Lightning

Lightning is a 1960 two-door Ford station wagon. With a very high tech late model supercharged engine, Adjustable air ride suspension, Six piston wilwood calipers with huge vented rotors, and a list of other very slick items that found their way onto her one way or another.

With the body off the chassis and on the rotisserie we stripped it down to bare metal. At this point there was a good amount of time spent with a wire wheel on an air grinder. This is where the rotisserie comes in handy because grinding is bad enough when you're standing up.

The 60 begins to become straight, for the first time in its life.

From the factory this car's body work wasn't perfect. The problem is the top of the doors and quarter panels are curved in three different directions. The concave shape at the front of the car gradually changes to a convex shape at the tail.

Standing tall wearing a few coats of glasurit epoxy primer.

The shape of this car is very complex and being painted gloss black means there is no room for error. Ed Kania, a long time employee and friend, is the body man that has done the majority of the body work on lightning. Ed has done many high profile and famous cars over the years, yet Thunder and Lightning could very well be the most ambitious project to date.

That was the show now heres the go!

The stock 60 frame got a make over with a Fat Man front clip. A very slick cross member / trans mount that we fabricated were installed in the front. We also added a custom cross member on the rear where the Air Ride Technologies air suspension is mounted. Powering Lightning will be a 4.6 litre supercharged mustang cobra crate motor. The mustang cobra is a very fast car and we want to be able to hang with them. Unfortunatly we're going to be a little heavier, so we are going to use a custom exhaust, custom programable computer mod., and an overdrive pully on the supercharger.

The 60's Bare Behind

Everything must be fitted at this time so that when everything is painted it will go together easily. As you can see here, the tail gate and rear window frame are fitting nicely. Spending the time to make sure all of the gaps are even and straight is extremely important.

Its Official

The black single stage glasurit paint is what makes it official. Now its starting to look like a Juliano car.

Lightning

This is a super clean chassis. All of the brackets that were welded on the frame got ground smooth. The smooth look makes everything look like it was there oringinally. The top of the frame rails had very ugly welds that look like they were done with a stick welder. They did not look good and had a lot of splater. We cleaned it up and rewelded it. After that we ground the overlaped edge straight and smooth to give it that extra detail.

The cobra motor is a very complex and sophistacated motor. The billet steel crank shaft is just one of the many things that make this motor so extraordinary.

With just under one inch to spare this car looks like it was made to have this engine under the hood.

High performance brakes: Wilwood top quality brakes
6 piston calipers, 13" vented rotors

They even fit on the 16" Americans that are on the wagon for now. Lightning will get 17" wheels, but for the mock up we're using these wheels.

Here is Bob holding the caliper up when we were putting it all together. We were very happy with the fit of everything and it went together great.

The weld your looking at is where the rearend was shortened. We had it narrowed to run the fat tires on the back.

The body and Chassis meet

With the body work complete, the "wood" that was actually machined out of aluminum is bolted on. The aluminum will get a simulated wood grain coating using the same technologies we use on our wood grain banjo steering wheels.