Projects Olds Rocket 324 in a 32 Ford; "trying to finish it thread"..

Hey F&J, make yourself a set of "tubing manifolds". You know, inside the frame 3-into-1 headers along the lines of the ones Red's Headers makes for flatheads. No holes in the hood or fenders and they keep the old style look. You can add "cut-outs" down below when you hook up to the rest of the system if you wanna be able to run 'em open.

 

General Gow is right, man you are on fire with progress! Great to see you using the old header parts, that's what this hobby is supposed to be about. About the clearance for paint burning, my lakes headers started to burn the cowl paint on my '27 so I added a subtle stainless heat shield in between. No problem when the car was moving (air cooled) but it "softened" the paint pretty good if I had to idle for a long period. The heat shields fixed that.

 

If those pictures are of the final angle of the headers, then I think they're going to be just fine. They look pretty good to me!

 

I managed to get one side finished...this is a lot of effort. I left the old header nipples attached to the flanges because it would be way too much destruction to remove them to angle them better.

Ted had made the center port split with 2 pipes, so I had to work with that. My 2 center pipes have an even 1/8" gap from the flange nipples to the torque tube. Now think about that, and how the heck can you weld the two pipes to the big tube... I had to constantly tack it all together, then bolt it to the car or to the spare head on a table, to finish weld each joint. Then cut all the tacks to be able to grind that joint because you can't later. Then tack it all and rebolt to do the next joint, over and over.

It paid off with all the constant refit/rebolting, because the finished header fits right on without fighting the bolt alignment and no warped flange.

Friend Ray showed up with his truck full of 40 parts. He brought two nice fenders, 2 driver side inner fenders (I only had one, which was passenger side), a 39 deluxe grille, 2 old repro chrome headlight bezels, and the last headlight bucket I needed. He borrowed my trailer to bring the 39 cab back in the morning.

We built that Jeep about 5 years ago. Souped up 327 or 350, I forget. I am getting old because I "think" we put a Muncie or a T10 in there
We made the bed and painted it with what he calls "dumpster green" It came with a Dodge pickup rear with a different ratio than the front axle, so I changed the front gear set. He found old slotted mags and had them spun on a big lathe to clean them up. Sadly, it sits outside since built.

 

Wow F&J that header you made came out neat! Man I like that

 

Ok, but now I need to make the other one look exactly the same.... not easy, I bet.

I am not sure where the exhaust pipe will go from there to the muffler? I almost want to poke it through the frame rail. ANY opinions on where to go with the pipe?




Sidetracked with finding a voltage draw in my kids truck, which I did find this morning, but Ray showed up and we fought the door hinge screws off, so I can fix his bent hinges...before starting his 39 truck cab chop.

 

sorry pic was over sized

 

Exhaust path ideas.
1. Remove the fenders and duplicate the pic in #26 note.
2. Run the exhaust parallel to the running board, under the door and kick our before the rear fender or then 90 it down through the running board and dump straight down.
3. Put a hole in your nice fender to then sweep under the frame rail and out back.
4. Stuff the pipe on there now with baffling material and get fumigated when you sit in traffic.
This is a real stumper isn't it?

 

I'm kinda digging the '90 degree it, straight down through the running board, and dump straight down' idea myself...

 

I JUST finished the other lake header about a half hour ago....making them exactly the same and sitting at the same angles is pretty difficult.... for me, anyways..


So if you see in post 30, the end of the lake tube is only half way back of the cowl panel itself...so, the pipe needs to go through the fender tail, or through the frame. I'd better make a decision quick.

 

get em as close as possible and zap em together. You can only look at one side of the car at a time right? Looks great Frank, whata cool car!!

 

Further to my earlier post, after looking back at the side picture from post 30, I still think it would look very cool to 90 degree them and dump them straight down. If your 90 degree bend started just as it hit the firewall, it looks like you would have just enough length to drop through the fender tail. They'd dump straight down and the gasses would be under your floor boards.

At least, from my 'arm-chair' point of view, that's what I think would be cool!

 

Yes, there is more than enough room to go through the fender tails. My main issue is that the fenders will need constant removal,refitting and welding , while I do the body work. I was trying to find a way to run the exhaust and still be able to remove the fenders easily...but that might be a silly reason.

Now, if I do go straight down through the fenders, then the connector pipe will be shaped just like a kitchen sink "P-trap" . It will have to do a 180 U-turn to get under the frame, then go up a bit, and then a 90 straight back into the muffler.

Never should have been at the swapmeet and found the fenders for sale... life was simpler then.

 

See, if I was being more attentive and thinking before posting, I'd have remembered that you wanted to run mufflers and a full exhaust... which renders my suggestion of dropping straight through the fender tail and dumping, a stupid one. Sorry for the useless suggestions.

I guess this puts you back to what you mentioned earlier about running the exhaust through the rails...

Another thought, how's your clearance to run the pipes under the running boards, outside of the frame rails, until you get to the back axle? Or does that put the pipes below the scrub line/too visual for what you're after?

 

Posting some pics and info on the 40 Ford dash swap for Speedy Canuck;

I must have lost the original pics during the swap, so here are pics of the 32 (which was actually a 5w coupe), and pics of an uncut stock dash in the 40 coupe.

First you need to trim the entire width of the V shaped front to fit the flat 32 cowl. I hope you can see the stock outer "pointed ends" of the 40 dash where they reach up to the 40 windshield? Get a helper to hold a flexible yardstick across the very tips of each side of the dash, but bow the middle of the stick forward 1/8", so that it is 1-3/8" in front of the radio hole front edge. (I did not bow the yardstick and ended up with 1-1/4", and an 1/8"th more in the center would have been perfect)

Now draw a line and cut it off.

Now look at the difference in the amount of "free space on the insides of each ashtray". Driver side can be narrowed 1/4" to 3/8". Passenger side is much more space so trim it more to match the just-narrowed driver side.

Cut the entire lower corner off to do the trimming, then while that piece is off, reverse the innermost curve where the dash will touch the A pillar. Just hammer/dolly it, right where those inner white X's are.

Then cut loose the top of the dash corners so it can be test fit. I did not cut the top corners off like I have marked in white, but if you did, you maybe be able to swap the right and left sides by turning them inside out as then the curve would go down instead of up. I reshaped mine, and did not think about that in time.



If you did cut the dash in the middle grille instead, the steering wheel should end up a bit more towards the center if you are running a large diameter steering wheel in a small body style.

 

Awesome looking work...love the car and engine. Keep up the good work and posts.

 

Frank. You are the man! Thank you!

What an ingenious way to narrow the dash without losing the original look! I'm going to be stealing your genius idea to narrow mine. Thanks for taking the time to recreate your measurements and to walk me through how it's done. Big help.

 

Speedy, I should explain this better

What I was trying to say, is that a big steering wheel might get very close to the drivers door in a narrow car. The old way of cutting the center grille should move it away from the door a little bit more.

The 40 dash bottom edge has a notch for the column/shifter. On my car, the 40 steering column bracket made the column/wheel sit up too high. So I used a 41..?-to-48 column bracket which drops the column down a lot, and requires that dash notch to be filled in. Then, I offset the column 1/2" towards the center of the car.

I don't know what year my column bracket is, so maybe someone will know which Ford cars from 41 through 48 would be like that. The 40 bracket is very short.

 

Thanks for clarifying Frank. I did understand what you meant about gaining more clearance for a wider wheel by narrowing at the grille.

I guess I'll have to determine what size wheel, (or the largest wheel) that I'll run and factor that into where I decide to narrow the dash. I may end up having to take a bit out of the grille, in addition to narrowing it the way you suggested. Looks like I'm going to sit down and do some math and measuring over the holidays...

I am going to be using a 48-52 F1 steering box and column, no column shift, so I will have to see if I run into the same angle problems with the notch on my dash. I imagine I will. I'll find out about the different column drops from later years, and keep my eyes out for one.

Here's the nice clean dash I'll be starting with...
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and experience!

 

I dig it. Front motor mount is really nice. Getting those Olds, Cad and Buick motors in around the steering can be challenging....

 

Just a small job today, as I can't tie up the shop by pulling the motor for the clutch install.

I found 4 stainless steel 15" trim rings at the last swap of the season, they might be Lyon?

A few weeks later, Bob Bleed used the same thing with 40 Ford smoothie caps on his Little Red Truck build...and they look great..

Anyways, my car has a 55 Olds rear with 5" bolt circle and 40 Ford front drums with homemade 15" wheels using 40 centers and old VW rim hoops. Here is the link to how I did that http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=405351&page=2

So, the trim rings fit the front wheels, but the rear wheels are 56 Olds 15" and there is no way to attach the 40 center cap. Also, the wheel hub sat in about 1/2" too shallow with the ring on.

I did have two junk 40 Ford wheels that the scrapyard was torching off of a banjo before I could buy the whole rear. One was messed up by trying to torch the lug studs off, which welded the wheel to the drum stud remains. The other one they cut the outer rim off, to remove the tire

I don't have a huge lathe, so I cut these on the drum lathe, to end up with 1" wide mini rings with the hubcap bumps, to weld to the rear Olds wheels.

I did not weld it on yet; I need to use flat magnets to hold it while I spin the wheel with a pointer, to get the ring to run true. Last pic shows the still rusty mini-ring under the beauty ring. It should work..

 

Thats awesome thinking Frank

 

Awesome post!

 

Cool. I think I will print this thread and put it in the "black binder of doom".

 

That distributer is BADASS!

 

"By the way, if you like Olds hot rods, check out Bob Bleeds "little red truck" build with the J2 set up...very cool build. He said his Edmunds 2X2 "won't fit", so I will try to remember to take pics of the special homemade intake gasket adapter plates to make it fit. I am doing the same intake on this 324."

Frank.. I thouight I was the only one with those air cleaners (altho I did see a set at the swap meet at the "Hundert Car Pile Up" this fall) I also had the dilemma of adapting the 303 Edmunds 2X2 intake to my 55 324 as well. I have and Offenhauser 2-4 manifold and I noticed ti had little 3/8"x3/4"x3-1/2" long tabs added to the edge of the manifold over the ports. They were just weled on, but they looked factory. So I did the same thing with my manifold. I added the 3/8"x3/4"x3-1/2" tabs, had it machined and then polished and it looks realy great with no special adapter/gasket.
If you send me a message I might be able to send you pictures..

 

I love this project, cool car !

 

I found some random spare days to work on this car. I dropped my old camera this weekend while taking pics of a 31/32 International for resale.. It made a couple more pics, then died. So, I found the exact same old camera online, used, for 12 bucks shipped. Saved money for car stuff.

I did b.i.n. Sunday,and it came today just as I was ready to put the intake manifold adapter spacers on.

I said I would try to take pics of that 303 intake-onto-a 324 motor;

First pic; I had to drill and tap two holes to mount the chromed dist timing pointer from a 303. I had the valley cover off anyways, so I just used strong magnets inside and outside to grab the chips. I like that goofy timing deal, and I have it set to zero at TDC....so, it really should make timing adjustments on the road, much easier because there is a scale to tell how far in degees, you have moved it.


2nd pic shows the homemade 1/8" thick aluminum plates to cover over the large 324 ports. I can't justify a used Bridgeport, so I use a $75 horizontal milling machine The scrap aluminum plates were $2 at the scrap place.

The other 2 pics show how it all looks together with the smaller port 303 intake.

There may be a problem: I did leave the center 4 studs in the heads, and then got the intake to sit OK and I did not have to fight any misaligned intake boltholes. I started all of those bolts a couple turns, then tried to "squirm" the manifold around to get a good fit in the V.

I started the torque light on all bolts and kept going around again with more torque each time, to hopefully let the intake be where it wants to be. All seemed fine till it was tightened up, and I really looked closely at every part of each mating surface. It just looks a bit off to me, so I tried wiggling a 4 thou feeler gauge in every spot I could. It never went in anywhere, but it just looks iffy.

I did the carbs over in the last few days, so I will be trying to fire it up Friday. then I will know if there are vacuum leaks.

I actually remembered to oil the cam lobes while the valley was open..

 

Frank what are you using for a generator?? or are you going alt? Is there mounting boss`s on the edmunds. IK the edelbrocks dont have them I made a slick bracket thats easy to make for the edelbrocks and will keep the generator on the driver side with the stock brackets if you want pics let me know. I actually have made a few extras incase anyone needs one. It is looking really good Frank cant wait to se it running.