Hot_Rod_Page

This first shot shows the virgin Jeep chassis that was used mainly because it came with a number and documents. Pretty soon after starting, the front and rear frame horns and all those weak pressed steel cross members were chopped off. Only about half of each side rail remained from the original chassis.
A 305 Chevy smallblock was temporarily slotted in the centre, to work out how far rearwards it could be located, while still leaving a little leg room for a driver.

Engine is solid mounted at the front using a steel engine plate, but has a flex mount under the tranny. Final engine will be a 350 Chev smallblock, with a lot of goodies inside. It was built originally for our Nova, but will probably be appreciated more in this light hot rod chassis.

The Powerglide 2 speed transmission is mounted to a tubular crossmember, which hopefully ties the chassis together and stops any twisting when the power is applied big time!!!.
The chassis is almost fully boxed at manufacture.
The 9" Ford rear end is held in place with ladder bars and a Panhard rod.

Another view of the ladder bars and cross member set up. Ladder bar pivot is right near the tranny cross member point, to help keep it stiff under the sort of loads needed to break into the 10's. All the pivots have rubber bushings to keep things from binding up under road driving conditions.

The 9" Ford rear end will have a couple of inches movement to allow comfortable street driving. The original plan was to go solid, but common sense overcame. The springs are off Honda motorcycle rear shocks.
Fuel tank will be mounted either back here, to the crossmember, or up forward, in front of the radiator.

The original plan was to build a small, Jeep style, drag racing car, to challenge the title of the "Fastest car in the Philippines", and to do it without spending too much money!.
The basic criteria was a powerful V8 engine, simplicity, and a fast build time.
A few days into the project it was decided to forget the Jeep body and design our own. Hopefully this car will be capable of 10 second quarter mile times, but we do expect our fair share of teething problems.

The chassis looks a bit odd at the front, as the rails get wider instead of slimmer. Strange design. The axle is a Jeep part, cheap and readily available, but ugly and heavy.

Front 'buggy' spring is looking good. The ends of each leaf will be radiused at a later stage to tidy it up. The mounting brackets for the spring end shackles were a nightmare of fiddling and modifying, trying to get everything to line up and clear everything else. All the hairpins, ladder bars, brackets, spacers, bushes, etc. were made by me.

Brake master cylinder is off some Jap car or other, with the power booster removed, because it didn't fit, was heavy, and suddenly doesn't work if you blow your engine at 145 mph!. I've yet to find if it has the capacity for the big Ford rear end drums. Front discs are off a To*ota.

More views of the brake pedal layout. I'll have to experiment with lever ratios to get good feel without too much travel.

"Sunny", engine builder extraordinaire, getting ready to drop the heads on my 350, covering up the lovely forged TRW 11:1 slugs. Those are fuelie heads, with big stainless valves.

The newly built 355 on Johns runstand. That's his Nova in the background. For sale if anyones interested. In the foreground, just, is Johns big block Chevy rail, built twenty years ago.

This is the 305 that's in the rod for the build up. The Hedman headers will stay with the car.
The 305 will go in our Nova

John Risya, ex USAF airplane mechanic and his chief wrench, Sunny. John is pretty much the guy who made it possible to build the hot rod. He supplied inspiration, encouragement, advice, parts, enthusiasm etc etc.
Sunny has worked for John for twenty years, starting as a floor sweeper, and progressing through to chief engine builder.

Roughing out positions for cockpit controls and holes. One day all that scrappy looking plywood will be shaped and finished and either glassed over or a full mould taken for a new body.
Gear shift is a full ratchet B & M.
Lo-High-Neutral-Reverse-Park.

The project was started on 15th June, and was first driven on 22 July.
Just 37 days from a bare chassis and a pile of bits, to a drivable car. It was only driven a few hundred yards, and had vice grips as a steering wheel, but I'd set a deadline, that I would have it driveable before I shipped out to go back to work. And I made it by just one day!

The body is made from 3/4" blockboard, and will be glassed over when the shaping is finished.

Another view, with the springs in place. Dampers are yet to be fitted. The arched rear crossmember was made by joining two of the severed frame horns that were binned earlier.
Most all the metalwork was cut by hand. There's no plasma cutter in my workshop, I'm sorry to say.

Steering box, shown below, is some Jap surplus item, and only just squeezes in between the tranny, firewall and headers.