Rolling Thunder!!

Finally off of the rotisserie, she's a roller!  In desperate need of shop space, we pressed hard to get suspension, steering and brakes completed.  Now she gets moved to the garage for the rest of the restoration, and that shop space will be utilized for the cabinet business.  Sigh!  Someday, I hope to build a new building which will house the business and this shop will become the car shop, again.  But for now, we'll make do as we can. 

This last picture shows the tape removed, and the rest of the black on the skeleton.



The following picture is a request.  We still need to find one more of these smaller, armrests, ivory in color.  The one on the bottom is not useable, as it is cracked, and broken.  Just need the plastic bottom part, not the stainless.

  



 This driver door had 12 bullet holes in it, along with this bad spot in the top corner.  Instead of leading these in, I decided to put in a patch, weld it in, then lead out the inconsistencies.

 And the door mounted, ready for paint after a final blocking.

Some of the hard parts waiting to be painted.

Sometime in the next week or two, we'll be plumbing the hydraulic lines for the top and windows.  The rubber conduit came from Steele Rubber Products.  The rubber lines were supplied by Dale Cooper and the rest of the fittings and the lines came from our local Napa.  Almost unbelievably, there is nearly 100' of tubing to run for top and windows.

And a shot of the inside of the driver door.  Painted, waiting for the internal hardware to be installed.

More to come, shortly!!  I'll try and do a better job of posting regularly now that we're making some good visual progress.  

Primed!

Got the main body in Epoxy primer, body seal was added.  Body panels were block-sanded after high-build primer.  Next up, is to get the chassis in black paint (all areas except those body parts that show, like the windshield header, back deck, etc. 

Back to Blasting?

I noticed that in a previous blog, "Blasting Time!", the date was August of '09.  Being in business for myself has certainly taken it's toll on my hobby time, that's for sure.  Not like some things haven't been getting done, which they have, but bodywork has been pretty scarce since that post.

Regardless, I finally broke down and rented a blaster and compressor (big one) and started the blasting process. Unfortunately, humidity got the best of me today and I had to shut it down with about a 60% completion rate.  I'll have to wait for a less humid day to finish the rest of the body and all of the misc. parts.

Blasting a car usually reveals more sins than blessings, but I'm happy to say that I'm really pleased with the amount of hidden cancer that showed up, which was relatively minor.  About a dozen pinholes showed up on the top of the windshield header, but will be easily leaded back in.  The frame is still as pristine as I thought it was in the beginning;  no cancer there.

It was disappointing not to finish, but, hopefully, we'll have her in primer in the next few weeks.

 

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.