Projects Bought a Mercury on purpose

That’s cool

those tail lights and trim……. Mmmmmmm

 

... except when it comes to body parts, like arms, legs, ears, eyes,.......testicles........ You get the picture.

 

One more pic.Pretty cool for sure.

 

Me likey

 

We just made a trip to Alabama for my daughter's graduation. We came through Jasper, that's your back yard I think?

 

Yep

 

Is the backyard full of old car hulks?

 

Yup

 

Messing with this shifter
The shifter said 52 ford with OD. Took the trans to Rocco’s and looked thru shifters and made sure the brackets were good. They fit perfect except needs a touch of clearance for the OD cable lever. The mount braces for the trans and solenoid perfect

the rod length look good. The levers won’t work.
If I use this, I have an extra set of merc shift levers I can cut and weld the Hurst levers to

wonder how this set up fits inside the car?

 

First time this shifter has been unwrapped since 1965

still not convinced I’ll change from column shift but couldn’t p*** up the deal

 

$48.32
A bunch of paperwork for a shifter.
Wonder if the warranty is still good

 

Adjusted for inflation, that shifter would be around $480 today.

dang

 

That’s not too far from the cost today. The Hurst Indy is right at $400, and the Master Shift 3 speed is $350 plus another $250 or so for the installation kit. I was recently shifter shopping until Lloyd @Lloyd's paint & gl***, saved my bacon and gifted me not only the shifter, but the transmission too!!

 

So $125 for the complete set up was ok?

 

A wonderful bargain!!!

 

Like finding out there was a very large gold vein under your shop floor. The question is. Would you bust up your shop floor to get it? Inquiring minds want to know. You took a chance and it paid off very good.

 

The funny parts is I didn’t even realize it’s a dual pattern shifter until I got it home. He has several mystery shifters for 3 speeds. I just grabbed one that had a bracket that fit.
Never read what was on the shifter. The box has shipping tape all o er it.
I think I did ok

he has a few foxcraft and some other brand shifter.
Even a set up for a Packard with OD

 

I picked up an NOS Fenton for my non od shoebox too - it came along before I was sure the column linkage would clear the SBC....it does and I just can't bring myself to convert it either

 

Shifter arm adapters cut and tacked to the new arms.
Found a piece of steel pipe the same ID of the shifter fork OD.

shifts like a brand new shifter.
The original OD cable lever hit the shifter mount.

neighbor had a random shifter lever in pile of parts with the correct slot. Just had to round the corners. Done

 

Messing with carbs. Thinking I’ll go with a manual choke for the center carb. …….maybe.

looking for a single cal custom valve cover. Can be damaged. For an experiment.
So some not so good news. Finally swapped up all the valve springs. Good.
But I noticed a good bit of air leaking out of cyl 8.
You can hear and feel air around the wrist pin area. So it’s coming thru the oil ring holes in the piston. So I probably broke a ring

 

Mr Anthony , have you tried a couple shots of oil from the oil can , rotate the engine and try to determine if the seal is any better ?

 

sounds like he better not be looking at it when he does!.....

 

Not yet. Flipped it over and made sure I wasn’t hearing things. Then closed up the shop
Pan is still off. So worse case is buying a single head gasket and ring set.

I’ll try that tomorrow
Had a slight valve leak but a tap with a hammer cleared that up.
I hillbilly leak checked em with pars cleaner and an air hose before ***embly.

 

It’s got compression. When I hooked up the air to the cyl it slung the wrench on the crank across the shop.

 

Put some oil in the cyls and rotated.

Number 8 has foamy oil coming out the bottom of the piston.

welp

 

Could possibly be just stuck rings. Pop the piston out and check it out.

 

I’ll get it apart next week.
Double check all of em again. I was having an issue with my piston installer.
Pan still off so it’s not a big deal. Just a head gasket plus whatever we find

 

Finally yanked the head.
Pulled the piston. No broke rings. Bore looks good. Piston looks good.
The rings were I guess stuck in the ring lands 180 from the gap.
Or, didn’t spring out and needed a slight twist for them to spring loose.
Sourse for the air p***ing by I guess.

 

Finally had time to drop off the clutch.
I have 2 pressure plates. A 988 and 1319. Both Borg and Beck
So I finally figured out the difference. The 1310 is mentioned in all the sbc swaps using a flathead trans. A 988 thru 1310 seems to be 49-to early 51 pressure plates. The 1318-1319 is listed as 51-53. The difference is finger length. 988-1310 has short fingers and used with the earlier style trans. The input shaft and throw out bearings are the differences. Longer fingers for the smaller input of the later trans
might help with some of the swap questions here.