Great Lakes 4x4. The largest offroad forum in the Midwest banner

Should I make a rat rod out of my turd Honda or fix it up.

  • Rat Rods are what cool, and besides, everything Nuggets owns looks like a rat rod.

    Votes: 41 38.7%
  • For the love of God, put some effort into this project and fix it up.

    Votes: 46 43.4%
  • I'm a closed minded a-hole who will make nasty comments because I'm jealous.

    Votes: 19 17.9%

1972 Honda AZ 600 upgrade.

47K views 277 replies 78 participants last post by  Rob the plumber 
#1 · (Edited)
This is my latest retarded project. I am upgrading the 600 cc engine to a slightly more powerful 5700 cc engine. It will be a full tube chassis running, of course, V8 chebby, shorty Powerglide, narrowed Ford 9 inch, and a narrowed Pinto front suspension. My goal is to stuff all these goodies into the car without modifying the exterior dimensions.

I am not sure if I am going to fix the body up much (fenders MUST be replaced regardless) or go for the rat rod look. At this point I just want to get the rolling chassis built.












The process of making room for the V8 begins!






I just started rough cutting everthing right now. Trust me, there will be alot of clean up to make it look better. I don't want it to look like a cobbled up mud bogger.
 
See less See more
6
#50 ·
I seperated the rear axle tonight. No problem at all getting the tubes out of the center housing. I will be cutting the tubes down in the next few days and sending the axle shafts out to Moser's when I get a few bucks.

Sorry for the cell phone pics.

Cleaning up the old mounts and getting it ready.



Getting ready to pop the tube.



After popping the tube using a slide hammer.



The gutted housing.

 
#61 ·
Here is before axle reduction surgery.



In process.



This is after surgery. This is just a mock up. I will be doing the final assembly when I get my axle shafts back from Moser. Yes the pumpkin is off center. I set the rear axle up so that the pinion will be centered so I don't have a compound angle in the driveshaft.

 
#72 · (Edited)
I actually thought about doing that at one time. I will have enough room for a driveshaft by using a modifed powerglide trans. The total trans length when I'm done with it will be about 17 inches. That will give me about a 11 in driveshaft. Since the rear suspension travel is only goint to be a few inches, I'll be ok with that. I talked to my driveline guy before the build and he said that length would be ok. He's also the one that suggested offsetting the rear diff so the pinion would be centered and the driveshaft would be correctly aligned.


This is my secret weapon for the build. I will be building my own but you get the idea. These trannys are very short.




I'm glad you guys find this build interesting. I personally am enjoying trying to make all this stuff work. I am taking the experience from building the Metro and applying it to this vehicle. This is really only my second "from scratch" car build.
 
#66 ·
I'd like to read that article. I've seen numerous V8 Chevettes at the drag strip over the years. I remember a very nice one that was street legal with a blown sbc. If I remember right, it ran in the 10's.

At one time I was going to build a rear engine, rear drive V8 Yugo using a standard 2wd tranny, boat V-drive, and regular rear end. That project never got off the ground.

There are several things about this project that make it different. The car is somewhat rare, it's very small, and I don't think it's been done before.
 
#81 ·
Hahahaha......I was thinking about the egonomics of this car the other day. This thing is so small that I really will not be getting in it but rather putting it on.

Why I pursue stupid shit like this, I don't know. I think I didn't get enough attention as a child so now I have to do stuff like this so people notice me.
 
#83 ·
I aquired some steel wheels the other day with the offset I wanted. I ended up narrowing down the axle another two inches so I have a good comfort zone between the wheel outside edge and the body. I also started cutting the pieces for the frame today. 24' of tubing looks like alot until you start hacking it up.

 
#85 ·
I have sat in this car before nuggets got it.I feel partly responsible for this build. I believe some left over vapors from what we did in this car are inspiring it. Seriously I am glad something is getting done with it since we drove three hours drug it home fron the junkyard and let it sit for a few years in my buddys building. Spent some quality time in this car dreaming about what to do to it. Glad it's going somewhere.
 
#95 · (Edited)
With the exception of fabbing up steering, the front suspension is pretty much done. It took forever to get two stub rails situated so they were square, same length, notched for clearance, blah blah blah.





I stuffed the suspension under the car for mock up. Everything is just eyeballed in so don't bust my balls about alignments.









The fram rails sticking out from the suspension are just stub ends. I left enough material there to make my life easier when I attach the front suspension to the main frame. I'm also going to have support for the body coming off the front of the suspsion.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top