1969 Firebird "wild turkey"

[zingercustoms]

New to this site, here is the latest info on my build
We are getting ready to paint the new hood. Installed it to get the close out panel we are making right. I am soooo glad we went ahead and changed to this hood. Also some pics of the interior. We made some covers for the carpet to lay on over the wires and roll bar plates. The seats fit great. The door panels fit really good, working on clips to hold them in place.








Got alot done this week....carpet is cut and getting edging sown on. Getting parts ready for paint, center console etc. Final Headlight bucket molds done, should have parts made tomorrow. I decided to make a close out panel for the front. I will make a mold and make them available, will fit stock front.







you can see the hole build here

[Dantigan]

The car looks awesome. I really like the custom front bumper. Did you make it as a 1 piece fiberglass?

[zingercustoms]

Yeah, check out the link at the top of my post, I have a pretty substantial build thread started....I made a mold and can reproduce the front end with the lights, fog lights and the grills are being made as we speak. THe close out panel, door panels, etc all reproducable. thanks for your imput.

[T_Raven]

Been following on lateral-g, nice ideas on the custom stuff

[zingercustoms]

Here is the console parts getting final finishes. really awesome feel to this soft touch clear.....
Came out just as I hoped...

[zingercustoms]

disaster......ok so, I have been working night and day on this project i have designed from end to end for the last 7 years to get it ready for the detroit autorama and i was doing great...worked through the night and was gonna leave at noon yesterday.....8am....car was being moved back into booth for some touch up of the stripes. we backed it up and stopped, put into drive and snuck forward and the brake pedal dropped to the floor, 500hp motor took me for a ride, so quck i couldn't get to park with the ratchet shifter....slammed into the recently finished waiting to be delivered $50k restoration tbird......here is a link to the car I built....and the wreck..here everything was custom made on the nose...the headlights, everything...I have molds for the parts but the 100s of hours spent getting all the parts to fit and shine....just crazy, the fender is custom, the scoops are molded into it with grills and everything...the tbird was a high end paint job, my best work....can just blend the clear like a collision job on that car.....not one body break.....only the doors, hood, deck lid come off, all factory solid seams. plus this blue is sooo touchy with coverage and hue change under clear.....and all the hours spent hand sanding it.....
so my question....
anyone have experience in dealing with insurance on custom work? how to get them to understand the amount of time spent to do it? not just a collision type claim? any help would be great.

[FlyDoc]

I just love the one-off fab work your doing with this car!
Sorry to hear about your unfortunate incident.
I like your interior panels that you built, I have a '06 GTO dash for my '92 Camaro, and have installed a C4 Vet IRS and want a water-fall in the rear seats. Can you give me a little more info on how you have done the molds & parts for yours. I want to have a more modern interior.
thanks
Bryan
https://www.pro-touring.com/showthre...IRS&highlight=

[zingercustoms]

Thanks, if you go to Lateral g.net and find my build there, I have lots of pics and some of the interior build...look at those and I will answer any further questions. Mostly I just have a picture in my head and use whatever materials from mdf, wool,foam, filler etc. to get the shapes I want. If you are building a part then you have to remember to keep the weight down if possible on the part.....I made molds of some parts for that reason. You can make any shape you want out of those materials but you also have alot of things to keep in mind if you making a mold for a part....like part thickness after it is made in the mold. The part will be smaller on the inside because of laying up layers of glass, so you have to make the part larger for the mold. If you have any specific questions pm me on lateral gnet. thanks

[zingercustoms]

Update: I got with the adjuster, he let me write my own estimate to repair myself and then didn't argue with one single minute of labor...amazing. They did knock my hourly rate down, but I expected that...I get a check for each car minus my $500 deductable in full sometime next week. wow!!!! worked out so smoothly, selective insurance is awesome.

[rickpaw]

Glad everything worked out for you. I read thru the entire build on lateral-g.

[zingercustoms]

Well, I tried really hard to get to the good guys to compete but I had so many repairs to do to get the bird back together....I worked 77 hours on 1 hour of sleep, left saturday and our truck broke down....anyway, made it for sunday morning....next year. I hade ride tech weigh it and it weighs 3733 lbs with 49.5%up front and 50.5% in back...........well here are some pics...I decided to make the ram air functional...so...it looks pretty good..the part on the car is a pattern, I will be making it nicer and making a mold for it. It has an upper part that closes down and seals to the lower....I have a few adjustments in gaps to make that I didn't have time or energy to get perfect. the wing has a third brake light in it under the yellow paint that lights up red.








THe stripes are actually really difficult to get right. they are an optical allusion. I originally made them with a 3/4 inch gap all the way through the s-curve...but it looked like crap from behind or in front of the car...so I ended up figuring out that you have to make the ends sweep gradually to a inch more on each end and when you walk around the car the stripes change according to your point of perspective and look exactly 3/4 of an inch all the way when standing at the front or back of the car.....weird.



I have a mold for the wing... my idea was that the car looked good at certain angles with a wing and not so cool at others...the ends mimic the tops of the quarters where they swoop up and the middle goes with the over all shape of the rear end with the bumper and heat shield all caring a commen shape.

[zingercustoms]

[zingercustoms]

Sorry double post

[zingercustoms]

Went to good guys indy, had a good time. I got a nice spread (6-8 pages) coming out in American Muscle Car Magazine....its french but hey, its a start. Figures a french guy would dig the style of my car....he was really nice and knew how to get some really awesome shots....taking advantage of the great surroundings.
Here is one I took and one of him doing the shoot.





you can find me on facebook Here

[rohrt]

Wow just awsome fab work.