Special parking/taillight assemblies

This taillight bucket represents the LAST hard part for the car that needs to be found, thus ending a 4+ year long search for parts.  Some new parts still need to be acquired, but that's much easier than trying to find the sometimes impossible, hard-to-find, forget-about-it-they're-not-out-there, type of parts.

I just happen to be having a phone conversation with another Hudson enthusiast, who lives across the country, when, as I typically do, asked out of the blue if he had one of these, and the RH side, no less.  Lo and behold, he just happened to have one sitting on his bench.

The 2nd pic shows the complete set for the taillights and the parking lights.

The unique feature of this collection is that Hudson used this particular set-up for the first few hundred cars off of the line in '52, and then switched from the stamped steel buckets and bezels, to a cast piece where the bezel is incorporated into the casting.

These are so rare that many a fellow Hudnut told me to give up the search about as soon as I had started.  One of those, " . . . they're just not out there anymore, and there wasn't many to begin with!"   Well, 4 years of searching paid off.

I particularly wanted to incorporate these, as my convertible was manufactured very early in the '52 Production Year, and very well might have had these originally.

A complete bonus is that every part pictured is NOS.

 Click on pic for larger images.

Wheels, Wheels, Wheels!

I got a call out of the blue from a nice fellow in NC, who informed me that he had an original set of wire wheels from a Hudson which were in pretty good shape and wanted to know if I was interested in them for the convertible.  After I picked myself off of the floor and located the phone to which, it was muttering, "Hello? . . . Hello? . . .", I somehow stammered, "Yes, of course I'm interested!  Send them to me, I'll stick a check in the mail."  Sight unseen, and needless to say, I'm VERY pleased with the overall shape for their age. 

You'll have to use your imagination a little, but try and picture them with center caps and whitewall tires.  Should look just like the ones in the pic below.  These were made by, Motor Wheel Corporation (if memory serves) and supplied to Hudson as an option, usually reserved for convertibles, but any model could utilize them.

Only conundrum is that I plan on using a continental kit and I only have the 4 wire wheels.  Maybe the kit will look o.k. with a steel wheel and hub-cap.  We'll see when I mock it up.

Intake and Exhaust Assembly

The intake/exhaust assembly is currently mounted on a stand waiting for a finished engine in which to attach it. A point of pride (with me, anyway), is that this Twin-H manifold is an NOS piece.  Never been mounted on a car, but, rather collecting dust on a shelf for the last 58 years.

The manifolds were blasted and thoroughly cleaned, freeze plugs replaced, etch-primered and high-temp painted the correct original colors, with a little fudging.  Originally the intake was gold, but the exact color is a bit vague.  Oldsmobile gold was used and is actually very close to the original color.  The fuel filter was found on-line and makes a nice addition.  Some of the fuel lines still need to be fabricated, and the choke tubes need to be tweaked.

The carburetors are correct Carter 968S which was found on the 308's, correct for the Hornets of the time.  

The heat shields were originally steel and painted, but I decided aluminum plates might make a better heat sink.  They were then polished, but I intentionally left some machining marks and scratches in them, so as to appear vintage.  I think it's a nice touch.  Likewise, a few select dents were left in the breather pipe facing the viewer, for the same purpose. 

If you look closely in the first pic, mounted to the bottom of the exhaust manifold is a "splitter" which splits the exhaust into two pipes for the purpose of dual exhaust.  This is an aftermarket piece cast by a fellow Hudson Club Member many years ago, which I've held onto.   Not real sure if it will make it to the car or not at this point.  Clifford Perforance has recently completed another run of headers, which would breathe much better than the manifold.  I'm considering switching to those.

Front End Parts!

Here's a shot of the front end components.  The upper and lower A-arms, the brake drums, backing plates are all NOS.  They were pretty cruddy when I got them, but cleaned up well.  New kingpins, bearings.  All has been re-built.  With the exception of the large bumpers in the middle of the photo, all the rubber bushings, dust covers were turned new on the lathe.  The dozen bags in the upper left of the photo is all of the mounting hardware for the front end, front brakes, and front bearings.  Be nice to see all of this on the car and put together. 

Currently the parts are simply painted, but I'm considering going back and ceramic-coating all of this.

Again, I can't help but admire Hudson's fine engineering into all of these pieces.  Quality, through and through.

Top Irons!

Wow!  It's been over a year since I updated this blog.  What a year.  I'm really behind on the progress of the car, but I am still making progress, which is a plus.  I'm still lacking a blaster and a compressor large enough to handle blasting the body, so most of the work has been on securing the last of the missing (and needed) parts, and prepping all the smaller pieces for the car.  Let's start with the top irons:

Well, it's a complete set, but unfortunately it's been stuck in a closed position for nearly half-a-century.  It took two full years to get these apart.  It's important to remember that as many parts as possible need to be saved and re-used, if at all possible.  Replacement parts or even whole assemblies are about as rare as hen's teeth.

  The "take-apart" phase involved soaking with penetrating fluid, daily hosings for a week or two, then heating up the fasteners and trying to work them free.  If they weren't ready, then more hosings with the fluid, more heat, try again . . . repeat ad nauseum.  Eventually, some of the fasteners had to be drilled out, re-tapped.  This is especially difficult with steel fasteners and aluminum castings, as the drill bit often wants to seek the softer aluminum instead of staying through the middle of the bolt.  Patience and perseverance is paramount, here.  In a couple of cases, an aluminum casting was cut and a section was taken out where the fastener could be removed laterally, then the casting welded back up, re-ground/filed/sanded back into shape.

In the pic above, this stamped steel piece on the right is the original.  This piece, from the driver side was in the worst shape.  The original car was upside down in a dry creek bed for 35+ years and I believe that the driver side was listed downward into the ground.  This piece was just too bad to save, so another (on the left) was fabricated to match the original exactly.  

Here's an exploded view of the new piece.  Click on the pic for a larger view.

This pic shows one of the convertible top latches.  These are currently undergoing repair in preparation for chrome plating.  They were severely pitted, but are incredibly difficult to find replacements.  I may consider casting these in the future, but for now, these will clean up and be beautiful when completed.

This pic displays all of the painted pieces (finally!) for the convertible top mechanism.  Three of the castings and one of the stamped pieces (mentioned above) had to be fabricated, but it's finally ready for paint.  More than two years was spent on disassembly, clean-up and fabrication.  Many of these pieces are like works of art and the final assembly is the most beautiful I've seen on any car.  Should be a real stunner.

The convertible top assembly, the rocker panels, the back of the rear-view mirror and a few other small parts are all silver.  Work on the rockers have commenced (blasted, straightened, primed), but still need some lead work and final finishing to prep for paint.  I'm waiting to paint all of the silver pieces at one time, so I have to wait a while longer before this top assembly can actually be assembled. It has been dry-run, of course.

The above pic represents all the "bling" that goes into the top assembly.  The two pieces on the bottom row are two painted brackets, but the next 16 pieces all get chrome-plated, which has yet to be done.  All of the curvy pieces on top with the exception of the very topmost one are stainless steel and all go on the convertible header, itself.  The very topmost piece goes below the rear curtain and houses the snap-fasteners that the boot will fasten to.

The above pic shows a sampling of some fasteners for the top assembly.  All of the fasteners that show have been fabricated from stainless steel, and will be polished to add a little more "bling".  One of the few concessions I am making away from stock, although the dimensions of all the fasteners are identical in size to the originals.  As these were all originally painted, the final assembly will be much cleaner in appearance.