1968 Shelby fastback Build and now the war begins!!!
 

So here we go, I have set a timeline of March to have the car finished. This is going to be hard because my customer stuff has to be the priority. So far we have spent 6 hours on the car from a roller to what is here. Another 6 hours and we will have a pretty good carcus to start all the measurements and pre fab.

Very nice. Keep us up to speed. :thumbsup:

So today was a good day. Im a little bit ahead of schedule on 2 other cars so I thought that Jim ( My right hand man) and I would make the table to start mocking up the car and continue gutting it. I build the cosmetic tables out of wood and then transfer any fab over to a chassis plate. Here are some pics of where we ended up today. Enjoy!!! Tommorrow is going to be measurement day. We have a chassis blueprint pretty much done geometry wise so now we mark the tables accordingly and transfer the drawing into fixtures

Welcome
Look forward to seeing updates :thumbsup:

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Looks good so far, what are your plans, wheel size, motor and are you building your own suspension?

Mike

So far we are going to do a custom tube chassis made from 1 5/8 moly, which will have a fully independent front and rear setup with custom fabbed tubular arms. Slotted Rotors on all four corners and we are currently trying to find a nice combo for wheels our plans are as follows

22x12 rears with a 6 inch lip
20x7 fronts with a 1 inch lip

The catch is the wheels are pin drive with no wheel nuts
This so far is the most frustrating part of the build as long as we keep the ride height where it is at its lowest setting and get an overall tire and wheel height we can overcome the issues as time passes Im in the middle of contacting Jason Rushforth to pick his brain on some ideas so well see what happens.

The motor is a 393 roush stroker that has been setup for a power adder we have twin turbos here on the shelf ready but according to our engine tech power wise we can get by with one. So thats in the air right now. I really want to do tail pipe twins but my partner and I are not agreeing as of yet. The rumor in the shop is that the car has had a private offer to buy it and continue the build but I havent spoke with the gentleman yet. I am going to try and hold on to this one until the end only because I want to build it as we planned however if he wants to continue with us I am open to it.

Thanks very much for your interest
Ross
stirtonhotrodz
(905) 337-9387:lateral: :lateral: :lateral:

So we had a really busy week at the shop and really didnt work to much on the car, but come friday morning we were all pumped to jam on it this weekend. I think we all did pretty good, finished building the fixture for the chassis ( mock up only) as well as got the motor mocked up, main rails bent, rocker rails bent, back section mocked up for the independent rear, the front rails mocked up for the front a arms as well as the rack. All in all damn good weekend. The 2 rocker bars were kind of hard because of the staggered bends at the firewall it seemed like it would never end. This weekend I want to thank some of my best friends who could have taken advantage of the last warm day for testing their drag cars but stayed back knowing how important it was for us to get this handled. Polish Mike, Mikey grillo, Inder from Tag Racecraft, Stu Lawson from Modified Mag, Fatty from Bent Metal and my partner Jim Slack but important my MOMMY for several trips to and from the shop with coffees, lunch and dinner lol lol. Also spoke with Jason Rushforth about the wheel delema we have and the decision has been that we are diffently sticking with the pin drives and he can custom cut the wheels for us. The next step on that is finish mocking up the front end, and then we will be sending the front and rear hubs to him to get the ball rolling. He advised us to run 19 fronts and 20 rears so well see I really had my heart stuck on 20x15 with a nasty 10" lip in the rear but he knows best and his advise is crucial to this whole pin drive setup so well see what happens in the next few days

So where's the chassis plate? How accurate do you plan to get using wood jigs for holding stuff?

Actually this is the only way to build a chassis like this efficiently price wise and time wise. With this chassis in particular, there is a lot going on. To machine all the different one off spacers and tube holders it would cost thousands of dollars. Being that it has to be fully functional and a show peice we will be changing on the fly with certain components possibly being re located ( to hide). A good example of that was over the weekend I noticed the master cylinder would be to close to exhaust pipe under the driver floor. If that was a machined chunk of aluminum or steel I just blew the machinists time as well as 50 bucks. Totally not worth it. First you build all your bars as they need to be and then when all your components are mounted functional and spaced correctly you machine your fixtures one time only and there dead on. As for the chassis table. I have a tube car on there now as we speak getting its chassis welded. The problem is that if they were generic square tube cars a fixture costs very little and can be reused car after car. But round tube stuff is always different ( motor trans suspension etc etc) Drag cars use 1 5/8 but streets rods use 1 3/4 see what im saying? I wouldnt even consider building all these fixtures because we are not a chassis shop, we couldnt justify it. We build one chassis every 10 turn key builds if that. Skinny kid for an example have a ton of fixturing, because they have cars on tables 24/7 they can justify and can use the machined fixtures reqularly. Not to justify anything here but even if one wanted to weld something on that wooden table with a tig welder and someone who knows how to use it you could do it if you clamped the main rails properly. I personally wouldnt try it because I dont need to but i would bet 10-1 that an experienced welder wouldnt warp those bars if they were fit properly.

Thanks Ross

It's an interesting build and I like to learn. The reason I was asking is because I couldn't help but notice that in your last post showing pictures - the very first picture in that set shows a board holding two tubes just ahead of the motor - note that it is sitting flat on the table BUT in the last picture of this set - that very same board is off the table a 1/4" or more... And the hub appears to be just sitting on a couple of stacked up 2X4's that don't appear to be secure - nor is there a hub on the passenger side at all... so what keeps you square and true... I don't see any center line or any permanent markings on the table to pull from etc. Personally I've never been able to weld anything and keep it from pulling off line - without it being more than securely clamped. So is your plan to take this off the wood table and transfer it to a chassis table for finish welding?

Reading your response -- I'm not sure I'm tracking -- so you're building the chassis this way -- kind of "temporary" just to see what works - then once you have that figured out - you'll blow it apart and clamp etc?

That is exactly what the intention is. I have pictures but they were to large to upload of the fixtures for the hubs. Those fixtures in particular are crucial and have been made out of .5 inch plate because we wont be changing them. After all the bending is complete, and we are satisfied with the fitment of the tubes we will then take them all out and place them on the chassis plate ( with the steel fixtures and clamps ) and go to town welding it. the board you are looking at i think is the one that holds the control arms up. That board has to be there because my arms are unequal length the upper sits in the chassis .5 inches more than the lower. Also I have to build tabs to hold them in accordingly. On that table what you cant see are 35 lines some in blue black green etc. Those lines drawn on the table are the centers of all my bars. they are thin like pen so you need to blow it up to see it. I dont think you can see them with the pics I have uploaded. I will post those pics as well. Every bar has its own color with measurement so I can easily tranfer it onto the chassis plate.Also if Imake any changes I can re draw the line with a thicker marker to suit my components needs without having to wonder what line is what.

If you need pics of something let me know Ill find a way to upload them

thanks again

more pics to come

Greg look at the 5th pic on the last set. Picture that hub fixture in steel. Thats what it is but with a center nut holding it at 12.5 inches high ( 24 inch tall tire combo. I will be posting more pics tonight at some point

Got it!