Technical What did you do with your car today? * NEW*

Finally got the Cad 331 and early Hydro into the roadster. Still have a very long way to go...

 

That is a amazing looking mill!!

 

WOW! Just WOW!

 

Started building the headers today...

 

Taking my zoomies off and going back to the street pipes, and yea they are loud. The zoomies I built from junk laying around sound radical, but are to loud for events that are several days long and lots of driving. They will be used for a one day event now and then.

 

Today’s monkey business

 

I started making the exhaust for the Henry J, 3 inch with 18 inch Dynomax bullets.
I like the flow off the collector but I'd like to tuck it up more without disrupting that flow

 

I tried out the Ansen 15 x 5.5 slots I bought yesterday onto the 57.
They have a deep backspace and a pretty flat face, they might be a keeper on there because I like them.

 

Clean

 

Chased a couple of electrical gremlins and got the steering wheel installed.

 

Clearing out construction materials and other non auto related clutter out of the shop ....

 

quick and dirty polish to some Edelbrock valve covers for the old Olds, blast and silver paint grill, fresh rattle can grill shell and Buick drums on the '23

 

Finally managed to find someone with a proper pillar drill to help me separating my original front brakes from the hubs. These old Ford/Mercury drums are swaged to the hub so pressing the drum or the wheel studs out without getting rid of the swage results in ruining the wheel bolt splines in the hub (that's why you find studs which are welded to the hub lol) or stretching the bolts. There's a special tool for this but it costs $170 delivered here in Austria but I'm cheap so we used a 2̶8̶ 14mm Milwaukee carbide tip hole-saw and it worked very well, in 20 minutes drums and hubs said goodbye to each other after 60 years. This swaging is not, to my best knowledge, needed for centering and judging by the way the new, beefier drums sit on the hub flange I'm 99% certain there should be no centering issues. No I could not cut the drums anymore, it was done at least twice before and they'd have been too thin - besides, if I did it, oversize shoes would have been an absolute pain to find here. So now all I need to do is take the car on a test drive and adjust, then bed the new brakes in and do our bi-yearly inspection. At least that's the plan...

 

Got the little car all cleaned up and ready to go to pictures. My middle daughter Avery is graduating today, I put this car together for the occasion, I will be riding shotgun while she rows the four speed to the grad ceremony. Hard to beat!

 

My second car was a white '64 barracuda with a 273 two-barrel, pushbutton automatic with a gold interior. Loved that car. I hope your daughter gets to drive it a lot and show it off.

 

What a pretty pic!

 

Beautiful car! As a high school senior my first car was a '64 1/2 Barracuda, 273, 4 speed. Man I loved that car. Yours is so much nicer than mine ever was though.

 

I got my exhaust finished up and put them on, even made a few laps around the neighborhood, then changed the oil.

 

Great engine. I bought a set of extended mixture screws for my WCFB dual quads. Made the rear easier to adjust with a 1/4” open end wrench. I also bought a Unisyn from Summit and adapted it to a small top 4 barrel to make adjustments better.

 

Went back to the "workshop" (it's no such thing, really a converted pig shed but) because I remembered the old LH drum used to stick after a few turns going forward which I put down to the worn out shoe return springs (all brake hoses are new, so I excluded the usual internally collapsed hose). Those were of course replaced before I assembled the hubs/new drums - but for the horizontal spring pulling the shoes together (see pic), because, for reasons known only to the ancient Drum Brake Hardware Gods of Chinesium*, it is not available in the hardware kit, and despite me offering sacrifice in the form of Audi and VW parts they remained silent on the reasons for this. Anyway, due to my senility I did not check this yesterday so had another look today - jacked the car up and stomped on the brake pedal a few times as well as press it with a stick against the seat frame, and everything seemed to work fine, no sticking brakes, they release and return to the basic adjustment position. Am a lot happier now because I have no clue who offers those springs. To celebrate I stopped at the local bakery and got myself a Topfengolatche which went down very well with coffee and grapes.

Next week I'll borrow trader plates from a friend and take the car on its 1st test drive since I did the brakes, so crossed fingers...

* Yes those are real and we always sure to pray to them and offer sacrifices before we order parts, but old Chinesium Gods can be fickle.

 

Today ...
I drove to a swap meet an hour twenty out of town.


Set up with friends... had lunch... then...


Drove home..... great highway time.

 

I think the reason why that spring isn’t in the hardware kit is it’s not supposed to be there.

 

Got the Nova out.

 

X2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

This morning I did remember to take the cover off the Shoebox [while garage temp still cool]

 

Why? You don't get it with the shoes and I never saw them advertised separately... It makes no sense to me to make all the other springs and glance over that particular spring.

 

After spending a few weeks back at work and then several days dealing with the sudden accidental death of my boss/friend I finally felt like getting back in the shop today.

Getting headers tacked and test fit...