Projects The 48 hour coupe

Awesome! I bet reving it in that garage had nothing to do with it being loud either haha

 

Haha oh course not

 

Got it out and drove it this morning. Still no video cause I can't seem to convince my 11 year old to come out and take the video and shes the only one home right now.

Verdict.

It's a handful lol. Its a bit squirrly, its still new to me actually driving it, I dont fit very well (I probably need to adjust the seat position some to address that. Its full sensory overload. But I got it out on the main road and scared some normies in their Toyotas and Kias lol.

It still has a pretty nasty dead spot just off idle butbthe ignition timing I did last night helped shrink that a lot. Mostly a problem starting from stopped and if youre cruising with almost no pedal input in 2nd or 3rd. Definitely seems related to having the throttle almost closed and trying to open it up. I'll definitely be able to deal with it enough to try cars and coffee in January as long as the weather cooperates.

Once you get past the deadline spot and open it up is revs up nicely. It wasn't just the garage making it loud as hell (@Tim ) lolol.

It has a boat load of blow-by smoking out the breather and the road draft. Not sure where I need to go with that. I ***ume its worn or sticking piston rings, but it has good oil pressure, good steady vacuum, and other than the one spot i mentioned runs pretty well. I was kinda hoping driving it would loosen up the rings but it hasn't really gotten any better so far.

I'll keep messing with it I guess. I do have what I think is a rebuildable 59a in my truck back in Iowa. That truck will be getting an olds when I get around to it so maybe I work on putting that flatty together on the side for this.

 

Ya know, 11 year olds who don’t take videos of their dad acting like a 14 year old end up on Santa’s bad list. I’m just sayin. Lol

 

I tried that angle. Lol she read straight through my ******** haha

I've since contracted the newly minted 14 yo (birthday was yesterday) to help me out sometime today cause she actually likes me lol.

 

Update she doesnt like me as much as I thought cause I interrupted her game on roblox whatever that is.

She paused the video while I was down the street and turning around so you miss the part where I got on it in second coming back just trying to build speed a little.

https://youtube.com/shorts/kyFmXC2_SDM?si=iebFNLD_-02F-v6h

And here's a short one from before I left trying to show just how much blow-by its pushing out.



Not sure why the longer video wouldn't upload as anything but a short and the shorter one as a regular video.

 

Oh that’s not as bad as I expected! I bet our discussed options work. Car looks and sounds great!

you have to film in landscape/ horizontal and preferably over 30 seconds long to get proper imbedding

 

Im going to get some seafoam like we talked about @Tim and see if that loosens up the rings some. That video was after it had already warmed up a bit. It smokes a ton especially if you choke to get it warmed up which brings up the idle speed it just pours our when its cold. It still smokes when its warm but it slows down a lot.

As for drivability I am waiting for new jets and power valves since if I remember right I just used the same as I did on my last flathead when we lived in Iowa. About 1000' higher elevation. Wouldn't think it would make a huge difference. I also went with 5.5 powervalves. I currently have a plug in 1 and 5.5 in the other. Thinking with all that popping I was having way back maybe I blew the one out. And I got a second so I could try it with 2 - 5.5 and no plug. My vacuum at idle is steady at 20. Haven't convinced anyone to ride with me yet to check it at cruise. But 5.5 worked pretty well before. I am currently thinking my stumble is powervalve related though.

Today as a side quest while I wait for parts. I tried my hand at painting and lettering my license plate i got when we first moved to South Carolina.

What I started with 2 years ago.

That got a citric acid bath and etch primer back when I first got it.

Google just said white background with black digits but no specific color code or anything. So thats what I did.









It'll need some touch ups but I'm going to let it fully dry before I do that.

Both colors are just semi gloss spray paint. For the lettering I sprayed black into a cup and used a cheap set of artist brushes.

 

That aught work!

You could see if your carbs have an option for a throttle rod on the other side of the carb. Then you have a foot feed and a hand throttle, I have a few that way so I can idle it up with out choking it. I think in the mid 30’s ford did this so you could get the car to charge while parked.

Plate should look perfect on the car

 

My 47 had the hand throttle. Id have to rework my current linkage to make that work. It currently has pedal attached to rear carb on the p***enger side. Then the 2 carbs are linked together via linkage on the drivers side.

If I remember right with the 47 the hand throttle attached to the drivers side (choke handle was p***enger side) so I'd have to move the syncing linkage to the other side.

 

Well I was wrong about what I ordered for power valves. I ended up getting 2 #6.5s to replace the 1 #5.5 and 1 PV Plug. And 4 new .051 jets.

Put tore down the carbs and installed all that last night. Too late to fire it up when I finished. To today I got it all back running. Amd adjusted. Still need to verify the carb sync but its running way better now. There's almost no stumble not and it runs pretty good. I still dont have a videographer so I tried multi tasking while driving to get you guys what you've been waiting for.

https://youtube.com/shorts/B3YCpiss2js?si=xC8GqFl1JWnIDZjk

https://youtube.com/shorts/meVRard_UzI?si=VtyD2Tb3nBUoKtQ6

Exhaust is still loud but when I don't have to drive it like I stole it just to go anywhere it ain't too bad.



Stumble is all but gone like i mentioned.

To dos:
quick and easy:
-Replied the brakes. Taking a pump or 2 sometimes to get comfortable pressure.
-Clutch pedal rod needs a little more adjustment. It is dragging a little.

More involved:
-Trans sounds mad in deceleration probably need to go through that at some point
-Rear end. Is leaking a little i havent investigated yet so not sure where. Also want to swap the 4.11s for something a little taller..

Bodywork stuff.
I have all the roof pieces to except for the front header and visor but I think ill be able to reuse those pretty easily.

But for now a few days off because were heading to Iowa tonight.

 

Neighborhood cruise in was still canceled for last Saturday but the weather wasnt too bad so I got thebcar out a little. Made a grocery store run and promptly ran out of gas on the way home lol. The wife wasnt too thrilled with that phone call lol. I've been using a chunknof old model a brake rod I had as a "tank stick" to check fuel level. But being a cylinder when you get to the bottom its deceptive how much is actually in the tank. An inch mid tank could be a gallon or more. But an inch at the bottom could only be a half gallon or less. (Funny enough this exact same thing is true in gas station underground storage tanks but on a larger scale. Which I deal with at work somewhat so there really is no excuse for me forgetting that)

Anyway she brought me the empty gas can I had at the house i put gal in and marked my tank stick at 5 gal. When I have a little more time ill drain it fully and put in a gal at a time and mark the stick and repeat ext. So I'll know where I'm at with a little more accuracy.




It was also drizzly out and I learned that it is nearly impossible to see out of the windshield at night with mist covering the gl***. Noted for next time.

Sunday I was finally able to make it to my first cars and coffee with the coupe. Ive been a few times but I was always that **** who had to say "well back at the house I have this" and this time I finally got to be a cool kid lol. And of course I took zero picture of that. Coupe got a lot of attention though. There were a bunch if guys asking questions and really looking it over. It was the oldest car there by almost 30 years. Most of the younger guys are in OT European and modern muscle cars but there's usually a few older guys in hamb ish era cars.

While at the show I heard about another gathering later that afternoon at a local offload and custom cars shop that is also pretty close to the house so I hit that too. Again didnt take any pictures but one of my friends from the neighborhood was there and got this one.



Again it got a lot of attention. Im sure mostly because I havent had it out ever so it was something different than the usual stuff that is at every event.

Later that night we ordered pizza and the youngest decided she would only go with me to pick it up if we took the Model A. So naturally I obliged.





All in all put about 35-40 miles on the car. No major squeaks or rattles except for those produced by the ****py roads here.

Car still smokes a lot. Seems to be worse off idle (so while driving) a week or so ago I tried some seafoam in the gas, in the crankcase, and some down the carbs while running. Hasn't really seemed to make much difference.

Tonight I checked the plugs for the first time since I got it going 7 of them looked like this



#6 looked like this



I also changed the gaps from 31 to 28 but It didnt seem to do anything good so I might go back.

Back to the smoking, its only coming from the breather and the road draft tube which would ***ume its blowby and there is a one or more piston rings sticking. Without fully tearing down the motor anybody got any tips or tricks to unstick rings? I say without tearing the motor down because I prefer the 59a flatheads and if I'm pulling the motor I think I'd rather build the 59 I have back in Iowa and put that in the car.

 

Nice progress and a good read. No one will be able to say you didn’t make it your own. You ticked by a bunch of hamb worthy milestones- it made you dirty, it marked its’ spot, it made you buy tools, it made you bleed. Great that you made a stir at cars and coffee, keep banging on.

 

Thank you sir.

For today's adventure.
Back when I cleaned the fuel tank is was never able to get the filler in the body lined up right with the spout in the tank. They were close but offset by about 3/4" (about half the opening diameter). Honestly I dont knownif i just never noticed it before or if I just didn't get it back in line well enough. Regardless the tank is pretty well centered in the trunk, the fill is mounted in the body, but I couldn't get the tank to slide anymore in the bracket.

The tank is tight to the roll bar and the supply line is basically up against the tank mount bracket. If i were to move the tank so the supply was on the other side of the bracket it would likely be too far and I'd be in the same boat...

This misalignment is annoying because it means I cant get a gas nozzle in the hole to fill up so I had to use and keep a funnel with me. In order for the funnel to fit it had to be a long skinny one and then I couldn't just pull the nozzle on or it would overflow the funnel and spill into the trunk. I've only actually taken the car to a gas station once but as you can tell it was bugging me. Haha

So today I moved the fill port in the body.
Pretty straight forward.
-I started by pulling it apart and covering the opening in the tank.
-Then I made a filler piece for the center hole and tig welded that in so there werent any sparks close to the tank.
-Welded up the bolt holes
-Hammer and dolly
-Redrill new holes offset by 3/4"
-Bolt the filler back in place
-tighten it too much and break off the studs welded into the filler
-drill out the broken bolts
-find new bolts, grind the heads, and shorten them, and weld back into the filler.
-try to burn my hands off picking up the filler immediately after welding (leather gloves weren't enough)
-paint and reinstall
-Fin

Hard to see but you can just make out the edge of the riser pipe from the tank centered in the opening g of the fill in the body

Filler piece

Filler and one bolt hole welded

New bolts holes drilled


Lines up pretty well now. The distortion in tape I used over the hole in the tank.




Painted. I thought id used semi gloss when I painted over the white body lined before but I guess it was flat. Probably leave it for now until it bugs me again.


Also of note for when I eventually do something with the fixing the paint job the paint under the black is a silver/grey. And when I was sanding it for welding prep it sure seemed like latex house paint so that will be fun if I do a full repaint.

 

Good job man.

If you ever bring that thing down to Tim's please let me know; I'd love to see it.

 

Would be cool. I either need a bigger set of cajones or a job relocation somewhere closer. I picked up that trunk lid from Tim while we were in Iowa. But wasn't going to be able to claim that as my carry on for the flight home so it be riding down with dad next time he comes this spring

 

Airlines get persnickety about that sort of thing...