In reply to Gunchsta :
Header paint? Were you related to this guy?
Regarding the weight, another part of the rationalization of this thing was that we might cut some mass out of the LTD. Unfortunately, we never weighed the car before hand to see if we actually did accomplish this. Come to think about it, I still haven't weighed the car.
Guessing at weights is the cost effective way to make things lighter.
The pile of Plymouth cosmetics was all laid out on the lawn. With only a few months left for the race, it was time to hit it hard and heavy and a lot.
The team decided they had enough faith in my ability to pull it out at crunch time that we could apply for the September race.
I (mostly) cut and pasted the following and submitted it as our team's "concept" along with our application.
http://holidayindartmoor.co.uk/princetown/plym-ford-36462.html
And, pretty soon...
No, just kidding, we got in.
All right. Time to make metal happen.
The roof basically located, I decided to work forward and get the hood, fenders, and grille done. I figured if nothing else, we could always race with the car half Plymouth, half LTD. This would look extremely wacky, but would absolutely be in the spirit of the game.
Mrs. VCH actually suggested we leave the LTD panels from the doors back. It would be like the Mullet of cars: Plymouth in front, Ford in back. Then we wear 50's style hair pieces with mullets attached. Response from one teammate:
"dammit. you mean I could have had a reason to be growing out a mullet for the last year!? so much wasted time!"
Anyway. To support the front of the hood, I took and cut off the top of the grill support on the Plymouth. The rest of the support and the radiator surround was far too rotted to do anything with reasonably. I then fabricated a giant rectangle out of bedframe thusly
And tucked it up under the hood to support it.
Coincidentally, the rectangle was wide enough to act as attachment points for the front of the fenders. The top member of the rectangle has a compound angle to it, measured, cut, and welded to match the angle of the front edge of the hood and support. The piece of the plymouth that the hood rested on was then bolted to this frame member, using washers as spacers to get everything aligned "perfectly"
Mounting the bumper was then a fairly trivial affair. All that needed to be done was to modify the brackets (bending, cutting, welding, cursing, bending, cutting off bolts, re-arranging brackets...), drill holes in the LTD frame to bolt the brackets to, and then bolting on the bumper, just like the factory (would that be the Plymouth factory, or the Ford factory?) would do it.
Man. It's stating to look like a car. A real car.
As for the grille (a very important part, for obvious reason), I'd originally planned on using the grille that came with the car.
Now, I have no idea what year this grille is from. Or if it's even a Plymouth grille at all. From online pictures of '51 Plymouths, it's most certainly _not_ a '51 Plymouth grille. It might have been from a '50. or a '49. Or maybe it was a Chevrolet. Or, I dunno, a Volga. The history of the Plymouth was a bit hazy (the only documentation I got was a TRANSFERRABLE registration card from NY...from 2001) and it had definitely been "customized" in various ways (note the gold painted chrome trim, and the very bright red and white upholstery job)....so, who knows?
The point is, the grille I had was far too bulky to fit in the space where it was allotted. The LTD, being of a much lower and squatter profile than the Plymouth meant that the fenders had to be trimmed at the bottom to fit, without dragging on the ground. Inspired by old roundy-round cars, I put a piece of old hardware mesh I had laying around across the front.
I spray painted it black, but felt the front of the car needed a little bit of brightwork to set it off. I raided a pile of old, dented side chrome pieces (mostly off of Volvo 122's and 1800's) and put this together.
Classy.
Some metal from that old stove got fabricated into the center vertical support for the grille, and the old Plymouth filler panel (that goes between the bumper and the bottom of the grille, horizontally) got banged out to something approximating straight, trimmed to fit, and bolted in place.
The trailing edge of the hood sit pretty well on the cowl, and I fabricated brackets at the top and bottom trailing edge of each fender to bolt the fenders to, to keep them in place. The bottom 6" or so of the fenders was pretty well rotten, but that got cut off anyway to accommodate the shrinkage of height of the whole car.
That's right. This puppy has a chopped roof _and_ a chopped body. I guess that's sort-of like an old-school channeling job...almost.
That appears to be a 49 grille. I had a 49.
This thread is one of the best ever!
Chopped and channelled is the only way to roll.
What size/type tires are y'all using?
Dusterbd13-michael said:Chopped and channelled is the only way to roll.
What size/type tires are y'all using?
245/50R16 on Jeep wheels. The LTD uses a somewhat funky 5 x 5 bolt pattern, and the Jeep steelies were cheap and easy and came in a size (16") that we could find reasonably good compound in. They're BFG g-forces, something like 320 TW. A teammate works for Michelin, so we got the rubber cheap.
Patrick said:That appears to be a 49 grille. I had a 49.
I, too, have a '49...the grille is "approximately" similar to my '49's, but not quite. It may have been modified. Who knows?
Feeling pretty good at this point. That front end looked _perfect_. It wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind originally, but I was digging it. That last picture in the above post became my computer background screen for awhile.
Deciding to press onward full steam, I moved to the back of the car. No mullet-mobiles here. This was going full Plymford.
The back was tricky, though. I wanted the trunklid to function properly, both for aesthetics and because the fuel cell lives back there and it needs access. The LTD trunk mechanism was not going to work with the Plymouth trunklid. So I decided to cut off the entire back of the LTD. Then, I cut the back part of the Plymouth (without the outer rear fenders; remember, old cars had bolt-on rear fenders!) into 3 pieces- right, left, and center. The cut lines were right on either side of the trunk supports of the _Plymouth_ trunk supports, that were attached to the package shelf and rear set vertical support, which was all getting moved over.
It should surprise no one that I spent days contemplating this, made dozens of measurements, and when the time came to cut metal, I was nervous as a kid at his first dance.
The right side of the Plymouth rear went on first.
Sorry to be using so many words here, but my pictures are E36 M3ty and not very many. I cut the LTD off around the package shelf- you can see it supported by that piece of 2x4 in mid-air as I fit the Plymouth right side rear piece under and around it. The bits of trunk floor that remain are all LTD.
Next I fit the driver's side rear piece into place. The right and left were not connected at this point, but I'd measured the width where I cut out the center (and the width of the trunklid) and kept everything as close to those measurements as possible. Like, within 1/16" of an inch.
I had to trim the inner fenders of the Plymouth to mate up with the trunk floor of the LTD.
With both rear inner fenders in place, I measured, marked out, and cut out the package shelf of the LTD to fit where the package shelf would be on the Plymouth.
At this point, I needed a mental break.
Back in the front of the car, as I said, the whole body got dropped- lowered- and I knew that the wheels were going to go up into the fenders further than they did on the stock Plymouth. All this work I'd been doing was with the whole car on jackstands, and the front suspension at full droop. Lowering the Plymford down, the wheels came up higher than the fender arches, and also way further out (since the track of the LTD was like 6" wider than that of the Plymouth). The solution? Flares.
I got the front of the car at ride height, and then traced out little wedges every inch or so on the fender. After removing the wheel, I sliced out the wedges, bend them out horizontal, and used them to screw that strip of sheet metal into. A few welds were needed in the front, where the wedges weren't very big. And some other metal was patched in here and there as needed to fill in rusty parts.
The flares looked pretty good, though I was a bit concerned the tires would rub with that limited amount of suspension travel space.
I cut up a 51 last year but I think all we have left is the rolling chassis and the glove box door. Doubt I have anything that would be of use to you unfortunately or i’d send it your way.
5x5 chevy truck wheels work too if 15” tires pop up cheap, center bore is the same size. I started with the oddball LTD 2.75 disc brake 9” 5x5 axle in the Wartburg before I chopped it all up. I had 15x8 chevy truck rallys on it.
In reply to Patrick :
I think that's about all I have left of our '51 now, too. At this point I'd give it away to get it out of my yard. 15" tires are kinda crappy now; decent rubber seems to be 16" and bigger. We've talked about going to 17's even. We also run spacers, because the offset on the Jeep wheels was weird. Bolt on spacers. So really, we could "convert" to 5 x 4.75 or 5 x 4.5 and open up a world of wheel options. The 'mid-90's Impala SS also used 5 x 5 bolt pattern, which we know because we run '95 Impala SS rotors on the back to give us rear disc brakes. Calipers are 80's G-body single piston front calipers. No parking brake, because #racecar.
Don't lie, I've seen the parking 2x4
buzzboy said:Don't lie, I've seen the parking 2x4
That's totally different from the package shelf supporting 2 x 4. It's much shorter, painted green, and labeled "Parking Brake".
You sir, are a Maestro of Mayhem. Cool build. Following with great interest.
Chronologically this brings us to the end of July/ early August. We'd gotten the email from LeMons HQ that our entry was accepted and we had to "Pay up, suckas." Once that paypal was sent, that was it- it was CMP or bust. September 18th was the date of the race. Less than 2 months away.
I sent out the following email, included in its entirety:
"Here's the basic deal:
From the condition the car was in when you guys left, I have since installed the front clip. The grille is close and the front bumper will be next, but that's already fitted so it's just a matter of fabbing the brackets and bolting it on. The back part needs to be cut and fitted and welded on. Then the fuel cell needs to be reinstalled, and the trunk floor rust-repaired and possibly modified. The wiring is close, I think it just needs the battery box secured and the switches mounted. I believe we should move the battery back so that it's against the center portion of the cage- this will get it out of the way when we're belting in the driver, and it'll still be far away from the exhaust.
The accelerator is mounted, but the carb is still off the engine and probably should be rebuilt. The drivetrain is in place; the output seal of the C6 needs replaced and all the fasteners holding the drivetrain together checked/ tightened.
The doors need to be fitted, and the back part of the roof tied down. Windshield glass to be replaced with Lexan.
Then it should be ready for a drive-test.
There's probably a few things I'm missing off the top of my head but that's the big stuff. I believe we can have the car ready to drive onto the trailer by Labor Day weekend- provided of course I get a few nice days to work on the car. It's been uncharacteristically wet lately, and with the back of the car sticking out of the garage, I can't work on it. Once I'm done with the front, though, if we can get the car driveable, I could flip it around so the back is inside and I can work on that. "
Rob's coming over the Saturday of the 11th and possibly the 25th to help.
I can't promise the car will be 100% race ready by race day, but will be trailerable. We might have to swap in the windshields and finish the exhaust at the track, those aren't long poles though. I'm going to continue to work on it every night that I can (should be 3-4 nights per week, an hour or so per night) and I think every weekend between now and the race I'm good to work on it at least for one full day. That's roughly 75 man hours from me + 15 man-hours from Rob; I don't see 100 man hours worth of work left.
Money-wise, we're in decent shape so far. I have (haven't tallied it) something like $200 in consumables (wire, lube, grinding wheels, weld wire, plasma tips, paint, fasteners, etc) spent, the Plymouth body I'm just going to count as "free" (or "worthless", if you prefer...or perhaps "invaluable" if you're optimistic) but I am hunting down a spare C6 as I think we've burned through all our good ones. Tires ought to last the race, and we have spare pads.
Entree fee is something like $1600 now, so $400 pp. Figure 100 in gas, another 200-300 in consumables, etc. so maybe about 200 pp. So 600, maybe 700, per person to be conservative, plus food.
Also need to decide if we want to RV, so someone can contact the rental place and get us one reserved. IIRC it was about $800 for the weekend, all-in.
Whoever's feeling optimistic, send LeMons HQ our money. ;-)"
August 4th, Rob: "We're paid up. Now to get the car running."
The crunch was on.
Email:
"As some of you may have seen from pictures hastily emailed from my Blackberry this weekend, the back of the Plymford is coming along nicely. Both rear inner fenders are fitted and the trunk floor modified. The front wall of the trunk still needs to be moved forward about 5" to make room for the fuel cell. The bit of trunk floor that got cut out in back should be able to be re-purposed for the front.
I also flared a front wheel, as it was sticking out and hitting the fender. The other front one needs to be done and I'm sure the back 2 (outer fenders) will need them, too.
The rear bumper will be basically right at the back end of the LTD frame. The front bumper is right at the front of the LTD frame, so the Plymford, bumper to bumper, will be the same length as the LTD's frame.
Everything's measured and lined up, just need some quality time with me and Mr. Lincoln. Then to move on to the doors."
As mentioned above, the trunk of the Plymouth was much shorter than that of the LTD. Where the fuel cell was mounted before, it would hit the trunk lid of the Plymouth if it stayed there. But we couldn't move it further forward because there was a big vertical wall in the LTD's trunk floor that the cell was already butted up against. That wall, though, had a good 18" of clearance in front of it before the rear axle. This cavity was where the LTD's stock fuel tank (long since removed) used to live. I figured if I could move this wall forward, maybe 8" or so, there'd be enough room for the fuel cell.
So, I cut out an upside-down 'L' shaped section of the trunk.
As well as the rear-most chunk of trunk floor (actually ended up cutting out the entire trunk floor. It was pretty rotten, and it was just easier to fix one big hole rather than 2 somewhat smaller ones).
The trunkid from the LTD donated a nice, large, flat chunk of sheet metal
As well as some side pieces to fill in. And that 'L' shaped piece of the trunk floor I cut out got slid forward 8" or so and screwed into place.
Meanwhile, Rob came over one weekend and mounted and plumbed in the radiator coolers. We run two coolers- one on each side of the radiator. That rectangle of bedframe turned out to be a good mounting structure for these.
View from the outside, peering through where the headlights would go.
Back at the back, I welded in the center-top piece of the Plymouth trunk portion, and fitted the modified package shelf to it, sealing up any gaps with scraps of stove sheet metal. The roof C-pillar was then lowered into place, and, after some finagling of the rear quarters, A-pillar lean, and height of the C-pillar, it was all starting to line up pretty well.
Almost all external traces of the LTD body are gone now. Plymford is slowly morphing into being.
This thing is still awesome. Quick Q. Did you do anything to remove the sharp edge on the front flares? Right now they look like razer sharp edges? Or is that OK in LeMonsChump?
How many more cubic hours would this have taken if you were trying to make it 'streetable' as in something you'd want to drive on the street rather than make it look good from 20' as a laugh on the track?
Adrian_Thompson said:This thing is still awesome. Quick Q. Did you do anything to remove the sharp edge on the front flares? Right now they look like razer sharp edges? Or is that OK in LeMonsChump?
The edge that sticks out to the side, over the tire, has a folded seam- I took my sheet metal former plier things and folded it over to give it some rigidity and make a rolled edge there. I did the same down at the front lower edge. And buzzed over anything left with the angle grinder to make it not a total blood-spurting event if it did snag on human flesh. LeMons does require that all sharp edges be rolled or broken or covered, though its not a super strict rule.
Adrian_Thompson said:How many more cubic hours would this have taken if you were trying to make it 'streetable' as in something you'd want to drive on the street rather than make it look good from 20' as a laugh on the track?
Actually..............
From a team mate, about the time the rear quarters were coming together:
"Your ridicularity is unbounded.
Because it's totally normal to do a body swap onto a 75 LTD chassis, because... reasons. There's litterally [sic] zero legitimate reason for doing this, and yet I love it. Good work."
The detritus of the LTD and Plymouth are slowly spreading across the yard. Here we see (left to right): Fuel cell under a lean-to of the LTD's trunklind, a Plymouth bumper, the growing pile of cast-off LTD body panels (back) the center section of the rear end (which I welded into place in the previous post), the part of the LTD's package shelf I cut out, some steel of indeterminate nature, LTD tail lights, Plymouth rear fenders, and the corner of a Corvair.
Next up: Fitting the doors. As I mentioned, the Plymford rebodying entailed squishing the Plymouth body down to fit the cage of the LTD. We kept the rocker panels of the LTD (The rockers on the Plymouth were bad to non-existent) and perching a Plymouth door on top of the rocker shows just how much shorter the Plymford is going to be than the Plymouth
I cheated a bit (or was extremely skillful, depending on your perspective) and used the pinstriping that ran the length of the body as a way to line up the body panels. To bring the Plymouth door down so the pinstriping would align, I flipped the door over and sliced off the bottom inside.
That fits a bit better along the beltline.
Though I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that floppy bit of metal (which was pretty rust-pocked, too) hanging down over the rocker. So I trimmed it off, Leaving about a 1/4" gap between it and the rocker. I'd also decided to lengthen the front doors (for better egress) so I sliced the door top to bottom about 10 inches or so in from the end:
Then, I took the back door, and cut 6" or so off of the front edge of it:
And splice it into the front door. The front doors were now about the length of a 2 door variant of the car.
My body skills are barely adequate; luckily (as Adrian pointed out) it just needs to look good from 20 feet. Or 200 feet. At 100 mph. I also did the passenger side first, figuring I'd learn a few things and maybe do the driver's side better.
One thing I did learn was that when I cut 6" of skin off the rear door, the rear door was about 6" too short to cover the hole. :-( Seems I forgot to account for the stretchening of the passenger compartment caused by leaning the A-pillar back.
You can also see that I fitted in the B-pillar here. The front door actually opens and closes and latches. The LTD B-Pillar was cut off flush at the rocker panel and with some trimming, the Plymouth B-pillar fit right in. Of course it didn't line up with where it had originally mated to the roof; but since I'd cut that off flush, too, it just needed to be scootched back some and welded in place. With everything tacked in place for now, the side of the car was really coming together. To save time, the rear door became just a skin and was welded in place. And the front door has no bottom- just an inner and outer skin connected at the top, front, and back.
I was so excited that the door opened and latched that I captured the moment in live action.
Sorry you can't view it embedded, I can't seem to figure out how to do that. But you can easily click the link.
One thing I forgot to mention up above was the hinges. This took some doing- and is the reason the front fender is off. I ended up using the top front door hinge, and the lower rear door hinge, from the LTD doors. They bolted in to the lower A-pillar (which is LTD, but obviously not the way they used to- new holes were drilled.) I wanted to bolt them to the Plymouth doors, but the vertical portion of the door wasn't really conducive to this, so I simply ground off all the paint and welded them on. It's not my finest work (you can sort of make it out in the pictures) but it does _work_, and the door can still be removed, you just have to unbolt the hinges and take them off with the door.
This is meant in the best possible way, but this looks a lot like 'Ready, fire, aim' My brain had registered the door and window height and shape issues, but I never thought about the stretching of the doors with the lengthened roof.
volvoclearinghouse said:The detritus of the LTD and Plymouth are slowly spreading across the yard. Here we see (left to right): Fuel cell under a lean-to of the LTD's trunklind, a Plymouth bumper, the growing pile of cast-off LTD body panels (back) the center section of the rear end (which I welded into place in the previous post), the part of the LTD's package shelf I cut out, some steel of indeterminate nature, LTD tail lights, Plymouth rear fenders, and the corner of a Corvair.
In this photo it looks to me like the Corvair is cowering in terror having seen what's happening to it's yard mates.
Adrian_Thompson said:This is meant in the best possible way, but this looks a lot like 'Ready, fire, aim' My brain had registered the door and window height and shape issues, but I never thought about the stretching of the doors with the lengthened roof.
I made life a LOT easier on myself by cutting the glass frames off of the doors. The Plymouth was originally a sedan, with full framed doors. No glass, no quarter vent windows...all of that would have been more (as you put it) cubic hours of work to mate up with the new roofline. Thankfully it's not needed for its new life as a race car.
I did do a lot of planning...but there was also a good bit of, let's call it "reactionary engineering" as well. Hey, it was my first time doing any of this!
I really appreciate this documentary. Bravo
The chaos outside of the shop expands...
I learned how to take a panaramic shot with my dumbphone. Which is about the only way to take in the entire inside of the shop.
Devising new and creative ways to test the impact resistance of decidedly non-impact-rated tools
Installing the driver's side door took a bit more work. The cage on this side stuck out further from the vehicle's centerline, to allow more room for the driver. When the LTD door was here, the door bars just cleared the inside panel of the door. The Plymouth body is narrower, though. So some clearancing was needed.
This lead to issues with the door latch mechanism. You see, it lived right where the top door bar came to. The solution was to cut off the latch and relocate it down a few inches- this also necessitated moving the corresponding striker down on the jamb. Cleverly I re-puposed the lock hole on the door (which was about 4" below the door handle hole) for the door handle.
After getting the driver's door to function, I decided, being that it was mid-August by this point and exactly one month until the race, that I really ought to try to get this pig running and driving again. The fuel cell got painted up and stuck back in the newly-remodeled trunk:
The next problem was the shifter. Up until now, we'd still been utilizing the column shifter on the LTD to actuate the C6 automatic. This worked OK...sort of (although we sometimes had issues with finding PARK correctly....a minor nuisance- how often do you use PARK on a race track, anyway?) but now with the drivetrain hiked back 6", guess what? None of the linkages lined up! I decided to ditch it all and rig up some sort of floor shifter. Without spending any money.
I scrounged around in the back shop and came out with an assortment of levers and cables and implements of destruction.
Surely something must work here.
Oh geez. That's the part where i would have bought the cheapest ratchet/cable shifter i could find and called it a day. Linkages? Relocated linkages? Adapted from other vehicles? Oof. Better you than me!
In reply to RedGT :
Actually, it wasn't all that bad.
After relocating the striker and latch on the driver's side door, and cutting the door down the same way as the passenger door....and lengthening the door (using a chunk of ex-LTD sheetmetal [that purple strip] this time instead of a chunk of the back door [lesson learned!] welded in) and cutting out the LTD B-pillar and welding in the Plymouth B-pillar...and probably some other functions I'm forgetting...
We have a functioning driver's side Plymford door! (click link for video)
Back to the shifter. Form the logbook, dated around August 27th:
In that pile of linkages and cables, I found what I believe to be an old 4 speed floor shifter for a Mercedes diesel. At any rate, it looks like it'll work, with some...work. I modified the bracket that bolts to the transmission from the old Ford-o-matic column shifter, and will mount a cable to it. The cable (an old volvo choke cable, works in push and pull, importantly) will route up to the MB shifter.
Spent an hour and a half in the garage last night, roughly half of which was spent laying on my back under the car and attempting to visualize mechanical motion. Eventually I achieved a near-zen-like state, which was interrupted by a drop of oil hitting my forehead. Like Newton and his apple, the solution then came to me.
The following day:
Progress on the shifter:
The cable is attached to the transmission via bracket and clamps. Cable does successfully push and pull trans linkage to change gears (holding other end of cable with pliers). Began fabrication of shifter holder bracket dealie. Need to mount dealie in car and attach cable to shifter tine, and then it should be done. Total time spent thus far: 2.5 hours. Total budgeted time: 5 hours.
Should be able to sneak in 4 or 5 hours extra on Friday of this week.
Truck rental is secured, I talked to the guy at the place yesterday. Going to pick up the truck Tuesday afternoon before the race, take Wednesday off work, load Wednesday, leave Thursday AM. It's roughly 4 hours from Rob's place to Matt's (more like 4.5 towing) so if I leave my house around 10 I should get to Rob's by noon and we'll hit Matt's by 5. That will give us time to load Matt's stuff, enjoy a delightful meal, and get some sleep before leaving at O Dark Thirty for CMP Friday morning.
A bit of clarification here...in all the haste to get the Plymford ready for the race, I had zero time to work on ANY of the other vehicles in my craptacular fleet. This resulted in two things. First, I needed reliable transportation to get to my real job daily, so I bought this, my first ever new vehicle.
And second, since my truck, which is the Tunachucker Official Tow Pig and Support Vehicle, was running very poorly, and I hadn't been able to fix it, I punted and called Enterprise to reserve a rental truck. $400 for a week long rental of an F250 with a hitch.
Back to the shifter...for real this time! My erector-set-like abilities with some defunct shelving rack corner pieces and a welder produced a serviceable mount on the transmission tunnel for the Mercedes W123 floor shifter. This shifter was meant to control a 4 speed manual gearbox, so I simply utilized one of the three shift rods to control the forward-back movement for the C6. Then I rigged up an old choke cable from a Volvo 122, secured the ends, and:
VOILA! A Floor Shifter (video)
Next on the master "To Do" list was some fenders. After bolting the Plymouth fenders on to the back quarters, the same issue we had in front reared its head out back. The wheels were wider than the Plymouth body. Deciding to try something different, I dug out some rusty, crusty Volvo 544 rear fenders I had laying around the yard. They were actually longer than the Plymouth rear fenders, so I sliced them vertically and spliced the back together, shoving the back into the front about 6" to shorten them. Then a series of tack welds secured the vertical seam. I cut the width down to what was needed to just enclose the rear wheels, and end up with
I decided to keep the stock Plymouth taillights, so I did a sort of crude "French" job around them, in fitting the Volvo fender flares. You can sort of see it here, as I prepared the driver's side fender for the box flare treatment.
I have to apologize again. At this point (End of August) I was tossing parts on the car as quickly as I could and pictures have gotten really scarce. The passenger front got a fender flare like the driver's side one (the deal made out of sheetmetal) and the rear driver's side door got bolted into place, rather than welded, to create an access panel for the back seat area (where the cool suit cooler would live). I mounted the trunklid, as you can see above, and amazingly, after cutting the Plymouth trunk into 3 sections and transferring it from the Plymouth to the LTD, welding it all back up and securing it to the LTD's frame, the trunklid pivoted open and closed just like "stock". It did not yet have a latch (that part of the Plymouth was all rotted out, so I'd need to fab something up here) but I figured we could come up with something quickly. The carburetor got rebuilt (by Rob) and I got that and the air cleaner installed and noted that the hood didn't have enough clearance.
This was solved easily:
And I was able to fire up the 460, which sent chills of excitement up my spine. The Plymford Runs!
All that, and more, brings us to August 31rst. 2 weeks until the race. And this is what I was looking at:
But that wasn't all. Disaster was about to strike, not once, not twice, but thrice. The first two were machine-related. The third one, though, ended up being a real twist in the plot...
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