'66 Monaco Resto-Mod

[Jack-Stand]

Wow those compressors are loud! Regarding the tubing work, from an amateur who has tried it, your stuff is pro quality gorgeous!

Thank you much on the tubing. This was my first go at doing anything "ornamental". I'm really happy with how it turned out, but there's still things I'd change if I could. As far as the compressors go, yes, they're incredibly loud, although the video was when they were first firing up. Basically the system was completely empty, so they had nothing to push against. Once the system pressurized a decent amount, they got quite a bit quieter.

 

[commando1]

Wow
Shouldn't you be building nuclear subs or something?...

 

[Jack-Stand]

Wow
Shouldn't you be building nuclear subs or something?...

Nah... my cousin does that... too much paperwork

 

[Jack-Stand]

Finally got the rear end back under the car and set it on the ground! I literally put it through its paces, including cycling through each corner one at a time. Good news is that it did exactly what I wanted, and my wiring was exactly as I had scoped.


I haven't quite decided yet, but I'm thinking that the car's wiring is going to be my next project. I've thought about painless and a few others, but the more I look at them, the more I'm thinking that I'll just make my own. I just don't like how they're ran compared to what I think I can create.

 

[thrashingcows]

Guess a back yard engineering degree is not quite up to par with an actual engineering degree....;)...Absolutely amazing work, can't tell you how jealous I am of your skills!

 

[Jack-Stand]

Guess a back yard engineering degree is not quite up to par with an actual engineering degree....;)...Absolutely amazing work, can't tell you how jealous I am of your skills!

Haha Thank you much, but all I have is a piece of paper that says I can do math... My actual hands on silks, I give credit to my grandfather (farmer) and all the machinists that didn't mind me asking stupid questions.. I still firmly believe there's a lot to be said about apprenticeships

 

[commando1]

Amazing. Really impressive job.
While I see no sense in bagging, I truly understand that it's all about the technical challenge in this case.
All I ask is that you don't do hopping and jumping demonstrations in parking lots.

 

[Jack-Stand]

Amazing. Really impressive job.
While I see no sense in bagging, I truly understand that it's all about the technical challenge in this case.
All I ask is that you don't do hopping and jumping demonstrations in parking lots.

Haha thank you much... There's definitely the technical challenge to it but there's also the variability in suspension combos. If I air my rear bags all the way up to their capabilities, they're stiffer than my stock rear leaf springs... Basically that means I can "theoretically" have coilover stiffness at the push of a button... I say theoretically just because I haven't actually driven the setup yet.

As far as the bouncing goes, you have absolutely nothing to worry about there. Lol Those cars are all show and no go... Mine's going to be a lot of go with a little show

 

[Jack-Stand]

Not much of an update, other than I'm planning/designing the electrical system of the car. I'm not an electrical engineer, so this has taken me significantly longer than some of my friends, but I'm feeling pretty good about it. Basically to start with, I just listed out the various components that I knew would be in the car, and I started drawing. Thanks to Dr. Google, I was able to find the original schematic to my '66, but unfortunately it was too blurry to read. Thanks to Dr. Google again, I was able to find a schematic of a '65 that was legible. Even though I was almost certain they were the same, I traced the lines out on both schematics, and confirmed they were indeed the "same". Just for safe measure, I did a triple check of the diagrams by checking the circuitry with my multi-meter (continuity check). If anyone is curious, red is turn signal power, dark green is the left rear turn signal, and brown is the right rear turn signal. The front turn signals, as well as the interrupted brake signal also "flow" through the column, but in my application these will be deleted by a couple of relaying circuits.

A lot of the more complicated relaying circuits started out on my white board. The relaying circuit pictured below is the relaying circuit for the turn signals on the car. I wanted to retain the interconnected brake/turn signal function that the car came with, but I wanted relays to do the heavy lifting.

At first I started drawing all of the circuits out on paper, but realized I had better tools at my disposal. I asked my boss (engineering director) if I could use the AutoCAD on my work laptop, and he approved (so long as I don't do it on company time of course). So basically I redrew everything in AutoCAD, and continued to fine tune it as I continued to design the rest of the system. It's a little tough to see exactly what's-what in the picture below, but further down there's a zoomed in shot of the turn signal relaying "module" I mentioned earlier.

 

[Andrew]

Bad *** build man. How is your front end travel? Looks like there is alot of toe in/out as it raises and lowers? I have had the same issues in the past. Looking at your set-up have you considered and bump-steer kit in the front? Maybe dropping the tie rod ends down a little at the spindle would help that out. Not trying to nit pick, just want it to be safe and driveable at all heights with the little one on board. Love what you're doing. I've looked at different ways to bag my 62 and there aren't many options. Thanks for biting the bullet and doing the R & D on this one as I might copy you!

 

[Jack-Stand]

Thanks brother and please, critique away. I welcome all the help and feedback I can get with suspension geometry. I've got more experience with off-road suspensions, so I could definitely use the help. Travel is decent, and believe it or not, camber and toe aren't horrible when it travels. It definitely changes, but it's not much more than any stock vehicle would (I've only compared it with my wife's CRV lol)

As far as bumps go, I don't have anything to combat bump steer specifically, other than the bump tabs on the knuckles. As far as suspension bumps go, I've got downward bumps, but not upward. I plated over the rail between the upper CA mounts, and then I recheck broke some 7/8" bar stock for the bumps to hit against. You can kinda see how I routed my front stainless lines.

Let me know if there's anything I can help with on your '62. I've had to redo a lot of things on my car, so maybe I can save you the headache.

 

[Jack-Stand]

The latest to hit the shop's list of things-to-do is my friends 12-bolt. Even though it's a Chevy (I try not to hold that against him), I agreed to help my friend with the bracketry on it. His Mini-tubbed '69 Camaro is putting something like 650bhp down out of a N-A 572ci BB, and he was feeling a bit skiddish about his welds. So he asked if I'd be willing to help.

He had already welded them up previously, so first thing first was to grind out the old material. The outers were easy, and I was able to use my angle grinder, but the inner welds required quite a bit more finesse with my die grinder and multiple sizes of burs. I tried to under cut the bracket just a tiny bit so that my material had somewhere to flow once I started burning them in.

After I got all the material removed, I started prepping to burn them back on. One thing to note, and there's a lot of debate out there about this. Some say that you need to heat the opposite side of the tubes before you weld on it, while others will argue that there's minimal deflection. A long time ago, having witnessed a piece of 2"x4"x3/16" wall tubing bow up 6" from flat after teaching my cousin to weld (several practice beads), I will say that I ABSOLUTELY believe that heating the tubes are a necessary step. While you don't need to get them glowing hot, you at least need to thermally expand the metal enough that it doesn't enter into the plastic deformation (bends but doesn't spring back) zone while the other side is heating (being welded) or cooling. If you don't do this step, and just burn the brackets on then it could potentially "bend" the tube to one side or the other. While the amount of bend is likely minimal, only a few 0.001" can cause premature shaft, bearing, carrier, etc. failure.

Anyway, I heated the tubes on the opposite side of the bracket as I prepped to welding them and set to burning them in. While I'm disappointed at how unpretty my welds are, I know they're strong. The very last picture is of the inside of one of the brackets. Unfortunately I had a tough time finding the appropriate angle for the stinger, so I basically just let it eat as best I could. It's not the ugliest job, but it's not the prettiest either. Next on the list for this axle are the lower brackets.

 

[1Fury1]

Thank you much on the tubing. This was my first go at doing anything "ornamental". I'm really happy with how it turned out, but there's still things I'd change if I could.

I’ve run miles of the stuff from 1/8 to 5/8 OD in my 40 year career as an instrument mechanic in the process world. Your work is on par with anything out there and better than many in I’ve seen in the trade. Looks like you’re using swagelok fittings which is as good as it gets. The 66 Monaco is IMO one of the nicest slabs and this one will be extra special. Thanks for sharing the details.

 

[Jack-Stand]

I’ve run miles of the stuff from 1/8 to 5/8 OD in my 40 year career as an instrument mechanic in the process world. Your work is on par with anything out there and better than many in I’ve seen in the trade. Looks like you’re using swagelok fittings which is as good as it gets. The 66 Monaco is IMO one of the nicest slabs and this one will be extra special. Thanks for sharing the details.

Thank you much! At the plant that I work at, I had the honor of asking some of our I&C techs about their tricks and methods.
The fittings themselves are actually Parker Yor-Lock (same thing). I ran those instead of Swagelock because my plant buys Swagelock exclusively. Basically I didn't want anyone thinking that the plant bought my system.

 

[mr. fix it]

Thanks for posting this project!
What Steering rack did you use here & what P/S pump setup you using?

 

[Jack-Stand]

Thanks for posting this project!
What Steering rack did you use here & what P/S pump setup you using?

Thank you much! The rack is one out of an '03 crown Vic... As far as the pump goes, I haven't quite decided. Newer PS systems are usually much higher pressure than our stock systems, but I can't track down the performance specs for the crown Vic pump to compare with there Saginaw pump. I think I might try running the saginaw pump to see if it provides enough pressure for the CV rack, and if it doesn't, I'll design/fab the necessary bracketry to adapt the CV pump to my application. I'm hoping that the Saginaw pump has the appropriate performance, because all I'll need to do is adapt the hoses.

 

[Andrew]

I’m digging it man. I looked at mine again yesterday. My frontend is quite different than yours. My steering is behind the crossmember. I ASSumed they were the same. Back to the think tank!!

 

[Jack-Stand]

I’m digging it man. I looked at mine again yesterday. My frontend is quite different than yours. My steering is behind the crossmember. I ASSumed they were the same. Back to the think tank!!

Haha I know how that goes brother. When I first started designing the front suspension, I was trying to figure out how to route everything behind the crossmember so that I could run like a mustang II setup, or even an A-body setup. The more I got to looking, the more I realized that I could probably adapt the CV cheaper, and I'd have parts available at any parts store. That's basically what drove my decision, I really like having parts readily/locally available. My rock crawler was built solely around that thinking.

 

[Jack-Stand]

Well it's been a while since my last update, so even though the next car project is in progress, I figured I'd post it nonetheless. Instead of my wiring system next, I opted for my center console. Unfortunately at the moment it just looks like a really expensive fiberglass-covered turd, but it'll clean up and look pretty as I progress with the project.

Anyway, I think somewhere on here I posted the steel skeleton that I made as the underlying structure for the center console. From there, I covered it with poster board. Some people prefer fleece, but I opted for poster board because it would hold the geometries that I was looking for, yet it's easy to form.

After I had it completely covered, I set it in the car, mounted the structure to the car-side mounts, and trimmed the skirts so that I knew exactly how it'd fit the floorboard.

Next I fabbed my air gauge pod and the rear cup holder/switch spot. I'm relocating the window switches to the center console, so I had to make sure there was enough room for everything. I did a quick test fit of everything just to make sure that it all still fit relatively well.

View attachment 287919
From there I put plastic under the skirts (so that I didn't glue the sorry thing to the floor board), and I set to applying my first layer of resin. The first application I didn't apply any fiberglass just because I wanted to try to let the poster board take its shape. Unfortunately the poster board got a little wavy on me, so I'm going to have a lot of sanding to do on the tail end (yay me). After the first application of resin, I went ahead and applied glass along with my front fabbed fiberboard piece. Don't forget, when working with fiberglass... Safety first... WEAR YOUR RESPIRATOR!

After I had some decent layers on it, I pulled it out of the car, and started layering it. I've still got a ways to go, and a lot of sanding that'll need to take place, but the turd is coming together.

More to come next time! I've got enough glass mat that I think I might try making my own door panels and trunk panels, but that's a long ways down the road. I need to make sure this thing looks decent before I try anything else.

 

[LocuMob]

I was wondering what you'd been up to! Looks good so far, fiberglass always looks like crap until it's finished.