New Addition to the Family!

We recently got a new addition to the family! We have been looking for a used CNC mill for a while now. This one came up for sale and I just couldn't pass it up. It is fully tooled. That is half the battle with CNC mills. Tool holders are VERY expensive and you need 15-20 tool holders to work in an efficient manner. The machine needs some electronics work so now is the perfect time to upgrade to the very latest and greatest control system. So hopfully soon the machine will be up and running. This could be the best thing we have done around here in a while!

Scott Fuel Injection

My Friend and Customer Dave Burke has me help him on occasion with some really cool projects for his stable of very traditional hot rods. His Model A coupe for example. I machined the block and prepared the valve train on his Ford Flathead some time ago. Dave is a trained tool and die maker himself and has the ability to create stuff right out off the top of his head. The pictures may not show it well but the intake manifold and cylinder heads are built from scratch by Dave. This last winter he called me to pick my brain about mechanical fuel injection and this is what  he came up with. This is pattered from a Scott Fuel Injector kit    you could buy in the Mid

   fifties. The kit changed your stromberg 97 carbs into fuel injectors using this kit. Today these are super rare. Dave copied his and fiqured out how to make it work from the Sept 58 Rod and Custom magazine article that featured a Scott Fuel Injector. The car runs very well and the injectors are like jewlery. A job well done If you see one of Dave's cars at a show Check it out you'll be amazed at the little details he incorperates into his cars, and most are hand made by him.

Shop Update(it's about time!!)

Been busy here at the shop. We have been working on a variety of different stuff this past winter. First up is the 428 Ford engine that we are doing as a complete This engine was completely engineered and machined by us. What is cool about this job is that the customer had the same vision as I had for this engine. The engine looks stock on the outside. All factory valve covers and air cleaner assembly, pulleys and accessory drives are in place. The inside is a different matter. A brand new rotating assembly with Scat Crankshaft and Connecting rods, Mahle forged pistons, Solid lifter flat tappet cam mated with composite flat tappet lifters, Edlebrock Aluminum heads, Harland Sharpe roller rocker shaft system. Lastly all bearings are coated with Calico antifriction coatings. We have used alot of cutting edge racing technolgy in this fairly radical street engine. Power is predicted to be around 500-530 HP running on regular pump gas. The pictures that are posted are of the process of putting in the sleeve that was required in the block. 428 blocks are quite rare today and cannot be bored more than .040 because of the thin wall design that Ford used on their FE series engines(352, 390, 406, 427, 428.). I had a cylinder that did not clean up as good as i would have liked after the hone process. That required a sleeve be installed into the block. We start by boring the block oversize to accecept the sleeve with about a .002 interference fit. once bored the sleeve is shrunk with dry ice and acetone. The sleeve is pushed in and allowed to return to room temps. The cylinder is then bored and honed back to it's original size, and the block is decked to it's proper height. The result is an almost undetectable repair that is stronger than the original block.We have the engine in final mock up. It will then be torn down and be prepared for painting,chrome, and special coatings. More later

Cool Parts for The Barn Find Hot Rod

Been a busy winter so far. We took in some work involving the 32 Ford barn find hot rod from the last post. A few details where missing and the car was slated to go on a show tour on the east coast then returning here for The Chicago World of Wheels.(March 1-3, 2013) The customer wanted a stock looking fan which would have mounted to the generator in stock form. This car had no fan at all. So we made up an adaptor which fit onto the armature of the generator then modified a early chevy corvette style fan to fit the adaptor. The trick is to make it look like a casting that might have been available at a speed shop back in the day and not a billet piece. I think we pulled it off pretty good. The next item was a set of 1940 Ford Deluxe Dash knobs. The customer wanted these adapted to the new dash switches under the dash as the wiring was converted to 12 volts. I ran into many problems with machining these knobs. You see these knobs where made from a material called bakelite and after almost 75 years they are a tad brittle. The customer then left it up to me to come up with a knob design that incorporated the top of the original knob which i was able to remove from the original and machine something that appears period correct. I had a copy of an old machine shop text book from 1953 and inside the text book was a blueprint for the perfect dash knob. So I got a piece of brass and machined 3 dash knobs using the blueprint from the text book. Back in the 40's-50's it was common for guy's to make hot rod parts in there high school or tech school machine shop class so this fit the bill perfectly. The next detail was a bezel to fit the customers lucky 1954 quarter which is mounted to the dash. This also was a challenge as things get pretty fragile when you machine things that thin but it worked out perfectly.The car is now on tour and I'am hoping getting some magazine coverage. This car is one of my favorite cars i've worked on in quite a few years. The Pictures show the steps involved with making some of the parts as well as the finished products.