Hood, all block-sanded, but I can't tell if it's really smooth by looking, or rubbing my hands over it.

Spraying it with water, lets me know if it's smooth.

Since my last update, the only pieces ready to paint are this hood, and the trunk lid. I still have a long way to go for the rest of the car.

I left off when I was encapsulating the doors. After they were sprayed, I put them out in the sun to dry.

The fist blocksanding showed I have lots of work to do to get the doors smooth. The high areas are light gray, and the low areas are black.

These are the tools I'm using to do the block sanding.

After the first blocksanding, I put them back in the sun, to make sure all the solvents evaporate.

The front cap is the last part I have to take apart. Notice how rusty the nuts and bolts are, before I remove them. I let them soak overnight after spraying with WD-40. Also notice the cruddyhood latch and bracket.

These are the same nuts, bolts, hood latch, and bracket......after I put them in my tumbler.

These are the door strikers, as they came off the car.

Thesew are the door strikers after tumbling.

Back of strikers.....before.

Back of strikers.......after.

This is the headlight wiring terminal before I took it off.

This is the same terminal after tumbling.

After I removed the hardware off the hood, it was time to start prepping. My oldest daughter was home from college, so she thought she'd "play" on the Hudson a little.

Since I had WD-40 all over everything, we wet-sanded with water and Dawn, to get the oil out. She liked this much better than using the sander.

The hood, all encapsulated.

Thank goodness that this is the only chrome on the hood. I've had 2 estimates for having these4 pieces re-chromed. $600 and $1000. I need to find a good, but cheaper chrome shop!

Back side of hood chrome.

Now,it's time to take the front cap apart.

There's more rust in this picture, than was on the whole rest of the car. I don't know why the front cap was worse than the underside, but I've certainly got my work cut out for me.

This is a view from where the left front tire would be.

Two hours later, the front cap is apart, and I only snapped 2 bolts.

This is the beginnings of the paint booth I making inside my shop. I've got a 6hp, 60 gallon compressor. Notice the blue air lines.I have 4 water filters, and 3 traps. Yes, I know that's overkill, but at least I don't have to worry about water and trash getting in through the airlines. I'll be putting filters over the 2 windows in the rear of the shop, and fans to pull in fresh air.

I think my wife was sniffing some of the paint, while I wasn't looking! (ha)

I put a 2 sided wall of plastic around the compressor, so it wouldn't be sucking in the overspray. Fresh air will be coming in through the 2 windows

I'll take a couple of these windows out, and put filters and fans in them too, drawing out the fumes.

This is the first coat of the Hi-Fil primer sprayed. Now, more block sanding!

I used a wire brush, then wet-sanded, to remove as much rust as possible, and then coated the inside of the doors with the Rust Encapsulator. First, I used a paint brush, and let the Encapsulator ooze into the cracks. The second coat, I sprayed, and fogged inside the doors pretty good.

Now that the weather is warming, maybe I'll be able to make a little more progress.

These are pictures showing the bracket I made, and the dual action mastercylinder that replaced the original Hudson Mastercylinder. I was able to still use the original brake pedal, and the original rod. 

To balance the system out, I used a proportioning valve. Also, with disc brakes, you need 2lb residual valves, placed as close as possible to the mastercylinder. The residual valves are blue.

I pushed the accordian rubber back in this picture, to show the original rod.

This is a good underside view, showing the valves, with the rod removed.

In order for the rod to be centered with the mastercylinder, I had to make a spacer between the frame, and the brake pedal housing.

This is a better view of the spacer.

And another view.

The front disc, is a conversion that is made for Hudsons by Bill LaBudd in Florida. You send him your original hubs, and a couple of weeks later, you'll recieve your hubs back, fitted to Chevy rotors. He supplies EVERYTHING, so basically it's a bolt-on operation. 

Another view of the LaBudds conversion.

I made all new stainless steel brake lines, using Eastwoods hydraulic flanger.  It stood up to stainless steel without a problem.

I had Currie Enterprises of California special-cut me a Ford 9in rear, posi-trak, with 3.08 gears and Explorer disc brakes, using the original rear as a pattern. It bolted in perfectly.

]]>

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.