Scored a beautiful Mallory distributor from Paul for the Tuck Fire Fund back in January. Appears to be new old stock. Took it to Minnesota's distributor guru Don Bohnenkamp, who rebuilt and dialed it in. Don rules!
Carbs and intake in. Had my generator rebuilt, fabricated a bracket for it. Got everything wired up and bolted down. Bought an 8 circuit "hot rod" wiring kit several years ago, on sale, and battled it for a good part of the summer. Cryptic instructions adding more confusion than following my own logic would have gotten me. Everything looks nice now, and I've got a box full of enough unused wire to rewire my next goddamn car. Got 25 ft of nice enameled cloth covered solid core wire and Rajah ends from Hot Rod Company that look really nice. I've never had this motor running in the time I've owned it, so I've been anticipating firing it up for a long time. Hamber Titus offered to come around and help me fire it up.
Titus came over to lend a much needed hand on firing day. Got spark. Got fuel pressure. Got no compression. Valves stuck. Heads off, and a Sunday run back to East Side Speed Shop for some valve grinding.
That was last week. Got the motor back together. Since it was apart, I cleaned up and tossed in some cool chrome valve covers I scored from Skyspop last winter. Gear Drive hand delivered a very cool set of awesome cast aluminum air cleaners. This bypasses plenty of sidetracking and snags along the way over the past few weeks. Like both NEW masters leaking like sieves. Bought two more this week and got them in and bled. Brakes and clutch work fine. My initial driveshaft job being badly enough out of whack to need rebuilding again before finally balancing it out. All the typical hot rod snafus. At least for me. Huge learning curve on this one. Right now though, things are looking up. Ready for round 2.
Needed a bell crank to switch my pull to a push. I don't have a lot of space back there, so I wanted to see how closely I could get it tucked in and under the carb. Borrowed an Eelco bell crank plate from Titus to make up a template in 1/8th inch. Seems to work!
yeah, man, I've been chomping at the bit. I thought if I fired it up last night it would finally help me sleep better. The past month the progress has had me really wound up. Hard to sleep at night. But I was wrong. Now that I know it runs, I laid in bed all damned night thinking about that sound!
Spent nearly 30 hours over the past 3 days in a mad thrash to get this thing on the road. This is Minnesota, and my alley is on a gnarly hill, so once the snow flies and shit freezes, it's impossible getting hot rods up and down it. I can't make it another winter without driving this thing at least once. Titus spent a few hours with me again on Sunday getting the linkage in order and carbs synched up well enough to run. I spent the day today finishing up the throttle linkage. Got it all together and running this afternoon. It was past dark. 23 degrees out. And I'll be goddamned if I can sleep another night not knowing. Here's a super sh!tt^ video of the maiden trip. The sound is horrible. It's dark as hell. It's shaky and bouncy. I'm beat tired and half frozen. But man, it was fun! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUMGXRtv6FM&list=HL1352771770&feature=mh_lolz
You and me both had our first drive in the dark! Allot colder for you. Congrats man, nothing like finally getting a project on the road after years of work!
Well crap! Now you're going to have six long months to think about that one and only drive, TORTURED by memory, SUFFERING out the winter... Okay I'll stop. Congrats man! Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app
The 1/4" stock I used on the bellcrank was giving a little more flex than I felt comfortable with. Probably would have been just fine forever, but it kinda was eating at me. So I made another one last night using 3/8" stainless bar, heavier stock for the plate, and welded the spherical rods ends, and it's way more solid. I can live with this one.
The weather has been unusually great the past few days. Couldn't have asked for better timing to get the car on the road. Unless of course it'd been July. Here's a couple shots from yesterday's drive.
As much as I hate how useless the little "peep mirrors" always turn out to be, I decided to dig around the garage for an old motorcycle mirror. I live in the city, so every little bit of visibility helps. Found an old factory one from my Shovelhead. Looks ok, and it works perfectly for that left side blind spot.
Been a long time since any updates. I've spent most of the summer driving the hell out of this thing, and trying to keep working on it to a minimum. I promised myself some time back that once I had it on the road, I'd get after it and have as much fun as I could. So I've managed 2500 miles, and felt she'd earned a little attention to detail and some time in the garage again. Since getting it on the road I've hated the generator bracket I'd made. It was a quick fix the get it up and out of the way and on the blacktop, so looks were sacrificed for function. It worked just fine, so no problem there. It served its purpose. But where it was riding, high and wide on the driver's side, stood in the way of having a hood, and that's part of the final plan, so it had to go. I spent a bunch of time scouring the little books and online looking for someplace else to put it. Finally found a photo in one of Goatroper02's posts of a little bracket on the passenger side. I think it's a take on an old Belond header kit bracket.
So I cropped and printed out a photograph of Goatroper02's pic. Cut it out, blew it up on the copier until the head bolts roughly matched up. Then I drew up a template, correcting for distortion from the photograph, and cut one out of 1/4" plate. Worked great, and is a crazy simple solution compared to what I've been sketching out myself all summer. Now I've got room for a hood, and it's nice and clean up top, so you can take in the wonder of all 4 carbs. First picture is where it sat before. Next is the bracket itself. A stock Olds generator brackets sits on the plate. Third picture is where it all sits now. Last photo is a nice clean unobstructed view of my Dick York carb setup.
Those look like Gear Drive Matt's air cleaners. I bought a pair from him for my flatty. www.lakeheaders.com '27 T Roadster build: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=734383
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