Compared to parts one and two currently the Taylor’d Customs shop is relatively empty with both the motor and body sent out to neighbouring shops Smallwood Custom Paint and Tenant Automotive respectively.

The motor, which left before the body, is a bit of a mystery machine with an interesting back story. Blair’s father Brian originally purchased it in the late ’90s long separated from the car it ran in previously. However after a few years of ownership he couldn’t find a home for it in one of his own projects so he ended up selling it.

Around 2012 Blair heard a rumour about an interesting motor with a ‘aircraft thing on it’ kicking around Northern Ontario and decided to chase the lead down on a hunch that he might know exactly the motor in question

After banging a few doors he tracked down the then owner’s shop and slid a few bills in his hand so he could get the motor back in the Taylor family. Upon bringing it back to the shop Brian confirmed it was indeed the same motor he had sold over a decade ago, completely untouched.

Fast forward to present day and the motor is completely blown apart in the midst of a rebuild.

During the tear down process the motor has revealed that it was hiding a few surprises.

First, it hasn’t been a standard 324 cubic inch Oldsmobile Rocket V8 for quite a while because at some point –presumably when the Latham Supercharger was added– it was punched out to 371 cubic inches.

Supporting mods for such a large jump in displacement include Dodge pistons, a Speedway cam and custom-made roller lifters. As cliché as it is to quote The Fast and The Furious someone did indeed ‘put in the wrench time’.

Exactly how significant of a power jump these changes and the supercharger will make is still just a guess but I’m sure we’ll be finding that out sooner rather than later.

Before the motor left the shop Blair had to rework the oil pan that had previously been modified for whatever vehicle the motor was last installed in.

This involved removing an oddly shaped extension and restoring it closer to the shape it left the factory as.

Being a steel pan Blair could do this all himself with a TIG welder but it did take quite a bit of lather rinse repeat flow of welding, grinding, and light shining, to get the pan watertight.

While Blair stared at blue light his dad gave the supercharger a good polishing before it went to Tenant Automotive to join the motor and quad Carter carbs.

With the motor and the body out of the way chassis work has been the name of the game at the shop. The frame kick up –pictured below in a photo from part 1— was made up of multiple pieces and portions of it remained open so that Blair could weld in some internal gussets.

Those holes have since been filled up as the reinforcing is complete and to make the frame rails look like one cohesive unit Blair put me to task with a grinder.

After a few hours of sending sparks every which the frame rails look a darn sight better and the same will need to be done to the rear before the chassis is flipped over and repeated once more for the underside.

Then it can get some paint and should be done just around the time the body comes back.

As I was grinding up front Blair tackled the problem of caliper position when the car was laid out.

As you can just make out from the photo above –again from part one— the brake caliper came into contact with the body at 0 psi.

To fix this issue the caliper mounts on the axle were chopped off, flipped right-to-left and left-to-right rotating the caliper down and away from the body.

This creative solution to the problem meant no extra trips to the parts shop were necessary and no custom mounts had to be fabricated, incredibly important when you’re under a tight timeline.

As for the rear suspension a panard bar has been installed and the link bar mounts that were previously just tacked in became a little more permanently affixed.

The next order of business was to mock-up some upper bag mounts for the rear. John and Blair tackled that together and in relatively short order slam specialities RE7 bags were roughed in and the suspension became several steps closer to complete.

Of course there’s still lower bag mounts, shocks, front suspension, final engine mounts, fuel tank mounts…. well quite a bit left to go but there’s 30 days left until the début at the Motorama Car Show March 12th so no big deal right?

With a deadline looming there’s literally no time to waste with the Taylor’d Customs ’33 Dodge project and significant progress has been made since the last update two weeks ago.

In the introductory post many details were left vague because many of decisions are being made as the metal is shaped, but the general idea for the car has always been a fairly minimalist end product.

That said Blair has never had any intentions of leaving it ‘ratty’ which means the car is going to see the inside of a paint booth.

Despite its 83 years of age the car is in pretty good shape but, in addition to smoothing out the evidence of the roof chop there are a few areas of the car that need to be completely reconstructed thanks to mother nature and the fingerprints of time.

Looking at the photo above, and working back from the March 11th deadline, it’s not hard to figure out that the car needs to get over the body shop as soon as possible if it is going to see the inside of the International Center floor in a properly finished state.

During my last trip to the shop there was a big push to get the body off the frame so that final preparations could be made for it to go to Smallwood Custom Paint.

Blair’s dad was tasked with figuring out exactly how the pedals were going to mount in the relatively narrow driver’s side foot well and since given enough time with a marker and cardboard he seems to be able to figure out anything the pedal box took shape very quickly.

John Weatherbie was busy helping cut a few things off the body that didn’t fit with Blair’s final vision for the car.  Here he carefully removes the grill mounts from the firewall (which is in remarkable condition hence the care) so they can be replaced with something a little more becoming later down the road.

Blair himself has of course been extremely busy since part one spending nearly every waking hour outside of work at the shop behind a welding mask.

The floor, which was little more than the beginnings of a transmission tunnel at last check, has really come along with roughly 90% of it complete at the time these pictures were taken.

Building the floor has been done largely using ‘by seat of your pants engineering’ because though Blair did rebuild a lot of the floor of the Montbomb this is his first floor he’s done entirely from scratch.

Through the processes he’s become pretty in tune with how 16 gauge metal contours which means each panel becomes a bit easier to shape than the one before it.

In addition to the floor covers for the four link have been fabricated along with most of a rear deck and a cozy spot for rear seats because lets face it what’s a four door without rear seating.

For rigidity and style sake bead rolls have been pressed into most of the panels which really helps give the entire bare metal floor a more finished look that will still be present once the floor is covered in a lick of paint.

The rear deck is one of the final pieces that need to be completed before the car goes to paint but since the remaining piece is fairly straight forward Blair spent most of his time buttoning up the firewall.

With the shop full of people he was keen to get help taking the body off the frame rather than fighting with it alone later along side and engine hoist and some jacks.

With lots of work to be done I didn’t hesitate to put down the camera and help out, and in a bit of a role reversal Blair managed to capture John and I yielding power tools.

Here I smooth out the firewall after the grill tab removal while John trims the four link cover out of the inner fender.

With things more or less finished we each grabbed a corner and lifted the body off the frame and carried it to the waiting dolly.

As of this past Saturday the body now in the hands of the Ryan Gibson and the chassis will be the focus of attention, aimed to be completed, plumbed, and painted before the motor comes back from rebuild and roughly the same time the body comes back.

Once again lots to be done, but the progress thus far has been steady and things are looking good. Stay tuned for part three!