Yeah, lightbar looks good. Tying them together like that is a good idea, plus it acts as a grille guard. I didn't see the dog until it was mentioned above.
Added a much needed fuse panel. Ignition/lights/aux/dash-not connected yet. Using cloth covered wire through out.
Interesting looking fuse panel. It looks like that design hasn't changed since the 20s. Is the idea that non fused items can be fed from the right hand side and fused items on the left?
Not positive. I found it in a pile of junk at my friend’s shop. It looks like you can ground the negative terminal and have a bus to run two leads (+ and -) for each non grounded device. It may not have been intended for a car or anything else with a metal chassis is my guess. I just thought it looked cool.
Great work! Where the did you get the cloth covered wire. from? I am hoping to do the same for my roadster but have only found YnZs as source.
The car did great at this last RPM Nationals event, and we were honored with the “Shifters Pick” award presented by the Shifters Car Club.
But there was something amis throughout the day of racing... cylinder no. 8 to be precise. This wasn’t discovered however until I inspected the car a few weeks afterward. It turned out to be a damaged valve caused by some clearance issues with the way the heads were casted and machined (and me not checking each of the chambers before installing). This had happened once before using these heads, and I thought I corrected it sufficiently by removing some material on the head near and around the valve.
I had Eric Vaughn of Vaughn’s Machine in Monrovia help correct the heads. Each chamber was clearanced by an additional .050 and each chamber now shares a relatively equal cc value. The face surface of each spark-plug hole and stud hole was machined to a perfect 90, and steel inserts were installed. These heads should be near perfect now!
I replaced all the valves with beautiful new stainless units, spiral ground and hardened tips. The valve seats were lapped and the lash was set once more.
Then had Stanyer & Edmondson “Goodyear” in Pasadena mount some fresh bias plys. They’ve been there Since 1922!
You definitely got the right guy to work on your heads. Eric is a master machinist and a great source of information. I bought the wheels on my 3W from him in '85. He has done me right with his aluminum wheels and their repairs. Your roadster looks terrific.
I think you stopped by after RPM nationals and had the compression checked, that's when we found out the one side had 2 cylinders with zero compression. Eric sure cleaned up those heads!!
I purchased from H&H since they were local. No grinding required as I used adjustable lifters. It was explained to me that they use these valves on all their builds.
They've got a couple 1.5" valves on their website. Does yours have a part number on the box? A Manley number?
The box they gave me was a plain cardboard box they’d found to toss them all into. That said, I believe these are the standard “1.5 budget-performance” as I have stock seats and the profile is not the “pro-flo” undercut design. Hope this helps!
Its been awhile since my last post, so I thought I’d bring my build thread to current. Since January, I’ve been slowly removing layers of old paint with hours of rubbing and wet sanding. The result was a good chunk of og ford black/burgandy with bits of factory primer poking through. Here are a few photos I took to record the process.
Original Ford lacquer paint along the lower edges was nonexistent, along with spotty areas where the paint was scuffed too deep or gouged out to bare metal. I decided to fill these areas in with black lacquer, before blending into the surviving areas with patina solution and misting touches of rustoleum maroon. The aim was to preserve as much of the original patina and to include the old chips, scratches, and even some evidence of the removed paint layers. Feathered and blended afterward for a uniform appearance. I also started on a top using the original irons.
The top was shortened by 3” and some of the original wood was not salvageable so I made replacements.
The Jalopy Journal
