Since guys have been customizing cars, shaving the door handles has been one of the most common modifications to make the car look as smooth as possible. This process can be a pretty simple process, but there are a few things that can make it go smoothly. I decided to show the process on Project Pile House.
Tag: Custom
How to Fit Seat Sliders to Your Hot Rod Seat
The older the car you’re working on, the harder it can be to find usable parts you need. This becomes increasingly difficult when you get into cars that were short production or year runs. The iconic 1932 Ford is the most covenanted cars to build a hot rod out of. Being that they are a one year only body style, parts get expensive quick (especially original parts!). The seat slider mechanisms for an original ’32 Ford seat are as rare as hens teeth and command a pretty penny when you do come across one complete! Recently my friend Ace asked me to help with the task of getting his reupholstered original seat to bolt into the car AND slide easily. I decided to take some photos along the way and show our low-budget (and fairly low tech) fix.
Decorate your lid! Custom Painted Motorcycle Helmet
Recently the trend for fully customized motorcycle helmets has picked up again and we’ve even begun to see custom helmet “shows” where artists, owners, and painters can show off their helmet. We decided to brew up our own custom helmet using a vintage helmet and show the process along the way. Mike L. is our resident paint tech guy and he did the work to transform this helmet.
Tech Tip- Making Dimple Holes without a Press
Dimpled or flared holes in panels not only strengthens the panel, but also adds a “industrial” look to a panel that is really hot right now. This process dates back to the WWII era when panels for aircraft were done this way to add strength and save weight. That look trickled down to post-war race cars and eventually has become mainstream in styling into custom cars.
Starbird Rod & Custom Live Choptop Workshop- How to Chop a ’56 Lincoln Mark II
At the 51st Annual Darryl Starbird National Rod and Custom Car Show over the February 20th-22nd weekend Darryl Starbird and Star Kustom Shop chopped a 1956 Lincoln Mark II. The chop began Friday when the show gates opened and ended when the gates closed Sunday afternoon. The event was held to showcase and educate the public on how master customizers lower the lid to enhance the profile and look of automobiles.
Custom Built Tailgate for Pile House
Possibly the biggest undertaking yet on this truck was making the new custom bed for Project Pilehouse. To quote Ron Covell in a metal shaping class at Eastwood headquarters; “I think those bedsides were the single largest pieces I’ve ever seen bead rolled in my life!”. The bed was definitely […]
Smoothing the Back End- Frenched Taillights on Pile House.
I will admit that I tend to over think things when I am building a custom car and sometimes I mock something up and I don’t like it or decide I need to tweak the original idea. A while back I decided on a set of ’62 Oldsmobile 88 taillights for the back of the truck. I liked the lens shape and chrome trim on them, but the bezel had peaked ends that made it tough to sink them into a relatively flat panel. For the sake of getting “something” in the rollpan I temporarily made brackets to slide them into the panel. At first I was “ok” with how they looked, but the further I got with building the tailgate on the backend I knew in the back of my head I needed to revisit how they were sitting.
Solid Rivet FAQ
Solid rivets, sometimes called aircraft rivets, are a solid piece of metal with a large head on one side and a straight shaft. They are installed by sliding them in a hole slightly bigger than the shaft, then deforming the protruding shaft to 1 ½ times its size, so it is tight and cannot pull out. They differ from pop rivets in that they are solid, therefor stronger, and use a buck bar and pneumatic gun to install them instead.
How to shave and metal finish your firewall with Empire Fabrication
Shaving or smoothing the bodywork on a custom car has been one of the most popular modifications since the beginning. Shaving door handles and trim or side marker holes are the most common things to shave on a project car, but close behind that is smoothing or shaving the firewall. Sean of Empire Fabrication has gotten REALLY good at shaving and smoothing cars. So much so that his finished projects require basically no body filler at all and can be primered and block sanded straight away. Sean recently took the time to snap some photos and give us the rundown on how he tackles a firewall shave project. The donor vehicle is a VW Eurovan that he has already drastically customized. So grab a drink, sit back, and watch how to do the job right with Empire Fabrication.