The rear end housing was semi- in place, so new seals went in.... Then we assembled the rear wheel drum, this time with an emergency brake line. The rear tires were going to scrape against the leaf spring shackles, so we made a bigger spacer for each tire. He started out on the lathe and created a holder out of a pipe. The band-sawed pieces were mounted and secured, and then the outside diameter was cut down uniformly. Then the pipe was taken out, the were pieces secured and the inside diameter was cut down to be uniform and to fit the correct size we needed. Here's the final spacer mounted with the rear drum.
It was so beautiful outside on Saturday, that it was natural to be out there sanding something. We took 600 grit paper to the radius rods and made them shine. My dad set up the buffer and really made them shine.... They look great under the car...
Last night, we mounted the tires, put the transmission and engine back in place and moved the car to the lift so we could continue to work on the underside without laying on the floor. And that's where she stands as of right now. Thanks for checking it out.
This is such a great thread. Family involvement, pics are great, car is going to be fantastic. Keep the info/pics coming! Your project is exactly what this hobby is all about!!!!
Almost forgot. I've seen the dzus fasteners on the streamliner and dealt with them most of my life, but I've never seen then installed before. We finished up all the dzus installations on all four wheels. Now we need to fit the moons in place.
Show us the moon!! Haha... I mean moons! Looking great, Jess. You are getting dangerously close to being able to fire it up and take a spin! It's gotta be soo tempting. How exciting! Malcolm
Wow,,,as much as I'm on the hamb,,,How did I miss this thread? The coupe has really come a long way,,,,due to the hard work and determinatin by yourself,family and friends,,,HRP
Wow, you've come a long way! It is shaping up great Jess! I am really looking forward to meeting you and seeing the coupe in person. Keep up the good work and keep us posted!
Thanks! I can't wait to meet you too! My dad mentioned he talked to someone who met you and the guy went on and on about how cool you were. ...I can't for the life of me remember who he was talking to....
I kind of went through a Malcolm withdrawl. Haven't seen you in a while. Looks like you've been busy. The roof looks awesome! See you at the swap meet!
It HAS been a while! I definitely want to make a visit down there soon. Just gotta get the Galaxie projects out of the way first. See ya Sunday! Malcolm
I have got a 33 Grille if your interested, I can will email pictures if you would like. Email me at ........ fatfender@aol.com By the way meet your Dad a couple week ago at the Speedway Museum. What a job!!!!!!!!!! Ed
FANTASTIC!!!! What a great build! A great FAMILY build as well! Thank you for the updates and for the clear pictures! I think there could be some good specific tech threads just from various parts of this build. Showing every step of the roof insert installation is a great example! Keep up the great work!
Wow. I have got to make time to update more often. I found a back log of some progress photos from last weekend. Yikes. I'll start with a very random, but very cool photo taken underneath the coupe. It's my favie photo right now. Some work got done on the front and rear shocks, but nothing was completely accomplished. We know what other parts we'll need to order. Now we have to figure out how to make sure the headlights won't vibrate loose from their holds and run into a spinning splined brake drum. That wouldn't be cool. I wanted to expand on our Dzus-ed Moons. My dad created a really cool template to place the dzus holes spaced evenly on the moon. The idea is to upgrade from cruddy small screws which corrode and whose holes aren't always evenly spaced. We start with your basic wheel with a weird bolt pattern (but imagine it freshly sandblasted): The template fits the inside diameter of the wheel's lip and holds a metal tab which has been dzus-ed to the template. Once you fit the template into place, it leaves space for you to tack weld the metal tab onto the wheel in the right place. Then you just weld the tabs more completely and in our case, powder coat the wheels in our favie color. And mark and drill the holes in the Moon disc for the Dzus buttons. Now, all four wheels can use any one of the four Moons. You don't have to mark the back of each Moon disc with archaic directions of which side, which wheel, what hole... And it's worth all the work and fuss, because the end result looks better than expected. The Lincoln Swap Meet held at the fairgrounds was successful for us. We could actually check items off of our "find list" this year. We scored this sweet right hand exhaust manifold for the coupe:
This last weekend was spring break for UNL, so Tim made time to help wire the coupe. Unfortunately, the big bad flu left my dad out of commission. Tim and I got a lot accomplished though, and I learned a TON about wiring. Here's the back of the dash panel when we started: Now, be patient with me as I go thru a few mundane steps, which I'm sure most of you know already, but to which I said, "Wow, I had no idea how that worked." You'll be rolling your eyes in no time. So the normal Painless Wiring kit will come with a bunch of little ends which you are supposed to simply crimp to the end of your wires. But, as Tim shook his head, he told me we would do this the right way. He clipped off the little plastic piece from each end, stripped a wire, fed it thru the end's end (ha) and soldered it into a permanent place. Then he placed a piece of shrink tube around the wire's new end and heated it, protecting it and making it look nice. We started with a fairly easy and obvious string. Each gauge needs a ground wire, so we needed to string those gauges together. He cut small lengths of black wire to stretch between each gauge, attaching an end with solder and shrink tube as he went. Eventually, all five gauges were connected together with one clean string of ground wire. Tim assured me that shortcutting grounding was not a good idea. I believe. Each gauge has a light bulb, so he did the same thing in stringing them together (grey), only he separated the sides. The three wires on the left were shrinked together and the two wires on the right were shrinked. The two sets were brought together with a third wire (brown). The brown wire will be the one going to the power source to actually light the gauges. Then he soldered all the wires together with the brown wire, to ensure a good connection. Shrink tube will help protect this connection and make it look fancy. This type of wiring went on for all of Saturday afternoon. I had Tim out past curfew because we worked until 10 pm.
This red with white stripe wire is for power the gauges. All five gauges were strung together with that red with white stripe wire. And other one-off wires were prepared and attached to the gauges. To make removal of the dash a snap, Tim decided it needed WeatherPak sets. This way, we disconnect three or four pak connectors and go. He grouped the wires and each group was very neatly shrinked together. Then he slipped these little bitty green rubber pieces onto each end. Then it was time to strip the wires, attach the ends with a crimper and solder the ends to the wire. He moved that green piece down and crimped it into the metal end. Then he put them in place in the WeatherPak connector: To make everything tidy, he wire tied the two sets together: So, less the ignition switch and headlight switch, the rest of the dash is done. He said that most of the time it takes to wire a car will be focused in the dash area. Makes sense. Next, he prepared the ignition's wiring:
Jess,this is the most well written,inspirational,and informative build post in a long time. Thank You,for sharing your "quality time"! What a great family,too bad more weren't like yours.
Jess, you rock. Thanks for all of the details - shows all the great things I missed last weekend! Malcolm
Thanks all. Back to the wiring we did this last weekend... So inside the car, we attached a fuse panel to the firewall. We also cut a hole in the fire wall for the wires going to the engine area. Then we started to identify and separate specific wires that we needed to work with first. In this next photo, we had just identified, re-grouped, cut and put shrink tube around the wires needed for two of the Weather Paks for the gauge panel. The smaller group had just gotten all it's ends added and snapped into the Weather Pak connector. This next photo shows the progression of work (bent over looking into the firewall from the front seat - ouch.) He did quite a bit of work regrouping the wires which had come from Painless wire tied together. Some wires needed to be rerouted and organized, so he clipped the Painless ties, regrouped and re-tied. A lot. The two single paks laying to the upper right of the fuse panel are for the future tach and possible accessories. These paks will keep them prepared and protected for us until we can use them one day. The shrinked group closest to us is for the ignition switch. The other two are gauge lights and gauge power wire groups. At this very moment, Tim was preparing the wires for the head light switch. Then he measured how much wire we would need to reach the firewall hole and cut the wires leading to the engine area. The two looooong shrink wrapped groups on either side of the freshly cut wires are will go to the back of the car. One group will lead to the battery, one will go to the taillights. Just wrapping the engine wires totally shows the difference in clutter. Then Tim started to add the little green gaskets, strip the wires, and crimp and solder on the ends. We had 18 or 19 wires. The bigger wires need a bigger end added. And if you can see, the ends are different than the ends we used on the dash panel. These ends are male and will fit into the female ends on the dash connectors. These wires will connect to that black connector stuck in the hole we drilled in the firewall. We mounted the dash and took it back out lots of times through this whole process to make sure wires would reach. This time, we got to connect the packs.... And mount the dash. Check out the crazy group of engine wires, all splayed out. More wiring to come this weekend. Hopefully I'll get that posted in a more timely manner.
The Jalopy Journal
