Project Frankenbird - 1968 Pontiac Firebird

[bdahlg68]

Originally Posted by 65_LS1_T56

He's planning on two more and leveling feet also. He just needs to pick up the pace, so slow

Dude I work like a mad man for an hour here and there. Just hard to fit in while solving all the worlds problems, hockey, and mowing the lawn.

All six casters are on and all the leveling feet are on. Welding skills are still sketchy him going to blame it on a couple things. Imperfect prep work (gaps and cleaning) and a crappy helmet! Need to stay between the lines. The lines are my friends. I promise the welding will get better. In the meantime I will accept all constructive criticism.

[Royalworks]

harbor Freight has auto helmets for 60-70 bucks. Work well.

When I was in school I scribed lines to follow as I welded. Just a bit finer line to follow with your tip and then it will become second nature. But I think you are doing really well!!

[Tuske427]

Originally Posted by 65_LS1_T56

He's planning on two more and leveling feet also. He just needs to pick up the pace, so slow

Ah, I missed that. Too busy looking at the pics I suppose

[65_LS1_T56]

Originally Posted by bdahlg68

Dude I work like a mad man for an hour here and there. Just hard to fit in while solving all the worlds problems, hockey, and mowing the lawn.

All six casters are on and all the leveling feet are on. Welding skills are still sketchy him going to blame it on a couple things. Imperfect prep work (gaps and cleaning) and a crappy helmet! Need to stay between the lines. The lines are my friends. I promise the welding will get better. In the meantime I will accept all constructive criticism.

One suggestion, and I'm no expert with the metal caulk gun, would be to clean the areas with a flap wheel first. Weld might be cleaner when done. Looks pretty good so far though

[66fury]

Welds are good.clean metal better and if you don't like it, grind the lumps down a bit and run another pass.practice,practice practice

[waynieZ]

Looking good.

[RussMurco]

How do I keep missing these great builds?!
Another awesome Firebird and I'd love to see the grafting of a BMW M3 suspension to it!!!

[bdahlg68]

Mocking up the new rear frame rails in wood first because it is way easier to cut quickly and throw in the garbage.... Getting pretty close on the angles / lengths. Will likely end up building this out of 2x3x11g tube. Here it is 1.75x1.75 pieces of wood.



On other progress, the garage was taken over by a barrage of house projects. Garage door opener needed to be replaced already, a big cedar playscape needed to be refinished and installed in the back yard, a 10x14 rug is in a box and in the garage needs to be moved inside, and on and on and on. The garage had turned completely into a non-usable space. I've since fixed that by getting the playscape done, and getting some of those Monkey Bars shelves. They hold 1000lbs each and are a 2' x 4' shelf about 7ft above the floor and have hooks to also hang stuff up. Made a big difference.

The compressor is wired and running and a 3/4" Rapid Air kit brings the air to 3 outlets, 2 on the back wall of the garage (right on the below picture) and 1 between the 2 garage doors (left on below picture). Glad that's done.

The car is up on the chassis table, albeit not at ride height or in position. It's currently at a 3" ride height with no rake. Cool but not practical. Planning to move it up 2-2.5 inches and give it a bit of rake (0.5" - 1"). With that done, I built the support for the BMW subframe based off measurements I took on an actual car. That allowed me to move on to the mock up phase. Now ready to start making the steel pieces. Unfortunately, I think this is the easy part. Getting the car and subframe positioned precisely is my biggest concern. Even with the amount of adjustment built into these production suspensions, I want to get it as close as possible. Once I'm at that point, I need to check if my idea about tying into the existing body will work. The way I'm planning to do that would make it relatively easy and not very expensive.

[bdahlg68]

And since this isn't a woodworking site and wood just won't work, I made one out of proper material!



Took 2 tries to get it right. First attempt was cutting with a plasma cutter. Second was with a cut off wheel on my grinder. Neither of these methods are perfect, but the cut off wheel worked out a bit better.

[waynieZ]

It looks good.