Project "49 No Buck$"

[kustombrad]

Pulled the 'liner out of the shop for the first time yesterday to take it to Sage Cheshire. What a great day!

[oldman3]

Sweeeeet....Jim

[69CST-V]

What exactly are you having the Sage Cheshire Aerospace do? Very cool.

[kustombrad]

Oooohhhhh someone who knows who Sage Cheshire is! Lol Art and the guys teamed up with me and took my initial drawing, made a 3D version to do pressure tests and CFD testing! The body will be fully computer designed! I'm beyond stoked!!

[ChuckDriver]

That looks cool!

[OrrieG]

Originally Posted by kustombrad

Pulled the 'liner out of the shop for the first time yesterday to take it to Sage Cheshire. What a great day!

My sense of scale was way off on the size of the front wheels and operating mechanism, thanks for posting the overall pic. Starting to look like a streamliner.

[69CST-V]

Originally Posted by kustombrad

Oooohhhhh someone who knows who Sage Cheshire is! Lol Art and the guys teamed up with me and took my initial drawing, made a 3D version to do pressure tests and CFD testing! The body will be fully computer designed! I'm beyond stoked!!

That's awesome. They do some neat stuff over there. Can't wait to see it all come together.

[kustombrad]

Glad that helped with the size reference! Getting the rest of the little AC stuff together so I can wrap that part of the truck up!

[rusty76]

Man that thing looks killer even without a shell....Top notch!

[kustombrad]

Thanks for the kind words on the car! I'm working away on the AC and getting excited to see how it's going to work! It's pretty much a "Frankenstein" deal as Alex likes to refer to it. I'll be posting up pics and letting everyone know how it works shortly, cuz I need AC on my trek to the salt next month!

[69CST-V]

Awesome. Post up some new pics of both rides. You know how we need our picture fix.

[rusty76]

Aint that the truth^^^^^^

[kustombrad]

Ok, here we go! There's lot's of little things, so I'll try to cover as much as I can. First off... the AC unit I scored from Alex and he'd taken it out of a mid 70's Chevy pickup as a dealer installed option. Pretty basic and simple unit. Since I had no intention of cutting holes in the dash, I decided to put it inside the glove box area and aim it toward the firewall (I'll explain later). The mount I made is very simple

and I used existing holes in the seal area under the hood for the rear mounting bolts (10/24's are both small and strong enough) so I didn't have to drill a bunch of holes.

This is a little bit ahead but I didn't get any pics when I first mocked it up

[kustombrad]

The beat up, pee'd on and thrown across his garage Geo Metro compressor, seeing it from inside the passenger inner fender.

All the cuts have since been rounded, but this was during initial mockup.

The hose and fittings kit (including the dryer) was a couple hundred on Ebay. The dryer is mounted on the pinch weld/toe board area of the passenger side. Everything is hidden so nobody will know!

[kustombrad]

One area that was going to be weird was the return line (-10) back to the compressor. Since it faces the glove box, I took a 45 degree I snagged from Alex along with a 90 I had and cut and welded them up to make this

I drilled (2) 1 1/2" holes in the little upper shelf for the hoses to drop through and 2 more inside the kickpanel to inner fender area...

[Low Elco]

Sano sneaky work- what we've come to expect. Nice!

[kustombrad]

Here's a pic of the condenser and 1 of the brackets that hold it in place.

I mounted it parallel with the radiator so airflow isn't interrupted. After ALL of the fittings were in place, I ran the hose as it would finally be. It was clamped where needed and left loose where both lines go to the compressor (for loosening and tightening when changing belts) THEN I cut the hoses to length. After marking the fittings and hoses (VERY IMPORTANT!)

I took them to Hesperia Hose and for a $1 per crimp (8 bucks total) Craig handled me!

[kustombrad]

The hoses are hidden behind the sill plate (the cover with the latch) so nothing shows!

[kustombrad]

I was digging around for some scrap aluminum to make the AC switch panel and stumbled onto some stuff I did a few years back. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm seriously ADD and am ALWAYS up for pretty much any serious challenge (and I do finish what I start!) and decided I was going to take some of my lettering stuff and actually turn it into a font! I know this is a little off track, but I thought it was kinda cool.

I brushed all my characters on these little chunks of aluminum before scanning them into my computer and converting them into vector art and making an actual font list (LOTS of hours!) and finally finishing it and having it become "Ragged Brad"! Insert absolutely shameless plug here http://www.letterheadfonts.com/fonts/raggedbrad.php ... So anyway back to the truck! I cut that up to make my AC switch panel that sits in next to the stereo hidden out of sight.

Now to drill some holes and paint it black...

[Low Elco]

I like the font! Nice job on the hoses- I shall be embarking on my own terrifying A/C journey soon.

[kustombrad]

Dude! It actually isn't that terrifying once you start doing it! The biggest thing is keeping EVERYTHING clean! Hoses blown out and taped up before installation along with everything else. It's kind of like putting an engine together... you can do a hack job and it may be ok, but take your time to do it all right and it'll be fine! Alex is just as excited as I am to see how well it's going to work so he knows what to expect with the 64!

[99 to Life]

brad, nice work. I can relate to you on the font process. My main source of income is screenprinting so I deal with art constantly. Vectors are my favorite. Great job.

[solidaxel]

I thought that was the best place to mount the hoses and hide them, under the inner fender not on top!!

[kustombrad]

Perfect!!

[rusty76]

Kool man. Glad to see some updates.!