Nothing wrong with a Super Bee!
Love the Goat
The Coolest versions of the same Bodystyle:
454SS Chevelle
The freakin' mega cool Buick GSX
Pontiac GTO Judge
Anddd...
The Oldsmobile 442:
What I want to know is,.......Who bet I'd change it? Who wins the pool?
Given that I said that I wouldn't unless somebody could see it (and @jrichker saw it straight away) that left me with the only option available to me.
To cut the old piece of junk off of the hood.
But first, I had to convince myself of that.
It's made from .20 ga steel. Using steel that thin goes against my grain as it is just a giant pain in the ass to work with. Since I had it laying around, I used it. What I got was a piece that ended up w/ an "oil can" effect for what ever reason.
The YouTube solution was to use a torch (an oxyacetylene combo is what I used) to heat a small dot to cherry red, then quickly quench that spot w/ cold water. That process is supposed to shrink the metal, and "tighten" it up so the oil can effect gets pulled out.
I did that.
While it worked, it left the top of that scoop full of dips, and bumps.
This morning, I decided to see if it could be saved, so w/ a hammer and dolly, I tapped and pecked, pounded, and banged on the thing trying to get it to flatten out.
The oil can effect returned.
I got the torch back out and heated up several more spots.
The oil can effect was gone.
Only now, there was a surface that looked like it had been through a meteor shower. Now I could come to terms w/ cutting that oversized, warped assed piece of s hit off the hood.
So I cut it off.
This is what it looks like w/o the scoop on top.
The back story:
Obviously, I needed some steel to recover the new hole I just created in my hood. It was Saturday morning. I knew that I wasn't gonna find what I needed anywhere save for he local Home Depots of the world, so I set out for that very place.
Home depot is a Joke. When it comes to steel the only thing they have is galvanized .24 ga stuff.
I left there and headed for Lowes.
Lowes has steel alright. All of it marked as 16 ga.
I got to looking at it and it seemed "thin" to be 16 ga. so I headed off for the tool area to see if I could find a Vernier Caliper hanging on some hook so that I could measure the thickness to verify that it was in fact 16 ga steel.
See, I didn't want it to be 16 ga steel,.....I wanted it to be 18 ga steel. It looked to me like 18 ga, but they were charging a 16 ga. price (35.00 for a 24x 24" sheet). I didn't want to pay 16 ga. prices for 18 ga steel.
Could I find a caliper?.....Nope. The only caliper they had was entombed in plastic, and I wasn't about to open it to see if I was right. So.......What the hell,....I bought it anyway. When I got it home however, that was a different story.
According to my caliper, the stuff I had was .0500 thick. 16 ga. stuff is supposed to be somewhere around .0625.
The stuff I had measured .050.
Did I call Lowes and bi tch out the manager for selling 18 ga. steel at 16 ga. prices?
Damn straight.....Managed to get a 20% credit refunded to my CC as a result.
Regardless, the piece still cost 27.00 dollars.
So now that that was behind me, I set about cutting, and bending the new piece.
* For some strange reason, this stuff cut like 16 ga.,...and it bent like 16 ga.,...but it measured like 18ga.
The pic above show the thing after bending, and then the front 1/8" x 1/2" reinforcement that goes along the leading edge to give me a "stop" to put the grille against.
So now I got this piece tacked in place, and only requiring the little triangle dudes that make up the front transitions;
Still have to build the grille insert, but the left, and right G nostrils match each other.
You know Alan that's the one thing where the opposite doesn't hold true. I get why a Chevy guy takes a ford body and puts aI know they are brand x, but I've always loved those. I looked at a 71 chevelle a few months back, but it was too rough to buy. One day I'm gonna get one and put a Ford engine in it to pay back all the guys who've raped Fords with chevy motors... haha. How many ppl would THAT pi ss off?
Uhh...... Thanks for giving me a reason to justify spending 27.00 on a 24" square piece of sheet metal, and another full day to return to a place where I was two days ago.Your cat told my cat your secret; then my cat told me...
It is a little known fact that cats, like whales, have an ultra low frequency language , below the range of human hearing. That language that can be heard many miles away and is sometimes relayed by other cats over extreme distances.
If you believe that, I'll sell you my secret CD on "How to speak and understand Southern cat language".
After 50+ years of eyeballing everything from bolt and wrench sizes to aircraft rivet layouts, I usually do pretty good at spotting differences when they are side by side.
That's crazy talk. Snap out of it.I know they are brand x, but I've always loved those. I looked at a 71 chevelle a few months back, but it was too rough to buy. One day I'm gonna get one and put a Ford engine in it to pay back all the guys who've raped Fords with chevy motors... haha. How many ppl would THAT pi ss off?
You know Alan that's the one thing where the opposite doesn't hold true. I get why a Chevy guy takes a ford body and puts a
Yeah I get it too. It's bang for the buck. Cost efficiency. Not to mention ease of finding parts.. But what if all of that means didley squat to you? A red chevelle with a bbf in it with cj heads and worms on the fenders instead of SS badges would be priceless to me. And THAT is why you do it. Kinda like fabbing your own torque arm, or scoops on a fairmont hood.
It'd be a damn shame if your Ford motor'd Chevelle SS got it's ass handed to it by a LS engined Mustang.
That earlier message was a talk to text version that I thought I deleted. Guess part of it got through. That's why your name is misspelled.
I cant read so i just looked at pics and videos. Coming along nicely Mike.
The real shame is that you choose to ignore the brilliant, witty commentary that is typically edited 4 times to insure that others will find it as funny to read as I do.:shame:
You talk to your car and I talk to my cat... Hummm... does you car give you as good advice as my cat gives me?The real shame is that you choose to ignore the brilliant, witty commentary that is typically edited 4 times to insure that others will find it as funny to read as I do.
If you're gonna just have to skim the "cliffs notes" version of this novel, then do yourself a favor, and go to the first page of the thread, where I actually spent hours categorizing each of the build phases.
But.....
You'll miss out on the more obscure events, like when the cat got sucked against the radiator when I first turned on the cooling fans, or when I and the car have conversations when nobody else is in the garage......
You do what you have to do, but you're missin out on a bunch of s hit.
Just sayin'......
The real shame is that you choose to ignore the brilliant, witty commentary that is typically edited 4 times to insure that others will find it as funny to read as I do.
If you're gonna just have to skim the "cliffs notes" version of this novel, then do yourself a favor, and go to the first page of the thread, where I actually spent hours categorizing each of the build phases.
But.....
You'll miss out on the more obscure events, like when the cat got sucked against the radiator when I first turned on the cooling fans, or when I and the car have conversations when nobody else is in the garage......
You do what you have to do, but you're missin out on a bunch of s hit.
Just sayin'......