Jim you continue to amaze me. You just tackle one project after another with great results and most importantly seem to have a lot of fun doing it. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us!
Love it ! Wood working is my blood. While still in school (nearly 40 years now) I worked for an 80 year old cabinet maker, Ray Moser was his name. He showed me stuff that I still use to this day. The first thing he ever showed me was how to draw a perfect oval. Items needed. 2 nails and 1 piece of string. The rest was magic. I sure do miss that Man.
great job on getting it running and the short drive. I don't think you could let a modern car sit that long and get it running for $50 and a weeks time. I know a lot of people have been pushing the boat tail thing, now that you can see it will run what are your ideas of what it will be?
Followed a link on a farm tractor forum this morning to a tractor-pull youtube video ( no comments necessary about tractor-pulls ) and there on the right side of 'suggested videos', second one from the top, is Jim's video of the 'first drive' !!
As my grandfather once said "boy quit cowboying it in my field!" Awesome comeback man! Love the way it sounds.
The 1st car is from the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang movie. We saw it ( OR a great knock-off. The guy with the car swore it was from the movie ) 4 or 5 yrs back at a car show in Frankenmuth, MI. It really is sharp. But that last car.... MAN that is beautiful!
Well yeah, RIGHT NOW it looks like that Johnny. The rest of us are looking 2 or 3 weeks down the road!
Absolutely correct Johnny. More than anything, I just really like the look of the boat tail speedsters. AND.... truth be told, I'm just having a little fun with Jim. I think this is one of the coolest threads on the H.A.M.B. right now. I'd be more than fine if he chose to NOT do a boat tail. Just don't tell him that.
Yes, Chitty it is. There are many remakes. The last picture is a 1932 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Boat-tail. More pics here... https://www.classicdriver.com/en/car/rolls-royce/phantom-ii/1932/152601 .
I decided it's time to get the starter working...so I bought a 6v battery (big expense, $100 with core charge and tax) and got the battery tray back to working condition. The starter switch didn't work, so I took it apart and cleaned the contacts. The starter just spun, no Bendix action. I took the starter out and fiddled with the Bendix, put it back in, and it tried to engage, but it acts like the teeth on the ring gear are too worn out. I noticed they were in bad shape, but didn't do anything about when I had the flywheel off. Oh well...take it all back apart again, which only took half an hour. I popped the ring gear off, and modified the teeth so they are now beveled on the other end. The flywheel and ring gear are now in the kitchen, getting a temperature differential, so they'll be easier to assemble.
I have never flipped a ring gear over myself but knew of guys doing it. I don't know if the ones they did had to get beveled, of course they were later models though or maybe they didn't and just got by with it???
I flipped the one in my Ford and no beveling was required. The "bad" side never had it done either. Flywheel is out of a C20 Chevy pick up.
The teeth on these old ring gears are really thick, they have a bevel on the end to help the starter gear engage. Not needed on more modern ones with finer pitch gears. I used a 4" angle grinder, of course. I got good at it after about a dozen teeth. Oh...it works! although the starter is cranking slowly, as someone mentioned I have really skimpy battery cables, it needs heavy ones.
yes, you can flip the gear, sometimes you can also just rotate the gear 180 degrees. ever notice how a ring gear is (almost) always worn in only one area?
I thought about rotating it, but since it would already disengage when it got to the worn part, I figured that wouldn't help me much! (I had tested it by rotating the flywheel to an unworn part, the starter would engage then, but pop out when it hit the worn part)
I've repositioned the ring gear many times on old tractor engines. It's a common maintenance task on old engines.
oh...if I did want to rotate it instead of flipping it, I would have gone 90 degrees...it was well worn on both sides, 180 degrees apart. And barely worn 90 degrees from there.
Anyways, the starter is working fine now, I put thicker battery cables on it. Still was running rough and would die frequently. There's an idle mixture screw, it was not doing anything. I took the carb back off, and took it part way apart...the idle screw seems to be fed by a tube, and the tube has a slot head and was stuck. I worked it for quite a while, and eventually got it to move, before stripping the slot all the way. yay! So I got the tube out, cleaned the crap out of it, cleaned out the hole it goes in, and put it back together. Still runs kinda rough, but it keeps idling now. And the mixture screw seems to do something. I went for another drive...quite a bit further around the yard this time...and it kept running till I parked it and pulled off the hot wire. Time to see about some wiring. The generator might be made to work, and there's an ignition switch that I might also get working. Also, this morning I fixed the leaky tire...it had a hole in the middle of a patch on the tube, which I failed at repairing. I looked around and found a fatter tube and made it fit in, I guess it's doing ok still. Lots of baby powder to keep it from getting folded inside the tire, I hope it lasts! I also need to work on the brakes...the front brakes are connected and kind of work, but not very well, Long stopping distance. Gotta be a careful driver.
The Jalopy Journal
