A Vintage Plate for Alphie

My collection of vintage Alabama License plates - 1963, 1964 (2) and 1965

Page Eleven: Alphie's Vintage 1964 Alabama License Plate

I have scrounged an original Alabama license plate for all of my projects cars’ (and motorcycle) year of manufacture and Alphie has one too.  Finding a pristine original plate would be ideal, but their owners tend to value them more than I do.  Fortunately, beat-up rusty plates are reasonably priced and easy to find on EBay, but they need, like their intended cars, a bit of work.

BUT! This time I found an original never issued 1964 Alabama license plate!  It’s a plate from Calhoun County (#11), not Madison (#47) where I hang out.  I have been searching for a 47 tag for about a year, but every one I found was shredded, trashed, junk.  Alphie deserves a pretty tag. 

Alphie's Unissued 1964 Alabama Plate

My tag restoration attempts are acceptable, until it comes to painting the numbers.  The ones I hand painted looked, well, hand painted.  I was going to send my EBay tags to be professionally restored but then I found the Tag Doctor – look up his website; he has some cool stuff and solid prices.

So other than some pics of my  tags, both restored and (partially) restored, here is some interesting/useless dribble about vintage tags.

Useless Trivia

When I started the Sunbeam Alpine Project, I had a 1965 Alpine, but if you have read the other posts on this blog, you know that now I’m building a 1964 Alpine – see the Organ Donor post.  I remind you of this so that the following paragraph, discussing a 1965 plate, will make at least some sense.

The plate I EBayed (back in April of 2019) for Alphie, a 1965 “Heart of Dixie” plate number 11-3047, was rusted and sun-faded to the point that I was unsure of the original colors, so I went a-Googling.  I discovered something interesting from Google, my college football fanatics…

In 1964 the state of Alabama issued vehicle license plates decked out in the Crimson and White of the University of Alabama– Roll Tide!

And in 1965, Alabama emblazoned plates with the Blue and Orange of Auburn University.  War Damn Eagle!

1965 Auburn plate - no lettering

More Useless Trivia:  The “11” on the Auburn plate means it was issued in Calhoun County in north central Alabama where Anniston is the county seat.  (Finding a specific county is difficult, but who knows, I might trip over a 1965 plate with the “47” of Madison County somewhere.  (Editor’s Note:  I didn’t!)

The “county” number, the first number or two numbers before the dash, are based on county populations as of 1942.  So in 1942, Calhoun County was the 11^th most populous county in Alabama, while Madison County was the 47^th.  (Incidentally, Jefferson was first, with Mobile and Montgomery counties coming in second and third respectively, hence their 1,2,3 county numbers.)  In 1979, Alabama officially locked the 1942 numbers.

The “3047” is the serial number of the plate, which lets the cop know who must pay the ticket.

The “Heart of Dixie” slogan and the embossed heart was added to plates in 1951.

Registering a Original Vintage Plate

According to Section 40-12-297 of the Code of Alabama, Alabamians “may request to register an original Alabama license plate, 1976 or previous, including a restored or refurbished Alabama license plate, issued in the model year as designated by the manufacturer of the vehicle, of a type license plate that would have been issued to that category vehicle.”  The phrase, “that would have been issued to that category vehicle,” means you have to use 1964 passenger car tags for 1964 cars, 1964 pick-up tags for 1964 pick-up trucks and, I suppose, 1964 hearse tags for 1964 hearses, if hearses are your thing.

The license plate folks will give me “a permanent vintage vehicle validation decal” that must be displayed on the lower portion of the plate.  So it won’t look exactly like it would have in 1965, but laws are laws, and it’s very cool that Alabama allows us to use original plates!

Blasting and Cleaning

(Editor’s Note: I wrote this post last year (April 2019) when I fully intended to restore a tag for Alphie.  Even though I found an never issues tag, I figure I’ll post my how-to write up because… why the hell not?

I have restored tags before – see the pics.  I restored one for my 63 Corvair Monza and on for my 64 Impala SS – so the write up comes from at least some experience.)

The first step is finding the clean metal.  I bead blasted, wire wheeled and sanded both plates to a clean shiny metal. 

(The 1964 plate is the one I kept from the 64 Impala SS I restored back in the 90’s - such a sweet ride!  By the way, the superscript “H” to the right of the "5" means that it was for a pick-up, ¾ ton or less.)

Keeping the “Original Look” – Not Over-Restored

I used a high-build primer to fill rust pits and scratches, but that’s all.  A glass-flat, pristine license plate looks fake.  They came with lumps from the AL DMV in 1964, so Alphie’s plate will be lumpy too.

You can see the tooling impressions -
original plates aren't pristine

Even though I’m restoring the tags, I plan to preserve the original look.  Plates were stamped and painted at Kilby Prison near Montgomery, and a plate’s original “fit and finish” was a little shy of awesome.  For example, I can see the outline of the jig, which held the stamping dies indented above and below the numbers, and the area between the numbers and letters was never completely flat.  I’m leaving tooling marks like these visible.

Similarly, of the original plates I have dealt with, the tooling often cuts through the metal at the edge of a letter or number.  Both of my plates have these cuts, and I will not fix them either.  (See the pics)

A flashlight behind the plate shows where the die
cut through the metal - original plates aren't pristine

I am going to straighten the edges and bang out any injuries the plates suffered during their time on and off their original vehicle over the past 54 years, just not the lumps from their original pressing.

Base Coat

Dupli-Color has engine paint in the base colors very close the red and blue I need.  A couple of coats with some light wet sanding between coats and a coat of clear for extra gloss should do it.  Be careful with the clear coat, it often crinkles the base coat under it.

Lettering Paint

A roller system on (what I assume) was an assembly line setup applied the original lettering paint.  Reproducing the original roller application is difficult, makes a big mess and doesn’t work very well – at least that’s what I read on the internet.  At any rate,  making a Rube Goldberg roller system to paint the letters on one plate doesn’t make much sense.  So Testor’s model paint and a steady hand are the call for lettering.

Hand painted model paint
just isn't good enough

(Editor’s Note:  Here’s where the post diverges from the facts of Alphie’s new tag.  I hand lettered the 1963 plate, and you can see that the lettering looks uneven and “redone,” in short it looks terrible.  

The original lettering paint was sorta reflective, not very, but sorta.  Testor’s model paint ain’t reflective, in fact it’s not very good lettering paint at all.  I read that some restorers sprinkle reflective granules into the lettering paint to reproduce the paint’s reflectivity.  The granules are usually more reflective than the original paint, so it’s a little better than original.)

The model paint doesn’t hold up against rocks and other debris that bang against the tag.  Check out the chipping on the 1963 tag, which I used as the front tag of my Corvair.

I hand painted the lettering on the 63 plate
It's acceptable, but still looks "redone"

Go with the Pros

Garage plate restoration is acceptable, but if you want a slick plate that doesn’t look like you rescued it from a barn wall somewhere, get it professionally done.  I started hand painting the EBay 1964 tag, but I was not happy with the results of the first couple of letters.  Honestly, it looked like it was restored during arts & crafts at summer camp. 

I decided that I was never going to get the look I wanted by hand painting.  I found the Tag Doctor's website while I was researching blokes who restore plates professionally.

Professional plate restorers’ prices range from reasonable to flagrant, depending on what level of restoration you want.  Do a quick web search, you’ll find them.  Since they restore tags every day, they have invested in the right tools and paints to make your tag look like it did back in the day.

A close-up of Alphie's never-issued 1964 plate
 with its straight from the prison lettering!

A shout out to the guy with the vintage tags

Alphie Under the Knife

Only a fool would take on this much rust!  BTW, I'm a fool!

Page Ten: Serious Surgery

Rusty Rockers - Somewhere There’s Solid Metal

With Alphie belly-up like a dead fish, I can get to her rusticles easily.  Standing up and working at chest height, it’s heavenly.

First up, Alphie’s ragged rockers.  Clearly, Alphie spent some time on salty roads, that and 60’s auto makers’ rust protection was mostly in name only.  Rootes’ anti-corrosion regime was red oxide primer.  Alphie’s undercoating turned toes up long ago, leaving black mucousy wads here and there on her nethers.  Bonehead Wrenching’s anti-corrosion regime is POR15, great gob that!  I might over-coat it with red oxide primer for authenticity’s sake – we’ll see, that’s a ways down the lane.

At first glance, the rockers are a shambles of jagged rust, but with my new perspective, I’m beginning to see how Sunbeam glued these cars together.  “If you can figure out how it works, you can figure out how to fix it” – at least, that’s what I tell myself.

With new cutting discs in my grinders, I went about prospecting for solid metal.  (I now understand why shops have racks of different sized grinders loaded with all manner of discs – switching disks burns a lot of time.  I have a 4 ½ inch and a 7 inch grinder, which helps, but still…)  I whittled down the passenger side, the rustier of the two, then I started poking about on the frame members where the rockers attach.  More flaky metal!  Fortunately, the rust is localized and not systemic. 

So, here’s the run down for cross member repair:

The Front Cross Member:  The rockers have three attachment points: at a front, middle and rear cross member, for want of a better description.  The front cross member only needed a small patch, about 2X2 inches.  It was easy peasy, and it gave me some good butt welding practice.  I recreated two tabs that serve as the actual welding points for the rocker panel pieces.  I attached the tabs using my latest toy, a 120-volt a spot welder from our grand benefactor, Harbor Freight – more on that below.

Front Cross Member before

Front Cross Member after

The Middle Cross Member:  The more I glared at the middle cross member, the worse it got.  The middle cross member shoots off from the main X frame at the center of the “X” and perpendicular to the centerline of the car, kinda like this: “X—“.  It also has a small box frame support that runs parallel with the centerline that supports the floor pan where the seats are mounted.  It also connects the front and middle cross members and runs all the way to the bumper attachment points at the front of the car. 

I noticed some flakey metal so I mounted a full-scale assault with double-barreled grinders, a reciprocating saw, an air hammer, chisels, hammers and bloody fingers.  After removing a length of malignant metal along the length of the cross member, I could see inside the cross member…  Flakey, crusty and paper thin, so more cutting!

With the two sides of the perpendicular extension of the middle cross member flayed open, I could see that the end of the parallel cross member was not entirely attached to the perpendicular piece anymore, BUT I finally found some solid metal.

  

 Parallel Cross Member:  The parallel cross member needs a new tip and attachment tabs.  The parallel cross member is boxed sheet metal, but I had to saw off a 10.5 cm length of it to find metal solid enough to hold welds. 

Box Frame fabbed and spot welded.  You may note that one of the tabs is in the wrong place - I figured it out when I started to install it!@%#*&

Butt-welded to the existing cross member and partially cleaned up.  I removed the misplaced tab, but now I see I need one on the opposite side of the other tab... insert your favorite curse word

OK, the truth - I kept cutting the cross member at weird angles so that fabbing a new chunk of box frame that mated up to the existing cross member would have been problematic.  It took about three tries to get a reasonably square cut.  Meaning the actual bad metal was only about 5 cm long.  It’s sodding hard to make a square cut with a grinder, just saying.

I fabbed up an 11 cm chunk of box frame using my spanking new spot welder.  The extra 5 mm gave me some leeway to adjust the mating edges to get a good butt weld.  It turned out mint, if I say so myself.  Check out the pic.

Perpendicular Cross Member:  This cross member (the one at the center of the X frame) is an upside-down serif U shaped box with a piece of sheet metal welded to flanges like the serifs on the U.  The bottom sheet metal piece has weight reducing holes in it, which present a fabrication “opportunity”.  I haven’t taken that on yet.

One vertical side of the U will need a patch about a foot long, but it will be an easy fabrication with only a flange on the bottom edge where the sheet metal bottom attaches.  The other vertical side of the U (where the parallel cross member attaches to the perpendicular cross member) will need about a 6-inch patch, also with only a flange along the bottom edge.

Middle Cross Member gutted.  The yellow lines show where patch panels will go

I'll have to recreate this rusty bit.  It covers the bottom of the Middle Cross Member
Remember Alphie is belly up in the picture above 

Rear Cross Member:  I can see some crusty rust, but I haven’t taken a grinder to it yet.  More later.

Spot Welder:  You may have seen Wayne Siebrecht’s You Tube channel – he’s restoring a Tiger with bad rocker panels, not nearly as bad as Alphie’s but that’s neither here nor there.  His video’s are quite helpful.  Anywho, he pointed me toward the HF spot welder.  So I figured, if it’s mutt’s nuts for Wayne, I'd give it a try.

My circuit breaking spot welder

My spot welder is the bees frickin knees!  It made fabbing up the new chunk of box frame much faster and easier than plug-welding it with my MIG.  (Editorial Note:  I have been referring to “plug-welding” as “fill-welding” in previous post.  They seem like synonyms to me, but most people on the interwebs use the term "plug weld", so count me in.)

The spot welder pulls some juice – the instructions tell you this, but it’s a bigger problem than I expected!  You can’t plug it into an extension cord, even a hefty one.  When I was welding up the box frame section, I kept tripping the breaker.  Any resistance will load to circuit.  For example, the welding tips were a little loose creating enough resistance to trip the breaker.  I found that I had to turn everything off on the garage plug circuit (which included the plugs in the kitchen) helped.

 

I found that it would make a couple of welds and the next one would trip the breaker, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern of how many welds it would make on the trot nor how much time I waited between welds.  Apparently, if the garage fridge was running, it tripped the breaker, if it wasn’t, it welded right along with no worries.  Now, I turn off the fridge for spot welding, just don’t forget to turn it back on!

A Quick How-To:  The mating surfaces being spot-welded must be clean, a bit scuffed and in tight contact with each other.  Any rust or space between the surfaces creates resistance that will compromise the weld.  And, uh, the little sparks shoot out of the weld are damned hot and will burn through anything other than leather gloves.  It’ll make ya cuss - wanna see where it burned my little pinky?

A Portable Spot Welder:  The cord on the spot welder is only about two feet long.  Since I can’t drag Alphie within two feet of one of the two outlets in the garage, spot welding on the car itself is a problem.

[Side Rant:  Why do builders only put two outlets in garages, fer sod’s sake?!  When I build my cavernous Garage Mahal, I’ll put an outlet every two bloody feet and at a 220 outlets on each wall!  TVA will write my name on a wall somewhere!]

This adapter lets me use the
higher amp circuit on my generator

Just so happens that I have a gas-powered generator.  After the great power outage of 2011, Dad decided to give his offspring generators, thanks Pops!  I wrestled it out from its corner of the garage, dusted it off, fired it up and plugged in the spot welder.  When I pulled the trigger, the generator did a little torquey dance and died.  I upped the idle and tried it again.  It burned a good spot weld but still did its torquey dance and died.  I found an adapter while digging in my Dad's stuff that will let me use the higher amp circuit - I'll keep you posted.

 Higher amps but still 120 volts

Rocker Restoration continues and I’ll update as I take on new acres of rust.

Closing Health Note:  I have created a nightmare of ragged metal edges that are ravenously hungry.  Wear your damn gloves, and buy more Band-Aids (sorry, adhesive bandages)!

Roasting an Alpine

Alphie goes belly-up for rusticle surgery

Page Nine:  Alphie on a Spit!

I got to thinking - a dangerous thing, I admit - but to transplant the Organ Donor's nose onto Alphie, I'll need get the body panel gaps even...

• To get the body panel gaps even, I'll need to mount and secure the doors.
• To mount and secure the doors, I'll need to replace the inner rocker panels to rigiditify (my new word) Alphie’s bod.  
• To replace the inner rocker panels, I'll need easy access to Alphie’s tummy.·
• To get to Alphie’s tummy, I'll need her on a rotisserie.
• To get Alphie on the rotisserie, I'll have to cut and modify two Harbor Freight engine stands
• To mount Alphie to the HF engine stand rotisserie, I'll have to replace the frame rail tips where the front bumper mounts... one thing leads to another!

Therefore, I conclude, that I shouldn’t cut-off any Sunbeam noses just yet!

Oh, I built a rotisserie!  BUT, as with everything concerning Alphie, spinning her on a spit turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

Problem #1 – I Need a Coupla Inches:  The engine stands are too short.  In order to rotate the body 90 degrees, the engine stands need to be taller than half the width of the car.  After much measuring, I need them to be at least 34 inches from the stand’s mounting plate to its bottom rail.

The engine stand upright (cut) with the 2X4 rectangular stock
that get it to 34" (or close enough)

A friend who manufactures laser cutting machines, gave me a length of 2X4 rectangular mild steel tube stock that fits over the post of the engine stand, meaning the post will fit inside the rectangular stock.  First, I had to cut the engine stand post in half.  Next, I inserted the engine stand upright inside the rectangular stock and laid it out on the bench.  I expanded the post/rectangular stock until the bottom edge of the mounting plate receiver was 35.5 inches from the top of the bottom of the post where the perpendicular beam meets the post. 

Thirty-five and a half inches turned out to be the magic number that will allow Alphie to rotate 90 degrees without banging into the legs of the stands.  I can work and weld her rusty underbelly without having to muck about on the floor. 

Fun fact, welding upside down SUCKS!

Close up shows the angle adjustment screws 

I have never worked on a restoration without having to scooch under and out-from-under a car thousands of times.  I’m looking forward to NOT doing that!

Problem #2: - I Need a Few Degrees:  Engine stands tilt the engine mounting plate back slightly; I assume to keep it from sliding off the stand.  The receiver on the top of the post where the mounting plate attaches is not at a right angle to the post.  When you press engine stands into service as a car rotisserie, the mounting plate must be perpendicular to the car’s center line.  

In other words, I need to tilt the receiver and mounting plate down a couple of degrees to level them.

Not bad.  We call that Bonehead Level

My solution is to mount the upper section of the post (the section with the mounting plate receiver) up against the inside of the rectangular stock so that it is locked in-line with the rectangular stock.  (See the pictures; it will help you follow this discussion immensely!)  I placed the lower post section in the middle of the rectangular stock to give me some movement where I can adjust the angle of the mounting plate.

I drilled holes and welded three nuts on the sides of the rectangular plate so that I can adjust the angle of the mounting plates.  The bottom two cap screws give me some fine-tuning and lock the angle.  (I added the cap screw just below the mounting plate receiver for adjustment to eliminate some movement.  I only want movement that I plan for.)  Again, check out the pics.

Problem #3 – I Need a Wider Stance:  The width between the engine stand’s wheels is too narrow.  I don’t want Alphie pitching over when I rotate her on the rotisserie. 

Extra stance and racing tires

Sub-Problem:  I also need to be able to roll the whole kit and caboodle around the garage, so I need some decent wheels.  The little metal casters that come with the stand just don’t pass muster.  I bought some 6” pneumatic casters from our patron saint, Harbor Freight.

I mounted the engine stand post to a 5-foot section of 4X4 and mounted the pneumatic casters to the 4X4.  Plenty of stance with plenty of wheel for rolling about!

Problem #4 – I Need a Connection:  I watched a few Engine Stand to Rotisserie Conversion videos, and I noticed a situation.  In the one video, a guy using the same HF engine stands I’m using had each stand holding up its end of the car independently of the other stand.  It looked to me that if he tried to roll the car on the rotisserie  – or move the car on any axis, for that matter - the engine stands would separate from each other and drop the car, mashing the car and any hapless soul who happened to be near it at the time. 

I need to connect the engine stands, front to back, so that the whole contraption moves as one piece.  Enter another a length of 2X6 - I had a twelve foot one taking up WAY too much room in my shed.  Instead of mounting the supplied rotating caster on the front leg of the engine stand, I mounted the front legs of each stand to a 2X6 to set a fixed distance from each other.  I mounted a fifth pneumatic caster in the middle of the 2X6 to prevent the whole thing from sagging in the middle.

Problem #5 – I Need Better Mounts:  Alphie has had surgery before…  It seems that someone in the Alphie’s past welded nuts on the end of her front frame rails where the front bumper mounts.  The angry studs that protrude like British dentistry from the frame tips threaten to tetanize (it’s a word, I Googled it) anyone walking past.  The studs are scary, rusted, stripped, and they’re too short.

Ahhh! 

I mounted the stand’s mounting plate to a 2X6, which I then fitted to Alphie using the shiny new bumper attachment points.  For all this mounting to happen, I added longer bolts (actually, they are pieces of ½” all thread) than the studs currently poking out of Alphie’s smile.

Sub-Problem – Shiny New Frame Rail Tips:  The frame tips where the front bumper mounts are “perished;” I need new ones!  (See the blog post, FIRST FABRICATION, about making new ones.) 

I love the smell of mig welding in the morning!

Problem #6 – Trimming the Fat:  Alphie needs to be at her lightest when she twirls.  I stripped everything down to her shell – nothing on the firewall, interior or underbelly.  I removed all manner of parts tossed in her boot and interior, all of which went to my secret storage hidey-hole.  Nothing is piled under the car… yet, more of a challenge that it sounds.

Going Up!

Problem #7 – Hoisting Her:  Once stripped to her knickers, I hoisted her high enough for receivers to meet mounting plates.  

My engine cherry picker handled her front end and my chain hoist mounted on a substantial I-beam that my house builder so thoughtfully included in my garage.  He added it to keep the attic above the garage, you know, actually above the garage.  I use it to lift various kinds of heavy kit off the floor, including Alphie, smashing!

All Mounted Up!

She’s finally spitted on her rotisserie!

At first, I thought I had her too high.  I feared that she would hit the garage door when I spun her.  I thought of several ways to drop a couple of inches – each idea required a good deal of re-engineering and a bit fiddly.  Then I thought, may as well give it a whirl (snort!:)

This angle shows how the rotisserie works

I took out the pins that keep the mounting plates from spinning inside their receivers, and she sat peacefully on her center line.  Then I nudged the handle on the front mounting plate just a smidge and Alphie rolled belly-up all on her own.  Seems she’s a bit top-heavy, not exactly balanced.  

I could slow her roll so she’s somewhat balanced but she is too heavy for to stop her from rolling, much less rotate her back the other way. 

If she had been less balanced, the let’s-give-it-a-whirl” idea could have been much scarier.  It’s better to be lucky, especially if you’re not that good.

Note:  Use the I-beam chain hoist to manage the roll in the future.  Cars are heavy, turns out.

Next up:  Serious Surgery!

Now I can get to work!  I couldn't fix all this laying on the ground!

Oh, I have a grinder, two in fact!  There is good metal in there.

FIRST FABRICATION

I was ready to put Alphie on the rotisserie until I saw this.

Page Eight:  Finally Fabricating!

I decided to spit Alphie like a roasting pig on my Homemade-Harbor-Freight-Engine-Stand-Rotisserie.  I modified the engine stands and got the rotisserie ready to mount an Alpine (that blog post is coming, soon).  But, when I looked into where to affix rotisserie to car, I found the front bumper mounts at the tips of the frame rails were No Bueno!  Rusty with stripped threads and someone had welded nuts to the ends to mount the front bumper, like I said, No Bueno!  FABRICATION BABY!  I’ve been waiting for this!

Shiny New Frame Rail Tips

My new fabrication bench, complete with sheet metal brake, lots-o-new metal fab trinkets and such kit, gets its first test!

I need to make one of these.  (From the Organ Donor)

Step One:  Trot out to the Organ Donor and rip off the passenger-side frame rail tip - by hand, no tools needed!  Yep, it is that rusty.  The avulsed (vocab word of the day) rail tip gives me something to measure without climbing under Alphie hundreds of times.  It also shows me how the Rootes folks put it together. 

I’m admitting here, without shame or apology, that I’m completely metric when I’m fabricating.  I can tell you exactly what half of 950mm is.  Don’t forget, I am an English teacher by trade.  I have no idea what half of 1 7/8” is.  No hate!

Step Two:  Destroy several file folders!  I saw this trick somewhere; make templates from file folders.  File folders are cheap, and I have tons of them laying around. 

Generically, the steps are 1) measure the dingus (many times), 2) transfer the measurements to a file folder, 3) cut the file folder to the shape, 4) trace the file folder template onto sheet metal, 5) cut the sheet metal to shape, 6) bend it, 7) weld it and 8) BAM! A new dingus!  (There are many other fiddly tasks, along with some screwing up, but those are the basic steps.)

The frame is made of boxed sheet metal (14 or 16 gauge depending), so I made two file folder templates: one for the inner frame and one for the outer frame.  Check out the pics of the file folder templates and the cut sheet metal cut from the template.  The templates work for the left and right sides; all I had to do was make the bends in opposite directions.

File Folder Template transferred to sheet metal.  The red lines have scribe marks showing bend locations

Sub-Problem One - Jack points:  Alpines use, as I see it, the sketchiest method of jacking the car on the side of a motorway.  I’m sure it works fine as long as you’re on a perfectly flat, level and dry concrete surface, but nowhere else.  The Rootes-provided “jack” uses an upward-angled, square stock gizmo that fits into an equally upward-angled square hole located just under the bumper attachment point.  A chap is to slide the jack’s angled proboscis into the square hole and, using the lug wrench, crank the nut on top of the jack to raise the tire off the (we’ll say) earth.  (Check out the pic of the “jack’s” base – a measly 2” diameter disc guaranteed to sink into anything less that Sahara-dry soil.  Best case: only have tire troubles in dry car parks (parking lots, to us yanks.) 

My generous description for this whole setup is “teetery”.  I suspect that, back in the day, smart Alpine owners bought a scissor jack on the way home from the dealership and chucked it in the boot.  Oh, and never, no matter the emergency, put any part of anyone’s body under an Alpine when it is precariously propped on its factory jack!

The Rootes Jack - Just don't use it!

But, in the spirit of authenticity, I must recreate the jacking point on my new frame rail tips.  To wit, I picked up some 1” ID square stock, which fits perfectly over the Rootes disability-waiting-to-happen jack’s prong.  I decided that the square stock needed some reinforcement so I welded a strip of 1” flat steel stock to the top of it.  You can’t see the reinforcement in the finished rail tip.  At any rate, I plan to keep a scissor jack in the boot.  The Rootes jack is only for show and/or demonstration purposes.

Sub-Problem Two – Substantial attachment points:  The Rootes folk used a ½” fine thread (of course!) captured nut for the bumper bolt.  I feared that I would need something more substantial for the rotisserie attachment point.  I discovered that “coupling nuts” exist and are used to connect pieces of all-thread together.  Of course, no big box store has ½” coupling nuts, so to the internet! 

Bolt Depot gets a shout out here – I love ‘em; they have everything.  I ordered four ½” fine thread (they had fine thread, a strike for authenticity) coupling nuts along with a length of ½” fine thread all-thread that I’ll use to attach a 2X6 to the bumper attachments and then the engine stand plate to the 2X6.

Step Three:  Cut out the sheet metal!  I did all the tweaking on the file folder templates.  (It took a couple tries.)  Next, I made the bends in the templates and matched them to the frame tip I yanked from the Organ Donor.  I only had to cut the sheet metal once!  Each piece bent up exactly like the template!  No wasted sheet metal!  (OK, a small confession:  the first inner frame rail piece I bent in the wrong direction.  I was making the right tip, and I bent the piece in direction needed for the left side.  No worries, I saved it to for the left tip!)

The front piece before I welded the coupling nut

Step Four:  Welding!  First, I welded the coupling nut to the front piece.  The front piece is a rectangular piece of sheet metal that I cut and bent to fit over the opening of the boxed frame rail (see the pics).  Once the front piece was formed and fitted to the frame opening, I drilled a ½” hole in the center of the front piece.  I grabbed a ½” bumper bolt, a washer and a nut, and secured the coupling nut to the inner part of the front piece.  Then welded the coupling nut to the front piece. 

All the pieces ready for welding - also the original and the left side rail tip welded up.

I drilled holes in the side of the sheet metal where the piece of square stock rests and fill-welded each hole.  Fill-welds simulate spot welds, are just as effective and a great way to glue together sheet metal where it overlaps.

When the 16-gauge sheet metal is bent to shape and welded, it’s quite robust.

Yours truly burning some wire!

Step Five – Grinding and priming:  I’m using flux core wire in my MIG welder so the welds aren’t exactly stacked-nickels clean.  The flux core wire leaves copious spatter and ragged surfaces.  (I’m learning to weld during this project, so it’s not all the machine’s fault.)

I have a myriad of grinding apparatus, both electric and pneumatic, and trusty hand files too.  With some self-etching primer, the pieces are ready to weld on to Alphie.

Step Six – Getting the tips even!  Step six requires many trips under and out from under Alphie to measure, measure, measure!  I’m looking for a fixed point on each frame rail where I can consistently measure to the rail tip for a definitive length. 

Once I build up the courage to cut the frame rails, I’ll measure from my fixed points to get a consistent distance to the tip of each rail.  I’ll spot weld each tip to its rail and measure a few hundred times more before I stitch the welds together and grind it all smooth.  I plan to fill-weld some scab plates inside the box frame at the junction where each tip meets its frame rail.  All part of my build-to-110% plan.  I will take it as a win if the frame tips don’t bend while I’m rotating Alphie around on her rotisserie.

If they do bend, I’ll throw a proper wobbly!  (Gratuitous Britishism for this post!  I’m rather chuffed I found a way to use it:)

Welded and ground down.  All it needs now is primer, paint and to be installed in Alphie.

Next Up:  Roasting an Alpine!

Captain's Log, Supplemental – Fitting the Shiny New Frame Tips

The frame tips are fabbed up, and they are a cracking bit of kit, in my (somewhat) humble opinion.  The problem is gluing them to the end of the frame rails.  Simply butt-welding sheet metal to sheet metal will not be strong enough.  The tips will bend/break when they hold Alphie’s weight on the rotisserie, not to mention if she takes a future shot to the bumper, perish the thought!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, my first thought was to scab in some sheet metal rectangles and fill weld them to the inside of the frame and to my spanking new tips, a fairly solid plan but…

A Flash of Duh!

At about 2AM one morning, a couple of things occurred to me:

1) I used 1X1 square stock tube steel to recreate the teetery Rootes jack points, which means…

The tip with the 1X1 fill-welded into place

2) The interior width of the frame rail is 1 inch – you know, because the jack point is 1X1…

3) I can extend a piece of 1X1 square stock into the frame rail box to give the tips the strength they need, Duh!

Such twilight epiphanies create groggy mornings, my mind races, and being a little too pleased with myself, I struggle against the urge to make a lot of early morning noise in the garage.  BUT I have a banging better plan!

Cutting the frame tips off was more involved than I expected.  Contorting the grinder inside the fender and lower valance was problematic.  I had to drill out spot welds and drop the lower valance to get access.  I probably would have had to remove the valance to get her on the rotisserie anyway.

Cutting off the old tips cleanly and squarely didn’t happen.  The first cut was a bit ragged; it looked like I chewed it off, but nothing that lavish welding and grinding can’t fix.  I also razed a rodent subdivision that had gone up during Alphie’s dormant years, ewww!

I cut a piece of square stock that runs about three inches into the tip and about five inches into the frame rail.  This piece will run along the top of the frame rail and be fill-welded to the top and both sides of the frame rail box.

Homemade panel separator
and requisite hammer 

A good plan until it met the enemy.  Welding the 1X1 square stock to my nifty new frame tip was easy, but fitting the other end to Alphie’s boxed frame required suffering.  To get a good weld to the frame rail, I could see I would have to remove a 6" X 3" piece of sheet metal that makes the outer skin of the frame box.  Sounds easy enough, right? - like when the instructions say, Step 2: Remove drivetrain. 

It took a grinder, sawzall, spot weld drill, air hammer, my handy homemade panel separating knife (see the pic), an hour and a half and a spot of blood to wrest it from Alphie’s grip.  Also, I had to keep the piece intact enough to measure a pattern for its replacement.  The rust inside the frame would have compromised the welds anyway, so all necessary work.

Like a good little fabricator, I vice-gripped the frame tip/1X1 assembly into place and measured, and scrutinized, and palpated, and pondered, and squinted, and measured…  The tip stuck out farther than the passenger side.  I cut 2.5 cm from the frame rail, getting a much cleaner cut with the entire valance gone, by the way.  Re-vice-gripped the frame tip to the frame and repeated the measuring/squinting cycle.  Eventually, everything was GO.  Time to burn some wire!

The tip welded inside the frame rail.  The square stock provides extra strength

I welded everything and ground down some solid if ugly welds.  The new frame tip is strong enough to rotisserize Alphie, but I decided to hold off fabricating the replacement frame rail’s outer skin until I can rotate Alphie so that I can weld without crawling under the fender well.

The yellow shows where I will fab a cover piece
that will become the outer skin of the frame rail

Can confirm that welding upside down SUCKS – note to self: get a welding blanket, those little sparks burn when they fall in one's lap and jump around the floor under one's bum.

Now for the passenger side!

Partially welded in.  I'll need to fill in the gaps and holes