Featured 1954 Nash Rambler light re-commissioning

Back to work on the Nash after getting another project done and out of the way. My two main goals now are fuel system and brakes. I took the fuel pump out, figured out the Carter part number (M797S), and ordered a kit. There are no new pumps for this car, couldn't even find an old NORS rebuilt or anything. The kit was 95 bucks with shipping, but I guess I'm just glad I can even get one.

So I moved onto the brakes. Today I made all new hard lines from the master to the rear wheels. Some of them had been replaced in the past but they used a single flare on the ends, and on the rearend they just left the old rusty ones clipped in place and put new ones over the top. I took the old ones out, made new ones and routed them through the factory clips which are actually quite nice.

I had to find some new clips for the line that runs front to back but I had a stash. Looking at the pics, I do see that one loop of my line looks like it's kinda floating in midair, I'll adjust that so it's tighter against the floor, it's easy to do with Nicopp, which I really like working with.







I got this SUR&R brand flaring tool last Christmas and it's so nice, you clamp it into the vice and it makes way better flares than those little parts store flaring kits, I never want to have to do it that way again. The tool isn't exactly cheap, but when it comes to doing stuff like this, it's so nice to have.

 

I swapped in my '55 grille today, was way more work than I expected, the only way to get access to the bolts was to pull out the radiator, so I did a coolant system flush right away, luckily it looked clean. Also had to reshape the pull handle for the hood release to clear the new grille, not too terrible though. I love the look of this over the original, the original looked too much like a Metropolitan.



I also bought this kinda rough emblem to use on the grille. It was very foggy on the bottom and had a bunch of crazing on it, I wetsanded the plastic face to get the fog off and polished it, then covered it in Vaseline for a couple weeks. The Vaseline soaks into the crazing and fills them in, works really well. It came out great, but I mocked it up on the car and I like it better without. So not going to use it, but figured I'd show the before and after anyway.

 

That emblem cleaned up amazingly well!

 

Neat little car and you knew exactly how to fix the body.Is it difficult to change the tires due to the bath tub design of the body?

 

It's not bad. You have to jack up on the "frame" (it's a unibody so no actual frame, but you know what I mean) so the suspension drops down a bit but then they're actually pretty easy to access. The skinny tires also help.

Apparently you need special adapters to do an alignment though, since a regular alignment rack has gauges that attach directly to the wheels, and that won't work on this car. Hoping not to have to figure that out on this one though.

 

High time for an update, for all 3 of the people who've seen this thread.

First off, I did thoroughly scrape and re-undercoat all of the fenderwells and the rest of the underbody. Anything that could get scraped off, did, all the factory undercoat that was solidly in place, stayed.

The only thing picture-worthy is my sweet new scraper. It's super long and super tough but also has some flex to it, worked amazingly well for this job. I got it at the thrift store for like a buck, I think it's a fancy frosting spreader for cakes. If you see one of these at a rummage sale or whatever, I highly recommend it.

 

Secondly, I finally got the gas tank back in! This was a huge accomplishment. After a ton of attempts, I finally got it clean enough to where I felt good using it again. Hard to get a pic inside but you can see there's no more crust of dried up varnish or flaky rust, it's bare metal in there, as good as it's going to get.

(insert pic here when I can get it to upload, certain pics are not uploading again)

What I learned cleaning gas tanks, is if there's varnish/gunk in the bottom, first you need to use a heavy solvent like Xylene, soak that and I made tools to scrape and brush it clean that I could feed in through the sending unit hole. I tried shaking around bolts and chains and shit and it knocked some loose but the stuff was so caked on, it wouldn't come off. Then, once all the varnish gunk is out, then you fill the tank all the way to the top with vinegar and water. I was using vinegar to try to de-rust it but I didn't fill it up all the way, it's gotta be kept all the way full with no trapped air. I used 6 gallons of vinegar and topped the rest off with water, let it sit for the weekend, then dumped it and immediately did the baking soda/water neutralizer, which I also filled to the top. Sloshing around vinegar doesn't do any good, it needs to be touching every surface, as does the neutralizing agent.

I'd tried calling all the old radiator shops around but no one around here will touch an old gas tank, so it's DIY only, as usual.

My Ford truck 6V tank sender works great! Same bolt pattern, bent the arm to match the old Nash one and dropped it right in. Shows just a hair over the E mark bone dry and showed 3/8 of a tank when I added 4 gallons in. Close enough for me, thrilled to have anything to go by.

I also had to replace the rubber connector from the filler neck to the tank, the original one was totally destroyed, and it also was so small, just long enough to get a clamp on either end. I bought a universal replacement one with a 90 degree elbow molded in and cut it down. It now covers a much larger portion of the filler neck and tank neck.



I also pulled out the filler neck from the quarter to clean it up and once I had all of the crap scraped off, I found a big ol' hole in it. Glad I took it out to clean it, I welded up the hole and cleaned it up nice and painted it to keep it from getting rusty again. I almost overlooked that.

 

Moving forward with the fuel system, I made a new fuel line to incorporate a filter before the pump, then I rebuilt the pump. Never did one before, watched some Youtube videos of similar ones ahead of time, wasn't too bad. The only place in the world that seems to have a rebuild kit for these pumps is a place called Then and Now Automotive out of Washington. Not cheap, but I'm just glad anyone makes it.

The amount of rust particles in the top of the pump tells me the tank has not been clean in a very long time, and that my pre-filter is a good idea.



Got that back together and working and decided to tear into the carb. This is the pile of loose rust particles I scraped out of the float bowl before I started tearing it apart.



I actually had it running with the carb like that, kinda shocking.





Took a few tries, but I did get the carb all tidied up and working again, although now it seems I need a fuel pressure regulator, the rebuilt pump seems to put out more than this carb likes. I had one of those Mr Gasket dial ones on there with a gauge and the car ran nice with 3 1/2 lbs of fuel pressure, straight off the pump it ran like dogshit and would just push gas out of the float bowl.

Knowing the Mr Gasket dial regulators are known to go to shit with use, I bought a cheapie set-screw style one off of eBay, and it was absolute garbage. Terrible threads, couldn't get it to stop leaking. That got sent back and I have another one coming now, hopefully a better one. Once I have the fuel pressure dialed in, the fuel system will finally be done.

 

Didn't have a ton of time to work on the car today but I was determined to get something done, so I decided to repair the messed up left front fender molding. Someone shot a screw into it and also a pop rivet to hold it to the fender, and it must have hit something as well, because it was very bent. I'd been wanting to try to weld stainless with the MIG welder and stainless wire, so this seemed like a fun experiment.





I used .030 stainless MIG wire with regular 75/25 Argon/CO2 mix to weld up the holes, using a brass backer bar on the front to try to limit how much weld I had to grind down on the face. It worked OK, although the Rambler moldings are paper thin. The screw hole welded up nice but the rivet hole took several tacks and got a little ugly. Then I ground them flush, did my best to sand them flat (it's hard to do inside that little groove) and then pounded on them with the buffing wheel.

I also did my best to straighten out the bent/flattened part. I like to use one of those plastic shims that come in auto lock-out kits, it's nice for beating on stainless because it doesn't mar up the back side like metal tools can.





It's still visible at certain angles but for this car, and a molding that's down low on the body, I'm really happy with it. With a bit more practice I think I could do even better, very pleased for a first attempt though.

Once I get the fuel pressure regulator on, then I just need to get the brakes finished up and I can start on the bodywork and paint. Looking forward to that part, because there I actually know what I'm doing.

 

Just an idea I've used when fabricating a patch panel, the local grocery isle can be your friend, look for the disposable aluminum foil type roaster trays as often used for thanksgiving turkey baking, these can come in varied gauges unlike traditional tin foil we're all familiar with in roll form, although restaurant supply may have heavier gauge roll foil if so inclined. You will find the roaster trays in various sizes & can be cut to size with common ordinary scissors, often these will have ribs or a pattern that can easily pressed smooth on a flat surface & your good to go shaping even the most intricate panel & transferring to your appropriate sheet metal.

 

So now you've got 4 people following along with you. I missed this thread when you first started it. I would have never thought to add fender skirt to it. Seems like you could have skipped repainting the wheels.

That's an AirFlyte, isn't it? And is that a Pininfarina badge on the sail panels?

 

OK, cool. I wasn't sure if it was custom enough for the main board, so far just a grille swap and soon 4 fender skirts. But I'm cool with that if you are.

The rust was a real shocker, especially for how beautiful the floors are in this car. I knew the rockers and lower front fender doglegs were going to need some work, just based on the bondo peeling off the bottom edges. But I never would have guessed how far it went. Still super glad to have found those donor car pieces for the tail lights.

Interesting. Could be useful for floor pans to transfer the bead roll pattern onto, that's hard to do with a tape or paper pattern. I've used foil to mask off suspension parts before, you don't have to tape it, it stays put, but never thought of trying it for pattern making. Makes sense though.

I thought of making the wheels black so they would show up even less, but we'll see what it looks like on the ground with the skirts done. It is an AirFlyte, has a cool dash script announcing it, and it does have the PininFarina badging, Nash credited the '53 Rambler restyling to Farina's studio. Puts the little Nash Rambler in good company with all the Ferraris and whatnot.

 

Thank you Sir. I hadn't seen it till now and the work he has been doing is great.

 

This thread is great! I'm glad it got moved onto the main board or I likely would've never seen it. Great work so far! I'm fond of these old Nash cars

 

There’s 6 of us now. Woo Hoo!

 

Make it 7! ‘50s to mid ‘60s compacts are where it’s at man!

 

This has to be the best looking ugly car out here.

 

Make that 8. Cool car, cool thread. My daughter fell in love with Metros when we saw some at a show but she lost interest when she found out how pokey they are. She has a bit of a lead foot. Lol. She had her own money, so for a while it looked like I might be getting a little Nash experience too.
Love that dashboard….

 

He’ll I’m 9!!! I didn’t even know about this until I just saw it on the main board. Glad that Mark moved it over so we all can see the work and join in on the fun. I can’t believe how much rust was hidden behind the bodywork and how lucky you were to know of a donor car sitting in a boneyard ready to be picked apart. I might have just bought what was left just because but if you’re like me you are fast running out of room to hide stuff

 

Nice car. I like the grill you put in. I agree with you about shabby work sometimes will keep a car in circulation and away from the crusher. I had one car years ago that the owner said he did some work on. He was very proud to tell me he replaced all the fuel lines, front to back. Too bad he used rubber hose.

 

My youth was misspent on Corvairs and Sunbeams, so I really dig oddball stuff. And they don't get much odder than this!

I love all your little touches, i.e. the skirts and that grille (which I agree is superior). But mainly, I appreciate the detailed presentation of the rust work. You make something that's quite difficult look downright straightforward.

Glad this got moved to the main board. Looking forward to more.

 

Good job on giving the old ride a new lease on life.

 

No real update on the car but I was at the junkyard where my donor car was and I took some pics of what's left. When I cut the tail light pieces out I was careful not to ruin the wheel arches since those are still good and I can't use them, in case someone wants to fix a 58-60 American with rusty wheel arches, they're still intact. That and a rear bumper is about all that's left.

Whenever I pull stuff at a junkyard, I try not to wreck anything else in the process. I wish everyone took that attitude.

 

I concur!

 

That "scraper" of yours is a dental plaster spatula, any dentist will have several
Great thread, had not seen it until now.

 

Follower #10 here. How did i miss this gem?

 

I’m out of fingers, can I still watch?

 

Take your shoes off!

 

I get that, man... I was in a salvage yard once trying to get some decent FE exhaust manifolds and was struggling to get the bolts out without breaking them; some wiseass watching takes my wrench and SNAPS them off. I asked him WTF was wrong with him and he said I was wasting my time; I told him I was trying to leave the heads unfucked...