My Kingdom for some wheels!

So with the new Camaro clip, I needed to locate some Chevy rims to fit on the front end. My first thought was that I would just run down to Pick N Pull and find some, but before I could go down there, I told my brother, some friends and my soon to be father-in-law. Well my father-in-law says he has a set of 4 Chevy rims in his garage that he would love to give to me, the only problem was he wouldn't be down for two weeks. Well, I'll wait for two weeks for some free rims I figure.

Well two weeks goes by and he drops the rims off last Wednesday, I'm as happy as a clam, I'll get to get some real work done this weekend. The first thing I wanted to do was take two of the rims with the worse tires down to the used tire place to have them replaced with tires the size I want (215/75-15) for the front. So on Thursday I run them out to Riverbank and talk to the owner, and he says he knows he has one tire in the size I'm looking for, but if I come back in the afternoon, he's sure the can find a second one.

So later in the afternoon I drive back out to Riverbank and find the owner, and he of course didn't have time to look, but he would do it right then, so he disappears for about 10 minutes, then comes back with more bad luck, he doesn't have another tire in my size, but then looking at the rim, he says, "you know those are Chevy truck rims, right?" What? So he measures the rim and sure enough, it's a 5 on 5.5", Chevy truck!

Dang it! Now I four wheels in my backyard that I have no use for, plus I still need two wheels for that Camaro front end. BTW, Chevy car is 5 on 4.75". So I ask the guy and he says he can look around, give him a call tomorrow (Friday). Well Friday shows up and I end up having a couple of free hours so I drive down to Turlock, because I've been told of a great used tire place that could help me out. When I get down there and I talk to the guy, he has no steel rims, the city told him to get rid of all his extra's so he through them all out two weeks ago. Dang it! Plus if I did have the rims, he doesn't have the tire size I'm looking for anyways. So hmmmm...

I decide I'll go to a junk yard and see if they have some rims. Once there I tell the guy I want some plain stock steel rims that'll fit a '77 Camaro. "Camaro?" he says, "No, I don't have anything like that" and I tell him it doesn't have to come from a Camaro, just need to fit a Camaro, so without looking or doing a thing he decides he has NOTHING in his yard that will work for me. So I go to another junk yard, and I get the same response. I figure that they are just being lazy because they won't get enough money to spend their time finding the rims I want.

So I head back up to Riverbank to see if the first guy had any luck and no, no luck there either. So time is ticking away, I have other things I need to do, so I decide I'll run over to Pick N Pull real quick and see what they have... And sure enough, a '78 Monte Carlo with 15" steel rims AND 215/75-15 tires on them. $30 for both. Should have gone there before I talked to anyone I guess.

Shop Truck Update, #5

So this past weekend I blocked up the frame of the '57 Ford to my desired ride height and threw the sheet metal on to see if I'd be happy with the height. Oh yeah, I'm happy now. I've blocked up the rear tires and then I'll pull the sheetmetal off and mark up all of the important locations currently, front cab mounts, axle center line, radiator supports locations and other various spots so that when I start mocking up the Camaro front clip, I'll know where everything needs to line-up. Talking to people it sounds like the front axle is just more of an eyeball adjustment. It seems when lowering these trucks, the front wheel will look as if it sits back in the wheel well because of the angled rear in the opening. So after all is said and done, I'll probably be stretching the wheelbase by 1-2". Good to know.

Let's see, I also picked up a 351w from a guy in Turlock. The motor ran when he pulled it, but it has been sitting for a couple of years. As long as I can get a year or two out of it, I'll be happy. After I get the truck on the road, I'll start collecting parts for its rebuild, but would rather not get hit by all of it at this time.

Shop Truck Update, #4

OK, I got the Camaro clip and cleaned it up yesterday. Looks be be in fairly good shape for have been sitting outside for the last couple of years. It's from a '77 Camaro and has disc brakes up front and a beefy looking anti-sway bar. I still need to talk to some people about installing it, I'm really looking for it to sit a certain way so we'll have to really figure out how it should be installed. More to come...

Shop Truck Update, #3

Talked to Tim last night, a guy I met last Fall at the Autumn Swap Meet, and nothing is in stone yet, but it looks like I may be doing a trade, my drop axle and springs for a Camaro clip. This is very exciting news since I didn't get the stance I wanted with the axle, the Camaro clip will give it to me, as well as independent front suspension, disc brakes and power steering. A few months ago I met a guy named Dennis and he had done the Camaro clip and loves it, his truck has the perfect stance and he says it drives like a new truck. The truck I posted yesterday, the '58 has a Camaro clip as well, with the perfect stance.

So I guess I'm hoping for the best, I should know more this afternoon.javascript:void(0)

Shop Truck Update

Well a busy weekend, I suppose. On Saturday the Turlock Swap Meet was around so I went down there to see if I could find a new motor for the Shop Truck. No luck, but one guy had a 351w short block (no heads) that needed to be rebuilt and he only wanted $750! Wow, I could build a motor for less then that. As we were leaving, Frank and I saw a '58 that had been redone. The guy did an excellent job on it, had a Camaro front clip so it sat nice and low. There are things I would do different, but it was nice all the same. One thing I really like about it was the tailgate. On these 57-60 trucks, the stock tail gate looks like an after-thought to Ford, just pasted on the back, but his guy trimmed it down slightly and stuffed it to give it a finished look. The stock tailgate always bothered me, and I always wondered what I would do to it, and I think I found my answer.

On Sunday I went back down and I pulled the motor from the truck, I'll see if I can sell the thing, which I should be able to do, ad that money to the new motor fund. That was about it for the Shop Truck. I did help Frank with a couple of things on his truck and he did get to start it. Sounds pretty good, mostly because it had not headers. He still has to fine tune the thing, but considering it's been down for over a year, it was music to his ears.

Lots of Web Goodies to Help Your Site become Web 2.0 Compliant

Boy where do I start. There are so many Internet technologies that it's hard to keep track of them all, so it's always good to be talking to people about web solutions. Over the last couple of days I've had a couple of good conversations with people that I must share.

Twitter Widgets. I guess this is the easiest one, but I found a widget on Twitter's web site that allows you to feed your "tweets" directly to a webpage. This is a great way of keeping your site up to date without really doing anything, as well as give new avenues of networking. Right now I have a working example on a site I'm working on, check it out here: http://thisherodesigns.com/ezBooks/index.html At the present time it has my own twitter feed tied into his site, but by the time the site is done, I'll have set-up a Twitter account for him and it will have his feed.

WebYep is a compact Web Content Management System. It's a very simple program that allows clients to edit their pages in a very simple way without a lot of coding. In fact it does have a Dreamweaver plug-in so in reality you don't have to do any program. The beauty of this is that people who don't know web programming have a simple method for updating their site with the simplicity of using a word program. WebYep has security features so not just anyone can log-in and make changes. You can find out more here: http://www.obdev.at/products/webyep/index.html.

Finally I found out about JW Players. It's basically a flash player, with optional skins so you can give it a custom look. It's used in a very similar way as YouTube without having to post the videos to YouTube, a better way of controlling your content and your audience. I like the ideal of that. Find out more here: http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/.

All good stuff to help your site become Web 2.0 compliant and give you an edge on your competition. Need to know more? Give me a call and I'll gladly discuss it with you.

Steve

Posted via web from thisherodesigns's posterous

Back to Work

Well after a small hiatus for the holidays, I got back down to Turlock to work on Mator. Oh, first things first, for Christmas, Barb got me a set of stock mirrors for Mator. I did put one on and even brought my camera to take a picture, but unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture.

Anyways, after installing one of the mirrors I decided it was time to button up the front end. One of the kingpins had a bolt that was giving me problems originally so I never finished the install. So after some hammering and grinding, it's in place and finished. I still need my pitman arm from my brother, but after that, the front end will be ready for the alignment shop.

I also looked at the way Mator sits, as it is right now, the rear end is a little bit lower then the front end, and that's not going to fly. I've been looking into ways to lower the front end more, because as I say, "the lower, the better", but without getting into a lot of money and changing out what's been started, I'll probably have to raise the rear end to get the rake I want. However, I do believe I'll wait till the truck is closer to being done since not all of the weight is on the suspension so I raise the rear end as little as possible to get her to sit right. The attached photo is a photoshoped picture of what she should sit like with the rear end raised approx. 1.5 inches.

Now for the bad news. I had painted the motor, but at the time it was sitting on the ground so I didn't get a chance to paint the oil pan. So now that the motor is sitting in the truck I decided to pull the oil pan so I can paint it. Well when I drained the oil, the first thing to come out, was water, and as we all know, water is a bad thing to be in the motor. So Frank and I talked about it and thought it is probably just in need of new head gaskets. Hopefully since that is a fairly easy fix. I talked to my brother though and he thinks it is best to pull the motor and the heads and take a good look at the motor, just to be safe.

One step forward, two steps back.