'betsy' 3500 hot rod project

S

sharonandmatt

New Member
well to start with we recently bought the car from ebay as an no MOT rat rod project.
a trip to stevenage from nottingham to tow it back was loads of fun! had to remove the prop shaft so it could be towed the plan of this taking an hour or so backfired a bit with 4 of the bolts refusing to let go, so after 3 hours of my mate and i lying on our backs slowly sawing them off we were ready to go, nothing like being towed on a short rigid bar for two and half hours in the dark, possibly the most terrifing experience of my life as the tow mounts didnt match up on the rover dead centre the BMW doing the work to the left hand side so that made for an interesting run.
next on the list was to replace the prop shaft and prepare her for the MOT, the prop went back in with very little problems and a progressive check of the car revealed a few small problems which we soon put right, then it was off for her MOT test time, we went to the garage with no real expectations she would pass more as a plan to give us an idea of what needed doing first but shock horror she was road legal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With our newly aquired road legality we took the girl out for a drive and discovered a real tendancy to misfire when engine under load this has now been traced to a possible leak in the manifold, and then the plans to rod her out began to take place!

well the plan for her is:
new holley carb and inlet plenum/manifold
new custom exhaust as the present one is terrible and grinds on the floor getting onto our driveway
fix the rat rod look to smarten her up
remove the terrible blue window tint and glue (mostly done now just need to finish rear window)
repair the only areas of rust (bottoms of the doors and a little in the drivers foot well)
upgrade and lower the suspension
full custom interior including all interior trim and dash board
once she gets through all these points the plan is to continue improving performance until she can make a respectable turn out on the strip to show up all these blue ringed pops and anglias
so any help and advice on areas to look out for whilst up rating everything would be appreciated
 
There's videos of this car on youtube, I'm sure. Is that the previous owner? I remember seeing this thing on ebay, and thinking it had the potential to be something quite interesting, wish you all the best with the car.
 
We've seen all the videos including the one when it was blue. We did a lot of research before buying it. It was one of the many previous owners who put the video up, not the man we bought it off! We'll keep you posted on how it all goes although the most time comsuming thing we have to do first is remove that awful blue tint off the rear window and from trying earlier, it's not going to be easy!
 
Just a comment,your image file seems too small to expand to get a better look?
maybe its me but i cant get it any bigger than you have posted them :?: :?
 
yeah we don't know what went wrong with the pictures every-time we tried to upload them it said it was too big shrunk them a bit and now suddenly they are tiny? what do you guys use to sort photos for on here
 
heres a reattempt at uploading photos hope it works this time
 

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Much better, I can see it clearly now :wink:

What's going on with the rear lights, how have they been made, and are you keeping them? The kinda work but are just missing a certain something, just really need to be tied in with the rest of the car somehow. I love the idea of hotrodding it, are you near to any strips?

I'd be looking at beafing up the rear suspension mounts, and possibly the elbows to start with to survive the launch. I believe uprated parts are becoming available for the differential assembly to address it's weaknesses. I'm led to believe they don't like hard use, especially if you're doing some engine work. Also you're going to need some more grip, so you may need to source some wider wheels at least for the rear :twisted:

Simon
 
The whole car has been smoothed but the rear lights don't sort of "flow" .Would be interesting to see it with normal rear lights, maybe series 1 lights without the reversing lights
 
DaveHerns said:
The whole car has been smoothed but the rear lights don't sort of "flow" .
Click to expand...

My problem is that they look exactly like tail lights from a Land Rover. I don't have anything against L-Rs as I have two of them, but these look a bit primitive for this car Depending on where just you want to go with the whole car, some snazzy LED lamps might work
 
If you want to keep that general approach for the rear lamps just get a set of angled spacers made up so that the lamps lie horizontally. They point upwards at the moment which I think is why it looks wrong.

Alternatively try a bit of tin bashing on a scrap/spare set of rear wings. Adjust the fall line of the tops of the wings to follow the boot line finishing in a rounded snub just to frame the boot lid. Then use Triumph Dolomite lamps along the bottom edges of the boot lid?

Chris
 
there is something about the rear lights that isnt quite right i suspect it might just be the angle they sit as mentioned before, but we will probably be replacing them at some point to make the shape flow better i have seen a set of LED's that are completely hidden until they are on which could work or i may jujst adjust the angle of the bulbs as i quite like the set up as is but agree somethings not quite perfect with it.
as to the upcoming modifications we will be starting a full investigation into the points we need to up-rate as soon as i can get all the panels off to check for rot and weak points my new welder should be coming next weekend so will probably be starting then.
as to the wider wheels at the rear they are a bit wider already but sadly we have definitely run out of room against the wheel arch, this is where i dont know what to do, i dont want to stretch the arch out and ruin the line of the car but i dont know how much i can bring the wheels in without fouling all the suspension points so will be a case of working it all out when i can get the time.
the diff will probably end up getting replaced at some point but i have been told they can cope with dragging but not prolonged hard use but we shall see.
at the moment we are still trying to decide which gear box to use stick with our BW45 and just get it tightened up or swap to the 5 speed manual, both have good points to them the BW can take a massive amount of power through it the manuals are more easily broken but manuals are more fun until we have tuned the auto, truly cant make a decision!!!!!

As to strips we are in Nottingham so warwick county race way and santa pod are both relatively near us
 
If you want a real drag car then the only option at the back is a live axle, then you can tub the arches, good old volvo 240 axle may just be narrow enough to fit under a P6 without having to cut it.
 
thats an interesting idea, what would have to be done about the suspension setup? that would give us much better off the line traction so would be useful
 
well quick update as we haven't been up to much, stripped out all the interior and cleaned all the surface rust and grot off so that we can work out if any welding needs doing, and thankfully only to small areas need doing in the rear passenger foot wells so thats good, managed to fit the nice new offenhauser manifold and the holley carb is ready to go in once i work out the brackets to link up the kick down and the accelerator cable. managed to pick up a set of SD1 heads rhodes lifters and a new fast road crane cam, the heads have already had the springs cut to allow the extra lift from the cam and is now being ported and polished professionally by my father and the haps at weslake so hopefully that should all add up to a nice set of power upgrades.
we have finally made a decision about auto vs manual and are going to pick up an uprated 5 speed sd1 box around christmas time so if any one has a spare pedal box and master/slave cylinder please let me know.
Other than that after recent chats with my dad discovering he is now helping out at weslake am getting fairly tempted by a narrow jag rear end as they have all the tooling to sort out whatever i need but that will be something to sort out in the new year.
With any luck all of these upgrades we should be getting into the realms of a respectable turn of speed for the first run what you brung in march
 
I'm no good with photoshop, but I wonder how those lights would look frenched in?

Nice project, saw this one on youtube also (and lusted after the moon discs :wink: ). Will keep an eye on this to see how it shapes up. 8)

Would also be interested to see one live axle'd and how it is mounted.
 
I think those lights would look awful frenched-in and also the light output would be pretty poor from a road safety point of view
 
frenched lights wouldnt really work with how thin the rear wing tip is and i agree totally about the light output for a short period i had a totally frenched led sled borrow from a friend and the rear lights were totally unnoticable in traffic i was constantly worried some one would back end us. to the live axle hopefully it will happen sometime next year and will probably require the entire rear end being reworked or possilbly a tube chassis being worked out
 
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