What little custom touches have you done to your cars?

[Dan Stryffeler]

A lot of modifications to the original suspension were made, but the main custom touches were the valve covers and overflow tank.

For the valve covers, I machined up my own patterns and had aluminum castings made, then machined the raw castings for final fit and finish; two piece units w/no mounting flange - socket head cap screws bolt down through the side wall and then the top plate bolts down to seal everything up.

Ended up using the valve cover patterns one more time to cast up a set of covers for my 66 Mustang, so I recouped a little bit of effort, but I don't think I'll ever try something like this again. The Ford logo was probably the most difficult part to make; drew out the logo on a sheet of rubber that was glued to a block of wood and cut it out with a razor knife, then sandblasted the wood and bandsawed out the logo... little cleanup work to the piece then had it cast in aluminum and worked the heck out of that to get the final pattern.

Too much like work, and if I wanted to work I would get a real job

For the tank, I bought a standard big block overflow tank from Dove and cut the bottom off, then machined up a new small block thermostat cover and welded it all back together.

All I really wanted to do was kinda replicate the look of the air cleaner cover, but stupidity takes real committment!

- Dan

[cobrajeff]

Dan - those valve covers are beautiful! Nice job!

Hyde and Blas -

IIRC (it was over 12 years ago), I think that I slotted the holes in the windshield frame a bit more to get some extra "rake" to the windshiled.



That did, however, present some problems when I went to install my convertible top. I had to cut and modify the top bows to get the top to fit with the raked windshield.



Never have completed the unique side curtains I started to make.

Couple more mods I did during the build:

I sectioned the foot-boxes in order to make room for the 351C:



I think I took nearly two inches out on each side, so that I had room for the headers.

I also made some custom steel valve covers, stripping some stock 351C covers, having additional breathers welded on, and then having them plated cad gold to match my Canton "T" pan. I would have like to put taller "R" Model breather tubes on it, but, with valve cover spacers to clear the roller rockers, I didn't think I had hood clearance for them.



In this pic, you can also see my "big-block" expansion tank that I modified to fit my Cleveland, and the remote oil-filter adapter that I modified to fit on the left cylinder head.

Then there were wheels - I ordered my FIA style Halibrands from Phil Schmidt - two 8.0" for the front, two 10.0" for the rear, and one 5.0" for the spare.





I painted in the GoodYear lettering on all of the tires, and painted on a blue stripe to make them look like BlueStreaks. The lettering and painted stripes held up pretty good, but, since I never got around to a front end alignment, I tore up the front tires in less than 1,000 miles (the rear ones were suffering from lead-foot-itis, I think). The Gatorbacks were hard as rocks, and didn't provide much traction. I replaced them with BFG Euro T/A's, and was able to increase the tire size significantly - going from 225/60x15 on front to 265/50x15, and the rear from 255/60x15 to 305/50x15.

Jeff