Technical Flathead water in combustion chamber....

Having spent the winter getting the Mercury up & running it was time to make a decision. We were fast running out of car storage space in our urban home. Since this was our last year here I decided to move her to our new property interstate. It was a difficult decision as I badly wanted to get some engine & road time under the belt. The time came and the plan was that we would head interstate first and my neighbour would load the car onto the transporter as he could only pick up the car in the new year and we wanted to spend Christmas at our new house.

Here you can see her sharing the ride with a Corvette and RS2000 Escort. An epic 18-hour trip divided over two days. Little did I know the bouncing around on the back for two days would have a detrimental effect on the suspension.



A number of days later... four in total, as the transporter truck dropped a valve on day two and had to overnight half way up the coast, the Mercury arrived. I am fairly stoked to see her in the new house.



Plenty more car space here... room for about seven in total, plus carport space for van and or boat. It has a separate workshop under the house and garage space alongside. Plenty of build space for future projects.



Here she is tucked up for the first night until we move her into the workshop.



After a couple of drives around (about 2 hours in total), I noticed a serious lean to the left. I crawled underneath and my suspicions were confirmed.



She looked great on the new workshop floor that I had spent three weeks painting.



The main leaf on the front transverse spring had sheared. I could see it had been fractured for quite some time and the four days of bouncing had finished off the crack. So there was only one thing to do.... Up on jack stands and spring out.



Definitely needs to be rebuilt..... Finding a good coachbuilder that does spring work is going to be tough. 48 hours of searching before I found someone.







We ran out of time on the holiday so now she is stranded again waiting for the spring to go back in.




What else can we do but head to our bar and pour a drink !!!!!

 

Where are you now located.........Greens here in South Grafton do leaf springs if thats any help, but I assume you are in bananaland........lol..........andyd.

 

Hey Andy ...yes mate we are now north of the border in the sunshine state. The spring pack is rebuilt now and ready to go back in. It's just a matter of time now.

Thanks for the info though.

 

That's a beautiful Merc, Mate... Had to sell mine just prior to chopping the top, due to a piece of aluminum in my eye,
1. New shop
2. No personal insurance yet
3. $$$ eye surgery
4. Saved eye, never looked back

 

Well, you do realize after the eye was saved you had the ability to look back

 

I hope you remembered to re torque those heads multiple times. I went 'round mine about 10 times before I was satisfied that the nuts were not coming down more. I always did it cold.
That means backing each nut off a whisker, before coming back down to set figure. 40 ft / lbs is a setting used by many. Looking through old repair manuals will show all sorts of figures from around 35 ft/lbs up.
Going tighter only encourages cracking round the studs between cylinders. Ford flatmotors have enough of those.

 

Thanks Garpo .. Words of the wise! of that I am very sure. I certainly dis and will continue to check them periodically. A number of guys here on the HAMB have said the same thing. So I will be sure to heed if I want to continue clean & trouble-free rodding !!

 

Hey mate .. Thank you for those kind words. These may be a little more common in the US, however we believe this may be the only chopped '39 sled here in Australia. A little bit of a one-of-a-kind.
Pretty special I think. So I will be sure to enjoy.



So very sorry to hear of your tragic loss of an eye....

 

Getting some road time under the belt and of course.. always things to attend to ...


Shed time ...

Local cars and coffee !!!