COOPSTRIPES: September 2012

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Summer is over time to work even harder...

The last month has been , well different .. . The old saying about the devil being in the details, is right. The major work goes fast then the assembly will eat you up in minutia. Replacing lost bolts. Pieces don't fit.You assemble a bunch of stuff only to discover you forgot something and have to take it all apart.
Got the master cylinder in and before the engine goes in the brakes need to be done.

Dale brought down his magic flair tool and bent up some serious brake lines. we installed an adjustable metering valve and bled the brakes.. work like a charm!

In goes the engine!!
The custom radiator mounts worked better that I hoped. I don't know why this hasn't been tried before. The problem with the early vans is the lack of airflow. With the radiator in the engine cover its hard to get air thru it.. this increases air flow and the air from the radiator goes under the van and not thru the engine cover.. gona get a shroud and electric fans on it yet.

While searching ebay, I came across the ultimate license plate for the van. In Ohio, you can run a year plate on a vehicle with historical plates. Since I am putting a Rat Fink on the van. This plate is perfect..the correct year,in great shape. RFA. Rat Finks of America? Rat Fink Artist...lol Had to have it

Got a call from Mister Green. The man who restos the horse drawn vehicles. He wanted some wagon wheels striped...those things had the snot striped out of them.

Another call from my good customer Dan Wright, the model A restorer.. did this 29 for him.

This one was a stripe job with a bad spot on the door..customer thought a daffy would cover it nicely.... LOL

Mike at skinner diesel built me a drive shaft that fit like a dream..It's a tight fit but it should work... guess we'll find out. lol

When we did the gas tank and filler neck we used two different sizes of pipe.. close but different enough that a hose wouldn't fit over both. So I made an adapter so a 2 inch hose would connect them. sucess!

With the engine back in I could put the serpentine system on. then connect all the wiring. This is a March performance kit and it is really well made.

Instructions are clear and easy to follow, and everything fit exactly as it was supposed to.

Impressive!

The wiring to the trans and gas tank will be run thru a conduit that I'm putting thru the center of the cross members under the floor. I'll paint it to match the floor and it will be unnoticeable.

I didn't want to paint the drive shaft till I made sure it would fit.

Hooked up the trans shifter...connecting a Dodge cable to a Chevy trans...lots of fabricating..but it works good. I got a Chevy throttle bracket from the yard. As you can see nothing lines up as it should.. more fabricating...lol

I'm running lines for the air conditioning, trans,radiator wiring for heater box,cooling fans ,and on and on. The devil is in the details....

THE EAGLE SAGA

It was 40 years ago and I attended the largest van event that I ever went to. Even tho I had had a van for some 4 years, this was to be only my 3rd van event. The Nationals at Bowling Green, Ky was sensory overload to the van enthusiast. 6300+ vans in one place? It still stirs the emotions. I belonged to a club from Newark, Ohio at the time called, North Fork Vans.

It was hot that weekend. Very hot.. To hot to even move. Got up sat to enter the show & shine. This was to be the first for me. When I got to the check in area we discovered that there were nearly 1000 vans in the line ahead of us. Didn’t do it. After parking back at the club camp we went to look at the vans. The heat was oppressive, and we spent most of the time in the bleachers watching the vans inch their way through the judging lanes,occasionally walking down to take a closer look. There were so many vans it was impossible to see them all. It amazes me to this day how the N.S.V.A. group was able to judge all of them and pick winners in just a few hours. There were a lot of real nice vans. Many were even outstanding. Saw the B.F.G. van, future shock. It was extreme, especially for then. But the one van I kept hearing about was a van from Ohio. Built by Greg of Akron. The van was the Flying Eagle 2. I never saw it. But a number of people said it was the best thing they had ever seen. I the host group must have agreed since the Flying Eagle 2 was awarded top honors at Bowling Green. including best overall paint ,and best interior. I never did see it..until it started showing up in every van publication there was and back then there were a lot of them.

Greg toured the van all over the country that year. Taking top honors at many shows, including Best of Show at the west coast van nationals in King City Calif . Over the next few years I became a fan of Greg's style of paint. He was the “Foose” of his day. His paint was on many of the top winning vans for years. The Superstar, Rocky Mountain High, Hotel California, Rolling thunder, and others were among the elite of the vanning scene. But the Flying Eagle 2 was Greg’s personal van and probably the best one he ever did. What ever became of it.?? Well in 1978 he repainted it. The second paint job was not as elaborate as the first but was still very nice. I know this from pictures I saw in a magazine called small car trends. But I still hadn’t seen it. Then later that year he sold the van to a guy in Louisville,Ohio , Ben Merkle . Merkle Had the van at the 7th. Nats show & shine. in Cortland. Never saw it. Later that day someone told me it was there. Hunted it down but it was locked up and I had to settle for seeing the exterior… after that it was never seen again. Fast forward 24 years to the Nats ,2003, in Kansas City. A long time Vanner friend comes to me with pictures of a van that he just acquired ,and wants to know if I would be interested in helping him restore it. Woaaaa. It’s the Flying Eagle. And it had been on fire! Well, to actually find this van after all these years was real cool ,but the story behind it was even cooler.. Blaino bought the van on ebay. as the story goes, Merkle was driving the van one day and it stalled at a light. Then there was smoke ,then fire. The fire department came and put it out but the van was pretty messed up. The van was insured, and after settling with the ins. company they sold the van at auction. No one wanted it. It had no parts a junk yard could sell and it ended up selling for $100. That person put it on ebay and it sold for a ridiculously low price. That’s when Blaino came to me. Blaino lives in Oregon. The van was in Michigan. And after a year of banter Blaino offered the van to me. I took it. Then Mikie and I took a 12 hour trip to Michigan and I finally got to see the Flying Eagle. Upon inspection and a little detective work , we determined that the fire was caused by a fuel line leak.The rubber hose at the carb, either cracked or wasn’t properly installed and sprayed gas over the engine., That's why it stalled. Then the gas hit the exhaust and fooom. The fire was contained to the intake and above. The paint on the block wasn’t touched.The fire melted the wiring harness, heater box and then came through the fire wall. The front of the cab was burned pretty good, some wood will have to be replaced but most could be saved. The pictures to follow will show the progress of the restoration… oh yes, in 2000 the van was repainted again, supposedly by Greg at least partly. It has his mural work on it. The theme is still the sailing ship, but it is now a futuristic look. Actually I like it. The idea is to eventually restore it to its original paint job, but that will entail striping the van completely as all 3 paint jobs are still on the van, and at least the first 2 are lacquer. If you look just right you can still see the old paint outlines. I am going to fix the van as it was before the fire for the time being. The restoration is pretty much done . Now i'm working on improving it. you know I can't just leave it alone. coop

COOPSTRIPES

Vanning

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Summer is over time to work even harder...

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