Given (probably) a Chenowth 2lw, a few vintage buggy questions

[ORANGECRUSHer]

Like I said in the other thread, black anodized body with a machined top and that black label will look sexy
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Brian H.

OrangeCrushERBerrien Warrior-2.4L Quad4-2x3 arms-1.5Fox coilovers-094-930CVs
LAZY MARY1970 Baja 2110cc-82mm CB forged crank-AA pistons/cylinders-Grant rings-1.1 vw rockers-CB serpkit-CB chromoly PRs-CB maxiflow filter pump-wix51515 filter-Dual 44IDF-cut/turned front beam-AEM wideband-Auber CHT-Donaldson Dual PowerCore filters-custom AL air boxes

[jimmyhoffa]

Even more Yikes was me trying to vinyl wrap this hood blue. It went not amazingly, so much so that my wife and I yanked the vinyl back off and flipped it 180 to hide the screwed up part behind my front bumper. I can't believe that worked. Good quality automotive films are forgiving enough to make up for me being not great at it. I will never call this car "done" but it has been all over the country, been shaken down and gets driven almost daily, and now has a complete color matched body with fully restored fiberglass. It burns and leaks no oil, and gets 26 miles per gallon, does documented wheelies on hot asphalt, and can fall out of the sky without exploding. like I said, I won't say "done" but I will say "happy."

I'll re-wrap the hood one day but now I'm busy with, like, uh... "stuff."

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[ORANGECRUSHer]

yikes!
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Brian H.

OrangeCrushERBerrien Warrior-2.4L Quad4-2x3 arms-1.5Fox coilovers-094-930CVs
LAZY MARY1970 Baja 2110cc-82mm CB forged crank-AA pistons/cylinders-Grant rings-1.1 vw rockers-CB serpkit-CB chromoly PRs-CB maxiflow filter pump-wix51515 filter-Dual 44IDF-cut/turned front beam-AEM wideband-Auber CHT-Donaldson Dual PowerCore filters-custom AL air boxes

[jimmyhoffa]

The Jamar chromoly spline hubs you may recall I used to restore my Neal brakes have a little play on the axle. I ran an indicator on the axles and they were straight to the .001". I just took off the axle nuts and clocked the discs around until they were under .005" rotor runout. FYI you can't really feel .004" runout at the rotor edge in a buggy if that's useful to anyone.

Random pics keep popping up and people tag me on Facebook.

Finally as a little treat to my car for being invincible I forced myself to finish fixing the everlasting gobstopper area on my hood and the paint is on. Not perfect, but not bad. Just how we like it.

I also spent 6 hours brushing the loose fiberglass chopper gun finish inside the hood, block sanding down and blending my repair areas, and then stippling the inside with a new thin layer of fiber matt to blend and tie it all together with very minimal extra epoxy. It was agonizing but now is done.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[jimmyhoffa]

For sure! It was a tad rough especially with the 100F heat but I'm fully recovered and so is the car. #4 cylinder idle jet had a lil piece of carb base gasket in it, and I had to loosen and re-tighten the axle nuts to get the rotors true again. I have aftermarket chromoly-hub NEAL disc brakes and there's a little play in the splines so they can get shifted or cocked just a bit and you can feel it in the pedal. No damage, all the rotors indicate in under .005" runout at the edge now. Lucas Johnson Visuals of STL got a killer photo of me and did what I thought was a sick edit, released last night. Buried with the back end tucked down, on the rev limiter with the front wheel hiked up - all with the weight of a guest in the passenger seat!

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[racecougar]

Saw the pics/vids on Facebook and thought "BADASS!" followed by, "man that would kill my back".

[jimmyhoffa]

Put the pain to the car this weekend! Our local Diode Dynamics Open House came around again, and I tried to really push it. They didn't seem to care how fast I ran the courses, so I sent it as hard as my body could take. I saw 250F oil by the end and idle pressure was down to 10psi, so I called it, let it cool down and then took a friend out as a passenger for 80% intensity laps. I don't think it got hurt, pressure was good again when cold. I bent the right rear axle stub, one of my rear cone urethane bump stops ran for the door and my back hurts but not bad. I could do it again today. I sent this jump probably 20 times and dropped 3-4 feet out of the air onto flat ground every time. I believe that I managed such that none of the 5 event photographers got a shot of me when I wasn't either sideways or in the air.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[jimmyhoffa]

Thanks guys! And I'll hit you up for those dimples if I need 'em. That would be great. SendCutSend got $34 each for those brackets. It was a bummer because the flat pattern is the same for both sides, but they don't give you a discount because the parts are mirrored so the bends and dimple directions are flipped, so you don't get the quantity discount.

Those are real Jackmans, which I like! There is a weird concentration of them in St. Louis actually, because the midwest's distributor for them at the time they were popular was in Earth City, MO, about 20 mins northwest of downtown StL. In the local classifieds it is extremely common to find old rusty buggies with a full set of Jackmans on them because they were so readily available when buggies were popular around here. I have 4 on my car, 6 in my driveway, and 2 in the shed, in various states of rusty.
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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[indianpeaksjoe]

As my high school spanish teacher would say "Jesus, Maria and Jose" - that buggy looks cool and the details you are adding are amazing.

Are those genuine jackman wheels or something else? They look great.

-Joe
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Adventures in owning a 66 beetle

[racecougar]

I dig the graphics.

What did SendCutSend charge for the brackets? I have a press and dimple dies here if you want to use them in the future. I have 1/2", 3/4", and 1", but I've been meaning to either buy or turn larger sets; just haven't had reason to yet.

I did this air cleaner mount a while back with them.

[jimmyhoffa]

Thanks! I finally got around to ordering any applying some Old Skool Kool graphics that I think were originally designed for a Jeep Gladiator. I really am digging this look, it adds character to the car for sure. I also designed and had SendCutSend make me these little dimple die tie-in brackets to keep the firewall from chattering on the highway.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[racecougar]

It all looks great! I like the color a lot; it matches one of my cars.

[jimmyhoffa]

Good progress on the wrap! Everything I know at this point is from the experience pictured, or the Canadian guy I found on YouTube. All things considered it's going well. Everything but the hood is done and on the car!

Next I thought to try to attack the spider crack on my hood without sanding out all the gelcoat like you're supposed to. I really hate bodywork and I had this feeling I was setting up to make something worse than it already was. So, I gouged out the cracks with a razor, and vacuum-extracted them with this lil pneumatic vacuum generator thing I had from a few jobs ago. Then I sprayed some 2K epoxy primer on WAY thick, and started using the vinyl squeegee to smash it down into the cracks. It purged the cracks full and eventually stopped taking any more. Then I let it cure, sanded it, and primed the hood! You almost can't see it.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[ORANGECRUSHer]

What material did you fab the carb guards from?

NM I went back and saw what I missed..
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Brian H.

OrangeCrushERBerrien Warrior-2.4L Quad4-2x3 arms-1.5Fox coilovers-094-930CVs
LAZY MARY1970 Baja 2110cc-82mm CB forged crank-AA pistons/cylinders-Grant rings-1.1 vw rockers-CB serpkit-CB chromoly PRs-CB maxiflow filter pump-wix51515 filter-Dual 44IDF-cut/turned front beam-AEM wideband-Auber CHT-Donaldson Dual PowerCore filters-custom AL air boxes

[jimmyhoffa]

Thanks man! I had a sample of Vvivid Neptune Blue Pearl vinyl wrap from a vendor booth sample at the Diode Dynamics open house 2 years ago. I tried poorly to teach myself how to do this real quick. No doubt the workmanship is rough but I'm in love with the color. Blue it is for the whole car. I'm not joking, I'm 100% sold on this. Already ordered more wrap.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[racecougar]

They look really good! That hood should keep you a bit drier next time you take it out in the rain.

[jimmyhoffa]

I got my carb protector panels trimmed, sanded, primed and painted with 2k single stage paint and now they're quick-release with DZUS fasteners. I perfectly matched the horrible orange peel on my other stuff I painted too, since I'm an expert. The gold heat tape actually works really well that close to the exhaust, and now I finally get to do the art project! Graphics and sticker time! I got some name stickers with the flag, but they're kinda small. I also designed some little filler brackets to secure the firewall out of .060" SS and printed prototypes. (See the yellow bits) I am going to have them dimple-died which I think will look tasteful.

Next I pushed forward on the hood which is a horrible incredibly time-consuming task.

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[racecougar]

Nice! That's out of the norm for Gateway, at least how it used to be anyway. I was typically lucky if I got three passes there over the course of a day; way too much time sitting in the staging lanes. That said, I haven't raced there in a decade now.

[jimmyhoffa]

Yeah it is definitely way different. Way more comfortable in the dry. The sand has way more traction the few days after a rain though, and if you wrench your harnesses down in your seat it beats you up less, and you can run faster in the hard rutty stuff.

I ended up hitting the strip Sunday for Import Face-off, ran in the high 13s until I did a burnout in the box and something irreversible happened to my Dick Cepek AT tires. They never hooked again. I didn't give up though. The drag crowd dried up towards the end and I just kept ripping laps through staging. Probably put down 25 passes.

Link

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1974 Chenowth 2RL #1244 Street Legal
My other car isn't ridiculous.

[racecougar]

I dig it!

The terrain at St. Joe was WAY softer and smoother Saturday than it was for my trips in October and November last year. It was so rough last year that I didn't understand why anyone would want to subject themselves to the spine-compressing misery of trying to run at any appreciable speed there. It was more like rutted concrete than sand. Now I get it; the terrain changes a ton based on the weather.