Ok, so that didn't work out so good.

I picked up the wheels yesterday from the duckman and took them to McDonough Tire on Racetrack to mount the tires. When i went to pick them up they looked awesome! The rear tires especially look so different mounted - from tall and skinny to wide and fat.

But, the rims had been scratched to hell by the tire machine.

Was that the installer's fault or the powder-coating? Hard to say, but the next thing I noticed made it a moot point. On both back wheels there was an area by the center that wasn't powder-coated at all!

So, this morning I got up early and ran the tires back to the shop to have them removed, then took the wheels back the the duckman. Hopefully it'll all be good this time.

Spraying the wheels was a bit of a failure unfortunately. Perhaps it's the wrong paint, but after a couple days of letting it dry I could still wipe my finger over it and come away black.

Not cool, and hardly the finish you want for wheels. One good scrub and I'd wash all the black off them.

Once again Curtis came to the rescue with a local powder coating company - run by the locally infamous "duckman". You can't miss him on the left driving east on SR20 from McDonough. Big building with loads of old tin outside.

I've left him the wheels over the weekend for coating with 50% gloss black, so hopefully this will work out better.

Wow. I wanted some aluminum sheets for building the 55's floor and bulkheads just like I did in the GT40 so I went looking. I posted on the HAMB for pointers too and got some great replies from locals - Curtis pointed out a very local fabrication firm that will buy materials in for you overnight.

I can't believe the price though. a 4x10' sheet of 3003 H14 was $94!!! Strangely I shortened my order from 6 to 3 when I heard that, I don't want to keep some $100 sheets around "just in case".

Funny story - I sometimes have problems being understood being English and living in the deep south. Not just the accent but the different names for things. I wanted some sheet that was 0.050" thick, but when I asked for "50 thou" all I got was a blank stare (it's 50 thousandths of an inch you see). Hehe. Apparently you're supposed to answer "0-5-0" to that question!

The wheels arrived yesterday as promised and they are great!

They fit on the car perfectly (always a slight worry when you are ordering custom size and offset) and are welded really nicely. No problems at all with these wheels falling apart.

I started spraying a couple of them last night (they came raw, sand-blasted steel). Cleaned them first with acetone, then a couple coats of etching primer, then a couple of coats of semi-glass engine enamel.

It was a bit disappointing though, because the paint came out like "fuzz" in a few places, so I'll have to sand those areas down and re-spray. I think it'll look nice in the end though.

Oh, and the hub-caps I bought fit too - I love it when a plan comes together.

Women don't understand, but hose ends are damn sexy.

And I'm nearly at the stage on the '55 when I need some - although the car ran/raced once as a '37 that was when it was right-hand-drive and much has changed since then. Oil and water tanks have moved, steering column moved sideways 5 feet, etc, etc.

So, I remembered Speedflow was the place to buy hoses and hose ends back 10 years ago, so I looked them up at http://www.speedflow.co.uk - still there and doing business!

But since I'm near a Summit store (it's 3 miles away, ain't he neat?) I thought I'd compare just for giggles.

Wow, speedflow might have been king back in the day, but a -8 straight end costs $14 there. Summit sells it for $6.95 - with no shipping of course. Ouch, time to drive to Summit I think...

I found some Mopar Cop wheels on ebay, luckily in San Jose (only 150 miles from www.RallyAmerica.com, so quick shipping) and they got sent the next day (more good luck, not a slow seller).

If it wasn't the weekend they would have been there the next day, but they got delivered this morning.

Amazingly, when I got notification from Fedex about the delivery I called them and was told the wheels were already cut up and being worked on. I actually spoke to Gary McLean, the boss, who answered the phone. McLean has always been the best known name for wire wheels having been in business for 40 years - I was really pleased to have spoken to him.

Man, this experience is so night-and-day compared to my other experiences. Can you believe I wasted 4 months trying to get these wheels elsewhere.

Yet another example that the HAMB is the best place to start..

So, third time's a charm - I'm now getting http://www.rallyamerica.com/ to build my wheels. They only have one wheel, so I'm buying some from ebay and getting them sent straight there. Jimmy reckons they'll turn them around within a week.

Sounds good to me!

I spent some time on Sunday in the garage finishing up the radiator mounts. The flip-front will also hinge on these mounts.

I was torn between making them lightweight so that they would easily break off in case of a minor collision (saving the chassis) and making them beefy enough to jack the car up on them (and hence strong enough to cope with low driveways etc where they might get bumped).

I went for beefy in the end, and added a cross brace in the direction needed to provide strength for lifting the car up.

The anti-roll bar (sway bar) mounts to that plate seen on the chassis rails, so I couldn't put any more bracing there..

I tapped the tube so the radiator can bolt to it.

Bonus picture: See how I mounted the oil tank overflow and water overflow tanks. I had Daniel weld the two together so I could use a single mounting point.

On Friday I called into Wheel Vintiques to find out how my wheels were doing (they should be done by now) and - well let's put it this way, I didn't get an answer. They moved between "the boss is building them", "they are in the shop being built" to "we have no idea when they are being done".

When I said that's not a good enough answer and wanted more information I got the classic response "What do you want to know, how many welds are on each wheel?".

Uh, that's just great guys. I just want my wheels!

So, I said I'll call back on Monday. And here's the funny part - before I could, at 10am I get one of those "early morning" Fedex deliveries. They are expensive. SURELY they didn't pull their finger out and finish the wheels and overnight them to me?

No, not quite! It was a refund check.

Apparently 5 weeks into the process they decided that they couldn't build the wheels after all. Great response guys.

Obviously, I can't recommend this company to anyone. Unless you want to use them as a place to store your money for a few weeks...

Fun couple of days on the '55, I finally got the dry sump oil tank fitted. After studying pictures of stock 55 firewalls I decided to recess mine just a touch - about a foot - on the passenger side and put the tank there. There weren't a whole lot of options!

Moroso sell a mounting kit for $90 which consist of a couple of stainless bands and some nuts and bolts. Screw that! I bought a 6' length of aluminum from Lowes and made my own for $6. I sandwiched the aluminum with steel plates where they mount.

I've fitted the driver side front roll cage bar too, so I started work on mounting the radiator. After a lot of measuring and thinking about how to combine the front tilt front end mount I still ended up going through a couple of fabrications before being happy.

The first time I decided to cut a section from the round tube and weld it some thick 3/8 plate and tap it for the bolts. A lot of work to hang a radiator from through, so I've decided to junk that and simply tap straight into the round tube wall. It's probably 1/4" wall, so that'll be fine.

More photos: closeup, radiator mount 1, mount 2