49 Hudson Nailhead Build

Ahh what a weekend. Honest last week sucked with one day being a family funeral then the other days working till 8:30 each night as I worked to a time frame that is still closing on me in a most desperately horrid fashion.

Yesterday (Saturday for those future cyber readers out there) in a semi hangover state it was deemed a most suitable idea to jump in the ol 52 Buick and cruise along two and a half hours of highways around lakes, gorges and wide open roads to a small central Otago NZ town called Cromwell. Calls of fame being some giant fruit statue thing, a hydro power lake, vine yards and for the last few years a car show attracting a wide following of people from around the South Island NZ.
A good chilled turn out of 600-700 cars i guess. Some pretty cool cars. But the inspiration i was looking for wasnt present to tell the truth. I was after interior ideas. Paint ideas. tail light ideas. and well… ideas in general.

This fine day was followed by more liquid refreshments & fish n chips -a kiwi classic and mighty fine cuisine in moderation when coupled with a Mexican blanket, a good woman and pumping tunes in summer.

Saturday done and pass resulted in a overcast rainy Sunday. Fine day for garage mayhem really. And that is what happened. With a general check over the 52. not much to report. rock steady. Following this beverages where served and car chats between the better half and my self progressed. Good times chatting over cars we saw yesterday, looking at photos and being those critical bastards as we picked at bits n bobs from each car.

Flockie from Flockies Kustom Chassis & Rods flicked me a most welcome text saying basically to check facecrack. Faster than a speeding ticket I was online. will note as fast as i was “she” was going “FUCK ME! HE CHOPPED IT!” before i could figure out whats what on my phone. beating me to the line by a good 30 sec. ( i work IT and got thrashed)

Measurements taken. Flockie in the background getting ready.

Available real-estate is promising upfront. Checkout that sweet ride in the background.

Diff out. Looking pretty good under there for the age of the beast.

Ass end is dropped on out. But man that crap up front just aint doing it for me. Wonder how that can be fixed…. ? Something that makes sparks maybe?

ps dont mind the slide in the background. a reason to all madness. last i was at the shop he was fixing an early 50’s F100 hood that had been used as a sled for the kids behind a truck in the fields by the last owner.

Touching wheel arches. Damn those big old guards can swallow up 28 inches of tire. I see this and just grin. Of course bumpstops and bla bla bla will add a few inches but still. BRUTAL! Side pipes will be on there as well to make it that lil bit lower…

Im thinking a C Notch is in order my friends. Check out below pic and tell me what you think. God im almost tempted to say tubb that fucker and get some serious fats on the back. Unfortunately i doubt this will happen though. those guards are a pain to get fat tires off but we will see what can be done.

Gud damn son! Low enough?

Front off, ass dropped and sitting pretty.
This is the pic that got the missus screaming “he chopped it!” over and over with squeals of glee & frantic social media postings. This generally only happens normally for lipstick releases from her fav brands, cats, new episodes of Vikings and leadsleds in general. So a big TICK in the only female perspective i care about.

I plan to use this photo to combat the “maybe i should curve your spending on the car line” should it rise its ugly head.

Top job Flockie. Thanks Ash for the pic’s. He has a Truck he was air bagging today at the same time Flockie was taking care of business.

o.o i have a new desktop wall paper.

Alex

Got asked if i have any pics of the car from when it was in storage.
The better half did a quick search pulled these off the interwebs.
Since it was off the road since 1969 im guessing it also had other older accommodation at some point.
Three owner car so i guess the person who took these was the second owner who had it for a handful of months & we purchased from.

And a few old photos we got given of the car & scanned from before it was painted mid 60s. Dated on the back 1962.

On a cold Wednesday a txt msg came across saying the rotisserie has showed up.
What better day to flip the old tank on its side and waterblast the underside.

Assembly didn’t take long. Straight forward process of slotting it all together really and checking the pins.
A quick bit of fab work and some welding and it was all connected to the car whilst still sitting on supports.
Sledge hammer was brought into play to whack out the supports.
And the car floated there like some crudy jetsons hovercar. ^^

Releasing the pins it sat level. A good sign. Was a bit worried it might not of been centered and would flip to one side.
We slowly rotated it and clearances worked just fine. Flockie nailed it. Rotated nice and smooth with little effort required.
Now if any of you have even tried trussing up a bird or something on a BBQ rotisserie you might appreciate how well we did getting a huge old car so well balanced. I know for one i have popped a chicken or something on to find it is off kilter slightly as it turns. Resulting in all kinds of grief from worn out motor to drive it to one side hitting the pan as it rotates.

And behold the HoverHudson!



As you can see in the above image – its a tad dirty under the car. Dry as a bone and no rot to be seen. Everything is nice and straight just dirty.

The rotisserie is on wheels so moving it about is a breeze.
With the forks of the tractor it was brought outside for another water blast.

The amount of gravel, rat turds, dust and crud that came off the bottom of the old beast was amazing. Think some of the rails had been solid silt and dirt. Some gravel is still trapped in the rails.

And as much as i would like to blame the light rain that had started i must confess that the reason i got so saturated was my glee i was having as i blasted the shit out of the old car.

Day latter it had dried up a bit.

Will be back out on Sunday to scrape more crud off it.

Now that some of the old crap is off the rear its time to start the cutting and welding madness! God damn but i am excited!

So as you can gather from the above posts the springs etc have all been ripped on out.
I chose a RideTech Triangulated 4Link to take its place.
Must say im happy with the product. 5.6mm(0.219inch) wall thickness tubing and 4.8mm(0.188inch) laser CNC brackets – included is brackets for the shockwaves. It just feels sturdy and built right. Ridetech sales reps are great to deal with and more than happy to go over everything making sure the right product was ordered for the car, weight, ride height and driving style.

I chose triangulated for a few reasons. One being no panhard being needed to free up room with luck for the exhaust as not much room under the Hudson for two pipes. Another was i could get tighter wheel to fender clearances due to less or no side to side play compared to a parallel 4link. They should give a much better ride quality than springs whilst being able to cope with rising and lowing the car better as well with bags.

Anyway a refresher of how it was once the big stuff at back was stripped off:

Below you can see the old brace and spring mounts. Flockie dealt to these.

And then fabricated a Hudson bracket kit & pipe support to replace original chassis brace for each side. Good thick 5mm plating.

Welded the four brackets to the car along with the ride tech one. Everything is rust killed and sealed up under the plates.

With bottom bar attached.

Bottom bar & mount.

Right hand side bottom bar done.

Left hand side bottom bar.

And done!
Bottom two bars attached to car via with some nice brackets.


Next is notching the chassis to allow diff, rising the unscraped section of trunk floor a bit and attaching the top triangulated bars.
Flockie just sees the gear and the car, visualizes so quickly how it will go together, quick glance at the NZ certification rule book to make sure its good then attacks it.

Ass end is pretty much done!
Well the hard parts any way.

Full ridetech 4Link tacked in and Moser housing in place.

Useing HQ 8000 series Shockwaves from Ridetech at the back. The mounting brackets have three height settings.

All welded in and a quick coat of black. This is shown at the lowest height.

once the skirts and rocker panels are on its going to look pretty good on the ground at this low height.

Guess i will do a bit of a write up of whats going on gear wise back there. Whats in and still to be put in sitting in boxes.
Talked about the Ridetech 4Link but im also using the before mentioned Shockwave airbags from the same brand.
For those not in the know click here to check them out with all the fancy videos and marketing guff. Basically they are air bags that mount like a coil over but with air shocks with 26 tuneable rebound clicks.
The company was great to deal with and extremely helpful.
Another company who had exceptional service was Moser Engineering. Drag racing heritage & brand so built to withstand alot of abuse. the guys build and race the kit they build. Website here.
Man i feel sorry for Brian Miles as he steered me through the process of ordering the custom 9′ rear end.
A million emails, measurements, re-measurements latter we got it sorted.
Bare classic looking Ford 9″ Housing made to my measurements. (2inch narrower than stock Hudson)
Moser axles w/bearing package 5×4 bolt pattern with screw in studs.
Moser perf nodular case.
Trac Loc posi 31 spline.
Nodular support.
1350 Pinion yoke – steel
gearing at 3.50
fill & drain plugs.
Wilwood breaks i will cover when i get to installing.
Should last me well.

So next step is taking it down off the rotisserie and sorting the front end. It will be back up on there a few more times yet i imagine

With the car now off the rotisserie its time to start looking at the front end.
As is blatantly obvious there is a slight lack of one currently. Its laying outside somewhere.
The old Hudsons one although fine in the days of dirt track NASCAR was a little lacking for what I was after. That being an updated drive train with disk brakes, power steering, airbags and room to fit the engine & trans in. Unfortunately the heavy old setup fell short on pretty much all these points.

Now I think I have already rambled on about the process of deciding what to do up front and so wont go on about it to much. Basically it boils down to shelving ideas such as restoring & updating the old setup, to a Fatmans front clip, to Jag IFS, to a Holden HQ-HW setup, to the current custom made setup that is made to my ride height, weight, drive style with zero bump steering, anti dive and all that guff. It also meets all the rigorous New Zealand certification requirements.

The little progress we did on Saturday was just assembling the fronts hubs & brakes along with nailing down the desired and final air out height up front. So nothing to hardcore.

Using a Wilwood setup. Main thoughts being I already had Wilwood at the back, they sell the complete hub & brake kit so things should fit together easy, and they should give no worries with stopping the heavy hung of iron. Also the kit should fit under most 15″ wheels but would be fine with larger wheels upto say 20inch. – yes im still unsure what im using wheel wise.

The kit used is a 6 piston, vented, drilled & slotted 12.19″ rotors with ford stud ( part no. 140-10741-D ) purchased from Summit who had them on special and nicely also chucked in stainless hose brake kit for free valued at near $60 USD. Nice perk that will make it not only fit all together easier but will look sweet as well. I must admit I think Summit Racing is one of my favorite stores in the world *~*’

Bearings and aluminum hubs all fitted together nice. packed up with high temp grease. Of course Wilwood would have to be different and used bleeping star shaped T40 & T45 headed bolts. And naturally we had to drop everything to pop down to the local engineering shop to pick up a half inch set so we could torque em up.
Once back said newly purchased sockets firstly snapped trying to torque to a small 20 or 25lbs then twisted trying to do the next size ups 40lbs. Was more than disappointed with Teng Tools quality and they will be going back. these happened to be the only ones they had in imperial at the time.
It will all be pulled off anyway when we go to paint everything but still… holdups and crap tools. Sure many of you know the frustration of it all.

And whats one of my posts with out a bunch of photos…
Setup on the welding table.

Sitting in front of the car. Drilled holes in the shock bars at air out/low height and have it set to that. This is the car at our original ride height. note the 25mm/1 inch bar up front under the car. Bleeping low and we have decided to raise the front up another inch so will have two inch clearance at this lowest point when air out. Will also give a slight rake to the car whats cool. The rear can be raised or lowed as well as its on its middle setting but we are planing to keep it there currently.

And to give a better idea of how high it currently is.. a pic of yours truly standing next to the car. Love how the roof looks chopped but its still factory. Again note this is air out not at ride height.

Things are looking good.

Surgery was required & the firewall was cut up a lil bit. This has meant the engine could be brought back a bit whats solved a raft of issues.

Clearances for PS rack hose connections solved. It was right up against the sump. But now we have ample room.
Able to bring the engine into the center more. Its now only slightly offset by about 20mil.
Engine mounts will work way better.
Able to get the carbs to the ideal flat positioning as it was on a bit of an angle.
Positioning for bracing to join the two sides of the rails will be better. Being able to go under the engine in a bolt in set up.
How the trans will sit along with the two piece drive shaft will be way better and pretty much flat whilst not having to modify the floor pan other than maybe slightly at the very front.
The distributor will be hidden more. I wanted wires out of sight as much as possible so this suits me. Being a pertronix unit I shouldn’t need to get to it much but if needs be will still be able to with out to much hassles.
Weight and center of gravity move a bit more back behind the front wheels instead of over them.
better clearances for sump.

Doing all this means we may have a heap of room up front. Not what I really want but we will have to wait and see how it all looks with the alt, PS pump, radiator and fans. the custom fan shroud I was envisioning may need to be bigger than I was thinking to help fill the gap.
Time will tell. once I have the panels on & rad in.

Speaking of the radiator. i have decided to keep the original Hudson radiator. Its getting re-cored by a local shop Timaru Radiator Repairs. Russell the guy in charge is a top man and been bloody helpful with some great input. Gave options for different cores etc for the old four core copper rad that included different row spacing etc.
Since the tanks are off etc im getting him to do a few other modifications. moving the bottom outlet to the other side to match the Nailheads inlet then shifting the radiators top inlet to the center to match the Nailheads centrally mounted thermostat. Thinking of using a flexy hose to give it that vintage look you see in all the old 50’s and 60s mags. Plus the ribbing will go with the fins on the engine.
Since its not a great idea to have the filler at the same point as the inlet due to pressure etc im getting it moved to one side on the top but im also getting a dummy one added to the opposite side. This is merely to please my OCD nature. when im standing with the hood up looking down at the engine I want to see the top hose running center rad to center engine then two caps to add balance on either side. My train of thought was with just the one to one side it would be a bit lopsided for the look im after. The dummy will also have a dummy overflow pipe just to keep it symmetrical. OCD much? /twitch


A slight notching is needed on the chassis rail above for the steering arm.

The engine mounts minus the side supports shown. Along with PS hose clearance.

Once the trans is lifted slightly and bolted up it will get the carbs flat along with increasing clearances around the racks hose fittings & rocker covers. Hard to tell from that photo but its looking like very little if any modifications will be required to the floor pan. Will pop it in soon to have a look. Should still be nice and tucked up even at air out.

A look at the old Hudson rad and where everything is being shifted to.