Recently, we were contacted by an Eastwood customer named Wesley K., who shared with us some pictures of his current project.  Wesley's plans for this Hudson are to resto-rod it.  During the build up, Wesley has been using many Eastwood products.  We were very impressed with Wesley's work and thought it would be of interest to other Eastwood customers to see this Hudson's transformation.  We will be updating this blog with new pictures as Wesley progresses through the build.  This picture shows Wesley's Hudson as he found it sitting in a field off of I-30 in Texas.

Read along as Wesley tells the story.

This is the "first" time I took it apart, back in 2000.  I put in a Chevy smallblock, 700R-4 tranny, Curry Ford 9in rear, and 4 wheel disc. While I had it apart, I re-did the whole underside. I stripped it down to metal, sprayed 2 coats of Corroless, the spayed 2 coats of Nason Gloss Black Urethane, then put on 2 good coats of rubberized undercoat.

This was the underside before I started.

Sprayed with Eastwood Corroless (now Rust Encapsulator).

Undercoated.

Finished. I made all new brakelines out of stainless steel.

This is the motor, installed. I could have gotten more horsepower out of fuel injection, but I think tunnel-rams look cool! 

After driving the car over 4000mi without a single problem, this is the start of the "second" time I've taken this car apart. Only this time, I took it "ALL" apart. Doors, windows, interior, etc. I took the interior of the car down to the metal, and did it, just as I did the underside........corroless, paint, undercoat. By the time I finish this car, it will be totally enclosed from the elements.

The first time I took it apart, I only re-did the underside from the firewall back. Now it's time to do the clip, and the body.

Front clip, sprayed with Corroless.

 Front clip finished. All suspension parst were either painted, or polished.  By polished, I mean I put all the nuts, bolts, washers, and clamps in my tumbler I bought from Eastwood. I just thought it would be unique, to be showing this car at a show, and be able to say all the bolts, clamps, etc, were all original, as they're sitting there shinning like chrome. 

Starting to strip car.

This is the same motor that was in the earlier picture, only dressed-up. The tunnel-ram, headers (I made) and the "Y" of the exhaust were all ceramic coated by "Jett Hot".Sorry to bore you with car pictures, but you know how proud we are of our "babies".  I've put a lot of work in this car (I do all the work myself), and I didn't want to mess it up. I'll be spraying the Encapsulator this weekend, then a few weeks after that, spraying the "fill primer", and block sanding to get this body slick.

Here's the last picture taken of the '48, stripped.You can see the reddish-brown of the "Corroless" I sprayed when I re-did the underside, back in 2002.

After spraying "Rust Encapsulator". I guess I should have covered up the tires, but I won't be leaving these on when I'm done. I have a whole new set of Magnum 500's waiting to be mounted.

Even though I sanded the heck out of it, you can still see the pitting from the rust on the hood, and around the trunk area. You can't see it with the naked eye, but my digital camera picks it up. I wanted to spray the "Rust Encapsulator" on it, so it wouldn't come back and bite me in the future.

All "Encapsulated". I did the inside of the car, just as I did the underside........stripped to metal, 2 coats "Corroless", 2 coats Gloss Black Urethane, 2 coats rubberized undercoating. I'll let this stuff "cure" for a week or two, then I'll start with the "Hi-Fil" primer, and the "Oh-so-much-fun" block sanding.

Here's a picture of some of the 60yr old bolts, washers and clamps that came off the car, after I soaked them in carb cleaner.

These aren't new parts. They're the same 60yr old parts, after running them through the tumbler. I started with "Green Pyramids", then went to the "Dry Shine", and finished up with a little mixture of my own.........corn cob media, and 2 tablespoons of Brasso. Tumble polishing these parts has been the easiest part of this re-build. Just throw in the parts and media, and walk away.

 After years of racing, I decided the best way to mount the Chevy motor in my Hudson, would be using a plate, just like sprintcars use. After all the tumbles and flips those Sprintcars take, I've never seen a motor come unbolted.  Instead of being bolted solid to the frame, and vibrating me to death, I cut the rings off of some shock absorbers, welded the rings into the plate, and installed urethane bushings. This picture shows the plate being built. The line, running through the picture, is a plumb-line I used to make sure everything was centered and straight. I got a bad motor from the junkyard, gutted it to make it lighter, and used the "dummy motor" for the initial fit. When I did this project, I hadn't heard of Eastwood yet. I wish I had, and I would have used one of their "dummy motors", which would have been about 300lbs. lighter!

The plate is 95% finished here. All I needed to do was drill 2 more holes, through the bottom "ears".

While I was building the motor plate, I also dropped the crossmember 2 and 3/4 inches, to allow room for the oversized tranny pan on the 700R-4. The square plate on the left, will be a combination rear motor/transmission mount. You can see on the top right, I already had the car converted to 4 wheel disc, and had installed a dual-action mastercylinder, in the original location. I made the mastercylinder bracket out of 1/4in steel plate. Ok, that might have been overkill, but we ARE talking about brakes. There are times when they are kinda important!

Here, the motor plate's finished, the combination (rear of motor/tranny)  mounts are rounded off, and welded up,and the crossmember has been dropped, welded, and strengthened. I put a smaller washer on the left side of the motor plate, so you could see the urethane bushing.

With the dummy motor bolted in, you can see the steer-rod going from left to right, and the tie-rod going top to bottom. Now, the tricky part..........getting the exhaust from the 4 cylinders on this side, through that little opening just to the right of the tie-rod. When you find out that nobody makes headers that fit.............you make your own. When I finally finished the headers, I had 1/4 in of clearence in all directions. Now that's a tight fit!

This is everything, finally bolted up, and was getting ready to fire the motor  for the first time. I was still in the process of building my headers, but I had these block-huggers that would work for now. So now let's go through our "Redneck Mechanic's" checklist............Sparkplug wires running all over the place,(check) fuel pressure regulator hanging in the air,(check)guages leaning against the windshield(check)battery cables held firmly in place by welder's clamps(check) All that's need now is to drop in the distributor, put on a fanbelt, and duct-tape the radiator in.

I didn't use duct-tape for the radiator, I "wired" it in. At least things look a little better in this picture. You can't see the battery,guages, gallon gas can, coil, resistor, and ignition wiring hanging on the other side. Even though it looked like a patient on life-support, it fired right up, and ran like a top! The headers in this picture, and the ones I made. Notice, instead of turning in toward the block, these had to come straight down.