Summer

Summer has officially begun. Since last month, we have been extremely busy here at Rusted and Rebuilt.

The Subaru Impreza has undergone a full face lift over the past month. All of the damage from the previous owner has been repaired, and we even added some lightning under the hood. I was able to solve most of the mechanical issues, too. Since replacing the idle control valve, the car has been running absolutely MINT.

The idle control valve is an intake component which controls the amount of air flowing to the intake when your foot isn’t on the throttle. It is a small plunger-type valve located on the throttle body. When I removed the old one, I realized why my car had been sputtering and stalling all the time – the plunger inside the idle control valve was completely rigid due to 13 years of rust locking it in place. After installing a brand new idle control valve, the Subaru has been idling like a champ, and it drives much smoother now.

Farewell, For Now

The Rusted and Rebuild blog has been a great outlet for sharing automotive knowledge, opinions, and insight. Due to show season coming up right around the corner, the team here at Rusted and Rebuild will be taking our focus away from the blog, and focusing more on our current projects.

The Checker is almost ready for the road, but we can’t truly enjoy it unless we get out there and work on it. For those of you who are still interested in the Checker, and want to know how the project turns out, keep an eye out for it on MassTuning and Tuner Spotting.

Thanks everyone, see you on the road!

Frozen in Time

During a WordPress walkabout today, I stumbled across several really interesting blog posts featuring photos of classic cars frozen in time.

The first post that captivated me was “Small Town Satisfaction,” shared by a blogger known as bluebrightly, on their blog “Wanderings and observations.” I especially enjoyed the photos in this post, sharing the classic beauty that lies in the small towns of the North Cascade Mountains.

In addition to “Small Town Satisfaction,” I also found two other contrasting posts which resonated quite well with the classic beauty of Lyman.

Wishing My Life Away shared a beautiful collection of vivid photos of classic cars, titled “Shiny Things.” I am amazed at how colorful and vibrant these photos are. The paint on each of these cars is half a century old, but still looks as fresh and pristine as the day it was sprayed onto the car.

Photo Credit: LaNae Lien, Wishing My Life Away

In contrast to “Shiny Things,” I was also quite intrigued by “Poundshop film in black and white,” a collection of black and white analog photos of classic cars, shared with us by Imperfect Tense.

Photo Credit: Imperfect Tense

Each one of these collections brings us to a different place at a different moment frozen in time, through pictures of classic cars.

How Do Cars Effect the Environment?

Many people cruise down the highway in SmartCars, Priuses, and various other models of hybrid and electric cars thinking that they are helping to save the environment; however they are quite mistaken. Due to lobbyists, government regulations, and false advertisements, it has become very easy to become misinformed when it comes to vehicles and their emissions.

For example, many people who consider themselves “environmentally-friendly” may become angry when they see a big truck billowing black diesel smoke, however diesel exhaust is actually less harmful to the environment than the exhaust produced by gasoline, because diesel is less refined and burns more efficiently.

Most cars typically run on gasoline at this point in time, which harms the environment even more than diesel. Although diesel is less harmful to the environment than gasoline, the soot and nitrogen compounds produced by diesel are in fact more harmful for humans to inhale.

Someone who drives an electric car might say: “well my car doesn’t run on gas at all, so it must be great for the environment!” However, they may want to rethink their logic.

Cars that do not run on gas or diesel are exponentially more harmful for the environment than diesel or gasoline powered vehicles. Most gasoline and diesel engines are made from aluminum or steel and use a recyclable battery which runs on an alternator; but not Priuses.

Electric and hybrid cars use a Lithium Ion or Nickel-Metal Hydroxide batteries. The Lithium Ion and Nickel-metal Hydroxide batteries used in Priuses are highly toxic, and if they are not recycled properly, they can do serious harm to the environment.

Here’s the real kicker: in order to produce ONE battery for a rechargeable car, more harm will be done to than environment than a single gasoline powered vehicle’s exhaust emissions could produce over it’s entire lifetime. The manufacturing of these hybrid batteries produces a significant amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, and also leaves behind nuclear waste. The nuclear waste is then pumped into mountains through large tunnels.

If you don’t believe me, just check out what the National Center for Policy analysis has to say about Priuses. Research shows that a Prius will do more damage to the environment over 100,000 miles than a Hummer will produce in 300,000 miles.

To put it most simply:

Gasoline harms the Earth a lot. Diesel harms the Earth less, but is more harmful for humans to inhale. Hybrid and electric cars completely destroy the Earth and the atmosphere, and are more harmful to human life than gasoline and diesel combined.

If you really want to help save the Earth, just walk or ride a bike.

Fixing Up the Fusion

The warm weather is finally here! The Checker Marathon is still awaiting some final adjustments, but our daily drivers need some time in the garage first. After a long cold winter, it’s time for some preventative maintenance.

By doing repairs and preventative maintenance yourself, you can save yourself a lot of money and stress, plus you can learn a lot of useful skills and knowledge along the way. It’s also a great opportunity spend time outside with friends and family.

Today at the Rusted and Rebuilt garage, we performed an in-depth exhaust repair on a Ford Fusion. The steel mesh surrounding the flex pipe had rotted out from condensation and old age, causing a large rust hole to form at the end of the flex pipe.

Over time, exhaust systems are heated and cooled to extremely high and low temperatures, and they often experience a lot of condensation. When the condensation builds up in the exhaust system and doesn’t get a chance to fully heat up and evaporate, it can eventually lead to rust and rot, like we can see here.

Once we figured out what part needed to be replaced, we found a replacement part online and began attempting to remove the rusted mess from the bottom of the car.

When parts are old and rusted, they usually do not come off easily. Often times, they need to be cut off, ground off, or drilled off. This old flex pipe was pretty stubborn, but after some cutting, grinding, and drilling, we finally had some positive results.

The replacement flex pipe lined up perfectly, but it was almost impossible to reach the top bolts.  The old flex pipe can be taken off with a grinder, but the new one certainly can’t be installed with a grinder. The only way to reach the top bolts was to use an extremely long ratchet extension with a swivel head to turn the bolt head from up above.

After a long and painful installation, the Fusion is ready for it’s yearly inspection. It took several hours over the course of two days, but it was worth the effort.

This type of repair would cost hundreds of dollars to send to a mechanic, between the cost of labor and the mark-up on parts. By doing repairs ourselves and buying parts online from the manufacturer, we can save a lot of money, as long as we don’t mind sacrificing some time and energy.

The best part is knowing that the work is getting done correctly with high quality parts, and that we are doing our part to extend the lives of our vehicles. If you take care of things, they last.

Also, huge shoutout to Jeremy and Matt at George’s Tire Place in Warren for hooking me up with new valve stems and plugging a leak in one of my tires. I’ve had a small leak in my tire that I haven’t been able to find for months, and these guys had the tire patched and ready to roll in less than an hour. I highly recommend going to George for all of your tire needs. Everyone who works there does a great job fixing and balancing tires, and all of their prices are unbeatable.

Gaming on The Go?

If you’re into video games and have a sick whip, you just might want to have them both in the same place. What’s stopping you from having your Xbox installed in your car? Maybe you don’t know how to cram that bad boy in?

First you need to find a reasonable size TV put mount in your vehicle. I wouldn’t recommend using a TV much bigger than 20 inches. Then you need your game console of choice (of course, it doesn’t need to be an Xbox).

You’ll need some kind of pipe to mount the TV, but make sure it’s not too big so you can move the TV in or out of the vehicle. You’ll need to bend the ends of the pipe so it can rest on the handles inside the car. You should be able to drill holes through the pipe and align the holes up with the holes in the back of your TV for mounting. If you drill screws in the TV, it should be in place just fine. If you’re concerned about the TV moving around while you’re on the go, you can always add some soft protection in between the pipe mount and the TV.

Next you’ll need to buy a power supply. You’ll want to make sure you get a big enough battery for this. Add up the amount of watts the TV uses as well as the game console. You’ll probably uses some where close to 200 watts. You’ll then need a power inverter since most lighter plug outlets don’t work properly if you’re using something past a certain amount of watts. You’ll need to run a plug with wires, just like you would if you were connecting a stereo speaker to your car. You’ll need to make a plug that will connect to the inverter.

Finally after connecting your plug, you should be able to plug in your TV and console of your choice and start doing some gaming. I advise anyone planing on doing this to have the game downloaded onto the console rather than playing it off of the disk. The disc spinning inside the console could be questionable because it could possibly ruin the disc if there is too much shaking while driving.  Have a safe and pleasurable gaming session on the road!

 

Rusted and… Rebar

While looking at rat rods on Pinterest, we found this rusty old truck with a visor made out of license plates. We were extremely inspired by this idea, and decided that we could do something similar, but add a unique twist to it. We devised a plan to create a frame for the visor using rebar, which is a type of steel reinforcement bar that is often used in construction for reinforcing concrete. We would then fill in the frame with smaller fragments of rebar, and stitch pieces of license plates to fit over the frame.

The rebar was extremely difficult to cut and work with. Steel is pretty solid. Especially thermo-mechanically treated steel with a tempered core.  The rebar ate through several grinding wheels before we even finished making the outer frame. Luckily, the thickness of the rebar makes it excellent for welding.

We used a straight piece of steel for the center, which would act as the main support, as well as a mounting point for our acrylic cow skull. The two side brackets were designed to sit above the side window tracks, using the spider webs to support the sides of visor.

Once the outer frame was complete, it was time to fill in the gaps. Since these structural pieces would be visible from inside the car, we decided that we should make them somewhat uniform.

The sparks from the grinder burned a lot of holes in the workbench, which can be seen slowly deteriorating throughout this progression of photos.

Once the frame was complete, we started filling in the gaps with license plates. Most of the plates we used are from the 1930s and 1940s because these license plates are made of a much thicker gauge steel than modern license plates, which makes them more suitable for welding.

After getting the visor welded to the car and sprayed down with our Secret Rust Solution, we fastened on our cow skull and sealed the surface with clear coat to stop the rust from venturing any further.

Creature Comforts

Checker Marathons were used as taxis in many major cities back in the 60’s and 70’s. They were designed as fleet vehicles with rugged frames and a massive interior.

Most rat rods are bare bones when it comes to the interior. To the surprise of many hot rod enthusiasts, this rat rod’s interior is fully furnished. When we first picked it up, both rear arm rests were rotted out, as well as most of the body under the back seat.

The floor was covered in various Bondo patches, and there were still quite a few holes where we could see the ground from inside the car. Once we got all the holes patched up with sheet metal and street signs, we had a lot of space to decide what to do with. We both agreed that a Persian rug would be the best option for a carpet.

The original heater was also not operational, so we found an old Cadillac heater on eBay for a good price, and it fit under the dash quite nicely. Many older cars run on six volt systems, however the Checker runs on a 12 volt system like most modern car batteries. This heater had a 6 volt blower, so we had to put a 12 volt blower in the heater so that the extra thermal load wouldn’t immediately fry the blower motor when we turn on the heater.

The armrests in the rear were still missing, so we made new ones out of wood.They’re filled with spray foam too, for added stability and structural support. The door panels were also in bad condition, so we added new fabric to the door panels and used it to cover the arm rests as well.

The original pieces remaining in the back seats are the two metal ashtrays that we managed to save and install into the new armrests. My dad also did some custom airbrushing and added some lightning.

Fossil Fabrication

Working on old cars can be a very frustrating task. Although it seems as if this car is frozen in time, most of the bolts are frozen too. As we get closer to the completion of the Checker, one question has been arising quite frequently: “what have we gotten ourselves into?”

After reading this blog post about the vintage car culture of Cuba, I was reminded why I love these machines so much. Some people see cars as simply transportation, but car enthusiasts see them as living fossils, preserving the technology of their day. In Cuba, it became be very difficult to import cars after the embargo, meaning that most of the cars in Cuba are restored classics because they couldn’t import new cars. The embargo has been recently lifted, but the effects of the embargo can still be seen today.

Cuba’s entire car culture is literally frozen in time. The only way for them to drive is to fix the classic cars that were already in Cuba before the embargo. They can’t order parts either, so they are forced to fabricate their own parts and salvage components from other machines, such as boats, lawnmowers, and other cars. If we take care of our cars and maintain them, they will last for generations, like the two-stroke 75cc Coco taxis of Cuba which can still be seen today.

It can be quite disheartening when unknown issues arise, eating up more time and money; but problem solving is what it’s all about. It’s a really cool feeling when you figure out how to solve a mechanical problem. Driving is awesome, but turning the wrench is the most rewarding aspect of custom car culture.

The license plates for the Checker should be arriving from the RMV any time now, which is perfect timing since the weather is finally starting to cooperate. We’re still trying to straighten out a few frustrating issues with the emergency brake and reverse lights, but the beast should be roadworthy within the upcoming weeks.

 

Welding on the World Wide Web

 

After we ran out of license plates and scrap metal, we started to look elsewhere for steel. There are quite a few sellers on eBay with large selections of steel. This eBay store specializes in selling plasma-cut low-carbon steel shapes, which are perfect for rat rods because low-carbon steel will rust quickly if it is not painted or coated. We were able to find a few spiderwebs on eBay that matched the theme quite well. After some hammering and welding, it was a perfect fit.

Once we had scoured every eBay store and international seller we could find, my dad came across an ad for SPEEDCULT. This place has it all: a blog, an Instagram page, and even an online store that specializes in selling the exact pieces of steel we were looking for at very reasonable prices.

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After seeing what SPEEDCULT had to offer, we couldn’t resist putting some of their art on the Checker. We ordered several really unique pieces from them and they all turned out to be extremely cool. They are made of heavy, thick quality steel and they are all cut with laser precision. For all of your rat rod needs, I highly recommend SPEEDCULT.

Tiki

Flying Saucer

Primitive Fish

Skull Pistons