polished TH350 continued.

So I spent basically another day on this polished transmission. I have two pictures to show the outcome. The polished trans which I'm very happy with and what I looked like after 4 hours of polishing. I look kind of like those old hobo statues you see in trinket shops. Not bad for home grown. More van stuff tomorrow. my buddy john is buying a 67 ford supervan tomorrow so expect pics of that.

side note: my camera is broken. anybody tryin to unload a digital camera for a good price? el cheapo point and shoot is right up my alley. somethin I can beat up in the garage. let me know.

louvered hoods.

Ever wonder how louvered hoods are made? You strip the paint off the top, cut the inside support out of your hood, make a grid, and then you stamp it out on the louver press, then weld the inner support back in and paint it. That's it. A friend of mine ordered a chevy hood from me so we went down to my buddy Brad Starks In Paducah, KY and asked him to punch it out.

the press has a piece on the stamping die that lines each louver up with the last one that you punched giving you a consistent line of louvers. That first punch is crucial!

spence's van.

I used to bug my fellow bluegrass vanners club member spence about gullwinging the slider on his 77 chevy everytime we got drunk. He finally let me do it and he was very happy with the result. The gullwing looks great but now his engine has taken a shit. He put in a new cam, lifters, and springs in his van about 12 months ago and for some reason ended up with 7 worn out lobes and a really poorly running van after a year. He called lunati and they said tough shit. That's about the time I bought a 68 chevy no door and decided to get a fool injected motor for it. So we've been disassembling some vans and putting some together. After I gullwinged the door he's been much easier to convince to do some cool custom shit. As a result of that tonight I decided to polish his transmission for him. He didn't even mind the fact that I started out by busting out the grinder and removing the casting lines. He's been re-painting the engine and it looks great. I also picked up a bitchin new air compressor last week so I'm really excited about that. Oh and the plan with my old van is to chop it!

the trans before polishing

You can see here I ground off the casting lines and it's getting shiny but it needs a lot more work before it looks like chrome.

The engine is lookin good.

Spence's van

The new compressor

my 68 no door.

Custom Vanner magazine.

So I've been getting a lot of requests for more copies of issue 1. I'm gonna try to get some more run maybe by the end of this month, however deadlines are getting pretty close for issue 2 so I'm not sure right now. I'll post an update on here and the vanson family blog if I get more of issue one.

Coop's house.

I went to coop's house yesterday to pick up some doors for an early dodge he's working on. He took a long wheel base dodge and shortened it. So now he needs an irregular sized door for the side and I'm going to make it out of fiberglass for him while at the same time making molds for fiberglass early dodge doors. Coop has 3 full custom vans, and 2 in the works. Those two being the early dodge and his new astro. Ok on with the pics.

here's the stance the van has with a flipped axle and both of the front spring shackles mounted in the frame. When the engine goes in this should have a nice rake.

the flying eagle just chillin.

the chopped astro, and the barnstormer behind it.

all vans.

if you're not familiar with coop here is some of his striping and painting on the gas tank of his fink chopper, and he made that gas cap too.

Adobe Group

I went out and spoke at an Adobe Indesign Users group tonight. It was fun getting to share with others ,my self taught experiences with Illustrator and photoshop. I didn't really touch on InDesign. If you're into graphic design though I highly recommend looking up one of these meetings in your area. they gave away a copy of InDesign CS5 tonight For free!

Totally unrelated here's a picture of the mirror polished bolts I make that go with the doors.

Getting the blog up and going.

So first post here. Just gonna test out some pictures. I finished up a custom 50 door for an early chevy and it's about time to ship that bad boy off. This door might also end up in the July issue of Hot Rod that has coverage of the C of C van show.