34ROADY
I drove this car to work for a number of years. When I got
my shop finished at our house in Escondido, and finally
collected all my junk in one spot, I finally figured out
what I wanted to do with this one. The engine that came
with Martha's Deuce was a 390 FE, sporting a Thunderbird
tripower setup. I figured this engine, with a TKO 5-speed,
on the old sedan frame that had the early Corvette IRS
would do very nicely in this car. Of course, there was a
lot to do to make this happen.
I donated the mystery frame, tired old 350/350 chevy stuff
to Justin Baas (who promptly installed the drivetrain into
a T-bucket and sold it to someone in Japan!). Kept the rear
end, which was a 53 Olds unit. Very neat and just the thing
to go under the 34 Sedan tow car. Some previous owner had
channeled this body. A subsequent owner, I think, then
constructed the mystery chassis and, instead of replacing
the floor in the body, simply built angle-iron braces to
mount the body. So it looked like a normal cabriolet from
outside but there was hardly any place to put your feet
once you were inside. Odd. The gas tank was a VW item with
the filler up on the body, behind the driver. Cute, but it
burped and spilled a lot. The fenders were fiberglas and in
pretty poor shape so they are now landfill, as are the
almost running boards (which you couldn't step on cuz they
were pretty flimsy).
So I pulled the frame from under the 34 sedan and took it
and the body to Jordan at Super Rides by Jordan, in
Escondido. He replaced the floor and the firewall and
mounted the body. He also fixed a lot of rot on the body.
At some time, someone had replaced the lower doorsills with
a piece of tubing welded to the body sheetmetal. This
horrified Jordan, who called me to come look at this
blasphemy. After some discussion -- and sincere promises
that this was to be a driver, not a show car -- he agreed
that it actually was a pretty clever way to replace the
rolled bottom of the sills. So he replaced both sides with
tubing.
Jordan (and Dave and Jordan Jr and ...) also installed the
engine and transmission. And a pair of Glide seats. And so
I took it home to finish up...
We moved to Texas late in 2006 to a home on an airpark. The
attraction of this particular home was the 65' x 35'
hangar, slightly larger than my shop in Escondido. We moved
six cars (we towed the Mustang behind the Durango when we
drove out), a couple of engines, several transmissions, car
parts, and tools -- which pretty much filled the hangar. On
a later trip out to San Diego, I disassembled my lift and
brought it (and a ton of work-related stuff) back to
Seguin. And there it sat.
The Mustang began to consume all of my time. I had not
properly cleaned it after the 2006 Bonneville since I had a
ton of stuff to arrange and pack for our move. Turns out,
that was a mistake. We made an abortive run at Bonneville
that next summer and had to pack it in. So that fall I
began to completely dismantle the car to fix the various
gremlins and salt monsters. Ended up just barely getting it
back together for the 2008 meet. But that was the meet
where I finally broke 200 mph! And so it went. Work on the
Mustang until it got too hot to handle, go inside and waste
time until the next day. Plus, I was doing some consulting
work for NOAA. No progress on either 34. Did some fixit
work on the 28 and built and installed an engine in Ruby
(which turned out to have 4 bad cylinders so I ended up
pulling it out again). All the time, wishing I were working
on the cabriolet.
For 2010, the toploader in the Mustang was broken so Jim
Best and I pulled the TKO out of the cabriolet and put it
in the Mustang. There it sat until I got the lakester
chassis out from California the next spring and pulled the
engine to install in the new racecar. Seemed like a good
time to get the 390 engine freshened up, however, so off it
went to Rick at Parks Engine Service. Got it back and ...
time to work on the lakester to get ready for Bonneville.
Here it is, spring of 2015 now. I had thought that I would
be driving this car in the fall of 2007. Hasn't happened.
But, dammit, I want to drive it. So I've scaled back some
of the things I planned to do on the lakester, moved the
other cars to the back of the hangar, and I've started work
on the cabriolet. Goal is to be driving it this fall. Only
8 years late!
My old neighbor, Jim Greenwood, has decided to start
working on the 56 Chevy he's had parked beside his garage
for the past 20+ years. In talking about it, he mentioned
wanting to lift the body off to work on the chassis. I had
attempted, with some help from my sons, to get the body off
my 34 -- without much success. In exploring the web, I
found lots and lots of ways NOT to pull a body and lots of
very expensive or time-consuming options. Then I ran
across
Accessible Systems
(they have just closed down until summer for some reason
but I'll put the link up anyway), who offered a body lift
gizmo that fits in your engine hoist. Jim got one on order
(just in time, I guess) and brought it down from Austin to
me. My son, James, and I set it up the next week and pulled
the body off inside an hour, total.
The lifting frame is an H-shaped piece that hangs from the
engine hoist with an eye in the center. You use nylon
straps at the four corners of the H piece down to the body
corners to lift the body. The only "tricky" part is
adjusting the position of the straps on the H to balance
the body so it hangs straight. Sligthly fussy but certainly
simple enough.
The engine and transmission are mated and waiting to go in.
I need to do some cleanup on the chasssis, install the
ESTOPP electric parking brake I bought from Randy Clark at
the LA Roadster Show a couple of years (!) ago. Run the
brake and fuel lines, install the engine, clean and paint
under the body. and put it all back together again. No
sweat!