| 05-10-2012 |
The gas tank is holding things up so I decided to try to go ahead and see how the new radiator would mount up among other smaller things.
It turns out the radiator shell interferes with the top hats on the spring perches. I called Chassis Engineering and they said this shouldn't happen and they are in contact with a few people that have put these kits on these cars and haven't had this issues. I talked to a couple of guys on the internet that said they have had to cut their radiator shells to get them to fit. I'm going to wait until I get the body mounted and the fenders on before I trim any part of the radiator shell to see just exactly what the problem might be. The fenders will definitely have to be notched because they mount flat to the frame rail and as you can see that has a giant spring perch sitting on it now. This hadn't occurred to me until today and had I known it it may have affected my decision to go with this kit.
April removed the old radiator.
With the shell propped into place the car looks like a fish head and bones
But April seemed to think it looked more like a pirate with it's mouth open. A stunning resemblance...
The grill shell won't fit right now. I had to remove a bracket from the power steering pump. Whatever it used to do it doesn't seem to have a purpose now, so I can leave it off. The power steering hose also had to come off and I'll have to make some custom ones. I'm not certain the pump will work as it is and I may have to get a pump that allows for a remote reservoir. This setup is the stock truck front drive assembly. Since all LS1 engines are externally the same any front belt drive system will bolt on to this engine, but they are extremely expensive to buy aftermarket and pretty hard to find from a used vehicle. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet but once again that is just one more of the issues that will come after the body has been set into place. Also, the brace in the middle of the grille opening is going to have to be cut out to make room for the air conditioning condenser. I've decided to modify it and weld in a new one rather than leave it out. I went to the scrapyard today but couldn't find any suitable metal to make the brace out of so I'll keep checking back until I find something.
I tacked the rear brake hose brackets on the rear axle. While I was at the parts house I tried to get new banjo bolts to go into the calipers because the ones that came with the kit have the wrong threads. To my surprise they couldn't even order the correct size bolts. The Ford Explorer rear ends are very popular and plentiful and I can't believe they aren't able to order them. I still had one left over from the old caliper which I was then taking to swap out for a core ($45 core charge for that thing). I grabbed another caliper while I was at the pull-a-part last time to use as a core, but still only wound up with one stock banjo, so I'll have to grab another banjo bolt next time I go to pull apart.
Thanks to the garbage Auto Zone brake hose flaring kit, which broke, I wound up this close to finishing the brake system. It almost caused the line to be too short to use and I was not looking forward to having to rebend it, but I think I can make it work.
I've been wanting to do this project for about 4 years now but have only recently had a welder. Today I decided it was finally time to make a rear license plate bracket for my '57. I don't even like explaining this to people anymore because they instantly disagree and say I'm wrong. A customer of my father's, that collects antique license plates, gave me an original 1957 Tennessee license plate, which you can legally run on the back of your car in TN if you have the real license plate in the car with you. The original '57 plate will not fit the stock license plate hole locations on the trunk of a '57 Chevrolet. This is a fact. People disagree about this with a passion. My dad has an original '57 Kentucky license plate and his fits fine, but this TN one does not.
Many say that the rear license plate brackets for 1955-1957 Chevrolets are the same. This is also not true. Many people, also, will disagree with this. 1955-1956 are the same, 1957 is different. I had a guy give me what he thought was a '57 rear bracket, but it turned out to be a '56. I was in a junkyard one day and saw a '57 Chevrolet with a rear license plate bracket. Not really thinking about it I took it off and assumed I had finally found a '57 bracket. When I got home I saw it was exactly the same as the one I had. When I went back to the junkyard I saw that someone had just drilled holes in the trunk of that car and put a '56 style bracket on it. So now I had 2 55-56 brackets and no '57 brackets. They do sell these new but I refuse to pay the ridiculous money they want for them. So today I took my two '56 brackets and made one '57 bracket.
Here's the two '56 brackets.
First I had to chop 'em up.
Then after checking out the car spacing I took an inch out of the trunk-side bracket so it will tuck in behind the license plate a little better.
After some hammering and grinding I tacked it in place, checked my measurements, made some bends and finished the spot welds.
It ended up looking like this.
I had been using some O-rings that were left over from, I think, an air conditioning kit from years and years ago as a gasket between the license plate and the trunk. I'm going to reuse them again.
I just sat it in place to see if it was going to line up correctly. One reason I like this setup better is dirt and grime doesn't get trapped behind the license plate, as this picture shows.
The finished result will look like this, except the license plate will tuck in better because this is just a picture of it wedged into the bracket with some old screws with no nuts on the back.
While doing this I had a grinder wheel explode on me for the first time. Fortunately I always use the shield and eye protection. It hit my arm in two places. It didn't do any real harm, but I can only imagine that is what it must feel like to get shot with a .22.
