Projects All Studes, All The Time

Nice rig. Have you ever used Ethanol Defence?

 

No, but tell me more. I'm usually able to get ethanol free stuff around here thanks to the efforts of MSRA. Unfortunately it's 91 octane and spendy, but its well worth it.

 

I started using it @ the advice of Mike's carbs in Washington. My understanding is that it prevents the break down of soft parts and the build up of crystals in the fuel system. When I opened up a carb that I'd been using it in, to re- jet, there was no funky stuff in the bowl. It seems to work. In my engines that not up-dated with stainless valves or hardened seats, I add 1 oz. of E.D. and 4 oz. of M.M.O. per 10 gallons of premium pump crap. But that's just me.

 

We have been plucking away at this thing. Got the rear axle installed, and we have the brakes in the back almost plumbed. My wife has never flared limes before, so it was a bit of a learning curve.





Also started working on the master cylinder and brake pedal. I was going to use the Jeep CJ5 master cylinder everyone else uses, but I'm not really happy with how far below the frame it sticks. Still exploring my options.

We also got hoses in for the top, so started gathering all the parts back up. The drivers side bracket was broken off from the floor, so I started working on that tonight. I have it more or less prepped for welding. Interior is also pulled so we can paint the floor while it's apart.

 

Got the broken off bracket cleaned up and welded back in. It turned into a marriage building exercise when I had to have my wife run the pedal on the TIG to get into a couple tight corners. Could have MIG'ed it in, but I need more welding blankets before I do welding anywhere near this car.



I gave both sides a multi color paint / undercoating job to make it look a little more original. Not that it matters since it will be covered up.





Heading back out in a minute to hopefully get hydraulic lines in and get the top working again. A new top is waiting at the upholstery shop, so the plan it to get this working properly and then strip the fabric out ASAP since it's torn up and stinks from rodent damage.

 

Success! We had to do some repair work to the old switch, but we got it working. My wife only got hosed down with hydraulic fluid once while we were bleeding the system, so overall a victory.

 

You sure have an understanding wife! On the TIG pedal thing, build an L shaped leg boot thing to velcro strap the pedal to your foot. Then you can TIG standing on your head!

 

Good idea @mohr hp . My thumb switch is too short for my 20' torch apparently. Too bad mind control TIG welders aren't a thing. Considering my wife has never welded before it went really well.

 

A little inspiration.

 

We had a casualty the other brake day when doing brake lines. We had just mounted up the axle and putting on caliper brackets so everything was going on TIGHT with a final torque check by me.

When we switched over to brake lines I forgot to explain how tight they needed to be. I've been playing with cars my whole life, she hasn't. Long story short, we had to find a replacement rear brake hose. It turns out a 60's bronco hose is a nearly perfect replacement for a Stude with an 8.8" swap. Besides the 7/16 bolt used to anchor it uses anyways. I spent well over an hour under the car working my way through the silicon bronze I had used to put in the 1/4" stud just a couple weeks ago. A bunch of resharpening and a slightly damaged tap we now have a 7/16" hole tapped in the axle to mount the line.

 

Ooh...shiney objects.

 

If it’s like an 8”, that bolt is also the axle vent. Ford used a drilled bolt to hold the brake line and vent the axle.

 

It's an 8.8, so the vent is over on the drivers side tube. I thought about routing the line to it but the other location worked well. To be honest I don't recall what was even in tgat hole originally. I just remember it had metric threads before I "fixed" it.

 

Good deal! Was afraid you had inadvertently closed off the vent.

 

Progress pictures. It's been slow, but we have been working on getting windows repaired and adjusted, as well as the top adjusted. I had the upholstery guy out today and he gave me the go ahead to pull the top off.

 

Forward progress...





Decided to go ahead and put the Napa POR15 equivalent in the "affected" areas and all tye low spots in the floor. I plan on top coating it with tan paint for now while we figure out a long term plan.

 

Well this went poorly already. Some of the product bubbled like crazy. It's stuck to the floor, but turned into expanding foam on the inside in these spots. I possibly put it on too thick, but this stuff is like tar compared to por15 and you have to work pretty fast. The fact the can was expired by 1.5 months probably did not help either.

So my account is being credited, but now I have to at least partially strip this floor and decide how to proceed. Hoping to get something figured out before we fly out for Speed Week (fingers crossed) Saturday morning.

 

What a bummer!!!

On a side note, check the weather, check it often. I was in Salt Lake for work this week, yesterday I took a drive out to the flats. Conditions were pretty sloppy. It's pretty wet there and as I was heading back east towards Salt Lake there were huge thunderstorms heading west. The airport this morning was a huge puddle.

 

Well that just draws a major vacuum! I've used POR-15 & it's good stuff, tho quite spendy. So, because I'm... er... "thrifty", I've resolved to use good ol' Rustoleum with time tested results. I guess you gotta pick your fights.

 

Studes were the hot ticket in Santa Clara (CA) between '59 and '62, there was a 'loose club' for '53s and '54s, 6 in all. I worked on every one of them, but never had the chance to buy one.
A favorite was Mel Wignall's 'Studillac', Mel was a Service advisor at the Cad agency, installed a '57 Eldo w/dual quads in '57, a crate engine. Real 'sleeper'.

 

Always a bummer when things like that happen. I can't recall if that coating is a "hot" type or not (meaning, very volatile solvent-based, reacting with everything it comes in contact with), but I suspect it is. I almost kind of hate to say it, but in my old age, I tend to err on the more conservative side and use something enamel-based. Yeah, you won't have the ultimate protection, but are your floors really going to rust out if coated with a straight enamel paint? I doubt it, and much easier and less dramatic application, too.

Hopefully you get the paint drama straightened out and things back on track. Good to see the top is moving forward and nearing the install phase. White and black is always good color combo choice.

 

Got back from our trip the other day. Didn't even make it out to Bonneville at all. I think the closest we came to seeing any action was watching the trains at Golden Spike National Historic park.



Wire brushes and a needle scaler made relatively easy work of getting this stuff off of the floor. Made a huge mess though.



Decided to go back to the basics and use Rustolium clean metal primer applied with a brush.



Today after making a parts run for an OT project I masked everything off and got to painting. It took 4 different colors blended in, somewhat emulating the darker tan below the current off white, finishing up with some Ace hardware paint that came really close to matching the car. By the time seats go in, and a floor covering of some sort goes in I think it will took good.




The next step is to get something resembling brakes functioning on the car. Minimally a driveshaft so I can use the clutch as a brake to load and unload the car to get it over to the upholstery shop.

Brakes. Driveshaft. Paint top frame black. No other distractions.

Maybe even get to drive it once or twice again before it goes back into storage.

 

Floor got a finish coat of paint after finding the closest shade that matches in a rattle can. The trunk floor is darker than the car, but the match looks pretty good where is meets at the edge of the floor above the rockers.



We are also prepping the top frame for a coat of black paint. Not sure if this is correct or not, but we think it will look better. Especially if we ever spray the car a different color.

 

Niiiiiiiiiiiice!!

 

Top frame has been painted and reinstalled onto the car.



I need to do a 'final' door, top, and window adjustment but its basically ready for the new fabric.

I also threw a temporary driveshaft in the car so at least I can load and unload the car using the clutch as a brake.

 

Time for a long overdue update on the Lark. August was busy with the trip to Utah, but a trip to Indiana where we went to the Studebaker Museum made up for it a bit.



September we went to Wisconsin for the 2023 Studebaker Drivers Club meet, so plenty of distractions, but we still made lots of progress.

Made my prototype brake master cylinder mount. I will probably make some changes on the next version, but it came out well overall.







Note I tried to get the mount as low as possible to get the linkage running straightish (with the proper pedal ratio), but wanted to protect it, hence the skid plate-ish design that bolts to the bottom frame flange. Version 2 of this mount will have some refinements including bracing back to the pedal pivot assembly like the factory one does.

 

Made a mount for the proportioning valve that came out nice.





One sticking point was resevoirs. The Wilwood master came with plastic resevoirs but I just just could not bring myself to use them. After a lot of shopping around and a speech from my wife about doing things that matter right and once (I wonder where she got this idea from???) we decided to bit the bullet and get Wilwood lightweight resevoirs. I ordered 5 so I have 3 ready to go for my car.


It took a few tries, but I figured out how to get it mounted and plumbed cleanly. I was going to use hydraulic fittings as seen in the picture, but had to make a different plan when I realized I bought the wrong size. I ended up tapping the factory fitting for 1/4 NPT so I could put in a hose barb. The 11/16-20 bottom threads presented a challenge, but a trip to the hardware store for a 1/2" compression nut solved that problem.

Some measuring, cutting, drilling, welding later, we had a system. It mounts through the steering column boot bolt holes. It ended up hanging crooked because of the firewall shape, so I will probably redo this at some point.

 

We looked at the wiring harness and am leaning towards a complete redo in the future. It doesn't even have a headlight harness in it at all so I'm really not sure on the story here. Between that and all of the bolts I have found loose on the car, my policy is to trust nothing unless I worked on it myself. Still a nice car, just lots of unfinished work that needs to be taken care of.

When I was putting the front shocks in I discovered that the front springs were not actually seated up in the pockets. So "unfortunately" the car will sit lower than we planned in the front. I will probably drop the back a bit to even it out. After a couple late (early) nights this week we finally got it back on the ground at about 1am Tuesday.



After work Wednesday I got it loaded up and off for the upholstery shop for the new top. Really enjoying the empty space in the garage for a few days and am doing a purge and re-organize of some of my supply cabinets.

 

At some point in here I was at the parts store for some odds and ends brake parts and fluid and ended up ordering a Tremec TKX through my local NAPA.



Note the warning label This is the narrow ratio version which should work well with the plans for my car. In a few weeks we will be changing gears and starting again on the '54 so this should get that off to a good start. It should be pretty versatile and last until I do something really irresponsible with the drivertrain.