The Roaring Season

Beautiful work Paul! Its really looking good.

Bloody marvelous

Thanks Steve & Rhys,
The pictures are not very good, It looks like fire engine red!
It is actually a very dark red and looks much better in natural light.
Cheers

Looking fantastic Paul. I'll bet you're getting excited now yourself seeing all that hard work coming to fruition.

Thanks Mike,
Yes, very keen to see a finishing coat on this project. I can see a time when sandpaper maybe not prominent in my life!
I am working on the body shell, it has had a 320 & 400 sand all over and the roof has had a 500 sand, I will finish the 500 sand on the body shell next week and its ready for paint.
Cheers

Too True - a bit like my collectables " ohh they have been on order for years !! and what a bargain "[ they apply the rule to buying shoes ?? ]

Paul B wrote:[ATTACH=CONFIG]57210[/ATTACH]

Paul - your cars bigger brother.

Paul,
I thought of you as I wandered around a local car show, Solvang, California, I hope you don't mind if I share these.

(Ken H photos )

Thanks Roger & Ken,
Nice to see another big block 427 T/bolt Roger.
Thanks for the pics of the 63 Fairlane Sport Coupe Ken, many of these came out with 289K hipo engines but with the earlier 5 bolt block as opposed to the late 64/5 6 bolt block.
Cheers to all!

Paul,
The "Wheels and Windmills" Car Show is held a week after the Laguna Seca historic weekend so next year you can pop in and take a look as you head down to LAX. (How's that for a plan. You would enjoy meeting some of these folk. I will even buy you lunch.)
They have all sorts of vehicles, such as my friend's 1951 "Baldwin Special" that his father raced and he has beautifully restored it.
But as you can see it can not be touched ! You could try this all weather hood / bonnet arrangement allowing you to work on the engine area in sunshine or rain ! This is a typical scene at Solvang. This great Pontiac behemoth 2+2 was sold back in the days when gas was 35 cents a gal.
It only has 45 miles on the odometer !
Here are some of the cars from last year's show at this site.

https://wheelsnwindmills.com/gallery/index.php

(Ken H)

Ken,
Love the 1951 Baldwin Special, Beautiful Restoration!! here is some blurb on it:
This the fourth car built by Willis Baldwin of Santa Barbara. It was raced from 1954 thru 1960 by Wm. Hanssen at tracks such as Palm Springs, Hanson Dam, Santa Barbara, and the famed Pebble Beach circuit. It is based on a shortened 1947 Ford chassis and is powered by a Ford Flathead V8 with an Ardun overhead valve conversion. The suspension and running gear is Ford.

Pic of the under floor and chassis now painted.
More pics on pg 17 post #337

Nice work Paul. Awesome effort.

Thanks Steve,
Its not a simple job spraying upside down and with all the different angles and shapes under the floor to get nice coats from the spray gun. but it looks very OEM which is what the build is all about.
Next job is get the shell into the finishing coat hopefully in a week or two.
Then final sand on the bolt on panels and they get sprayed in about four weeks from now - all going well.
Cheers to all.

So Paul
When do you do the acid dip and put on the vinyl roof ?
Ken H

khyndart in CA wrote:So Paul
When do you do the acid dip and put on the vinyl roof ?
Ken H

Its no 1969 Penske Camaro Ken, I don't know how those cars held together during racing, some claim they lost 30%-50% of body weight by acid dipping. I cant imagine a 50%weight loss.
Bush maths = if the steel was 1mm thick back then, a 50% loss in weight could be 0.5mm steel. Cant see how that would work. Probably fold in half in the corners!

Paul B wrote:Its no 1969 Penske Camaro Ken, I don't know how those cars held together during racing, some claim they lost 30%-50% of body weight by acid dipping. I cant imagine a 50%weight loss.
Bush maths = if the steel was 1mm thick back then, a 50% loss in weight could be 0.5mm steel. Cant see how that would work. Probably fold in half in the corners!

They did some pretty heavy dipping back then. All the factory teams did. I spoke to a guy a couple years back who builds race cars, and he stopped acid dipping body shells and instead now blasts them. He said there was only about a 20kg saving in the dipping. But I know the Trans-Am teams did some pretty intense dipping.

Try picking up a 20 kg item, you can get a bad back or hernia.....20 kg is a lot.
Norm Beechey did a fair amount of weight saving on his Monaro- reading the write up of his build , dont think that was ever acid dipped..can anyone confirm ?

I know of a certain car which was being prepared for B&H way back when. A mysterious fire in the workshop meant that the shell was somewhat damaged. Funny that nothing much else was. As no other shell was available the powers that ruled were asked to OK that it be rubbed down and repainted, and the go ahead given. It always did look a bit less perfect than most of the others

Paul,
I apologize for trying to have a bit of a laugh as you would be last person in the world to do anything that was not to factory standards and I should not have mentioned acid dipping as it distracts from all the magnificent work that you are doing.
(But I do have some good articles about acid dipping if you are interested !)
You may not want to do that "Bucket List" trip with me now but My "Bucket List" trip was coming out to Taupo this year and meeting so many of you. I will be forever grateful of the hospitality and generosity that made those 3 days unforgettable for me.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Ken.

p.s.
You can get one of the classic acid dip stories from Sam Posey during this YouTube clip.

[video=youtube;6w8IgJ0frPI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=17&v=6w8IgJ0frPI[/video]
Sam Posey's 1970 Dodge Challenger # 77. Laguna Seca. August 19. 2018.
(Ken H photo)