# 3 years in the planning.



## Gym Whourlfeld (Jan 22, 2003)

I seem to do things slower anymore but my little piece of work I am currently doing has been mulling over in my head for about three years now. Mulled long enough?
A week ago I striped out the non-essentials from an old car and I have now made the new front suspension for it, the frame that bolts onto the front suspension and the extended frame to lengthen the wheelbase with the new custom body I will be fabricating.
The orginal car body is styled like a 57 Cadillac and was a kid's riding toy that was modified to be a fire truck, so my mini-hearse will be 15 inches wide by 4 feet long when done.
It's roofline will angle up toward the rear of the car like a real hearse and it will have a vynl roof which will also be my padded seat for my unpadded seat I carry with me everywhere I go.
This will be a display here and double as a parade car . Wether or not to place a mower engine in it I'm still debating, it might just be towed in a parade via a steel cable.
I have very heavy-duty tires and wheels mounted using a very heavy little steel frame, welded mostly , bolted together in sections just for sub-assemblys to make building it somewhat easier.
Unless a person has ever built a project that has alot to it they don't realise how many times something like this gets handled, rolled around,lifted, test fit with every working piece, and of course it just keeps getting heavier and harder to lift with every part it acquires until compleation.
I was going to almost automatically paint it hearse/black but then I began considering white...
I do have alot of experience with this design of the little car body, I still have my original such Caddy/Firetruck in my front room,(from my childhood) the one I'm "Hearseing" I bought three summers ago at an antique store, so the chassis parts from the" hearse" will possibly go on my old car if/when needed.
The one really painfull learning experience I had with my Caddy/Firetruck involved the little wooden ladders that hung on it's sides. I would lean the ladder against the wall, and try to climb the ladder, the slick hardwood floor in my parent's house and the slick hardwood ladder feet would slide quickly trapping my fingers under the ladder rung because my own weight was still on top of the ladder as I was screaming in pain! "Duh!?"
I will admit at that tender, young age I had to climb that ladder more than once to sufficiently learn the lesson not to do this. One more time, "DUH!!?"
I was maybe 3, my Dad climbed ladders all day long installing TV antennas and spouting, so why couldn't I?
When my Dad was building his garage people would drive by and honk at him, he didn't know he was so popular! Then he had the crap scared out of him when he happened to turn around and there I was! I had climbed his ladder and was walking around up there where he was nailing down the floor. I would have fallen at least 10 feet to the concrete floor below, I was a climbing fool in my youth beginning at 3!


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