The Wam Bam Thank You Van comes out of its stupor

OK i see what you're saying, the one I got from Eugene is set up so it goes through the tube. So the center of the motor mount bolt is inline with the center of the tube cross member. This will move the engine forward from the set up you have. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the 260 and the 302 is basicly the same block.
The 260/ 2speed WAS in there and now the 302/C4 is going in. I'll snap a pic ASAP to remove any confusion my inability to put thought into text has caused.

 

Aaaaaahhhh crap. I just went through this whole thread, and didn't see a single airbrushed wizard or girl with big boobies and a metal bra riding a tiger. WTF?

 

I'm working on it! Gotta get the thing running first!

Fredo, you may have a different crossmember because you have a totally different set up... early Econo (61-64). SInce you had to dump your entire motor mount set up, you could put the new one anywhere. Eugene must've figured that it was easier to mount directly to the tube than to mess with the mount platforms

 

Man, I found an old econoline pickup truck this week that apparently used to be raced by one of the Ford dealers here in Indiana. It's got a built 260 V8 and supposedly pulled the front wheels. I can get it for $1000 which leaves me about $990 short today.

 

All those vans now have murals of Jesus on them instead.

 

Christmas is the time... for progress!!

I had my old wheel studs cut out and replaced, but not correctly. See, Econolines, like 40s Fords have wheel studs that are swaged and have to be cut out and the new ones swaged. The hub and drum MUST be permanently joined. The machine shop I took it to knew all about it and convinced me that I didn't have to re-swaged them. Turns out I do. So instead of shelling out another $80 and hours in traffic, I decided to sell all my brand new brake stuff and go with discs for slightly more money.




I stripped down the front of the van and removed the single pot master cylinder, stuck e-brake handle, 170 rod-style throttle linkage and a bunch of other stuff. Then I cleaned up the frame, painted it with POR-15 and shot it with undercoating

frame


MC


Throttle linkage


I also discovered how bad the floor really is. Most of the van floor is decent, but what you see here is below the driver's feet. You can see the steering column (black tube). I just peeled back the sheet metal screwed down by a PO. The sheet metal extends down into the step and rocker. Luckily I have an Arizona replacement rocker and the rest is all flat sheet metal.



I took the dual MC bracket that Fred Carello (OldEconolines Yahoo group) made and drilled the new mounting holes... which took a long time because the steel is very thick and the holes needed to go on the edge of an internal piece of box tubing, but I eventually got it.

Fred's bracket


Modified, painted, and installed.



I need to take the e-brake brakcet and mechanism back out and free it up. It looks cool and is way better than shelling out $250 for Lokar stuff and then having to modify everything and have a handle in the way anyway!

I also cleaned and painted a lot of parts including the 240-style Econoline cable throttle mechanism and brackets, radiator support, MC, driveshaft, etc.

Speaking of driveshafts... This is the smallest driveshaft I've ever seen! The pen is there for scale




Here's the 240-style shaft I needed for the v8 conversion next to the the 144-170 driveshaft (trans yoke still attached)... but as short as it is... it's still too freaking long!!! It needs to be about 1" or more shorter. right now it exactly fits between the rear end yoke and the trans yoke end with absolutely no play whatsoever, so I'd have to remove the rear end or engine to install it... then never hit any bumps.

I also took some advice from the HAMB and bought 2 cookie sheets from WalMart and made myself a fan shroud. So far so good, but my little 110v flux core welder can't do metal that thin, so I just got it tack welded together.




Since there just wasn't enough clearance for my headers, I cut out the floor. I'll modify the dogbox later. Since my vintage Cragar long tube headers were too long, I'm getting new ceramic coated Mustang headers. The ones you see here are just the stock Lincoln Mark VII headers I used for mock up.





Finally, the bane of my exisistance. Here's a freaking lower shock mount that is firmly stuck in the front axle. I've beat it, heated it, took a 6' extension on a socket, and even put it in a 12 ton shop press, but that sucker will NOT budge. The other side came out effortlessly. The side where the bolt head is seems slighly larger so I think that a sleeve from a bushing got wedged in there somehow and then rusted... or a PO screwed up and tried to bush it. It's a little bent now, so I think my next best bet is to try to drill it out and hope I don't hit the axle.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that i went to an old spring shop ...been there since at least the early 60s judging from some of the photos... and had some new u-bolts made for the front axle. They were a little too wide, so they pinched them in a little for me... but too much. They said that if I hit the crown of the u-bolt on a hard surface (like the garage floor), the bolts would open up. I thought they were nuts, but said OK. Sure enough, after about 15 hits on a metal anvil, the bolts had opened up enough to fit!

 

good work, you are very busy man,,,anyhow try to laser the bolt i know it costs but it worked for a broken bolt in a sbc head for me,,when everything else fails

 

laser the bolt??

 

in the early 70s i put a 260 in a 63 econoline van .the owner wanted headers and i had to trim the floors to gain clearance. i used a dodge A100 dodge doghouse .the A100 doghouse has a hump out on the sides to clear the headers.

 

yeah, and a 60s CHevy doghouse is bigger, but I didn't have either. Theoretically, these headers should clear the stock dogbox, but it would've been close. I figured a little extra room would keep it a little cooler and make things a lot easier in the long run. It should be an easy modification

 

thanks for all the pics and the update. Well documented and freakin interesting.

 

"The hub and drum MUST be permanently joined. The machine shop I took it to knew all about it and convinced me that I didn't have to re-swaged them. Turns out I do." --Hellfish

Out of curiosity and future reference, what convinced you of this? How is it any different than using press in studs on early Ford brakes for example.

 

lookin good joe! i can see the bong hit smoke rollin out the windows already!

 

Maybe I can help explain the drum swadging process as I know it.

I worked in an auto machine shop when I was in high school and one of the jobs I routinely performed was replacing worn out, unmachinable brake drums on front hubs.

I had a drill operated cutter that went over the stud to cut the swadge loose so the drum could come off. Then I could press the old studs out and press new studs in. The studs were knurled and pressed into the hub, locking the wheels studs into place. The swadging is not intended to hold the stud to the hub. That's what the knurling on the shoulder of the stud was for. I always used a little Locktite also.

Then the drum was slipped on and the studs were swadged to lock the drum onto the hub. I had a tool that went over the threaded end of the stud and when it pressed down it encountered a short, unthreaded section of the stud which stood proud of the brake drum. Pressing it with the tool, flared it out and locked the drum onto the hub. It basically expanded the stud to hold the drum tight.

After the drum was swadged to the hub, I would still have to turn the hub/drum assembly slightly to ensure the brake surface was concentric. All told, it usually took me less than 30 minutes to do one.

Not all front hubs were made like this. It's been thirty years, but I seem to remember that it was mostly 50's and 60's Fords that were like this. Maybe some Mopars. Some other models were made so that the drum just slid over hub and were not swadged. Some had small screws that held the drum in place.

 

Right. My 59 Chevy, for example, does not require swaging, but the drum fits snuggly over the hub and is supported by the hub. The Ford, OTOH, has a small gap between the drum and the hub center, so without swaging, the drum can move around a tiny bit and is not supported by the hub, just the studs. That tiny bit can get a lot worse over time, potentially causing oblong holes in the drum and stud failure... and death... or that's how I understood it

 

it all makes sense, but I would have never thought of any of that. Awesome thread!

 

Really cool. Lots of good info there.

 

Hey any progress on this?

 

Between their 4 month old twins, and moving last weekend... no.

 

yeah, The only garage time I've had recently was to install rear seat belts in the 59 and re-install the front axle on the van so I could move it to our new place. However, somewhere between my last post and this one, I did manage to strip and paint a few undercarriage parts. I'm hoping this weekend I'll be able to finish teh disk brake upgrade... but I'll probably spend all day just trying to unpack and find my tools

 

I wanna see the rest of the fan shroud. Now!

 

hahaha!! It looks EXACTLY the same as it does in that picture, except I put a few crappy tack welds in to hold it together.

 

paint 'Free Candy' on the back

looking good dude!

 

I gotta say I've always loved these vans. Ive read your thread like 18 times. LOL. Lookin forward to more progress pics.

Gotta love that freakin AeroKroil huh? Stuff WORKS!

 

Great thread..Love the pics.....