Caddy air cleaner mods

[123pugsy]

Very nice.
Wish I had space for one of them machines.

[MP&C]

Pugsy, I checked the thickness for you when we got done. Back down to .043-44

[123pugsy]

Originally Posted by MP&C

Pugsy, I checked the thickness for you when we got done. Back down to .043-44

Right on. You must be psychic.

[MP&C]

Now to fold the outer perimeter of our air cleaner base. I thought of using a tipping wheel, but that appeared to be rather close for comfort. So a curved piece of bar stock in the scrap pile (resource inventory) was selected and a drum sander used to fine tune the radius to match our part.














Then a hammer form was made to stretch and shape the "horn" of the base. Quite a bit of stretch needed but you don't know until you try...








Video of hammer action:


https://youtu.be/am3PNWl467o


Alas, cracking occurred, so the horn was trimmed just down from the radius and a piece of 18ga was hemmed, rolled, and welded, to form a band. The band was tacked up for a test fit, we'll get it fully welded tomorrow and get all the parts bolted up with some rivnuts and press nuts..

[Steve Hamilton]

Sure is a lot of work, but the results are spectacular!

[DarkLightning]

Looking good! Is that a Caddy or SBC engine under that blanket?

[MP&C]

SBC, 383 stroker

[DarkLightning]

Originally Posted by MP&C

SBC, 383 stroker

Thanks! Keeping that '57 "stock".

[Fargoman]

If you had rolled a bell-mouth in the horn it would have flowed more air.

Great work, way better than I could dream of but I'm a power person. Cue Tim Allen!

[MP&C]

More travel for the day job, had to install a 24' video wall. Back in the shop finally, progress on the air cleaner continues.. We had some stainless mesh left over from our speaker grill fabrication that we plan on using to address air flow inside our pocket for the ignition coil.





An 1-1/2" Rotacut is used to provide the hole in the pocket, two pilot holes spaced 1/2" apart will expand the hole for us.. The venturi effect inside the breather should promote air flow across the coil.














Next, to hold the mesh in place some retaining rings will be needed. We'll use some MDF trimmed to size to fabricate these...








Or the action version....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9xRENMU9l8





The newly formed part has a tight hold on the hammer form, so much that we can clamp it in the vise, drill the two pilot holes to match the pocket, and drill out two 1-1/2" Rotacut holes without the part budging..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM_iv-XZdw


The dynabride belt sander cleans up the points into flats, the side flanges are trimmed to size with a roloc sander, and then we can roll to fit the inside of the pocket.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyHC0p9NKrE


test fit....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DxT-oGXcfk


Holes are added for some 3/32 rivets to clear the mesh





Aluminum pop rivets are used to get a better view of the final look before we blow it apart for priming..





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9-Hp-O925M


We will be using press nuts in the coil to ease the pain of assembly, and we also added some more shiny stuff on the front end..