As usual, fabulous work. Definitely a good example of making a plan and execution with experience. Love to see it coming together.
BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Thanks Mike, I appreciate it and hopefully it’ll be of some use to you on your exhaust. The exhaust is not stainless, it was originally aluminized steel. But I found the aluminum coating contaminated my welds occasionally, so all the areas to get welded were stripped down to bare steel.
The entire exhaust system will get coated inside and out from front to back anyways, so I wasn’t really too concerned about it.
Appreciate it Tony, thank you.
I probably did mention it at some point, but yes, the entire exhaust system will be ceramic coated in high lustre silver (likely CeraKote) from front to back, inside and out to match the headers. I’m actually ready to pull it back off the car NOW for the final time and drop it off at the coaters, but the weather here has turned and we’ve received a ton of snow. Which is not good, because I can’t fit all the individual pieces inside my regular cab work truck, and transporting bare metal pipes in a bed full of snow isn’t really an option.
I’ll just have to bide my time and wait for a decently dry day first.
Wow, that’s quite the compliment! Thank you, I’m flattered!!
Couldn’t agree more Jake, that’s something I’ve personally thought for years as well. Those old roadsters were so much simpler, less parts, less complexity, and probably easier to build IMO.
Thanks for the compliments from this galaxy travelling alien dude! 👽 😅
Thank you Duke and Jeff, again I really appreciate it. It means a lot, much more so coming from my peers than from say, random people at a car show. You guys are the ones I’d much rather be judged by.
Alrighty then, time for another update yet again already.
At the end of the last one, I mentioned something that I’m referring to as DIRTT, or Doing It Right This Time. This is but one of potentially several DIRTTy spots that could pop up, and to be honest it’s one that I had all but forgotten about.
You see, the downside of owning a car for 30 years is that some of the work was done by a teenager. Or in my case, a twentysomething. Twentysomething me understood the issue, and even the solution, but lacked the experience and tools to make a decent repair of it at the time.
To skip right to the heart of the issue, I’m trying desperately to get to the point where I can shoot the rear firewall and the sides of the inside back of the car in epoxy. You see, there is a Murphy’s Law that says something to the effect of: “Before the desired task can be completed, something of equal or greater importance must be done first”.
Boy does that ever apply here.
To do a quality job of this, it necessitated removing the rear quarter windows and their related trim so I could prep all the surfaces first. The driver’s side went well, I found that I had siliconed the glass in, but cutting through it and the removal went quickly. At least it didn’t and wasn’t ever going to leak.
The passenger’s side however, is where a sin from my past reared it’s ugly head. On both sides, once I had the glass and trim out and off, I got down and dirty with removing all the old seam sealer, silicone, paint and dirt etc. Once I had this all cleaned up, I was reminded that I had replaced a section of the lower window ledge back in the day due to rust. How I did it however is what left much to be desired.
Doesn’t look too bad from the outside with the glass removed. Tiny little bit of rust forming where the trim had rubbed, but that’s it…
…the inside however, revealed a different picture:
Especially at the bottom inside edge:
For reference, the driver’s side is virgin untouched stock, and what it’s supposed to look like:
So now you can see what I did as a repair at the time, and how. It served its purpose at the time, and was probably the best I could do with what I had, but it certainly wasn’t ideal. This screw hole so close to the top edge and the buildup of filler is what had me concerned:
After waffling and struggling with my conscience for a bit, I felt it would be prudent to revisit this and do the repair properly this time. Before even cutting out the old stuff, I started making a proper replacement piece. After bending a piece in the brake and stretching it in the shrinker/stretcher, I had the beginnings of the new piece.
First test fit was promising:
Now having the replacement piece fitting fairly well, next came stripping down the outside to reveal just how bad it looked underneath. It wasn’t pretty.
Out came the cutoff wheel and make the ugly go away.
With the last remnants of my old repair removed, it was plain to see the underlying metal wasn’t in the greatest of shape either. Cuts in the substructure from going too deep…
…and heavily pitted inner surface that wasn’t replaced at the time:
Nothing a little more cutting wouldn’t take care of for the rusty section, and a little welding and grinding on the cut areas:
Moving back to my new replacement piece, I used the driver’s side as a template to make this side look as close as possible, both in looks and in physical construction.
A little trimming and a lot of test fitting, and it was getting close to being ready to weld in.
I first had to add this little tab to the inside bottom of the “B” pillar…
…then start tack welding it in:
On the inside, the 90 degree tab got a couple of holes punched in it, then plug welded to the inner structure just like factory. Except nicer.
Back on the outside, in progress:
A little more welding and grinding, some finesse on the edges, and I think you’d be hard pressed to tell anything was even done now.
I have a couple more pictures I could put up, but I’m at the limit already for this post. I think you all get the jist though, the repair was done right this time.
I’ve added in the last few bits to the inside to finish it off, done a couple test fits with the moulding (it fits absolutely perfectly with no issues), and redrilled the holes to reattach it as well. I’ve made this side as close as I possibly can to the driver’s side, and am extremely pleased with the results.
Glad I decided to take the time and redo this repair now, and Do It Right This Time.
D.
At the end of the last one, I mentioned something that I’m referring to as DIRTT, or Doing It Right This Time. This is but one of potentially several DIRTTy spots that could pop up, and to be honest it’s one that I had all but forgotten about.
You see, the downside of owning a car for 30 years is that some of the work was done by a teenager. Or in my case, a twentysomething. Twentysomething me understood the issue, and even the solution, but lacked the experience and tools to make a decent repair of it at the time.
To skip right to the heart of the issue, I’m trying desperately to get to the point where I can shoot the rear firewall and the sides of the inside back of the car in epoxy. You see, there is a Murphy’s Law that says something to the effect of: “Before the desired task can be completed, something of equal or greater importance must be done first”.
Boy does that ever apply here.
To do a quality job of this, it necessitated removing the rear quarter windows and their related trim so I could prep all the surfaces first. The driver’s side went well, I found that I had siliconed the glass in, but cutting through it and the removal went quickly. At least it didn’t and wasn’t ever going to leak.
The passenger’s side however, is where a sin from my past reared it’s ugly head. On both sides, once I had the glass and trim out and off, I got down and dirty with removing all the old seam sealer, silicone, paint and dirt etc. Once I had this all cleaned up, I was reminded that I had replaced a section of the lower window ledge back in the day due to rust. How I did it however is what left much to be desired.
Doesn’t look too bad from the outside with the glass removed. Tiny little bit of rust forming where the trim had rubbed, but that’s it…
…the inside however, revealed a different picture:
Especially at the bottom inside edge:
For reference, the driver’s side is virgin untouched stock, and what it’s supposed to look like:
So now you can see what I did as a repair at the time, and how. It served its purpose at the time, and was probably the best I could do with what I had, but it certainly wasn’t ideal. This screw hole so close to the top edge and the buildup of filler is what had me concerned:
After waffling and struggling with my conscience for a bit, I felt it would be prudent to revisit this and do the repair properly this time. Before even cutting out the old stuff, I started making a proper replacement piece. After bending a piece in the brake and stretching it in the shrinker/stretcher, I had the beginnings of the new piece.
First test fit was promising:
Now having the replacement piece fitting fairly well, next came stripping down the outside to reveal just how bad it looked underneath. It wasn’t pretty.
Out came the cutoff wheel and make the ugly go away.
With the last remnants of my old repair removed, it was plain to see the underlying metal wasn’t in the greatest of shape either. Cuts in the substructure from going too deep…
…and heavily pitted inner surface that wasn’t replaced at the time:
Nothing a little more cutting wouldn’t take care of for the rusty section, and a little welding and grinding on the cut areas:
Moving back to my new replacement piece, I used the driver’s side as a template to make this side look as close as possible, both in looks and in physical construction.
A little trimming and a lot of test fitting, and it was getting close to being ready to weld in.
I first had to add this little tab to the inside bottom of the “B” pillar…
…then start tack welding it in:
On the inside, the 90 degree tab got a couple of holes punched in it, then plug welded to the inner structure just like factory. Except nicer.
Back on the outside, in progress:
A little more welding and grinding, some finesse on the edges, and I think you’d be hard pressed to tell anything was even done now.
I have a couple more pictures I could put up, but I’m at the limit already for this post. I think you all get the jist though, the repair was done right this time.
I’ve added in the last few bits to the inside to finish it off, done a couple test fits with the moulding (it fits absolutely perfectly with no issues), and redrilled the holes to reattach it as well. I’ve made this side as close as I possibly can to the driver’s side, and am extremely pleased with the results.
Glad I decided to take the time and redo this repair now, and Do It Right This Time.
D.
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It's nice to see that the younger D made some mistakes even if the result then was better than most of us could achieve. On another note, I'm a little concerned that you have that shiny conductive piece on your finger. Be careful with the digits brother. 😬
I hope I can do work at this level before I'm worm dirt. Probably not but iit's inspiring nonetheless.
Well damn.
After over a decade of waiting and wanting to be in a position to be able to afford these, tonight I finally pulled the trigger:
And these are the newest release heads with the improved heart shaped combustion chamber, for The Juggernaut’s big 462.
So stoked. No turning back now!
After over a decade of waiting and wanting to be in a position to be able to afford these, tonight I finally pulled the trigger:
And these are the newest release heads with the improved heart shaped combustion chamber, for The Juggernaut’s big 462.
So stoked. No turning back now!
Those are a nice head, awesome! One set tested were less than spectacular 240ish cfm , the other two showed improvement over the last gen heads. Bigger runners and valves with more porting potential than the previous generation. I am waiting patiently for the SB version.
Yep, I read through the thread on Classic Oldsmobile started by Mark so I’m fairly familiar with the redesign and the changes over the original aluminum castings. Including the lowered runner floors and the additional material on the roofs. I’m taking this opportunity to also upgrade my rockers to Harland Sharp 1.6 rollers, and a few other things.
Up fairly soon after that will be trying to find a good roller cam and roller lifter retrofit kit, and quite possibly go to an Eddy air gap intake. Might as well go whole hog on this and make it worthwhile.
