1958 Drag Racing Doc...Cool.

I was amazed at the support vehicles just as much as I was the drag cars.

Well as usual, we headed back to Desert Valley Auto Parts see if we could find a second skirt. We found one buried in the dirt underneath a '50 Poncho a few months back. Got the hardware too. After a short time of sight-seeing in different sections of the yard, we headed over to the Pontiac section. After a little bit, we happened upon our skirt. I felt like some automotive archeologist as I stood there grinning from ear-to-ear dusting off my relic that I had pulled from a shallow grave.

Brought 'em home and dragged my new helper's pack and play out into the garage so he could supervise.

 Once we figured out how to mark and drill the hardware, the rest was easy.  We even threw on the full moons to see what it was going to look like.

VJ Day Video

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

The original gas pedal is held together by a ball and socket type set up.  The rod that comes through the floorboard had the "ball" on the end.  The back side of the pedal has a rubber socket that the ball pops into.  Anyway, it eroded and is now broken.  I found an old Speed King bass drum pedal and decided to make a pedal out of it.



If you have never seen one of these, it looks to be an easy convert.  There is a good base with a solid hinge.  The top of the pedal connects to the a swing arm that moves the drum stick so that it strikes the bass drum.  While all of that extra metal is, I am sure, functional and necessary to play the bass drum, it is top heavy in appearance and just all around ugly.

So I got out the cutting wheel, and took the end off.  Unfortunately, I don't own a die grinder, yet, so I used the side of the cutting wheel to smooth out my cuts.  'Came out pretty good.  And I polished it up a little too.

My cousin is going to help me rivet some narrow side panels in the rear and then I will run a hole through the rod and either use a cotter pin or thin rod to secure it.  At least that is what I have in my head.  I will keep you posted.

Additionally, we want to french the headlights.  So there is no better way to accomplish that, in my opinion, than through the use of a pair of 1953 Ford headlight rings.  The outer rings were separate from the inner rings.  Not knowing anything about Fords, I had to do some homework and I found that there were some clips that held the two together.  I was able to find those clips at Mac's Antique Auto Parts.