my 66' impala hardtop :)

[nemesis_adrasteia]

mate im jealous of your fabrication skills. good job with it.

[ari666]

couple more pics. i am dog tired after all this, but it looks lke i have done f' all

firewall paint free, 2 rust patches cut out and sealed up.


drivers door jam. the kick panel still needs its rust sorted so it will be a while b4 this sees any paint


the colour sprayed out on a test patch. itll be more brilliant that shown because of the yellow-ish putty we are using, and not the black base we sprayed on. also my phone camera is sh1t and doesnt show colour very well

[ari666]

yay! here is my latest battle scar, you cant really make it out but the cut goes all the way through my nail and the skin under it. pic taken after about 1/2 litre of bloodloss


door jams puttied, still not ready yet.


firewall puttied

[Morton]

I like where this is going You're giving me motivation to keep my HQ coming along - don't stop!

[ari666]

i have had 3rd degree welding burns to my eyelids twice now. most uncomfortable pain in the world. makes your eyes water every time you blink. lol.

also a member for the council came over last week as a result of one of the neighbours complaining about the noise, i know which neighbours, but he wouldt confirm. anyway, we had a chat for a bit, i showed him my mates galaxy, my chev and my commo and chatted a bit about his cars and his speed boat, and in the end he shook my hand and said something along the lines of "f..k your neighbours, the work you are doing is legal, and there is nothing your neighbours can do to stop you, so have fun"

i now like members of the council. he was a dude.

[ari666]

a before and after pic of the windscreen support rail



and the interior gutted, wiring is my hobby so i cant wait to sink my teeth into this job, but there is a lot of welding to do to the windscreen support so i have to wait. i have a decent stereo setup to go into the beast consisiting of two 10 inch woofers, two pioneer 150w 6x9's for the rear, two kenwood 6 inch splits for the front, and two jap branded amps to run the rear 6x9's and woofers. i cant remember their names, but i have pulled them apart and the build quality and components are awesome.

[TrikkBen]

shame its a four door..Good luck.

[Morton]

dude, you're getting better and better at this as you go How are the dimensions going, all square still? You want to be especially sure with the window support

Loved your story about the encounter with the council worker He sounds like a champ ^_^

[Blown V6 Hatch]

Looking good.

Welding flash sucks man. I've had it a few times, it's like someone keeps throwing sand in your eyes. I went and bought a really good auto darkening welding mask, never had it again.

[stocky]

shame its a four door..Good luck.

nothing wrong with a four door.

that firewall makes the engine looks so tiny. good project. keep it up

[ari666]

Looking good.

Welding flash sucks man. I've had it a few times, it's like someone keeps throwing sand in your eyes.

yeah!! i wanna get one of those masks, the one i have is an old skool bad boy that you gotta flip each time you need to look. it sucks. my latest idea was 30+ sunscreen and sunglasses, till i found myself half an hour later with the sunglasses sitting on top of my head and my face feeling warm.

i never frikken learn.

anyways, the windscreen support on the chev is kinda weird. the main part that holds the windwcreen secure is the metal dash pad (the vents bit underneath the vinyl dash matt). the bit that i am doing now are two sections which join together to support the dash/windscreen so it isnt the type of thing where mm's count, but when i get to the dash pad itself, then i will need to have my micrometer and get ready to have to redo it three or four times.

even still, i had to do this section in blocks of 70-100mm at a time so i didnt go off the curve. took two days to do the top. the bottom/inside the car is a lot easier now that i have the curve finished cos all it needs to do is meet the curve and the firewall. i did a 300mmm section yesterday in just under an hour.

my mate has almost finished the side patch which i cracked the sh1ts at. its 2mm steel so a real prick of a thing to get right. even with his 5 years of panel beating its still taken him 3 weekends to get to the point of hanging the door and checking gaps, so i am really glad he did it for me cos i would have got it really wrong. will post a pic of that when its welded up cos' its a thing of beauty.

anyways enough bantering, i gotta go do some real work so i can pay the 1600 bucks for a rubber kit

[ari666]

ok, well its about 100 degrees in the shed atm so i am having a beer to cool down and typing this for a second time cos' internet explorer and a capped internet shagged me up the bum.

i decided to do something slightly different today because in all honesty i am getting sick to death of welding little panels in. so today we are moving on to the world of sound.

ok, so to begine with i needed to make a base plate which will attach to the bit where the vents used to be. those vents were nothing but trouble and caused a heap of rust so they are gone, never to return. i decided to make the speaker enclosures out of steel cos' even though MDF has better acoustics than steel, MDF would have gotten wet and fallen to bits in about a week.

so i chose 2mm steel for the base cos' that is where i would be seeing most distortion introduced. basically just held it up to the shape of the vent and scribed around it



then moved on to the cone. i have no idea of the wattage of these speakers in real terms so i only guessed the dimensions for the enclosure. the plan initially was to have a vent but it seems i have no room for one so there may be a bit of a problem there later on.

i had to weld, then double weld, then weld again to make absoluteley sure that the cone was sealed cos nothing pisses me off more than the little ssshhh noises boxes make when the joins dont fit. even still i have sealed the joins with a bunch of sikaflex



weld on a nice 2mm backing plate. its pretty important usually to make sure your backing plate (or whatever is behind the speaker) is reallllly sturdy cos' you are relying on that point to reflect sound back towards the front of the speaker. if it wobbles around you are just introducing noise and killing any real acoustics, but as i am not running a vent, it may not be a big deal.

anyway, i just blew some aerosol can black on cos no one is gonna see the welds etc anyway.



and my favorite bit, the test. i hooked it up to my home theater (which outputs around 180W RMS to the two fronts) and cranked it to around 2/3's full volume, loud enough to make the neighbours complain (again). luckily it performed pretty well, no leaks from what i can hear, no distortion and it doesnt even have any deadener in it yet! i am still scrathing my head how to put a vent in, but even still the small amount of base it puts out is crisp and clear and really what you want from a tiny little 6 incher.


thanks guys

[ari666]

after finishing the second enclosure and hooking it up to my hi-fi i have decided that i am not gonna vent these bad boys, they can take almost full volume of my marantz amp without distorting. which is saying something cos' the speakers i have in-house usually distory around 6. (numbers going down, 10 test number, 6 is distort of home speakers, tried them on 3 just b4 and they were distoring, but only slightly)

just gonna amp the hell out of em' once they are in the car, hopefully there wont be too much introduced noise from the panels, but yeah, these things sound awesome

BIG UP TO ME.. an' sh1t

p.s. if anyone wants to know how to make the cones to fit the speakers i took a few more pics the second time around but didnt wanna cloud up the forms. if you want, then ask and i shall post.

[Jo3_Blo]

Gees, nice work man. Keep it up.

[ari666]

just boring ol' patches today again

completed windscreen support


and the chassis cleaned up and sprayed black



laters bros

[ari666]

i finally caved to the pressure from my friends;

[ari666]

omg, i just bought the nicest header paint by accident, was wanting just straight black but must have grabbed the wrong can...



anyway spent a couple of hours fixing welds and porting

[ari666]

and now the fun begins although body work is fun cos' im learning how to metal fabricate, nothing is better than getting into your engine


im looking at buying this dress up kit, but dont know if i can justify 330 bucks US. prolly more around 400 AUD


roller rockers (cheapies) electric fuel pump, already got the edelbrock performer manifold and holley 750 vac secondarys, headers and a bunch of orange spray paint will complete this fine donk

[Morton]

Oooooh shiiiiiiiiiiney ^_^ That's so pimpin' it's almost criminal

I want the Holden version for my VQ

[ari666]

so here is stage 2

stage 3 is fresssh paint preciousss.




and a little lol for the afternoon, i so wanted black, but failed in finding any stock in oz, anyways it was weird, as soon as dude from VPW said he had silver i was like DONE, he was like ?wanna know how much? i was like, NO, gimmie gimmie gimme, and i ended up with this dress-up kit, which in all honsety, i think is muuuch better than the black one. what do you think?


its got the air cleaner too etc, but CBF unpacking it cos i gotta wait itll monday/tues for other bits to arrive b4 i can start assembly.

[stocky]

you know most people put grocery lists on their fridges, not car part lists

[ari666]

what are you talking about? this IS my grocery list :P

anyways, i couldnt help myself:


edit* why the hell do all my pics look like they are sprung from the 80's? try this one;

[ari666]

i didnt wanna go shiny but...

[Morton]

Duuuude this is going to look EPIC I'm actually really excited to see how it comes out ^_^

Maaaan I'm sooooo jealous right now

Maybe I should dress-up my 202...

[rch-13z]

mmmm sweeet!