Episode 20 – Working under the car today. Rick wants to run dual exhaust straight out the back, the gas tank needs to be moved and the spare tire tub taken out. Rick drains the gas tank, drops it, and gets it out of the way. The spare tire tub needs to be cut out. He is going to go through and clean all of the undercoating off, drill out the spot welds, and move the two braces towards the passenger side about four and a half inches. That should center the tank right up and allow the exhaust to run right out the back. Once that is finished, he will fill up the hole of the wheel tub. Now that it is out of the way, he can move on to the gas tank and rear suspension.
Episode 20 – Video Transcript
Rick Drewry: Hi everybody.
Here I lie underneath my 1953 Chevy, on a creeper, and what I am doing is, I am figuring out how I want to do the exhaust. These cars only came with a six straight inline six-cylinder and with a single exhaust that went out the back. Well, I want to run dual exhaust, and there are all kinds of things in the way if you want to run them all the way out the back, which I do. So, what I did was I drained the tank, dropped it, and got it out of the way. It is actually in good shape. What I want to do is – the gas tank is almost up against the frame rail on the driver’s side, and on the passenger side, it is up against the spare tire tub, which is also up in between the frame and the gas tank. So, there is no room really to go straight out the back. What I am going to do to solve this problem is I am going to move the gas tank over about four and a half inches to the passenger side, and that way it is centered between the two frame rails, but to do that, I have to get rid of the spare tire tub.
Hanging down right here is the spare tire tub, so that is what I am dealing with. I am going to cut that out. Then, we also have the braces here, with straps that go around and hold the gas tank up against these braces; there and here. So, I cannot just slide the tank over because the tank has grooves in it that rest on these braces. What I am going to do is go through and clean all of this undercoating off, drill out the spot welds, and then move these two braces towards the passenger side about four and a half inches. That should center the tank right up.
Now that sounds awful. Which it probably will be because nothing is easy. But the hardest part would be getting this undercoating and stuff off. Once I do that, I will drill out the spot welds. I will move them over and reweld them in, and it will go in place like it is made that way. If I tried to just slide over the gas tank, it is not made that way, so it would be a model to damage the tank, or the tank would be tilted a certain way. None of that is good. The best bet is to literally move these braces over, and it would be worth a days’ worth of work to get that all done. That is going to be the next step, cutting out the wheel tub and then drilling out these braces, moving them over, and then filling in the hole of the wheel tub. I will weld a piece of metal to cover up the hole. So that is what is up next.
Haven’t decided yet, but I could actually almost take a nap lying under here. But not today. I got too much to do so, stay tuned!
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