Dayco PN 72384, lower radiator hose for a V6 Ford Explorer, I forget the year range. I had made a conduit profile of the shape I needed and went to local auto parts and asked to look through their hose selection
Thanks, working on my 56 Nomad this winter and will be installing a crossflow as well. Out of my inventory of good used stuff.
Wagon progress! So Jared has been tackling the fun task of prepping interior trim pieces, getting them ready for another round of epoxy.. Another modification we're undertaking, the air cleaner, when mocked up on the engine, showed a tight proximity to the back of the AC compressor. Looking at the clearance we had to the firewall, moving backward 1" will give us much needed breathing room for the AC lines. So out with the old .... And to move rearward, the mounting hole is moved forward one inch.. Next in store is a new bottom for the air cleaner.. A hammerform is used to give us a folded lip out the bottom
At this point we need to hem the flange so the bottom isn't quite so sharp.. A 1/2 x 1/2 aluminum angle is used as a height gauge so we can use the roloc sander to get our flange to a consistent height. This will allow us to use a tipping die in the bead roller to fold the hem.. Then the part is re-installed in the hammer form to hammer the hem flat..
Ummm... might be a dumb question, but why didn't you just cut out the top and bottom with a one inch offset and flip them around? Would have been a lot less time and work.
Thanks guys!! So I've had some questions as to why this or that with modifying the air cleaner. I was going to hold out with the REAL reason, but here goes.... This firewall is just too clean that I can't bring myself to clutter it up (or the wheelwell) by mounting an ignition coil and then being forced into using an overly long coil wire.. So as shown here.... this will be the approximate location as we fabricate a sealed cavity from the bottom side of the air cleaner to mount the coil. This should put the coil wire about two inches in front of the distributor... So this should give us a nice clean look and keep the firewall as open as we can...
Thanks fellas!! Time for some welding.. TIG used to tack the new bottom in place..... I thought my eyesight was going.... time to replace these.. Next, we'll work on the base plate....
More work on the Caddy air cleaner, time to fabricate the pocket for the coil. Our radius brake that is bolted to the front of the shear is used to bend some 18ga into a horseshoe. One side is trimmed short and the other is left long to bend and form the bottom in the magnetic brake. And end plate is cut out to seal off the void from the rest of the air cleaner innards. This gets tacked in place and then fusion welded using the TIG. A holesaw is used to get the hole started and offset Wiss snips to trim out the hole in both the housing and the mounting flange. TIG tacked and fusion welding on the flange, and it then gets trimmed to fit inside the air cleaner housing. Yup, that's what I was looking for...
You're not concerned that how you have the coil mounted there's little chance of proper air circulation past the coil heat sink? I'm assuming that heat sink is there for a reason... I think I'd punch a couple of holes in the 'top' of the well so that the motor draws cooling air past the coil.
Outstanding! Perhaps a quick explanation of "fusion welding" for us untalented, non-welding souls out here, Robert?..... .............Isn't all welding fusion welding?.....Thanks, Don.
Don, perhaps I should have said no-filler fusion weld. The adjacent panels are nice and tight together so you can just fuse the panels together without needing to add filler rod.
Now for our bottom plate for the air cleaner.. In order to keep the filter located properly (keep it from moving around) we decided to add a bead to the bottom of the plate. Then the plate is trimmed to a circle, and the thumbnail dies in the Lennox used to start the shrinking process around the edge. We then jumped on the Erco kick shrinker to flatten the uneven surface.. And repeat. Repeatedly. We have two or three more rounds to go and we can start tipping and stretching.
Last night we changed out the thumbnail shrinking dies for linear stretch dies in the Lennox TE250 in order to tip the flange back horizontal again. We have a backstop / fence that had been notched for tooling and this did a nice job of getting the flange depth consistent. As this gets bolted to our linear slide and we'll need that to remain stationary, some Cerutti built clamp blocks are added. Linear stretch dies in action: Next, we had been having issue with the Skat Blast cabinet, and given the sale going on this week at TP Tools, ordered a new high volume cabinet gun and nozzle, some high flow fittings, and while we're at it, how about some fresh glass.. Amazing....we can see! But alas, all the new parts did not fix the losing media about 5-10 seconds in. So we figured this was a blockage with the suction tube, which requires removing the expanded metal deck inside. Which has sealant along front and rear edge. So a handy utility knife was employed, along with this fancy tool we had made up for removing tiles in raised flooring, as it did well in pulling up the expanded metal. The screen was tipped up out of the way and a large magnet holds it in place... Once we had access to the pickup tube, we noticed a hole in the inside corner that didn't belong. Once we removed the tube, we noticed it was more widespread... Well, I guess we have found the suction/media issue, and now have a used High flow gun/nozzle for sale. Luckily the sale is still going on, ordered the replacement tube last night..
It is always something. I continue to really enjoy this build and appreciate all of your time and effort to share these pics and videos with us. I know that it is a lot of effort to spend which doesn’t actually get the car finished. Kudos to you!
I appreciate it no end-I've learned a ton just from the photos, and am going to attempt to apply it to my current build.
Thanks for taking time to comment guys!! Now to fold the outer perimeter of our air cleaner base. I thought of using a tipping wheel, but that appeared to be rather close for comfort. So a curved piece of bar stock in the scrap pile (resource inventory) was selected and a drum sander used to fine tune the radius to match our part. Then a hammer form was made to stretch and shape the "horn" of the base. Quite a bit of stretch needed but you don't know until you try... Video of hammer action: Alas, cracking occurred, so the horn was trimmed just down from the radius and a piece of 18ga was hemmed, rolled, and welded, to form a band. The band was tacked up for a test fit, we'll get it fully welded tomorrow and get all the parts bolted up with some rivnuts and press nuts.. Yesterday we got our replacement tube from TP Tools for the Skat Blast 1536 cabinet. Can't remember the last time it worked like this, so I'd guess we've had a "leak" for a while now. And since we replaced the nozzle unnecessarily, we now have a good used media blast cabinet gun for sale. Has the High Volume power head (20-25 cfm required) and tungsten carbide nozzle, if anyone needs one. I think $50 plus shipping would be fair. No trigger, intended for use with foot pedal. For a hopper/suction machine, it does work nicely..
Always enjoy your updates. Even though I don't have any of the tools, (well any of the powered tools), you have, it gives me ideas on how to get some of my simple metal shaping done. Thanks!
More travel for the day job, had to install a 24' video wall. Back in the shop finally, progress on the air cleaner continues.. We had some stainless mesh left over from our speaker grill fabrication that we plan on using to address air flow inside our pocket for the ignition coil. An 1-1/2" Rotacut is used to provide the hole in the pocket, two pilot holes spaced 1/2" apart will expand the hole for us.. The venturi effect inside the breather should promote air flow across the coil. Next, to hold the mesh in place some retaining rings will be needed. We'll use some MDF trimmed to size to fabricate these... Or the action version.... The newly formed part has a tight hold on the hammer form, so much that we can clamp it in the vise, drill the two pilot holes to match the pocket, and drill out two 1-1/2" Rotacut holes without the part budging.. The dynabride belt sander cleans up the points into flats, the side flanges are trimmed to size with a roloc sander, and then we can roll to fit the inside of the pocket. test fit.... Holes are added for some 3/32 rivets to clear the mesh Aluminum pop rivets are used to get a better view of the final look before we blow it apart for priming.. We will be using press nuts in the coil to ease the pain of assembly, and we also added some more shiny stuff on the front end..
The Jalopy Journal
