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I started this build before somebody pointed me to this site. My car is turning out similar to this build style, but I worked into it from the back door. I started building a body and then framing it out. Here is the build thread as posted on another site.


What is the best thing you can do with a rotted out 1954 four door Caddillac and a wrecked 1960 Jaguar MK2?

Build a boat tail speedster!!!

First you gotta cut the roof off the Caddy!



Then cut the skin free. ....and slice that down the middle



Then cut apart some old porch posts to recycle the free 1x1 tubing. Bend that into a shape that follows the curve of the roof. What the heck bend it so it makes the shape of a 30's Indy car.



Prop up half a roof and see what it looks like

I can see it. ....keep going.

Throw the first subrail away and make 2 that have smoother curves. Prop up both sides, plop a cushion wher the seat will be and make race car noises.



Study the shape and draw where the cut out needs to be.



Grow some balls and quarter the roof



Its starting to look like a race car now!

Part out the Jag. Take the engine, trans, radiator, driveshaft, rear axle, front spindles, knock-off wire wheels, steering parts, gauges, switches, and title.

Plop the major parts down and see how they are gonna work with the new racecar body.

Realize the fancy overdrive trans is big in the wrong places. Shifter wrong. Driveshaft too short. Swap trans out for a non-OD model. Scrub off 40 years of grime first.

This is the kind of stuff that inspired me to look at a Caddilac like that.

I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped.

The plywood sheet worked OK for mock-up, but it wasn't working well enough to build a real car.

I have a work bench that is almost big enough to build on, but it is buried under 4 years of grinder dust and misc accumulations. Half a day was spent cleaning off the table.

Finally got the table cleared an my subrails on the table. Table is about two feet too short for the body to fit. No problem. I built an outrigger to support the point of the boat tail.

Time to start building body structure out of 1x1. Square tubing may be great for building boxes, but it sucks for the complex shapes in this car. Got one hoop done in the rear body and tried to make a hoop for the cowl. Succeded in making lots of scrap out of 1x1 . On to plan B.

Make the cowl from 16 gauge flat sheet. This was my first real project with the horrible freight shrinker/stretcher. I think it went well. I think it would have been easier if I made my angle 1x1 instead of 1.5x1.5 (oh well).

Here are the pics.

Did some to the cowl today. Dash is gonna be high (33" from floor in center). I should be able to get away with a 4 inch tall windshield.

or however tall these little things are. (I'll make something similar)

[img]http://www.xks.com/includes/getImage.asp?filename=images\large\17-1950.jpg[/img]

Dealing with dial-up at parent's house. Only three pics for now. Kinda hard to tell what is going on, but the body flares out at the dash. Dash is 49" at widest point. Firewall is 43" wide.

A few more

Saturday morning, I played with a roll of masking tape.....trying to convince myself that the shape was right.

The door cut out didn't seem quite right. Played with that some more. Drivers side seat has been cut back 6 more inches or so.

This is what we ended up with. Dad thinks it looks like a WW1 airplane







Looks better. Had to see how it felt. Feels good. Nice and roomy.

So now that it starts to look like a car....what are you supposed to do?



Tear it all apart and work on the frame.



Did I mention that I was thinking about building this car as a unibody?

All of the 1x1 will be boxed in with sheetmetal.

Adding diagonals is a pain. They have to be curved so that match the horizontal pieces. Chassis should be plenty stout though.







Door swoop goes down to the frame / truss thingy.


Rear suspension is the next thing to figure out.

Right now the rear suspension/frame layout is a blank canvas from the seats back.






The rear of the car will be built around the suspension.

I have thought about a triangulated 4 link with the bottom bars on the outside of the body (attaching at the node just ahead of the quarter panel skin). The uppers would be inside the body.

I have also considered hairpins attaching at the same general location.

awesome
love it how far off lotus spec size is it?

This where I am today.


As of right now, a 3 link rear suspension with a watts link is what I think I want the rear suspension to be.

The front will be an imitation of the IFS used on the 1936 Miller Indy car pictured above. Spindles, hubs, and brakes are 1960 Jaguar.

Here is the real thing.





My arms will be fabricated out of steel.