| Author | Message | ||
     Vladimir Ivanovich Kirillov Prolific User Username: soviet Post Number: 231 Registered: 2-2013 |
Have any of you chaps tried your hand on an English wheel specifically with aluminium ? I was looking at trying to take a coachbuilding course in England to get some education on this caper but there is so much information on the internet by way of articles and videos that it just does not seem justified in these days of planes flying over the Ukraine and the Middle East with all the crazy behaviour going on on the ground. I could of course fly via LA but that's a the long way around and I think really using the English Wheel is something to master over a long time hands on only. I had this magnificent book years ago that showed pictures of a convertible Cloud, I think it was a Series one and this car's canvas roof disappeared out of sight and had a hard cover over it like a 64 to 66 Ford Thunderbird which gave that super smooth look I don't see on Shadow era convertibles, perhaps I should have said Corniche but you know what I mean. The bag sticking up does not please my eye and the Jensen Convertible was just ugh to me. Many years ago I decapitated a S3 Bentley basket case but had to weld the top back on to flog it before embarking on a totally necessary Russian drinking spree in Zhigulovsk. A word of warning the hot grit/metal from a cutting disc chop chop will engrave the glass on the dash gauges so cover them up if you don't want to learn the hard way like I did. I understand that the Cloud convertibles all started out as 4 door sedans and the front doors were removed, stretched a couple of inches and the pillar moved back with rear doors welded shut. Quite a headache of a modification but I have always wanted to make my own Cloud convertible with a bag that totally disappears and unless I win lotto that is the only way my collection is going to see a Cloud Convertible because the price of the originals is three times plus that of a good sedan. So if any of you have any knowledge of where to get this type of conversion information please let me know. Naturally, I will use as my starting board a basket case Cloud as I am not certain I could do it to a good sedan. There are naughtier fellows around like Hollywood movie producers. I have just watched a movie called "In Time" a sci about when money is no longer used but all transactions are in life time so as soon as your time runs out you croak. It was interesting to watch the cars in the movie which were modified in various ways and the Lincoln Stretch Limo looked cool but all the cars in the movie got an over dub of electric motor hum. It was all going well until they trashed an early etype convertible (actually they probably didn't trash it but just substituted it). Then again I guess if Hollywood can pay Cruise 10 million a movie then wrecking classic cars would be like second nature to some Hollywood dwellers. | ||
| Jean-Pierre 'JP' Hilbert Frequent User Username: jphilbert Post Number: 68 Registered: 9-2013 |
Vlad, Good news: all those courses below are top notch and contain sheet metal courses. I saw all their tools and spoke to the instructors, I am thrilled that such courses (still) exist. Bad news: die Kurse werden in Deutscher Sprache abgehalten. http://www.oldtimer-seminare.de | ||
| Randy Roberson Grand Master Username: wascator Post Number: 367 Registered: 5-2009 |
There are fairly inexpensive, if not super-professional quality, English wheels out there. I would like to try one myself. I saw Jesse James on TV take a piece of sheet steel and a plastic mallet and shot bag and pound out a motorcycle gas tank in about 30 minutes. I could guess it was not his first time... I have a few photos someone took at the old MPW facility when they were building the last of the Phantoms back in the 1980s. They had wooden forms to check the shape of the panels against, before fitting them to the Car. What these talented and skilled people can do is amazing and beautiful. | ||
| bob uk Unregistered guest Posted From: 92.40.248.194 |
I have wheeled stuff. Aluminium is easier than steel. I saw I wheel made by hanging a wheel from the roof , a rear axle. And a smaller gap adjustable wheel bolted to the floor. (Message approved by david_gore) | ||
| Vladimir Ivanovich Kirillov Prolific User Username: soviet Post Number: 236 Registered: 2-2013 |
Thanks Jean, actually doing a course delivered in German language would not be a problem for me because just watching others do things is a big part of the learning process. Most Germans these days speak passible English any way.   Now for something different. I don't know how to explain this but here goes. In the Soviet Union there was from 1917 when the Russian Czar and his family got croaked to nineteen nineties when when the CIA totally fluffed it in not predicting the Soviet Union's evaporation a period and during that period car customization/modification was virtually non existant. There is somewhere in Moscow a company that for huge amounts produces hand built cars and or modified cars for the many Russian millionaires/billionares that have a car interest. One of those cars is a Volga that went from a real ugly duckling to a very dashing sports and from 4 cylinders with 4 on the tree to a V12 five speed snipped from BMW. Pictures above of standard Volga and modified Volga sports. Just where these crafty chaps learnt their skills is anybody guess but part of it had surely to do with the fact that almost all Soviet males are self taught mechanics and they have the ability to keep nightmare machines going because in the Soviet times you either fixed it yourself or it didn't get fixed. I once while walking to my school there saw at minus 45C saw a man fitting his own new exhaust system lying in the snow which is a real feat considering gloves would have to be used as you know skin permanently bonds to metal at minus 10C. I think coach building is a great caper if you can pull it off and somewhere in Switzerland there is a chap who for a million will build you a P4 Ferrari out of hand formed aluminium. I want to either teach myself this skill or learn it to make cars. The reason for this is during my life I have often wished I could make a buck doing something I enjoyed doing - just like a mad scientist. Retirement can be deadly if you don't keep active. I have just spent 6 months is a type of quasi type retirement caper and I now have to travel maybe up to 1,000 kilometres away and crawl around in the grease under ugly trucks and maybe even Japanese, Korean and Chinese cars the existence of which I truly loath. The mechanical trade these days is a loon factory. The Mad Scot not too long ago was lectured severely by some young know it all that pronounced it was possible to fit a left hand threaded nut on a right hand threaded bolt and another genius fitted two orings on a mine dump truck which worked perfectly until the truck engine seized due to lack of oil and announced a $500,000 engine had bit the dust. The trade has also been unidated with American craziness by way of treating all employees as fools and drug testing everybody apart for the CEOs. Nice to know many US law firms have seen a buck in this and are doing swift business suing the employers and the drug testing companies when the tests prove themselves to be not 100 percent accurate. There was a time in Australia where a mechanic could get a start just by turning up and asking for a job. Now companies again following the USA caper are using personal recruitment companies staffed by young ladies who have no knowledge about the mechanical trade, and demanding resumes, birth certificates, police record checks and medicals as well as cerficates in how to tell the difference between a broom stick and a duck. Unemployment is fast becoming the norm and even young mechanics are heading for the beach with a head full of meth after deciding full time employment is for the birds. The mine companies lead the pack with requiring mechanics to fill out miles of paper work before performing any work, during work and after work in a lame effort to shift responsibility from the employer directly to the worker so that the employer can reduce its legal payouts to injured workers. Needless to say the Australian mining industry is in great disarray presently and has to me almost replicated the Soviet Union's documentation lunancy. I want to leave this type of employment to those who want to play in the field of flowering madness. | ||
| Randy Roberson Grand Master Username: wascator Post Number: 368 Registered: 5-2009 |
What a transformation! Artisans for certain! Vladimir you have just described the modern corporate workplace so well: I work in the American pipeline industry, we are so inundated with forms and rules, that no one can even remember them all any more, hence all work stops because someone can't find a form, or as likely everyone is scared to make a decision because it is the corporate version of the firing squad if something goes awry.The simplest task has become so complex that it is almost impossible to perform "correctly": check off a two-page inspection form every time you use the forklift to unload an engine part; expense accounts are a nightmare and uselessly so. The central office rolls out computerized automated spreadsheet-based applications to "make our work easier" and they are so complex and full of glitches that it is impossible; then we are derided for being lazy and Luddities if we say anything. The only happy employees are the young ones who don't know any better; the only happy auto technicians I know are operating alone out of a shed in their back yard, and hidden from the authorities. Or else, retired. |
