Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Please pass the H.A.M.B.!

It tastes as good as it looks.
photo source: Nueske's

There are forums and blogs on the internet for every conceivable subject and interest. There are some that attract a lot of traffic and there are those are seldom visited.

This is one that has been around for a long time with a dedicated audience.

It is associated with the Jalopy Journal. The name is the H.A.M.B. The Hokey Ass Message Board.

I'd like to add that there are a lot of nice pictures of hot rods and custom cars. Some are current and some are historic or vintage.

However that's not what attracts me to the site. I've never been one to go to car shows and drool over all the pretty shiny cars.

I want to see how people build their cars. The H.A.M.B. is the place for this. I'm not going to post any pretty pictures here.

This is a site for die hard, old school, hot rod and custom builders. These are the guys that get their hands dirty. These are the guys with the skills. Wrenching, welding, machining, painting, upholstering. Whatever it takes. This forum is a treasure trove of DIY skills and inspiration.

Especially inspiration.

If the poster does not currently have the skills, they will often jump in (with both feet!) and acquire the skills while they work on their project.


Since I have a lot of free time a the moment I decided to re-acquaint myself with the H.A.M.B. Since I had not visited in several years, there was a lot of new material for me to peruse.

Posters that are starting long range projects post "build threads." These are usually fairly detailed with lots of photographs illustrating their build operations and progress. These threads can span years.

What is very rewarding is the honesty of the posters. They will often admit that their current project was a poor choice. They buy it and then later find that there are so many more problem areas that they overlooked in their excitement of acquisition. So what are you going to do now? Sometimes they cut their losses and sell it for what they can get. Or they can push it out of the way and just forget about for a while. Most of these guys are just like me, in that they have some wrench turning skills but they don't have the money to farm out the work. They realize that if they don't do the work themselves then it will never get done. Besides, whats the point in paying for things? The idea is to get in there and do it themselves.

They just grit their teeth and start in.

I'm going to share part of one build thread posted by Hackerbilt of St. Johns Newfoundland Canada. This thread ran from 12/30/2010 through 11/7/2012, almost two years. I have followed threads that have documented a four and a half years process!

Hackerbilt bought this '63 Dodge four door as an easy Winter project. It was going to be a driver, up by the spring. He knew that the car needed some frame repair to the rear spring perches, He was ready for that. He was aware that it was going to need some floor pan repair. He was ready for that. He right away replaced the springs and perches with Chevy S10 parts. Then he started  in on the floor boards.

It was four door and he got a little grief for that.
It was also slant six powered but he was okay with that also.

That orange thing is the tail shaft of the transmission.
The thing contained in the "white curve" is the
right side torsion bar pocket of the cross member.
It was rusty, so were the floor but they were covered in tar!

First he cut a bit, then a bit more.

Then he cut more and removed the torsion bar cross member.
The shiny pieces are the metal bits he fabricated. Notice how much shiny metal will be fabbed and replaced!

This is a section of replacement floor.
He made a tool to fit to an air hammer to make those beads.

Replacing the entire floor was a bigger job that re doing the spring perches. Worse things were to come however. The following pictures show how rusted the rt. side of the door pillar, firewall. heater plenum, and toe board were. One of the big holes was patched with some vinyl house siding, liberally coated in tar!

That white object is the siding patch.

If I would have found that much rust out, I would have called it quits! If the builder couldn't do the work himself, he probably would have also. Rust likes to hide in hidden areas and it is often bodged up and covered up, this case in roofing tar which keeps it from being seen by the buyer before purchase. Many posters are located in the north east or Canada and they know it almost impossible to find inexpensive old cars that are relatively free of rust. Other times, they just didn't look close enough!

Cut out the rusty metal and make a card stock template.

Take fresh metal trace, cut, flange, add holes, and a bead.

It fits! You can see other fabbed panels below this one.
The grey "paint" is weld through primer.

Clamp securely and weld, The round hole is for the blower fan.

All done.

Here you can see the underside of the repair.

Yo can see that you often don't have much original metal to work with. It takes skill to fab these bits.
Hacker says to just cut the rust all out! Still you have to proceed methodically.

This is the driver's side of the plenum, the area of the cowl
under the windshield and dashboard.

Look at all the patchwork. Hacker patiently positions and welds each patch in.

This is the driver's side door pillar area. You can see all the replacement metal.

It looks much better now.

Now it looks almost like new.

Compare this to the earlier photo.
What a transformation.

Looks like the rear quarters and wheel arches needed reconstruction too.

What happened to the trunk floor?

It looks pretty good from this angle.

Is it worth all this work?

There was rust everywhere.

Hacker is not giving up.

If you've got the skills....

And the will...

I guess that it's all about the challenge.

Look at that new metal. Look towards the rear and there's more rust!

No, it's not the same car. Of course it would have been easier to start out with this!

Did Hacker ever finish the car? The thread went dead after a couple of years. I'm guessing that he didn't. It is incredible that he put so much effort into a car that he knew from the beginning wasn't worth very much. He probably started in on another project. It seems like these hardcore HAMBsters like the building even more than the driving

You can learn a  lot from these build threads. They come up with some clever and innovative solutions. I really admire the determination that the builders display.

The rest of the forum provides other nuggets of wisdom. I'll revisit this subject in later posts.