Very Beginning of the 60 Starliner

[Drew Pojedinec]

Worst case scenario, I have a C0AE 1848 which is a factory replacement for that car that we could plop on while we continue the 2112 search.

[mbrunson427]

Thanks to Drew, the proper carb for the Starliner has been acquired. Well, the important piece of it anyway. It'll get sent down to Drew to be redone and completed, but this is a part I've been hunting for quite a while now. Only thing left is the air cleaner lid and I should have 100% of the hard-to-find parts for the car that were missing.

[mbrunson427]

Blasting is complete. The car is now sitting at Neal Kurschner's shop, Tin Element, to start on the metalwork. Blasting revealed some pretty poor patches in the rear quarters. There is a stainless panel that goes right behind the wheel wells, so I'm sure that area rusted over time and was patched back poorly. Some pretty thick bondo there as the pictures show.

I'll be stopping by every couple weeks while Neal has the car, so I should have some sheetmetal progress photos. The blue Jaguar Low Drag is leaving next week. That project has been consuming most of his time. It was built by him from scratch out of aluminum. I'm very impressed by his craftsmanship on it, can't imagine what the owner has paid to get that built.

I do need to find a hood. We knew that the hood had a problem in the middle of it, but once it was blasted it was pretty obvious to tell that it had been victim of an engine fire. There are pinholes in it and it's warped pretty bad. Neal can fix it, but figured we'd be time/money ahead to just find a straight hood.

[BruceS]

I've seen some FB posts from Neal on his projects; good choice for the Starliner!  Looking forward to following this.

[mbrunson427]

Stopped by today to take a couple pictures of the trunk floor for reference. He hung some body panels on it to get crap off the floor. Looks like somewhat of a car.



This is the area of the hood that was melted via engine fire. It's right in the center of the hood, so a bunch of the metal was warped and would probably be pretty hard to make 100% flat if we re-used this hood. Especially hard because it will be painted black.


I'm hunting for a new trunk floor now.


Spare tire area of the trunk.




Neal pulled some of the plastic off of the Jaguar so I snapped a picture. It leaves for Florida within a couple days. I'm really glad to have seen this car before it left the shop.

[410bruce]

Cut the center of that hood out and put a shaker in there.

[BruceS]

Mike have you tried AMD for the trunk floor?  Not sure if they make the exact piece but may have something from another year that is very close. 

[mbrunson427]

Mike have you tried AMD for the trunk floor?  Not sure if they make the exact piece but may have something from another year that is very close.

Bruce, I found a few options. AMD makes a 61-64 trunk floor. Major difference between a '60 trunk floor is the spare tire location. There's also some other random eBay deal. Bought both of them and I think Neal is going to try and work with those. I also found a full trunk floor locally, might drive out and look at it this weekend. I'm finding that '60 trunk floors were notorious for rusting. Between the 3 options, he will be able to piece something back together. I wish AMD made a replacement, but I can understand that it probably doesn't make business sense for them to produce one.

[mbrunson427]

Tin Element (Neal Kurschner) has started working on the Starliner. He does a very good job at documenting his progress. His work is in a rotation of different projects, I think if i ran a similar shop, I'd probably also work in a rotation so I never got bottled down into one single project. The Starliner has found it's place into that rotation. I'm not sure how many of you do instagram or facebook, but you can follow Neal's progress on both places. Here are the pictures so far, after 2 days of work. I probably won't continue to duplicate everything, but here is an idea of the quality (I think he deserves a lot more notoriety than he currently receives)

https://www.instagram.com/tinelement/
https://www.facebook.com/TinElementLLC

[allrightmike]

Mike, what a hoot to see panels like those fabricated; I know they are not otherwise available. A piece of artwork!


Mike.

[Stangman]

WOW very nice shes gonna be something when done. I wonder how long it took him to make that piece. Hes probably so used to doing it he probably did it in a very reasonable time frame. Regardless nice work

[mbrunson427]

Here's a couple more, of the other side.

[mbrunson427]

WOW very nice shes gonna be something when done. I wonder how long it took him to make that piece. Hes probably so used to doing it he probably did it in a very reasonable time frame. Regardless nice work

So far he has 3 days into it. He make's pretty quick work of it. The trunk on the other hand, I think he'll have some time into that.

[allrightmike]

Had pretty much the same problem areas with my Starliner project. Being that I am not a sheet metal artist I cut replacement pieces which were in good condition from a donor car. Still a ton of work if you don't want excess filler. Wouldn't even attempt to metal finish!


Mike.

[drdano]

With as nice as those patch panels are, I'd be surprised if he didn't metal finish it out after they are welded in.  Very nice work thusfar.