Projects All Studes, All The Time

Studebaker Champion

 

Last weekend we picked the Lark up from upholstery to put it into storage for the winter. Unfortunately the top did not get done due to some Studebaker funkyness in how they did the tops. All will be taken care of in the spring, so I'm just happy to have it out of my hair for now.

Brakes seem to work at parking lot speed, but my temporary driveshaft was barely engaged on the splines, and it also rubbed the floor, so speeds were limited to only a few miles an hour.





I am taking a couple weeks to fully purge the garage of any distractions. Anything household related is leaving. Bikes and bike repair stuff is being relocated to the house. All of my SBC and SBF Ford stuff is on its way out. If it resembles a distraction it is OUT of the garage.

Depending on how this goes I will minimally have much more room to work in the main bay, possibly enough room to get two cars in by spring time.

 

I am usually attracted to early Ford hot rods, but this past summer was in Delaware at our “summer” home—-75 years in hot ass Texas and went to a car show in Selbyville,Delaware and captured this beautiful ‘Baker with a Stude engine and accompanying factory supercharger—-what a gorgeous hot rod. Had to stop and take some pics with my I-pad. h

 

Great thread!

 

No Studebaker content to share unfortunately. You will have to check out what @Jacksmith and @Tim are doing to get your Stude fix.

Still messing with a major shop reorganization project. I'm also doing some equipment projects that have been neglected for too long.

I almost broke down and bought a TIG welder cart, bit then realized I have a bunch of tools, parts, and steel, so I made this this weekend:






I need to order some tig filler storage tubes and integrate them on the front right corner. I also need to go through the drawers of this box and make sure that I have relevant stuff in it, matching the function of the main garage bay.

 

Old exhaust pipes work perfectly... don't buy 'em, make 'em... oh that's right, I don't have to tell you that!

 

It's been way too long without an update in this, but things are finally back under way. Shop is 90% of where I want it to be, with a few projects that I can work on without tearing everything apart again. We also spent most of February away from home too. Spent a week in Fiji, then went down to Tuscon, AZ or a few weeks for my wife's job.



Got it up on stands and it happened to sit perfectly level as is.





Did some rough trimming on the bellhousing since it was pretty close to the firewall.



Studebaker BW T10 next to the narrow ratio Tremec TKX.



It fits !





Almost like it was made to fit! I think I'm sitting in the factory position fore and aft, but leveled out some and lower overall. It's sitting at around 5° instead of the factory 7° or 8°. I need to get some reference measurements from a friend's car to see where I am from factory.

Lower in the car will let me keep a taller induction setup below the hood. More level should keep the driveline a little happier and keep things tucked up nice above the bottom of the frame.

 

Hopefully tomorrow I will get to look a little closer at the engine mount situation.

My plan is to bolt or weld on ears to the block plate, making it into a mid plate to take care of torsional loads.

Front I would like to emulate a stock donut mount, but a little lower to keep things under the hood. This will hopefully allow the front of the chassis to flex (it is a Studebaker after all), as well as to position the engine fore and aft.

I probably don't need a transmission mount at all, but I would like to use a rubber mount back there just to support it in a neutral position.

Anyone have thoughts on this idea? For the initial engine going in, the mounts (and transmission) are complete overkill, but I am trying to set this up for longer term use and abuse.

 

My 2-cents: I'm of the mind that a transmission mount is absolutely needed. I've seen Tri-5 Chevys break a rear trans housing even though the engine is supported in 4 places.
That's a nice transmission, don't take a chance breaking it!

 

I think the trick will be to support the transmission mount and not put a bind on the system.

I have some Pontiac transmission mounts that @dare-to-be-different pointed out earlier in the thread coming to see how they fit.

Got some mid plate ears roughed out tonight. These will get refined and welded in to the existing block plate off the car. I plan on putting the outer bolt holes in a known location which I will document for myself. So far out from center, and so far up or down. Then I can replicate the plate in the future for a Stude, as well as other engine options. Might even run it through the lazer scanner at work so I can have it cut out as one piece. Basically once the tranmission and bellhousing are locked in that's where things will stay.







The chassis attachment point is the channel "hat" over the frame. These are through bolted with a factory sleeved bolt hole that goes through the frame.

 

Late to the party now that you're into the aftermarket bell and mid-plate, but there is a better, less expensive way to get there. The Studebaker truck V8 4-speed and 5-speed bellhousings are hell-for-stout, already have the side motor mounts and can easily be modded to accept your Tremec.

jack vines

 

I considered using a truck bell @PackardV8 . I even have one sitting around somewhere. I'm more concerned about the safety of steel vs cast bellhousing, so I went this route. Thankfully was able to find a B.O.P one to modify for the job for the right price instead of having to buy a QuickTime bellhousing.

Could you share what the truck bellhousing modifications are though? When the Lark eventually gets an upgraded tranmission I will probably want to upgrade the bellhousing too, or minimimally go to a steel flywheel.

Could someone with a C/K confirm the front engine mount locations? Mine line up between both slots. Outer set? Inner set? To one side?

 

The Studebaker V8 car bellhousings are fairly thin. If one has hefted the 4-speed truck bellhousing, it's half again thicker, heavier. I'd bet the 5-speed would function as a scattershield; it's that thick.

The truck bellhousings have a wide enough transmission mounting face they can be re-drilled for the Tremec. Since there are different front bearing retainer diameters, some require machining smaller, some require a spacer ring.

jack vines

 

With the crank and tailshaft centered in the chassis, the engine mount holes line up between the chassis side slots. What's the deal with this? Do the factory mounts run crooked, or is the front of the engine offset to one side or another?

 

Engine mounts are offset with rubber between most likely

 

This is my tranmission mount riser that will weld in place and convert the batwing crossmember into a tranmission crossmember. I will have to do do some trimming where the right side meets the single exhaust hump. Unless I can find a dual exhaust batwing.

Getting better at TIG welding, but I still really struggle with stops, hence the after the fact blob thrown on top.


The overall height is right around 3 inches and there is a decent amount of clearance to spin a wrench underneath.

 

Don't lift until the puddle cools.

 

I'm pretty good about staying in place while the puddle cools. I think I'm not looking ahead far enough to watch the end of the part start to melt away on me. Need to look ahead further and get out of the power sooner I think. Jumping ahead and backstepping the end does not seem to translate to TIG.

Practice makes perfect right?

Or is it "grinding and paint makes the the weldor I aint"???

 

After way too much time and energy spent, I decided the best approach to lower the front of the engine was with the Pontiac transmission mounts and lowered versions of factory mounts.

Between the two changes it drops the front of the engine around 3/4 of an inch. This does not sound like much, but it takes around 1 degree out of the whole drivetrain angle and adds around a half inch at the carburetor for hood clearance. Crank centerline to bellcrank clearance is a little over 4", so I can safely run a 7" balancer / pulley combo and still be able to change a belt without dropping the bellcrank or lifting the engine up. A 8" setup may fit, but it will get tight.


2x2x.188 box tube.


The idea is to move the bolt hole down, so the threads barely clear the bottom wall of the new mount. Part is directly tapped since using nuts would push the bolt holes up. 3/8-24 thread from the factory bolts was retained so I can get 4.5 threads into the wall.


Used one old mount as a fixture to add the lower ear stolen from the other mount. You can see the .400" height difference between the two.



All welded up. Left and right pairs instead of the factory same part flipped around backwards.



Holes drilled through putting the crank centered in the chassis using the outer frame side slots.

 

That'll work...

 

The other day I converted the batwing into a transmission crossmember. I added the part I made a few days ago, clearanced to fit correctly at around a 5° angle just to take some strain off of the mount. For now it's just tacked in because I may end up doing something completely different here, but for now I need to lock in the tailshaft position.





The next step is to pull everything out of the car and add my extension plates to the block plate to convert it into a midplate.

 

Really enjoying this thread, Studes aren’t something you see every day, but they def have their own character and style.
If you haven’t purchased any filler metal tubes… we use 1.5 or 2” PVC tubing at work. Its clean and you don’t have to worry about dissimilar metal corrosion or oils contaminating the rod. Glue a cap on one end and leave a cap loose on the other end and it seals the rods up from the elements. Keep up the good work, looks great!

 

I finally got the mid mount 'ears' welded on to the block plate.





Did some slicing and dicing using the outside most bolt holes to cut everything straight and true. At some point when converting to the Stude pattern things got twisted a bit and it's been driving me nuts.



I also added the chassis side bolt holes, which are on center and aligned to the belhousing pattern.

If I ever use this thing in a competition setting I will likely need to pony up and buy a store bought (unmodified) scattershield, but this block / midplate can be easily replicated and when the need arises.



Bolted back together ready to go into the car.

 

Started to make my chassis side mounts using a bit of CAD. Note the scribed lines...a cheap (or name brand used one from an auction) height gauge and a flat surface can do some nice layout work. Beats wrecking the tips of your caliper. Some careful center punching and drilling will get you some shockingly accurate holes.



Trimmed up, drilled and tacked to the chassis sleeve. The sleeve is hitch reviever tubing which caps the frame perfectly. It bolts through the frame with a sleeved hole and 5/8" or 3/4" bolt for the factory tow / tie down (?) loop on the bottom of the frame.

Need to double check the alignment amd do a final burn in on this and mounts should be DONE.

 

Got these welded up and in the car. These were back to back welds, one looks great, one got a cover pass over it after the picture was taken. More practice needed I suppose.





Pretty happy with the way this all turned out.

Currently have the car up on the hoist with tools and benches getting shoved below it to make room to work on the Lark, which I grabbed from storage this morning.

 

Nice work!

 

If you're like me, the welds always come out perfect in the areas that no one will ever see. The parts that are out there in full view of everyone...... uh... ...can be ugly....LOL

 

In case anyone is wondering...no you can't fit a 3" single piece driveshaft in an early Lark.

At least that's what I'm telling myself. The shaft was rubbing HARD on the tunnel. Would have had to beat the daylights out of the floor and still limit uptravel.

Apparently later cars had longer tailshafts getting the driveshaft further out of the way. And they weren't lowered...

Did a lot of research on driveshaft phasing in preparation for going back to the stock 2 piece shaft on a lowered car. Everything fights everything, so may have to break up the angles in 3 spots with the working angles adding and subtracting out. Or possibly an inverted "brokeback" / "W" setup with the front 2 joints rephased running equal angles, and then the pinion running with very little working angle.

 

Hmmm... I'm confused. I've never heard of a 2 piece driveshaft in an early Lark.

 

I can't find my Lark chassis book, does someone have one they could scan in the driveshaft page from?

The shaft looks similar to the one out of my '54, but the carrier bearing was bent and mangled to make it fit. It also had a 6 cylinder Dana 27 rear end in it, so who knows what's going on.

Of course I pitched the rear end long ago and never took any reference measurements. Only drove the car once over 30 mph so I have no idea if the driveshaft was happy in the first place.