My Next Project: 1965 Sunbeam Alpine

[UNSTUCK]

Well not much interest in getting this blasted. I think I found a place to do it but I was surprised at how many turned the work away or wanted a TON of money for it. Maybe I should get into that line of work...
Anyways, it's on the trailer now thanks to my new forklift. Made it a piece of cake.
When it gets back I will get the rear axle and suspension built ASAP as well as figuring out the transmission mount. I'll feel like it will be all down hill from there. We'll see.

 

[rholbrook]

The one they built on OverHaulin was really cool.

 

[UNSTUCK]

Here's the two cars I'm working towards. The red one is for sale right now, or was a few weeks ago for like $70k!! It's fully custom and ready to race. I hope this build will be only slightly less than that car. My customer really likes the other one. Good colors, and great stance. It's much more realistic as far as a build goes. So this car will stand like that one and be super mean like the red one.





The car is getting blasted right now. I should have it back tomorrow. I should have the rear axle built tonight, minus brackets. So when the car gets back I'll be able to set it where I want it and start building links and mount the shocks.

 

[sixstringsteve]

is the second one an original tiger? I prefer the stance of the red one. Either way, this car is going to be amazing.

 

[UNSTUCK]

I think it is. Check out the website link in the picture. They have a million pictures of that car. The rear tires are huge! I like that look better too.

 

[CobraNutt]

I dig the side-exit exhaust too...makes for a noisy driver though!

Sent from my mystical handheld gizmo.

 

[jeepin4x4james]

Well not much interest in getting this blasted. I think I found a place to do it but I was surprised at how many turned the work away or wanted a TON of money for it. Maybe I should get into that line of work...
Anyways, it's on the trailer now thanks to my new forklift. Made it a piece of cake.
When it gets back I will get the rear axle and suspension built ASAP as well as figuring out the transmission mount. I'll feel like it will be all down hill from there. We'll see.

Who'd you find to blast it?
If you were about a month slower I could have helped you out... In the process of buying out my friends blasting business. Everything is stored at the moment though.

 

[UNSTUCK]

I took it to Blast Products in Salt Lake. They are close to my work and stuck to their phone quote of $300 for the underside, floor pan, and firewall. If it looks like the outside body can be done without warping it they will do that for an extra $200. If it looks like it will warp or starts to warp they will blast all the hard to sand corners and such, and include it in the underside price. Seamed like a good deal to me. At least they were the ones to call me back. Hard to give business to people that wont talk to you.

I have more to blast and coat so let me know when you are ready. I was watching a video of the DustlessBlaster system. It looks pretty sweet. Almost no mess, no heat, and pretty fast. I couldn't find anyone local that did it though. You should get into that stuff.

That's the stock rear wheel well opening and those wheels are 18". John is choosing between the wheels on both of these cars, but in the 17" size so they wont stuff quite the same. I'm building in lots of adjustment in the rear so it may turn out the same. The front only has about 1/2" of adjustment. It will be hard to get the front just right and not rub anywhere.

 

[UNSTUCK]

Here's a few pictures I've been meaning to get put on here.

I can't believe I waited so long to get a forklift. It really made loading the car up a breeze.





With the car at the blaster, I was able to start putting the rear axle together. It's a Fab 9 housing with a Speedway limited slip. The suspension link parts are on their way to me now and the brackets are also getting cut. I have a few more to draw up still. I hope to have the car back from the blaster today and have the rear suspension built by this weekend. Once it's built the axle housing will get powdercoated.










John will be up here visiting from PHX. in two weeks. I'd like to have it be a roller by then with the drivetrain installed. I've got a lot of work to do.

 

[sixstringsteve]

Are you sure that axle is going to be strong enough?

 

[blznnp]

Are you sure that axle is going to be strong enough?

I agree with Steve, I can give you my 8.5" 10 bolt in exchange for that weak little axle, just let me know when you want me to trade, I will even bring it to you

This will be a sweet little car, can't imagine having that much power in a paper weight

 

[UNSTUCK]

What can I say? All I know is how to build a jeep. And this would be a good jeep axle, so....

 

[jeepin4x4james]

I took it to Blast Products in Salt Lake. They are close to my work and stuck to their phone quote of $300 for the underside, floor pan, and firewall. If it looks like the outside body can be done without warping it they will do that for an extra $200. If it looks like it will warp or starts to warp they will blast all the hard to sand corners and such, and include it in the underside price. Seamed like a good deal to me. At least they were the ones to call me back. Hard to give business to people that wont talk to you.

I have more to blast and coat so let me know when you are ready. I was watching a video of the DustlessBlaster system. It looks pretty sweet. Almost no mess, no heat, and pretty fast. I couldn't find anyone local that did it though. You should get into that stuff.

Funny that you mention it..... I'll buy a vendor star as soon as we're up and going... Looking at buildings this week.

 

[UNSTUCK]

Is Dustless what you are getting into? With one of those on a trailer with a high cfm compressor I bet you could do real well.

 

[UNSTUCK]

Got it back from the blaster last night and back on the rotisserie. I'm pretty happy with the job, for half the price of another quote I got. As you can see, there is still a lot of bondo patches around the car. I'm not sure what to do with it at this point. Can I leave it bare metal for a month or so until I'm ready to take it to paint or do I need to at least prime it now? Is there an RME guy that does great body work? Maybe you could get it ready for paint for me. Hit me up on here or PM me if you'd like a side job. Nice car on a rotisserie in a heated garage, what more could you want?

 

[Bart]

I would NOT leave it bare metal for any length of time. Clean and blow all of the blast material out of the nooks and crannies and get some kind of sealer on it. It will flash rust fairly quickly JMHO.

 

[UNSTUCK]

So uh, what tires should I run? We have the rear wheels in at 18x10's and the fronts will be 18x7's. The tire size will be 265/35/18 and the fronts will be 215/40/18.

This will be an AZ car so dry roads only. Would want a tire that will last a while and be good for the very occasional auto cross. What do you think?

 

[UNSTUCK]

Well moving along...This is easily the hardest project I have ever worked on. It would help a lot if I was any good at this stuff. Oh well. I think its been about a month since I did an update. My kids think it doesn't look any different than a month ago.

These pictures are out of order, but this is some of the stuff I've been working on:

Started the roll bar. I'm thinking I will fully tie it into the body and not just to the feet on the body floor. I am also considering tying it into the rear frame section so I can mount the shocks to it. This has been my biggest brick wall, figuring out how to do the upper shock mounts. I removed the "frame" section above the rear axle because the wheels/tires wouldn't have fit. So now I need to figure out how to replace that strength. My customer really likes the way the soft top cover rotates forward to allow the top to fit behind it. If I run bars to the rear of the car we wont be able to use it, unless we modify it. We'll see what happens there.




The unibody has made it difficult to mount the suspension links. I decided on this and hope it will be strong enough. I have a hard time getting past the Jeep/rock crawler/racer mentality. I keep thinking this kind of stuff would never last on a jeep, but these cars don't need nearly the strength, or so I've been told. On a side note, this car is far from square or symmetrical, from the factory. The two welded nuts in these pictures are the seat belt mounts. There is no reason why they couldn't have been same on each side. They kind of just threw stuff where ever. Overall the car is easily over 1/2 inch out of square. Makes it hard to take measurements that mean anything. Remind me to get a picture of the grill opening for the radiator. It's awesome!












I mocked up one side of the front suspension and found a wheel/tire that was close in size to what we wanted. This allowed me to figure out the offset I needed on the new wheels. They are custom order Billet Specialties Mag wheels. I hope I got it right.. I should know in another 3-4 weeks when they get here. Both of these pictures are at ride height. The rear wheel well is much shorter than the front. The car will look like this sitting level.

 

[Greg]

Nice progress! It's not easy to change your thinking from rockcrawler fab to car fab... too funny about how far out of line things are.

 

[sixstringsteve]

I love how overbuilt this car is. It's awesome.