece is for the front and I'll cut and weld some sheet to cover the space. Plus this will give the lid something to attach to.

 

[ckessel]

Today I made up the front piece of the frame. Cut some sheet material, clamped it together, put some tack welds on. From there I would put a section in the vice to squeeze it together, apply some tacks, move it, repeat. From there, dress the welds down. Came out pretty good inspite of me.

 

[ckessel]

Last week I was not able to get any work done on the 65. Was busy doing home owner stuff. Back at it today though!
I continued tweaking the various frame pieces for the tank cover. Was able to get them all pretty decent. On the front one, since it's triangular shaped, it was tough trying to get it positioned for matchup to the two side pieces so I tacked it to the nest to keep it in place. Got them all tacked together. Will continue working on them tomorrow.

 

[ckessel]

Today I cut/filed a couple of pieces to go between the front triangle section of the frame and the two side units. After they were ready, got out the Lincoln glue gun and welded them up. Grind the welds down tomorrow. After that, start working on the lid.

 

[ckessel]

Got the welds ground down today. After that I put the frame into the nest and tacked them together in a few spots. Knocked those welds down. Marked out the lid on both sides then set it on the nest unit to get an idea where I needed the curved contours in it. Since I don't have a slip roller in my arsenal of equipment, I looked through my stuff for a forming guinea pig. Found a piece of 3" EMT thats leftover from the fence posts. Set that on a horse and proceeded to form it by hand. So far, so good. The rear portion will take some thinking as its multiple contours. To be continued...

 

[ckessel]

The last few days I been wrapping my head around what needed to happen on the lid at the rear arched portion. I was figuring that it needed to get run through the wheel for some stretching. After looking through my textbooks, my suspicions were correct. So today I moved the lift up and rolled the wheel out from its place along the wall. Ran the lid through the unit with many passes and it's going to work out fine now. My lack of consistent time using the wheel shows but it's going to be fine once it's fastened down. I was thinking about rolling some beads in it but elected not to. Don't want to give myself extra issues to fix. As it is, the unit is pretty stiff once it's clamped down so I should be fine as long as nothing heavy gets on it. While it was together, I marked the backside so I can see where holes need to be to weld the lid to the frame.

 

[ckessel]

I tacked the lid and frame together after drilling holes for the plug welds. After that I set the tank nest into the trunk then went to put the lid on. No go. Hmmm. Then I remembered that I added the floor mount flanges onto the nest thereby making it a little wider. So I ground the remainder of the horizontal flange from the lh rail and that gave me the room. Turned out that the nest was squeezing in some to fit in the floor making the opening a little smaller. Got the floor edge and rail edges welded together, ground them down then checked again. Good to go now. Did some more welding on the lid to get it finished.

 

[ckessel]

Well I did a blunder on drilling plug weld holes. I've been trying to remember to clean off felt pen marks to cut down on mistakes. OOPS! Ended up with 12 extra holes in the wrong area of the lid because I didn't clean off the pen lines. A few years ago I realized that the removed plug that happens when I use my Rota Broach cutters can be used to plug up holes. So today I measured out the cutters till I found one that is 5/16" on the inside of the cutter. I tacked the pieces in on the back of the panel using the TIG. On the topside I flowed in some Silicon Bronze into the plugged area with the TIG. Ground everyone down and good to go now.

 

[ckessel]

Got some more knocked out over the last few days. The rear piece is trimmed up in preparation for welding. I fixed the tank nest in place with some screws so I could fit the rear piece and see where I wanted to cut in the front. Got some dimensions for the front piece, cut it out and marked where I need to cut the floor near the shock mount. After I cut the front piece out, I cleaned it with Acetone, then roughed it up with a Scotchbrite disc for paint adhesion, cleaned it again with Acetone then doused it with Ospho. Today I marked out areas on the front and back piece for some bead rolling. This will help stiffen those two areas back up otherwise they will be just floppy parts.

 

[Kern Dog]

Will there be anything left that is stock?

You're going to need to write a custom service manual for this car to help yourself in case your memory starts to fade.
Great work, far beyond how far I've taken my cars.

 

[ckessel]

There will be plenty of stock or stock based stuff on the car still. Like not going coil over/4 link. No thanks.