Rat Rod Ricipe

Here's a picture of the "cage", I don't know what you call it in Jaguarese, but it's the inteface between the rear end and the unibody and It performs three functions: a mounting point for the third member, a mounting for the coil-over shocks and it reinforces the pivot points of the lower control arms. I have to duplicate this in order for everything to work correctly. The welder cometh, my son Bryan, when he isn't here working on race cars or hot rods he's taking his kids to their sports or he's working at the power house, we spend a lot of quality time together. The third member connection, check out the fish plates on the mitered joints, the pivot point reinforcement, and a shot of the chassis on our jig.

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eugene13 said:
Thanks Tom, tView attachment 141451 View attachment 141451 View attachment 141453 he true soul of a rat rod is a car put together with whatever you have, Bill collects Jaguar (pronounced jag- you-are if you're British) automobiles and has had these parts for a long time. The rear end came from a stolen XKE that was wrecked on the Native American Reservation south of here, he had the frame hanging in his garage for 15 years, the car will tell a story... but I digress. Here's a picture of the motor mounts, KISS, the upper motor mount before and after me and my die grinder, and installed. I love working with this old British Iron, they measure in inches.
Click to expand...

Pardon me....
However where does one find that large bushing for the motor mounts...
Been looking for one of those for a while... the local parts shops are not much help.

THX in advance!!
 
Welded up the radius rod mounts, shock absorber mounts and the reinforcement for the lower control arm pivots, the rear end if finished and now we can turn our attention to the front end. The bumper is from an XKE and the Lucas fog light is from a swap meet, Bill said that Joseph Lucas was a pioneer in automotive lighting and electrical systems and his detractors called him the Prince of Darkness, I always thought that was Ozzie Osbourne. Bill needed some stand-offs for his headlight buckets, the ends are spherical. Having no way to turn a sphere I cut a 25 degree taper and attacked them with a file and used Prussian blue to check the fit. Not finished but close enough to show it off, the grille came as a rough sand casting, 40 hours of polishing and it's starting to shine. The transmission mount is next so we had to install the engine. Last is a view out the back door of my shop, we broke a snowfall record for December, the bright pink spots are the neighbor kids playing on snow piles.

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I've seen lot's of rat rods. Yours looks like a show car. Keep the pictures coming.

Tom S.
 
The build is much to clean to fit my understanding of "Rat Rod".

I propose "Cat Car" instead.

Cats are known to regularly triumph over rats. Isn't the Jaguar a cat?

Either way, it sure looks like a great project.
 
Looking great. The front radius rod support is pretty long. have you considered gusseting it? A triangulated plate would be standard fare, but a tubular strut would probably look cleaner and serve the same purpose. it might be fine as is, and I'm no engineer, just thought I'd throw it out there. Really like what you've come up with so far. Cheers, Mike
 
Hi @eugene13 , I just stumbled across this thread, read every word and admired every picture and had to say.......Fantastic!

Thanks for posting this build!
Please keep us updated as it progresses, I can't wait to see more.

Thanks again,
-brino
 
Thanks for the compliments and the ideas, extropic is close, Bill calls it a Cat Rod, and yes, we'll put some tubing gussets on the Radius rod brackets. The parts finally came from Great Britan. (that's what is says on the package Made In Great Britan) and I'm starting on the transmission mount.
 
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