Hot Rods The (mis) Adventures of a Compulsive Tinkerer

The brake pedal and master cylinder are back in and tight and the brake lines are installed.
Now if I can only remember the sequence for ***embling this jigsaw puzzle…..

 

How’s it going?

 

IKEA floor kit...

 

^^^^ LOL…. All it needs is about 50 weird cam-lock fasteners.
I figured it out and started installing the screws only to find that I needed about 20 more than I had on hand. They are stainless steel with large diameter, low profile heads. The better part of a week waiting for another batch to be delivered. It’s in there.



While waiting for the screws I decided to tackle the ugly job of cleaning up the remnants of the old roll cage. Sorry for the ****py photo, my phone didn’t like the strong afternoon sun.



It’s been high nineties to over 100 each day and the car is outside right now so I work in the morning and after sundown. Also, the fire danger is very high so I have to be extremely careful cutting and grinding outdoors, it’s been the cause of at least three fires in our county so far this year. I wet everything down so the worst that could happen is I’ll electrocute myself.
I cut the stubs off below floor level and cleaned everything up. I painted the areas with Rustoleum flat black and made new close outs. I used the old floor material so it kinda looks like it’s been there for a while. Way better!

 

your stude truck is gorgeous

 

I needed to have the seat in place so that I could remount the gas pedal and the shifter. The seat seemed a little out of position so I added a slider mechanism that I had. It raised the seat 3/4”. I’ll have to see if that helps or hurts. The mechanism didn’t have a handle so I had to make one.

You can see the lovely angle iron (old bed frame) shifter bracket. I made a new one but forgot to take pictures.
I also pruned the gas pedal ***embly and made it pivot closer to the floor. It had an awkward feel and all the extra metal limited my options as to where I could mount it. I may still cut off the tip and weld on a new tab. We’ll see.

In general: my wife’s office has been slow lately so she’s home more. I feel a little guilty heading for the shop when she decides to do yard work or home stuff so that has been affecting my shop time a little. Happy wife…. You know.
Also, Doctors orders, “walk briskly each day, you need to get your heart rate up”. So we’ve been going over to the lake to walk the trails regularly. That lead to the inevitable,”What are you going to do with the white boat?” A few years back we bought a very clean, little- used 18’ SeaRay. We took it out once, then I had open heart surgery, then Covid hit, then my Mom required care, so like many boats, it sat unused. So I added, “Get the boat cleaned up and running” to my To Do list. I’ve always loved boats so it’s a labor of love. Drain the old gas, change the oil, clean it thoroughly and hope the old Rochester 2 bbl remembers what to do with fresh gas. It will be running tomorrow and off the list.

 

I always clean the stud contact very well and add some silver solder , dress it down and it’s good for many many miles and years

 

Been a little while….
Here’s the new shifter bracket, strange looking but it will get a cover. It’s not bolted in yet, I’m still futzing with the seating position

I decided to try lowering the seat so I shortened the existing seat bracket. I cut it loose, cut 1” off and reattached it with a sleeve. Now it’s removable. Before:

After:

After several iterations I finally hit on what I hope is the right combination of seat brackets. It’s lower and tilted back slightly. With the new slider I can fine tune it. Now I can position and mount the gas pedal.

 

It looks like I need a longer steering column so I ordered a 28” long one from Speedway. In the mean time I mounted the gas pedal. Since it’s bolted to the .062” aluminum floor I made a 2.5x3”x1/8” backup plate for the back side.

The pedal position is way better than before and after a little rework, the pedal is smaller and looks better. I managed to keep the integrated pedal return spring too.
I ordered some linkage parts and bell cranks from Speedway. I’m not a fan of cable throttles, takes away all the fun of figuring angles and ratios and stuff.

 

Yes Bob, last week the heat was a killer.
Now we’ll just be in the low triple digits, feels like fall weather after 109-113!

 

The new steering column arrived today so I yanked out the old 26” column and put in the new 28” one. Funny what a huge difference two extra inches makes. Now I need to drop the column down towards my lap a little and it’s perfect.

I’ll probably revisit the steering column support, maybe I can come up with something better. Without the benefit of a roll cage dash bar there’s really only the bottom of the dash to work with.

As you can see, the remaining upper firewall leaves a lot to be desired. Just one more can of worms to open….

 

Worm stew ain't all that bad if you ****e it up right!

 

Well, I made the conscious decision to start down this particular road. I could have just got it running, gave it a big bath and put up a cl***ified ad. But noooo.... I just had to "tidy up" a few things. LOL .
Do me a big favor and stop me if I start sanding body panels, will ya....?!?!?

 

I was running low on energy this afternoon so I looked for something that I could accomplish sitting down with NHRA.tv on. The new master cylinder means new lines and a repositioning of the brake light switch. I traced the wires to where they joined up with the original ’49 Austin wires and sure enough, they spliced them to the old cloth wires. The factory brake lights never worked but it had a big trailer light down low to conform to bracket racing requirements. It’s gone now so I need to make the factory taillights work. The old cloth wire crumbled with any flexing.
I pulled out the taillights and cleaned up the sockets and the contacts. I expected to have to replace them but they were fine. I made new pigtails with wire colors that match the newer wires coming from the front.
I don’t know what the taillight gaskets are made of but I thought I’d try soaking them in Neatsfoot oil to soften them up. If it doesn’t work, I’ll make new ones from cork.

Two new pigtails….

Those clever Brits. Spring loaded, solder-less connections. A little careful cleaning and they work like new.

One thing I did notice is that the pins on the bulb are symmetrical so the bulb can be installed either way. So you have to pay attention to get the bulbs in correctly.
I’m looking forward to seeing those cool little gl*** taillights light up.

 

You’re getter me motivated, Bob!!

 

Once again life gets in the way. Clearing out Mom and Dad’s house, Dr appointments, repairs and service for the family cars and of course the heat all conspired against me. Trying to absorb some of my Dad’s tools and equipment into my already packed shop was time consuming.
With the Austin in the shop with the A/C I decided to address the front brakes. They have always dragged making the car hard to push. I cleaned the rotors and hubs, repacked the bearings and put them back on. I was cleaning the calipers and noticed that they were frozen up. The driver’s side retracted with a little help from a C-clamp so I cleaned and painted it. But the p***enger side caliper was really stuck. The poor C-clamp really groaned before there was any movement. So I ordered new calipers. They finally arrived today.

Now everything rolls nice and smooth, no more dragging. On to the next task, bleeding the new system.

 

I though for sure your next post was going to be

"So I started sanding the body........"

 

Its been hard to fight the urge, real hard….. My brain keeps saying, “Just one panel at a time, piece a cake”. Uh huh.

 

That can be "Plan B"... Job #1 can remain "Running & Driving".

 

Sorry for the long break, lots going on and none car related. My Mom’s house is all spiffed up and on the market. Big job - done. I haven’t been down to check on my LA house since forever it seems. So I did a twofer. Work on the house and chase car parts in SoCal.
My Studebaker pickup is one of three that the Pisano Bros built in the 60s. Mine has a mild ‘59 389 Pontiac in it. One had a 413 Mopar and the third one had a stroker, roller cam, nasty high compression ‘59 389. I bought that engine this weekend. That truck currently has an LS in it.
This one started with a ‘59 389 block with ‘61 421 heads according to the casting numbers. It has an Edelbrock 2x4 intake and a factory fuel injection distributor. As you can see it also has an adapter for 55-60 Pontiac engine to a Chevy automatic transmission. All good stuff. It was recently gone through but had valve train noises. We’ll see, I think I know why.

I also picked up a couple SBCs and some miscellaneous parts.



The carbs for the Pontiac are in the box. I like the old headers…..

The old van is earning its keep this month.

 

Nice haul!

 

I also found time to finish cleaning my buddy’s banjo rear end for his ‘29 Tudor and got some primer on it. Hopefully, I’ll paint it tomorrow along with the PSI rear radius rods and I can get his ch***is back on four wheels before I head back up north.

 

Final coat. He wanted the rear end and suspension to be white. I thought, ugh, white? But I got it and the rear radius rods painted and reinstalled and I like it! I wish I had my can of red 1-shot and my brushes with me, I would have put a few lines and flourishes on it before installing it. The body is a ‘29 sedan with a 5” chop. It has the potential to look great if he doesn’t get carried away, he has “cartoon car” tendencies….. I forgot to take a picture with the rear end installed.

 

Back home on the ranch, I unloaded the engines and the shop absorbed all the extra junk that I hauled home. I had to make a quick engine cradle for the new Pontiac. I didn’t have any casters that would work so I guess it calls for a trip to HF. When I get the casters I’ll pull the engine out of it, weld on the casters and paint it. (Low gloss black). For now it’ll sit on the movers dolly.

 

I got out the carburetors, turns out they are different numbers but both are from an early 60s Cadillac. I found a matching one on eBay and bought it. When it arrives, I’ll check them out and order kits.

My buddy ran it with two Edelbrock carbs, I think.

 

It’s been a while since I drove the Stude pickup so I fired it up and gave it a much needed bath. It’s time for the semi-annual deep cleaning of the chrome wheels, so, being an old guy, I put it on the hoist and raised it to a comfortable working position. My usual routine is to clean them with soap and water when I wash the truck, then clean them with good old fashioned DuPont chrome cleaner, then finish with Meguire’s pure carnauba paste wax. For a set of wheels that live outside, they are staying pretty nice.
Wax on….


Wax off….

Pure drudgery, but then I absolutely love the look of those wheels and knock offs, so I will endeavor to persevere. The front wheels are from the wheel guy in LA, a custom pair that he made and were never picked up. I snapped them up. The rears are older, from Wheel Vintiques. Man, they did a nice job on the plating.
Which leads me to some questions…..
Did Wheel Vintiques ever recover from Covid and get back to shipping chrome wheels? Last I checked they weren’t making chrome Series 64 wheels, only smoothies.
And what do others do to clean and preserve chrome wheels? I’ve been doing this process since the old Blue Coral days, is there something better?

 

Some things just bug me. The rear bumper on the Stude. It’s a little too high to my eye, it’s wrinkled in a few places and it’s held on with hex bolts instead of real bumper bolts (remember those?).
Looking for instant gratification, I wasn’t going to remount it or try to straighten it, but I could at least deal with the missing and wrong bolts. The ones circled in green were missing and the ones in yellow were rusty old hex bolts.


I dug into my stash of old bumper bolts and made it look a little better.

 

Last but not least, I worked on the Austin last night. I bought some carpet off of eBay and have been cutting and fitting it to the back seat area. It’s a ***** kneeling in the car, marking and cutting. There will be no photographic evidence presented because I’m useless as a trimmer but hey, it’s supposed to be a race car not a show car, right? I have all of the pieces cut, just need to do a final trim as I glue it all down.
My reasoning for carpet? Many of the early g***ers had full interiors (like Stone, Woods, and Cook) like the street cars they were supposed to be. My Austin has nice plain black panels and headliner so I decided to cover the sheet metal in back with thin black carpet. Besides, it might hold out the fumes slightly, making it more hospitable for when the wife decides to go to cruise night. lol.

 

Hey Bob, I've been using Blue Magic Metal Polish Cream. It comes in a short little gl*** jar, I found it @ O'Really's. This is the best I've used in a long time.