Progress Thread HeHateMe gets bent

General karthief said:

That's a rough day, my sympathies. I'd say it gets easier but it just gets different.

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2Blue2 said:

Condolences
hard to lose love ones even if its for the best

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Thanks! He had turned 90 in Dec. He had had 3 heart attacks (all minor) starting at 44...but he was in good health, save for heart failure and COPD. Mind sharp as a tack. Still drove himself around, except my sister grocery shopped for him. He drove himself to the Dr just 3 days before he went to the ER, so I wasn't really expecting him to go so fast. He ended up with fluid on the heart and lungs and poor kidney function. So they tried for 2 weeks to dance between giving lasix and killing his kidneys, then take him off and let his kidney's recover. Ultimately he didn't have enough kidney function and the fluid overwhelmed his heart and lungs.

Right now I am making a 60 mile each way commute to work. I used to call and take to him almost every day for at least an hour. That's the different part. I catch myself grabbing my phone and wanting to call. It was comforting to hold his hand and tell him it was ok to go. It wasn't easy.

Well, I just got back from a week in Corpus Christi cleaning up and cleaning out his house. I got 4 totes full of stuff and his tool box. It's a god knows 50 or so year old Snap On top box on a Craftsman bottom box. Not very big, but crammed full of tools and stuff. I couldn't let it go. Funny, when I was a kid it seemed semi truck sized. It's not even all that tall. Next up, my sister will oversee getting all the dings from the inspection fixed. We were already putting a new roof on, replacing all the facia boards, and there's a leak in the plumbing drain system somewhere. Probably got to do some electrical too, since it was built in '58.

But, everything left goes into the estate sale. And that's that. 90 years of life, down to several totes of memories that my brothers and sister decided to keep. Everything else goes to the dump or to someone who pays $.50 for it. But, life goes on I guess.

I have gotten a few things done on HeHateMe. My brother came over 3 weeks ago and we cut the roll cage out and dropped it and he welded the halo and windshield bars completely in. Then we put it back up and semi- welded the bottom in. Then we took the S&W frame rails and decided to modify them to make sure that there's never going to be a reason the car can't sit low enough.

On our 83 Regal in our youth, we didn't put the tubs up high enough and then put the cage down tubes over the top of them. We never felt like cutting the cage out and cutting the tubs out to fix it.

I have room for 13" of tire. I kept the frame rails as far apart as I could so the springs will be as far apart as possible. Maybe next weekend, I will start working the rest of the bracing for the cage. It's a 12 point, so good to 8.50. I have the 25.5 sfi book and will add some of the floor bracing, not so much for cert, but for safety.

And then there is the hole measure twice cut once thing. So, when I bent up my A pillar bars, I kept thinking, they are really close to the windshield. I never got the windshield to test fit. So 2 weeks ago, AFTER they had been welded in, I got the windshield down. It clears on the the passenger side, but not the driver...the windshield was resting about 1/2" off the flange sitting on the bar. Boy was I pissed. But then the more I looked at it, I realized the bar had moved towards the a pillar. So with all my ratchet straps and making some wedges, I was able to move it over towards the center. I had to then cut a huger hole in the dash to weld the dash bar in to hold it. I'll make a pleather cover or carpet cover to cover the dash when I am done.

It's good now with no gasket, so the space the gasket adds will probably leave the glass 1/4 to 1/2" away from the bar.

I'm still alive. After Dad died, I kind of went into a funk. I was used to talking to him almost every day driving home from work. It's 80 miles each way so plenty of hours spent talking about life, HeHateMe, and other stuff. Then work went crazy, all of 23 I was working 10-12 hrs a day and the commute was killing me. My brother has started building a tube chassis 55 Buick and I've been over to help him a bit this summer. Work has changed a bit this year and "most" weeks I am working from home Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I am not so exhausted with work.
So, I cleaned the car off a week ago and have started doing the whole, what was I doing when I stopped working on it trip down memory lane.

I'll post some pics...I may have over built, over thought the leaf springs, but I have them all pretty much tacked in with a way to raise and lower them in the car if I want to change ride height.

Well, these storms were bad...we got a ton of rain, but NOTHING like east TN and NC. Pray for those folks!!! Here's where HeHateMe sits now. I have gotten some stuff done. The lasst thing was my brother building the homemad driveshaft loop. Only for us to get done and say, well that sucks...it's so low. I'm going to cut the loop out of the 2x3 crossmember, so that what is left is straight and level. And instead of the homemade ds loop, put in a 2x1 rectangle tube loop. Next up is to figure out the elevation of the driveshaft and do all of that. As you can see I made changes to the front bar setup.

Instead of the bolt on affair that goes to the side of the shock tower, I made full down bars. I'd gotten pretty decent with my tube bending skillz. I added a pnuematic over hyldraulic jack which makes that JD2 bender work like butta. This is just going to be an 8.50 cert but I am pretty much going to put everything in except the FC cage to be able to 7.50 cert it in the future if I want to. I know there was a lot back n forth between me and Mike about bracket racing, but honestly the goal for this car was always to do at least 1 drag n drive. Hence the turbo. The LS is mainly so on drag n drive, if I blow an engine we can run down to the nearest Kroger and buy another one and throw in to at least finish the week.

Still a lot of tubes and welding to go. My bother built a 25x30 shop at his house in Ark where the 55 is and at some point will drag this hooptie there to use the lift and get under to weld or build a roll over jig and do it here..

Before anyone asks...those are Funkhouser Race cars U-boltless axle perches...top notch stuff. The U-bolt was cut off and welded to the perch to hold the axle until we get everything to the point to set the final pinion angle and weld the housing to the perch. Then removed the u-bolts. I made the Leaf spring mounts adjustable, just in case, but I think I like the ride height about where it is now. I decided to go with steelies. 15x10 in the back and there's room for a 12"tire. At some point I need to cut the back glass out. I am sure I will find part/most/all of the bottom channel rusted out.

As far as the 55 goes, we had a set of T/A Aluminum heads back in the day which got lost over the last 30 years. But my brother has decided he wants to build the fastest factory cast iron head 455. He has spent a ton of time cutting up the heads, and welding them back up. He has raised the intake/exhaust ports significantly and will fill in the bottoms with epoxy. He's cut up an aluminum edelbrok intake for the flanges and started making a sheet metal aluminum high rise intake. He just contacted a company to make exhaust flanges with 2 1/4 stubs and should have those soon. Going by ET calculators, the 455 in the Regal was making somewhere between 675-750hp depending of you use ET or MPH. So adding almost 70 cuibic inches pretty much adds another 100-125 hp min. It's a mild steel tube chassis, so we might be cert limited on ET and speed.