Bruce, nice looking wagon! I've been trying to decide what I wanted to do for the rear area, orginally had a rubber type floor. I think you talked me into carpet, lol. Just have to try to get carpet to match the new carpet Jim bought back in the 80's for the front part of the car. Buried myself in the garage this weekend. Removed the rear side windows so we can modify the metal to accept a single piece of glass. Went ahead and pulled the windshield to prep and paint the dash and roof. Wife came out and said "Well at this point you might as well just paint the car." Soooo.... I'm thinking we may end up doing a full repaint. Now to decide on color. First time I saw the car, I though "Mint and cream", now I can't decide between that or more of a copper color and cream.
Been making good progress this week getting it stripped down ready for paint. Meeting with John at CleanCut Creations next week to start looking over colors. We will be getting the bodywork done and deliver to him blocked to 400 ready for the final block and spray. He is going to try to get close to BuckD's '49 in a standard base clear. Plans is for it to roll into the paint booth first week of April. These are my interior colors.
Super excited! Ordered new bumpers. Can't afford the $1200 each the chrome shop wants to repair and rechrome these. So I ordered the one piece Chevrolet bumpers from Chevs of the 40s. Will modify brackets and splash pans to fit if needed. For $305 each, I couldn't find a better option.
Seatbelt braces are all in, floors done. Painting them tomorrow. Dash is mostly filled, still needs some grinding.
Pulled it outside, blew out every nook and cranny, then pressure washed inside and all underneath. Then used paint stripper to remover most of the paint. Tucked back into the garage.
X 3 on the colors! I, for one, just love hopped up "Boat anchor" motors in orphan cars. Milling the head for a compression boost is probably the biggest bang for the buck. A Pertronix conversion for the distributor is also recommended. How about this "up and over" split exhaust? Gotta love the sound!
Put over 40 ours in on the wagon in the last three days. My wife and a couple of buddies helped during part of that.
Be sure to use foil/metal tape on the edges and seams of your insulation. It could melt and get on your headliner.
Walkin, Thanks, I hadn't thought of that and it's a really good idea. Ratrod, it's cool seeing two Pontiacs being built at the same time. You're about to jump way ahead of me though, I am going to spend the next 6 weeks welding up seems, slinging filler and spraying high build primer to try to smooth this massive pig down some. She has a date with CleanCutCreations on April 11th to start the final scuff and spray the paint. Btw, I didn't mean to almost duplicate your thread title. I realized it later.
I hear you there. My car was what I would consider a straight original car, then once I got it to bare metal I wasn't "ok" with it just being straight. 3/4 of a gallon of filler and 3 quarts of glazing putty later and I still didn't think it was going to be good enough. Then I sprayed 1 3/4 gallons of very high build primer and now it's pretty damn straight. Your doing good work though, it'll be fine before you know it! I don't mind the thread title haha it is cool seeing 2 of these old poncho's getting love at the same time
A bit more info on that split manifold... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/1951-pontiac-straight-8-split-exhaust-manifold.605805/
I've been thinking about doing this on my car, right now I have a single 2" pipe off the stock manifold for about 3' then split to dual 1 3/4" pipes out the rear, with no mufflers. It sounds real mellow with a good tone. For some reason my photobucket won't let me upload a video, I'll try again when I get home. I'm curious is doing the split manifold would offer up any more performance... It sure does look cool.
True duals would certainly be less restrictive. Eight cylinders are a lot to breath into a single pipe! California Bill's Speed Manual (1954) cited a ten horsepower increase at the rear wheels of a stock Chevy six, with just headers and duals. A true "split manifold" is partitioned, so that each outlet services only some of the cylinders. In most instances, a partition needs to be inserted in the manifold to effect a true split (rather than simply two outlets). As I read the link, the Pontiac 8 manifold is already partitioned between the halves, so sealing the old outlet creates a true split. Now you have only four cylinders exiting into each pipe (i.e., less back pressure). The poster claimed a noticeable improvement (which would have been accentuated on his dual carb motor). Sometimes, different splits are possible, depending on placement of this partition relative to port configuration. For example, some sixes can be split either 3/3 (each outlet servicing 3 cylinders) or 4/2. You can imagine the effect this would have on the sound. There have even been a few 5/1 splits! While this would minimize the performance aspects, it makes for a crazy sound! One thing to keep in mind with the pictured set-up, however, is the disabling of the heat riser. (Note the Edmunds intake shown is water heated.) Perhaps a good solution with the stock intake would be to leave the heat riser intact, and effect a 5/3 split. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/poncho-straight-8-split-manifold.734587/
Yeah, the wagon was an original paint car and I have only found three places that need rust repair on the outside of the body. But the door dings, scrapes and roof dings are plentiful! I keep wanting to get a spare manifold to play with. There is actually a divider above the collector that sends the two ends of the motor down into the collector. I am curious whether you could cut back to there, drill and tap that area for a plate and make a split collector to bolt on, basicly sending the front and back out of different pipes. The straight eight firing order is correct so you will be sending true dual exhaust out. Here are pictures that I took of a guys at the Rust Revival two years ago. He built his own headers out of stainless. The lake pipes are made out of 2" copper. He took his scrap copper and cut them into then rings, rolled the rings out straight and used that to tig the pipes together.
Maybe I will get time next winter to do something like this. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/38-pontiac-flathead-6-manifolds.589400/
I work with some top notch metal fabricators, one of them offered to help me tig-weld up something like that for my car. I do have another motor that we can use to mock it up on, I just haven't had the time to get it over there and start knocking it out. Maybe once the car is painted I'll make that my next priority. If you want it, I do have another intake/exhaust manifold. It came off of my car, the exhaust manifold is cracked, but if your already cutting and brazing I don't see an extra crack being an issue. Shipping would probably be crazy expensive though.
Maybe mill .060" off the extra head, while you're at it? That should wake it up! If you ever get deeper into your motor(s), you might even want to check the valve clearance/piston clearance (there should be plenty), then talk to Scott at Delta Cams about a mild cam regrind/lifter resurfacing, which you will find surprizingly inexpensive. (Freeway speeds are a lot higher now than when that Poncho was new, and it wouldn't hurt to move the power band up a couple hundred RPM.) And just for drools, how about this 300 HP beauty (1954 Pontiac Bonneville Concept Car)?
Great job, the color is dead on. It is fantastic to have a boat load of minions as good friends, a wife who very understanding. Keep up the good work and of course keep us posted with all those super pictures. Joe
I do have one of the later factory "high compression" heads sitting in my shed, supposed to bump compression from 6:1 to 8:1. I actually forgot about that until you said something haha. One of these days I'll get around to swapping that on and splitting the manifold. My car needs valves real bad, if you look through the spark plug holes with a flashlight you can see that there are chunks missing from almost every intake valve. I've just been weighing wether or not this motor is worth putting the money into, or if I should just throw the 389/t400 setup I have in it. Sorry to hijack the thread, we can move this talk over to mine if you want.
Shipping would kill me on the manifold. I'm enjoying the info. Mine smokes out the down draft tube. I've been told by some old timers that it is natural. But I don't know how much is ok, or what could be wrong. I wonder if it is from sitting so many years and it just burning off residue. So I will see once we start driving it how much time and money I am willing to sink into this motor. My plan all along has been to swap in a trailblazer atlas LL8 inline 6 if this motor/trans goes. Drop a little turbo on it, have 400-500 reliable horsepower that should get 20mpg. Just won't open the hood at traditional shows. I think it would fit the engine bay well and can be cleaned up to somewhat look traditional like an old jag motor.
That would be cool, not a bad idea. Reliability and driveability are pretty important things haha My plan when I got my 50 was just to keep it on the road and enjoy it until something broke. Then i started changing little things here and there and now I'm elbow deep into it. My original thoughts on the motor were just to keep it going, fix the transmission problem and just cruise. Down the road if I decided to V8 swap it I wanted to put the straight 8 into a model A or roadster of some kind. It's such a cool looking motor and makes plenty of power for a model A. We will see what happens.
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