Projects Giant speedster project

Cowl

Cutting down the cowl sounds easy but really there was a lot of soul searching and measuring because once you cut you obligated. Recutting and rewelding is a bad. In the first picture you can see the original cowl and where I marked it. I spent Friday cutting down the cowl. It took all day because I wanted to preserve the cast beading. I left my camera at home and didn't get any pictures. Sorry. Dennis the welder had it all welded by the time I showed up on Sat morning. It looked great. I cut a hole for the steering column and set the cowl on the frame. I hope you'll agree it looks a lot racier. This body will have a door, so imagine that in place. The pedal height came out good too. I mocked up a seat back just to check my driving position.
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Waterpump

So the engine runs now but I've got to get some water in it so I can run it long enough to set the mixture and timing and bask in its glorious thunder. The waterpump has graphite packing on both sides. The shaft is bronze. Every other old car I've owned had a steel shaft and they all needed replacing. This shaft was perfect. Cool! I tried all my tricks to get the water pump apart but I'm afraid it will break. The bushings feel fine so I dug out the old packing, bead blasted it and painted it with POR15. I figure if you can paint over rust with the stuff, how much better will it be if you paint over clean iron. I also painted a bunch of other stuff. Once you crack a can of POR15 you better paint everything in sight. I also polished up the brass. Next I've got to hunt up some conveyor belt material for the flex joint. Then bolt-r-up.
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I bringing the REO to the 33rd annual car show in Clarkesville Ga on Aug 20-22. I'll probably have it here on Sunday. We'll go for a ride.
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According to what I read , POR 15 NEED rust for adhesion . Painting a clean part may not be optimal .

Edit : I checked on POR 15 website , they says it s correct . Sorry

 

I've never had it come off. Probably because the bead blasted surface is rough. I know it won't stick to any type of polished surface.

Jerry
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More Waterpump

Today I started assembling the waterpump. Most of you know these old things have graphite impregnated packing. I bought a roll of it at Hershey years ago. No one ever told me the correct way to install the packing so I made up my own procedure. Wrap it around the shaft, add a little oil, compress it with the packing nut, undo, add some more packing, retighten. It seems to work on my other cars. The flex joint I make out of some conveyor belt material. I use some gasket punches I inherited from my dad to make the holes. For little holes I use the drill press as a kind of arbor press. For big holes I use the hydraulic press. Hope this isn't too boring. The drive on the other side of the waterpump is for the generator. I'll worry about that after the cooling system is done.

Jerry


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Forgot to add. That filler cap you see on top of the pump in the last picture is for the oil. The oil slides around a cast channel in the waterpump and into the side of the block.
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Not boring at all! This stuff is mainly new to me and interesting, I know "early modern" stuff (call it post-1935 or so) and this is a generation older technology.

 

packing a pump is easy you cut the packing into a ring make your cut at an angle like 45 deg opposing so when the ends meet they fit together when you install a ring use the packing gland - metal retainer to bottom the ring out in the stuffing box - place where the packing fits , every time you put a ring in move your cuts where the rings meet to different positions 12 o clock 4 o clock 9 o clock 1 o clock etc so the liquid doesnt have an easy path to follow to leak out dont want all the ring ends to be in the same position , i dig this build ,

 

Fan

Just got back from Pigeon Forge TN with the family. The kids loved it but we sacrificed a lot of money to Dolly the goddess of country. Continuing with the cooling system I dismantled and inspected the fan assembly. You can see it in the before picture. They used some pretty primitive bearings back then. They look like something out of your kids bike. One of the races was loose in the housing so I tack welded it. Crude but effective. The hardest thing was getting the seal apart. The seal is just a felt ring that is held in a threaded housing that screws into the hub. The threads were rusted and it took some cajoling to get apart. I cut a new felt ring with my gasket punches and after degreasing and bead blasting the fan is ready to paint and assemble.

Jerry
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Fan2

The fan is driven off the right side camshaft. You can see the drive in the first picture. A one inch wide belt connects to the fan pulley. They thought big back in the old days. The pulley on the camshaft is rusted out. I ground off the rivets and took the thing apart. When I scare up some 12 gauge metal I'll make a new pulley.

Jerry
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You my friend are a total PIMP.
Nuff said!

Great build!

 

Body

Okay, I know what you're thinking. He's not even got the engine ready to go and he's working on the body. So here's my answer. Building a car is like playing a chess game. You've got to always be thinking a few steps ahead. The pedal placement depends on the steering wheel which depends on the seat which depends on the... You get the picture. Unless I know where the body's going I don't know where other things go--the exhaust, the firewall etc. I had an idea in my head but I needed to see it. I bought some battens at Lowes and slapped together a quick framework. It's a little hard to see. Notice the corner pieces in the cockpit. See what you think. Nothing is for sure.

Jerry
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Yes indeed Jerry !!

I think most of us have played the mock up and 10,000 trial fits game.

It is all part of why it costs GM or Ford so much money to bring out a completely new model.

While they probably don't use bits of cardboard, duct tape, and coat hangers to figure out how to mount a certain widget.
What they do, is not all that different in concept to what we have to do.
It takes them YEARS as well, to get all the relationships reasonably correct.

 

The body mockup looks good Jerry- lots of room for the little yonas behind you, too

 

You know, I just saw an old Chris Craft runabout with a rotten bottom on Craigslist...

 

Kudos!

Have you considered wood for the body, ala Hispano Suiza?

 

Love it! I've never gotten over my old 30ft Ketch. Cedar planking on oak frames.
Jerry
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Stopped by on the way home from tubing (took my oldest yankee to Helen today)- sorry we missed you!

 

First thing that popped into my head too - tulipwood and copper rivits!!

 

My son and I were camping at Lake Hartwell with the Cub Scouts. HOT! Even the lake water was hot. I'll be back on the speedster today.
Jerry
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Did you see the '22 Seagrave gas tank on evilspay?... could it be from your chassis?

 

Could be. $500! I think the guy's dreaming. The ceiling collapsed from a water leak in one of my buildings. It's taking time away from the Seagrave.
Jerry
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Sorry to hear that- hope it's a quick and inexpensive fix!

 

I just found this thread, thanks for turning me on to it. I lost a good part of my morning catching up by reading the entire thread but time well spent. Great job on the building and the online record I will look forward to updates.

 

I'm back.

I had some problems when a bad plumber created a leak in a building I own and the the ceiling fell down. But I had a chance to work on the Seagrave today. I firmed up the temporary framework for the body. I also secured the steel. As I looked at my mockup the vision of a wooden deck hit me. That would surely jazz things up. I'm not sure what kind of wood they use to make those alternating planks. Mahogany and ??? I watched a video that showed a guy using a Beugler pinstriper to make the seams. And I thought they were real seams!! So give me some input. The first and second picture shows my idea for the body--only much much bigger. There's no compound curves and that's important for ease of construction. They weren't into compound curves in 1923 anyway. Now picture the same body with a wooden deck like the next picture. Years ago I built a similar deck for a sailboat I owned. It was really pretty simple. The trick will be turn this pile of steel into a framework. I made work progress but my camera took a dump. Lens error! What the hell is that?

Jerry
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Just read the whole tread, AWESOME build man! And the sound of that thing running, too f'ing cool....!

 

i love this. it's amazing.

 

If you have ever worked with wood on a boat , you know that with a good frame , it s not too difficult to make curves . Patience and patterns .. And a little bit patience again
The only problem is you need to have good tools for wood work , a planner , a saw , etc .. So $$$ ..

 

I had that happen, turned out to be the lens zoom/focus/retract mechanism was jammed. It just had gotten some sand in it, I cleaned it and it started working again.