National Enquirer Spy Photo

Could It Be!

salt truck'in

We needed some ballast to load the front suspension, so we could check the tie rod clearance at ride height. So what better thing to use---bags of salt!

"Hind End" ready to weld

J.W. has the transaxle assembly all square and centered to the chassis. We have adjustable solid struts for setting up the ride height. They will be replaced with coil over shocks in the final assembly. The torsion bar suspension has been replaced by swing arms with heim joints bolted to the torsion tube housing. We have a couple of rear wheel drive, banjo spring mounting pads ready to be welded to the torsion tube housing. Everything is being held together with some custom U-Bolts that were made by Warner Spring in Indianapolis. We have a tempoary cross member in place to hold the frame rails true, untill we get every thing welded in position.

World Of Speed

The Indy Hi-Winders is the sponsor of the 130 mph club at the World of Speed at Bonneville. They sent me a jpeg of the artwork for the 130 mph club t-shirt. Just for fun, I had to take the thing into photo shop and put a Speedwagen Rat on it. Check out some land speed racing stuff at the following links--warning this info could be the beginning of your next project--BEWARE Usfra home page SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TIMING ASSOCIATION AND BONNEVILLE NATIONAL SPEED TRIALS OR ECTA - East Coast Timing Association Landracing.com Stuff

luv dem Vice Grips

Well it was a 100 deg heat index today, and I says to my self---self why don't you go out back and pull some fenders of a VW carcus. Nothing as refreshing as sweat and fender rot in your eyes to help develop character. The good part of this whole survival story is, I used some vice grips in a new way. These wonderful tools have saved my fanny many a time. In this saga, I had some fender retaining nuts that were in a recess in the tin. I couldn't get a wrench on them, plus they were rusted badly. ---Ah-hah, say's I--- THIS IS A JOB FOR VICE GRIPS! I took a pair of needle nose vice grips and grabbed the nut down in the recess. Then I took a set of big jaw vice grips and clamped them onto the jaws of the needle nose set. This gave me adequate "grippage" to get it undone. The solution to some of the other contrary bolts was not as elegent as this solution. Big hammer, chisel, hacksaw, pry bars and grumbling. Now that you have suffered through this tale of mechanical blaa-blaa---The happy ending is--the fenders are all off the carcuss

Frankenwagen

If you swap enough parts into a race car and hit it with a TIG welder at just the amperage , you can get the thing to come to life. Who needs Disney!

Body Mock-up

We are working with a Fiberglass Body, untill we get the metal one finished. The plastic body sure is handy to to have. We did some horse trading with Larrry Lemke to get this body. Larry is a bug drag racer from the Buckeye state. He consults us regularly for "professional" advice on how to tie junk onto the back of his truck, since he saw us rig this glass body onto the rear of Jim's S-10 pik-up.

BUG TIN

These are the two Super's that we will chop up for body tin. The dark blue one has a sun roof that will make an exit hatch. It takes two roofs to do a Top Chop (usually). We have a lot of rust and rot to repair, but we will use 200 mph Bondo for safety.

SLUG BUG

Every Kid needs a reason to punch his friend! Here at the Speedwagen Shop we work hard to keep the American Tradition of "slug bug" alive. Try to imagine a world without a reason to punch your pal.---- SLUG BUG....

Car Art

This is a a surprise from Ginny, one of the "Speedwagen Girls". They are old timie post cards from the Bonneville Salt flats. These little treasures were found on e-bay, and custom mounted. What a cool surprise! This a another surprise from Ginny. This is a doodling on the back of a Steak & Shake place mat. These are the original plans that Jim and I made for the Speedwagen car. Looks good in the black and chrome frame. If you ever see two guys with "FOUR COLOR" pens drawing on their placemats----then you have spotted us!

:(

This week we started stripping out a couple of Super Beetles to start the Speedwagen body fabrication. We decided to switch from a Standard body style to the Super. The Super windshield has more rake and is slightly curved. This will be an aero advantage for us. The sad news is I put the "whammy" to one of the front windows. The rubber seal was stiff as a rock, and I couldn't get it to let go of the metal. Just about the time I knew I should cut it out of the rubber seal--SNAP!!! . I took away my Harbor Freight catalog for a week as punishment.