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Next the 2 and 4 post lifts were installed. I ordered the Challenger lifts several months ago and I’m glad I did because these are currently built to order and the lead-time was a surprise to me. The moon and stars aligned and the lifts were delivered to the installer as we started painting the floors and then once the floors were completed, the installer had a cancellation and my installation moved to the front of the line weeks ahead of the original date. The 4 post lift has jacks for both axles and I will also use the lift to do front end alignments so we can keep your car in the shop and not send it out for the alignment after we rebuild the stock or install aftermarket suspensions. Plus the traditional alignment shops and technicians are not equipped to work on a car that has the alignment far from the factory specs (or no specs!). I am glad that we will be able to control this part of the build process.
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I was on the fence about painting the fab room doors but Shawn and Jesse convinced me and knocked it out over a couple of days. They look remarkably better compared to the last photo in this set that shows the unpainted doors. All that is left on these doors now is to mount the filters in the openings at the bottom. I didn’t capture any good photos of the before and after baseboard installation but again, it looks remarkably better too.
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As I designed the shop, I didn’t want customers to enter the shop and be greeted by someone sitting behind a counter or a desk. It’s a hotrod shop and I want visitors to see a cool car when they come in. That car could be a finished car, a car half way through it’s build, or a car that that we haven’t started yet. Something cool, an icebreaker, a conversation starter. The first car to take the spot is my 1970 Camaro Super Gas drag car. I plan to feature customer cars here once I have something that we might not be working on for a while. I wanted customers to see this car before they entered the shop so I put in a glass entry door and a glass overhead door. The first photo shows how this looks at night. The second photo is the view after you come in the door. The third photo is looking back to the customer entrance showing the shops break area. The break table is a 12′ table with 10 chairs. We eat our lunch here, review catalogs for parts and equipment to order, and track our progress on the cars we are working on. Not shown in the photo is the refrigerator that was delivered a few days ago. The last photo shows a storage area where some of the “shop vehicles” and projects will reside but also storage for customer cars.
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This set of photos is the reason for the shop. Customer cars. This month I’ll talk about three of the cars we are working on. The 1965 Mustang convertible is a 289 4-bbl A-code car that is in fantastic condition. We are performing a disk brake swap, adding 17″ wheels and tires, a new dual exhaust system, and working through some intermittent issues such as failure to start sometimes and an inoperable horn. The 1963 Impala is another car in fantastic condition. It has the rear axle off center and we found an aftermarket panhard bar too long pushing the rear axle to one side. We shortened the bar to provide the proper range of adjustment. We are replacing the carrier bearing with a machined aluminum housing with the bearing supported by polyurethane. We are rebuilding the vent window regulators and rerouting a fuel line that resulted from a fuel injection system installation. The 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass is the biggest project we have in the shop currently. This car is still owned by the original owner who brought the car to us to speed up the restoration process. We will be replacing the quarter panels and fixing a fair amount of rust by custom forming the repair panels. I will show more of this custom work next month. This car also had a vinyl top and it caused more rust issues. We won’t be putting the vinyl top back on the car. We have a significant amount of repair work in the C-pillars and in the rear window channel. I’ve been busy buying the metal forming equipment so work on this car can move forward at a reasonable pace. This will likely be the first car we paint in the shop so stay tuned to our Facebook page for the progress.
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This last set of photos shows several photos of the shop as it was built. An amazing effort was put forth to build the shop and I thank everyone who contributed along the way.
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Please like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BlueCollarMuscleRods/ and check our webpage for the gallery of construction photos and videos by clicking on the ‘TAKE A SHOP TOUR” button, https://bluecollarmusclerods.com
As our focus of the newsletter changes from construction to car projects, we will continue sending out a monthly newsletter. Facebook posts will be more frequent. Please feel free to offer any feedback and let us know how we can make your Muscle Car, Rod, or Custom build dreams a reality.
Let us show you what we can do!
Sincerely,
Eric Meyer
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