Not much progress I'm afraid. Laid up with strep throat since last Thursday. Gary did get the rear shock mounts finished and installed along with the tranny crossmember. I got the proper brake master cylinder on order along with front shocks, a brake valve and a wide groove pulley for the alternator to match the rest of the pulleys. From another place I have ordered the clutch disc I need for the T5 and Buick flywheel. The engine/tranny combo is now mounted in the frame. I had the front engine mounts in but that was all. Now the tranny is held up as well. This set-up is quite long and very heavy. The shipping tag lists the engine alone at #825. The old Buick bellhousing is cast iron and has mounting bosses on either side. We're going to fab some mounts for them and have the engine/tranny combo suspended from three locations along its length. Next, we're going to get the radiator and grille shell mounted, front shock mounts and start mounting the cab to the frame. Then its body work time.
Nice start and dig the straight eight, different but kewl in my book. With all the layoffs its a good thing to be working steadily. Good Luck and keep us posted
Dad gum Rande you have come along way since you posted pics on the FSJ site.. I like it I even kind like the straight 8 idea. One of the JWs I worked with last year is building an Olds with a straight 8 but he is using a Saginaw 4 speed with a overdrive off of a Saginaw 3 speed if I had known you were working on this I would have clued you in on it, might have saved you some labor anyway. Here is the link to the swap. http://www.chevytrucks.org/tech/overdrive.htm
Rande there is some great tech on just swapping out the tail shaft on the T-5 . I did it my self to get it in the Model A . Very easy swap and here is the links and a couple pics . http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=171291&showall=1 Moves shifter plenty far in front of seat on my Tudor , Plus i can move engine forward now after some pulley mods 1 1/2 inches
Charlie! Good to see you around here. Jeeps haven't gotten complete control I see. I'll chck out that link later, have to get back to work. Bluestang67, I thought about that swap but I'd have to buy another tranny to do it and just figured bucket seats would work fine and the shifter is still in a pretty good location with the handle turned around. I'll simply make my own handle if needed.
I am kinda glad I ain't working I am not a big GM fan, but there was a 54 Pontiac in the local CL today with a 3 on the tree and a straight 8. according to the seller it is a driver!
Nice build. From the 1st page of this thread you mentioned that the tranny is a 1996 Ford T5 from my end it looks like an eighty camaro T-5. Pretty sure the newer for t-5 are a one piece unit. Well any hoot keep those pictures coming
mink, the tag number (238) sayd its a Mustang 3.8 unit. Thats how the salvage yard labelled and sold it. Got out there today but still feeling lousy and didn't get a lot done. Got the cab back off and cut out some of the floor that was in the way. Checked out the rear shock upper mounts that my brother made and installed last weekend while I was laid up sick. I made the lowers, Gary trimmed them a bit to look better. Here's the tranny mount. The strap going under and holding the mount is 5/16" strap. Got the drag link and tie rod bolted in (not yet permanent) and figured out an upper mount for the front shocks. We'll fab them next week. I managed to get the drums off the rear axle (heat, hammers, pry bars). Getting ready to start rebuilding that. Its a Ford 8" from a Maverick. Here's the front hairpin mount. Welded on, smoothed and primered. We also got started on the cab floor. Didn't get it finished, I ran out of steam and headed home. Hasn't been a good couple of weekends. This strep infection has knocked me back pretty good. Over a week now. But, I got some parts in, bought some front tires and did get some stuff done. Not sure if I will go out there tomorrow. Work is slowing down a bit as we just finished a big, long term project so I may have an extra day each week for a while. That would be nice. The major fab work is mostly done on the stuff I don't feel comfortable about welding on myself. So, I can give Gary a bit of a break. Still having fun though!
I just don't have any real experience with welding. Don't want to practice on my frame. I'll do some of the smaller stuff such as brackets for the grille, radiator, bed etc. Non-critical stuff. Gary will be there to help. Not shown in the pics is the tunnel for the tranny. We got that done but after the camera died. Next, I plan to get the cab floor reinforced a bit, the cut out section reinstalled and the cab mounted. Once the floor is done and the cab mounted, we'll work on the steering column and brake and clutch pedals. Gary is taking the bed plans to a local sheet metal shop to have them bend the pieces up. I need to find some headlights for it. I like the longer ones, like mid-30s GM rather than the earlier shallower units. Haven't found any locally, gonna search the web for some. See which ones I like best. I'm having second thoughts about that Willys grille. It seems a bit short compared to the firewall. May have to find somehing taller.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/I66coupe/projecttoday4.jpg how did you put that in in that tubing?
Glad to hear your still having fun. Have you told your doctor you're still having issues? I have never had a case of strep that lasted that long after the onset of medication (not the level of symptoms you mention anyway). Take care and get well.
Mink, there are two tabs welded on underneath the tubing where the hump meets the side pieces. Two holes in each tab allows the support strap to be bolted up on either side. If you look closely on the left side in that pic, you can just see the end of one of the bolts and the nut (look kinda white in the pic). In this pic, you can see one of the tabs there on the left side. Made a closer view. Mink, I just reread your post and think you were actually asking about the hump in the tubing (I'm a bit slow on the uptake). Thats a scrap piece from my brother's workplace. We cut it off a longer piece and mated it to the straight pieces. All those square sections are scrap pieces we salvaged.
Chevs of the 40's has the headlight buckets you are talking about. Also, are you gonna keep the start switch on the carb? Would be a cool thing to do in my opinion..
Great looking project... the way you are making progess you will be driving it this summer.... old trucks rule.......
My point in posting this thread is not so say: "Hey! Look at what I am doing, ain't I great?" More: "Hey! Look at what I am doing! Am I going to kill myself?" You guys that have much more experience, if you see something that looks wrong or perhaps a bit iffy (dangerous) I would certainly appreciate some input. I have never done such an extensive build. I am 51 years old, been messing with cars to a certain extent all my life but this undertaking is by far the most involved. The fact that no one has shouted "you're gonna die in that thng!" is encouraging. My brother has also built a few and he reads all the magazines, keeps articles about frame and suspension design. We both have been attending all the rod events in the area (for many, many years) and we look pretty closely what everyone else is doing. We pay attention. I trust our combined knowledge but you never know....
You're right we haven't yelled at you yet for building such an unsafe vehicle that doesn't meet the DOT standards of safety that we all respect along with the traffic laws.... What's wrong with us, we should make you do it like everyone else's does.... Seriously, your work looks good to me, but I am just an electrical guy, I would prolly use chicken wire and bondo on my frame.
most everything you have shown that involes your frame and the welding look okay... how deep the weld penatration is some thing you have to look at and be able to tell if they will hold. I like the bent square tubing that you have used ...my question is how did you do that...? it looks very good./..
The bent tubing is scrap stuff from a manufacturing plant. We didn't do it. So Roothawg, you didn't miss anything. Thanks for the kind words guys. Hope to be driving it this summer. It may not be pretty by then but hopefully, at least on the road and safe.
More progress this weekend. We got the tranny fitted together with the clutch, throwout bearing and fork, adapter plate and bellhousing to see if everything fits right. So far, so good. The '95 Mustang 3.8 pilot bearing fit right in. In this pic, the bearing itself is sticking out of the adapter (the bearing comes in that adapter from the parts house for its original application, we didn't make it) which is how it came but it can be pushed in farther if needed. It was a good bit of foresight by Buick that they would make thier crankshaft to be ready for that Mustang pilot bearing. We have been using a nylon strap to lift the cab on and off the frame as we needed but it would stretch a bit too much and we just couldn't get the cab to clear everything to move it over. We would have to take the frame off the jackstands and put it on the floor to clear the bottom of the cab. We've had enough of that. We made a fixture to give us a bit more height out of the lift. The problem was, the strap would stretch upward so that we could not get enough lift before the chain got to its upper limit and stopped. We took care of that. We now can lift the cab high enough to clear the frame without droppng the frame on the floor. We got the front floor made and welded together. Just a little more work needed on it. We also got an alternator mounted to the old straight eight. Turns out the old Buick wide pulley from the generator fits right on. We modified the original generator mount. In this pic, I have a chrome pulley on it, I will not be using that alternator. Its just for fabrication purposes. Gary also made some bed side supports. I think they turned out great. I also got a large patch made for the under the seat to fill an area we had to cut out. That'll go in next weekend. We got the front shock mounts figured out but not yet built. I got the front disc brakes mounted and did a little grinding on the calipers to allow the 14" front wheels to fit. We also got a lot of other little stuff done. We made some good progress this weekend.
So how did he make tose bed side supports? They look very nice. The tooling and bracketry look good too.
The bed side supports are made from some scrap pieces from his workplace. Not sure what they were originally.
Well, we didn't get much done but we got some stuff accomplished. Does that make sense? We figured out how and where to mount the brake booster and master. Got the mount made but not yet installed. We spent most of the time on the T5 install on the old Buick straight eight. A little grinding here, some cuttng there, a bit of welding, plenty of swearing and its in! We did learn that my stockpile of swear words is grossly inadequate. We took some measurements for various things, did some head stratching about a shifter, mulled over some ideas for front shock mounts, generally a day filled with planning. Back to the T5 install, we had to rework the old Buick clutch fork a little but got it working right with the Ford throwout bearing. Actuated the fork and pressure plate by using a come-a-long attached to the rear of the frame. Everything works in there as it should. Thats a relief. I'll be aquiring some materials, Gary will be fabricating a few things and we'll hit it again next weekend.
Well, time for an update. No pics as what we have done hasn't changed things much. We set the pedals in temporarily to see how things fit. Once they were in we saw the clutch slave cylinder I've been planning to use will interfere with the brake pedal. We figured a mechanical linkage will not be difficult to make so we're going in that direction now. We also pulled the steering column from my old Jeep Gladiator (in a rain and ice shower..fun!) and disassembled it to remove the shift levers and associated parts. We figured a location for it to clear the pedals and give a decent angle to the steering wheel. We decided how to run the steering shaft to the box and ran through a few ideas for a dash mount. We did test fit an old column Gary had but I'd like to have self-cancelling signals so we'll go with the Jeep column. I'll get some pics this weekend.
The Jalopy Journal
