I won't be driving this thing for a while yet. Here are a couple of pics with the shock mt crossmember in place , C notches complete with a little boxing and the main crossmember notch finished. Shocks are some pretty stiff gas shocks I had on hand and should work great. Kind of fancy for this truck but no money laid out so they are going on.
Hi mate , George from Australia Would you be interested in selling that fuel block , it's the only piece missing that I need
No progress to report. After I sell my Willys I plan to work on this truck steady so I will have something fun to drive. Sorry George but I want to have mostly down under speed equip on this truck.
Funny how hot rodding goes - I am collecting small time speed equipment Los Angeles based manufacturers products for my project - the opposite to what you're doing. enjoyed the build thus far @Kiwi Kev. Can't wait to see more of it Is the Willys your Nasty Habits coupe, or another you've been working on?
Haven't checked in in a while hope everything is good with you Kev. I know how life can take different directions. Love to here how you are doing. Troy
Haven't been too active on the H.A.M.B. lately , that is because I can't seem to get pictures to load on my computer and computers frustrate the hell out of me . I have taken plenty of pictures but I can't add any here yet. Sooner or later I will figure it out and add some. I have worked on the truck a lot but it doesn't look much different. I had a major set back with the engine. Lucky for me my friend Perry has been helping me a lot. We thought we were ready to test fire it but it wouldn't turn over. That didn't make sense to me because I had heard it run before and it ran perfect and looked super clean inside. I stored it for several years, outside but well covered with tarps etc. It is a stock 239 ci Y block from a 54 Ford pickup. We pulled a head off and somehow water got into 2 cylinders and rusted the bores badly. I wasn't about to tear it down and invest a bunch of money in a rebuild, this is a low buck project. I remembered a year or 2 back a guy who runs a local transmission shop had a Y block for sale, fully rebuilt, sitting on an engine stand in his shop for $600. I crossed my fingers and gave him a call. Good news, he still had it for the same price so I bought it, perfect! He got it with a 55 car, it was also a 239. I know it is the dog of the Y blocks but it would be fine to push my little truck around. So we were getting ready to put this engine in the truck and guess what, it turned back and forth but not all the way over. pulled the heads and guess what, one cylinder had somehow got a little water in it and rusted a small section of the bore. What a fuckin' bummer! Such a shame because someone had done a hell of a rebuild on this thing, new pistons, valves etc. So we dropped that one piston out and had a good look at the bore. Remember this is a low buck build dammit! I cleaned the bore up as good as I could and honed the shit out of it. There is a small area with a different texture, not too bad, when I put a small straight edge against it with a flashlight on the other side I don't see light so I put it all back together. I will just run it and I am thinking (hoping) I won't even notice it. Spent a little money on head gaskets, oil pan and timing cover gaskets etc. I put the truck timing cover oil pan on the car engine to keep the front mount. Found another problem along the way. Whoever rebuilt it had the timing gears misaligned so we fixed that and were very happy to find that while it was on the engine stand and not in the truck. It is now painted and in the truck. Sure did burn up a lot of hours and a little cash to get back to where I was. Had a lot of fun along the way. Yeah right.
Hi there Kiwi Kev, looks really cool, even cooler with the NZ Berry and Chung parts on it, I was wondering if Greame Berry is still over there? I have 4 speed Ford Mk4 Zephyr gearbox, and was wondering if B/C or anyone else made a forward shifter to mount shifter on the box where the forward shift mechanism goes? I have a 241 Dodge Hemi engine for my 34 Ford truck, and 59 Ford nine inche diff, 38 Ford steering box, RHD firewall, B/C Dager oil dip stick handle, I had a pair of B/C Dodge rocker covers years ago, wish I kept them now!!!!! I will need to get a 34 Chassis with original chassis number for my truck some time, can't wait till my 1934 Willy's roadster pick up is sorted and ready to sell so I can start the 34 Ford truck, also have a 32 Ford pick up as well, got some really cool Weiand Drag Star manifolds for the Dodge Hemi engine for that truck, all the best Brett . Here is a fuel block I will be running. I picked it up in New Zealand but I am not sure where it is made, maybe Australia or England. Maybe a HAMber knows. It is a Lynx and has a removable end with a screen filter attached. I am going to run this orig' SW 5 gauge panel that I pulled out of an old big truck in a junkyard years ago. 3 of the gauges are curved lens and I changed the speedo. Here is the steering wheel I'll run. I picked it up at the annual Ventura Raceway swap meet for $20. A few years earlier I picked up this radiator at the same swap meet for $35. The inlet is on the wrong side for a Y block so I will need to build a cross over tube. I have a lot of misc' stuff on hand for this project, I have been putting parts aside for it for a while. So I have pulled the cab and bed off and now have the frame in the garage getting worked on. [/QUOTE]
Brett, sorry I can't answer your questions about G Berry or the Mk 4 shifter. I have made some other progress on the truck but no pics yet. I built some structure for the floor sheet metal to mount to, made a battery box under the passenger seat, modified the hell out of the brake and clutch pedals, mounted the master cylinder and made up the clutch and brake linkage. I bad to change the angle of the toe board to make it all work. Floor sheetmetal is almost finished. I also came up with some parts I need. Got a pair of 4.50-16 Firestones for the front. Found the rear brakes I need amongst my junk. Perry donated a pair of radiator support rods and a tie rod. Bought a pair of repro tail lights. I am about to order a pair of 7.50-16 Firestones and 3 carb rebuild kits. So progress is slow but steady.
Just found this excellent build thread. Kev, to upload pics, just click on the button on the lower right corner that says "UPLOAD A FILE". When you do that it should open up a directory of your computer files, then you click on the folder where your pictures are stored in your computer in the left hand pane, you may (probably?) have sub folders for your different pics, just click on the sub folder(s) to get to where your pictures of this project are, and then click on the photos themselves to upload them. I'm subscribing, hope to see this one finished, it's really looking good.
I'd love to know how this is going or???? The low/no buck attitude is the only way I can do project cars.
Got sidetracked, didn’t finish this thread and 7 years passed. I have pictures and time to spend on the H.A.M.B. so I will just pretend nothing happened and carry on. I see that there are many missing pictures, bums me out but I don’t know what to do about that. I have been driving the truck for a few years now so most of these pics that follow are from several years ago. It was time for pedals and floor. The issue with the pedals was clearance around the side mount coming off the bell housing. From memory I notched the crossmember in that area, rotated the pedal assembly and mounted it with the pivot point higher and further back than it used to be. Some heating and bending then tabs were welded on where needed for linkage. Clutch fork linkage is a straight shot forward and brake linkage is a straight shot back to master cylinder. For all this to work I had to change the toe board angle a little. I built some tubing structure for the floor. You can also see the plate bolted across the top of the x member to help tie it together. Master cylinder and battery locations can be seen here. Next came floor panels and trans cover, can’t really call it a tunnel. I welded the back part in permanently and decided to rivet the front panels in so it can come out for future repairs.
So...you're home now? Hope all your medical stuff is behind you. Floor looks really good, Kev. I was just in Ventura, for the Chopperfest, last Sunday. I figured you might still be recovering, so I didn't drive by.
Next came headers. I wanted oil filter canister collectors like some of the hot rods I remember from my childhood. I found a pair of canisters, cleaned them up and cut out the bottom to fit 4 tubes. I located them right beside the frame rail because I planned to cut hole in the frame rail and run the exhaust straight out the side of the collector, through the frame and out the back. Since the cowl was getting patch panels at the bottom later I didn’t worry about tack welding a plate to locate both collectors in position. Then I began fitting and tacking tubes. Then the individual tubes were fully welded and sanded smooth, then put back in place. Everything got assembled and tacked together. Headers were removed and welded on the bench.
Great to hear Kev, and so good to see you posting on here again. I'm a big fan of your build threads.
Thanks for following through here, we love your work & it's great to have you back posting. Looking forward to it
I rebuilt 3 Holley 94s doing the best job I could. Sanded all mating surfaces flat, bead blasted the bases and painted them with black POR 15. This truck was never going to be garaged, just parked outside and covered with tarps to protect it from the elements. I planned from the start to paint the suspension, engine etc black and have a few chrome items. Full paint and detail was never going to happen on this truck. The Berry/Chung intake had some stains on it that bothered me so I took it get tumbled and that didn't remove them so the shop polished it for a good price. I wasn’t planning on a polished intake but it is probably my favorite part on the truck so I went for it.
I don’t pretend to know anything about Y block Ford engines but I soon found out the 239 is the dog of Y blocks. Turned out a 272 intake doesn’t bolt on to a 239. Well that was the intake and engine I had and I enjoy a challenge so I decided to follow the advice of a wise man I know and “press on”. I bought intake gaskets for both and you can easily see the port size and location differences. When you overlapped the gaskets there were gaps here and there so I made a 18g steel shim to go between them. This thing was never going to flow like a race engine but I figured as long as it sucked in some mixture and ran good enough to drive around town I would be happy. A few holes needed massaging with a rat tail file and I bolted it in place. As long as it ran like a stock 239 I would be satisfied.
The Jalopy Journal
