Projects Im getting Married! Project 46 ford begins!

Nope no bender for me, but im officially sticking it on my birthday list haha. Hopefully I'll have a more exciting video soon. I promise the one I posted captured none of the excitement if the moment. It was pretty rad to here that first 3 second rumble

 

looks like im heading out friday after work with a friend to hopefully get it ****oned up.

My only possible issues i can think of right now are the brake pedal angle, which after i look at more and more photos i think it might actualy be in the right place and it just looked wrong because its not what i expected/ i was looking at it from laying on the floor/ the toe board is obviously out/ it was hot and i was tired.

if it is wrong im going to make the adjustment tube on the mc rod shorter so i can move the pedal some more.

the other issue is its not idling with out a teeny bit of pressure on the throttle, it idled fine in the truck it was in so youd think it'd be good to go now as nothing was really fussed with other then pulling the carb off a couple times.

I bought some stuff to help check for a vacuum leak but more then likely with all the **** that was attached to the motor in the truck it had some vacuum leaks and they had adjusted the idle to work around it. now with no leaks im adjusting in the other direction? weirder things have happend but i dont think it's going to be anything that'll keep me from driving home.

just a quick update while all you *******s are getting your cars g***ed up for the HAMB drags

 

OK so I have a little time to kill and decided to draw up how i ran the drivers side exhaust.

I'm not sure that it'll be all that clear to those who haven't seen it first hand but i figured it would help for now until i can get a photo or maybe video that shows it well. I have no photos so its a little simplified coming from memory



the drawing on the left is looking from above, the one on the left looking at it from the drivers side.

A: were the exhaust meets the center dump manifold, you can see them in my other pix
B: steering box
C: oil filter
D: wishbone~ mines split using the c.e. kit for reference

bends are labled 1,2,3,4 and referenced below

first bend, ok so for now i have this....



It was a pre made flange i got at the parts store, it had a 2 hole flange face so i cut it down and slipped it off and the 3 hole one onto it. I then trimmed it further at the dotted line to be as long as i could get away with. from memory it seems like a good 3/4 of so of an inch before it would touch any part of the sterring box. ill measure when im out there if i can remember.

I know when I marked it I was holding it in place and basically trying to make it as short as i could while still allowing room for me to fit an exhaust clamp onto the stub as im doing this run threw with flex bends for the most part. if you had shorter studs coming off your manifold, or you know just had some one bend you the funny bend you could do it tighter with out having to think about the studs hitting the clamp.

any how. you get the jist. i bolted the 2 inch o.d. stub onto the manifold and then took an 8 ish inch piece of 2 inch i.d. flex pipe and clamped it on making it bend as soon and as sharp and i could to the front of the car and then slightly down into the area that would be marked as bend 2

bend two right now is waiting to be picked up actually, its a very tight 90 deg bend and your standard exhaust bender that leaves all the wrinkles in the bend will not bend it in the small radius that you'll need with out kinking it in half so I had a shop send out for one for me and i can get it tonight.

so 2 is a 90 bend that will attach to another length of flex pipe that snakes around the rest for now, the flex pipe wont bend that tight so that's why i didn't use that.

ok, so then it comes from bend 2 towards the back of the car sorta lose S shaped out around the steering box and then out around the oil filter so you can actually change the oil with out taking things apart. those are bends 3 and 4.

in the drawing you can see it go over the wishbone and under the frame, its were the pipe is "cut" in the side view drawing.

I ran everything with weight on the front axle and tried to keep everything fairly forward to allow as much room as possible.

it looks like it should be fine but that's why im using flew pipe because it will crush before a car part and let me kinda fine tune the design.

It does look like if you had a bender that will make really small radius bends, mandrel bender? that you should have no problem getting it all bent up in solid pieces. However! the way it has to snake around everything i would think it would be nearly impossible to wiggle up into place in one big head pipe with out taking the front suspension or steering apart. what i plan to do is have some sort of flange some where near the #2 bend and put it up there in 2 pieces.

another thing to add to this ramble is that i am running my exhaust UNDER the frame no threw it, even if i could snake the exhaust around the steering box and threw the forward leg of the X member my brakes are under the floor and i feel way more comfortable not having exhaust running fairly closer to my m/c, prop valve, res valves and some fuel line. i ran hard tubing from roughly the firewall back to some 36" long smithys into a 45 and out in front of my rear tires.

the hangers i used are like a clamp with a rubber bit and then some drilled strap attached. i bent them at a 90 at the top of the rubber bit so i could bolt them on as close to the bottom of the frame as possible and not have the rubber in bind. that puts everything pretty tucked up but with enough room for one of my fat hands to fit between it and anything else.

I hate seeing exhaust hanging under a car, good reason for it to be lower i suppose so mine is hung a little closer to the center of the car then the outside so it would be harder to see.

id say the first hanger near the fire wall is about 3 inchs towards the center of the car from the edge of the bottom flat of the frame rail. so like 5 or 6 inches from the outside of the frame rail if that helps. kinda hard to describe were you could take it only the right way.

anyhow, the rear hanger mount is say 8 to 13 inches forward of the front of the back fender and is located roughly 5 inches in from the bottom edge of the frame rail.

hopefully that helps and if you have questions let me know. friday ill hopefully get the rest ****oned up and drive it 60 miles home in the dark around midnite. im working in similar light to what you see in the video of it running for all of 3 seconds so ill get you pix and video when i have actual light

 

Hey! I just saw that you got it running. Excellent!

That exhaust looks fun. Have you thought about buying a box of bends? I had pretty good luck doing it that way.

 

^^ I plan to do this too once I'm at that stage. Was going to suggest the same..

 

When you had the carb off , did you keep it upright ? If you've waved it around a bit or laid it over for a look see underneath it may just have a bit of **** dislodged and in a jet. Whip the top off and blow all the ports/p***ages out with the air gun .



.

 

Good thought on the air blowing, I made sure to not turn it over but who knows. And I'm lacking a welder but it's on my list otherwise I would have done the box o bends for sure.

I't looks like a split Fenton style manifold like cactus is running would clear on both sides do when it gets to welder time maybe I'll just build some creative headers and by p*** the squiggly bits of head pipe haha

 

Oops! I missed the lack of welder part!

 

Yeah I might even make it a winter weekend project or something to get a box of bends and go spend the weekend at a friends house with a welder and burn them together.

But for now it'll work just fine and honestly with upholstery, the wedding, the honey moon and a trip or two to Portland who knows if I'll even have the time to take a weekend and tear it apart before it's nice out again an I just want to drive it haha.

 

I vaguely remember one of the several small block trucks, or, it could have been a car, probably mid 80's?,where the p***enger side manifold had it's hookup at the very back of the manifold.
I wonder if you could use that manifold backwards on the driver side and run the head pipe down in front of the steering box?

 

Yup even early 70's pick ups have that manifold but honestly i've looked at some running that set up and it looks like it just makes your tight spot to work around the cross member instead of the steering box so I don't know that your really saving yourself any trouble. It's very tight on the drivers side regardless of where it dumps.

 

Damn, never thought of the crossmember!!

 

if you got one that maybe dropped straight down nearly at the end but not at the end it would be pretty choice and eliminate a bend or so but your still going to have to do all the snaking underneath so i figured whats one more funny bend.

ill try to get pix when i have the car, a camera, and the sun in the same place

 

Just read this from the first post to here. . . can't wait to see it done.

 

update!

first the good....then the maybe less good.

photos very first







Alright so where we we? ah, yes friday.

Friday after noon sitting at work I knew that I had plans for the evening, getting so close to the goal last weekend i had set out to get a week night in before Sarah had to leave for school for a couple months. My friend Steven had been on and on about wanting to help me, so it was official put up shut up time for him to lend a hand.

I think the wait until 5:30 when I could leave would have felt like it was taking forever anyways but when i saw the video of st. nicks 57 roaring to life my heart and stomach just started doing back flips! wow! i was floored and ampt for the next chunk of hours after that.

I got off work, grabbed Steven and a burrito and we made our way north.

With a slight detour to Le Mars to retrieve a 90 deg super tight radius bend that i had failed to capture on a super secret mission wednesday, and a hand full of bolts we got to the shop about 8pm.

First on the list was boring stuff.

I got the p***enger side flex pipe connected to the solid head(?) pipe that leads to the muffler. it was a chore to be shore, i could have used a little more length and the sweeping bends created with the flex realy leaves something to be desired. with some modified hangers everything got back lined up and pointed in the right direction.

the drivers side with all its crazy bends went pretty quick, slipping the elbow on for size and a few trims later it was all good to go. not much worry at all.

the only thing i dont like is that the flex pipe is touching the wishbone with a gap above it to the frame instead of being closer to the frame with the gap between the pipe and the wishbone. Thats with weight on the front end so i dont suppose it should be that big of deal, but i do plan to re visit it and 'convince' it out of the way a little more if the wishbones don't beat me to it.

With the exhaust out of the way we went to attacking some small things. A refill of the grease gun and all the zerks were plump with grease, a hand full of zip ties and the plug wires off the ram horns, that rattling head light ring marked with an electrical tape X for security, the transmission filled and finally we turned the key.

to be fair we turned it a few times.

i was un sure how much ATF was in the transmission after we lost a sizable amount threw the leaky dip stick situation, fixed with some creative rubber work and silicon, so i put a few quarts in, ran it threw the gears, and fired it up quick.

it sounded like ****, and did not want to run.

figuring maybe it was choked by the filter as the previous sorta successful attempts had been sans the filter I pulled it off to test. Maybe its running rich?

Fired back up and it was better, but not totally great. it was running better but not as well as good as it was a few nights ago. i could hear a tiny whirling noise kinda like a rear end with low fluid or sharp teeth in it, so with it having run maybe 2 or 3 minutes we shut it down to measure fluid. Dumped another two or three quarts in and went to fire again.

With my hand on the key and steven my human gas pedal it fired up with out drama. I noticed that it was a little louder then i expected from the long smithys but no whirling , no noticeable noise from the inside outside of what youd expect from a loud motor.

He let the throttle back slowly trying to see if it would idle but not to much luck. we killed it and checked the trans. fluid level is good!

Back to our two man ignition sequence, the cars fired up and i take a look back. the rear of the car is on jack stands as its a mystery were PRND are located after the trans arm was pointed down and the shifter moved to the left. all the way at 6 o clock was park, i guessed right!

I slowly let it up into reverse, success! and then onto neutral to slow it down before watching the forward gears and returning to park.

I let steven keep it ideling the best he could as i went to check the fluid levels and a stumble was audible. A back fire, a plume of smoke out of the carb and the engine purrrrrrrs. he lets his hand back away and it idles like its always wanted to!

Maybe it had gotten jarred around in the journey north, either way the demons were released and this babies ready to roar! I walk around the car, an ear to the exhaust tips checking for tone in a crowded shed wonder if id hear leaks out of my hokey set up and step out side to listen to our handy work.

It wasnt long before i heard it.

the noise that would be echoing in my head on the quite drive back to sioux city, and all day threw out work today.

nock. nock. nock.

at first it seemed like it came from the drivers side far back corner of the valve cover, was it a stuck lifter? it doesnt sound like one, its not a metal noise, its not a tap or a tick?

It almost sounds like its coming from the bellhousing. I hustle over to the other side of the motor hoping to locate the noise better and its not coming from the motor. its coming from the general area of the bell housing.

I shut it down.

The motor had warmed up and I had found myself a mystery noise at 1:30 am.

The nock is not fast, it is steady like a metronome.
The nock was no audible at any point before it got warm.
It was roughly 54 deg out while we ran the car in the shed, door open, back on jack stands.

The nock sounds, well i've been saying like plastic. It isnt a hard nock, almost a tap. Thats a misleading way to put it as i dont mean it as a "sounds like tapping" it sounds like the amount of pressure your exert tapping something. Thinking about it maybe it sounds closer to the sound of taking a hammer by the head and softy tapping on the wide side of a 2x4.

It is not an aggressive noise at all, to be honest at first I thought maybe something was dangling and with the vibration it was swaying in the rhythm of the car. Catching something to make noise on the beat.

but no such luck.

I have zero clue what it is and i pray to god its not a cracked flexplate.

The th350 trans has been more or less sitting a fresh rebuild on a shelf for a project that ended up with something else. The converter , bolts and everything brand new. The cooler and lines, all of it new. The engine out of a friends truck that i've heard run and drive tons of times, and though I obviously wasn't on mission to find a crack when bolting it all together I think I would recall seeing something, even if it was slight as we were pretty intimate for a few nights in a row.

Though I thought I had it all tight maybe one of the converter bolts is a little lose. Causing it to slightly shift and thunk with the rotation? the trans acts completely normal, in all gears and under a little throttle. I can't really call it under load with the wheels on jack stands i figure.

Has any one have any NON FLEX PLATE CRACK ideas? I thought maybe it could be a cracked manifold, a lose flange to the head pipe or even some weird vibration from the pipes coming into contact with something but where to sound seems to be coming from and just the way the sound sounds led me away from that idea.

Any how at this point we head 6 miles into town and find the only place still open for some awful gas station "coffee" and to find jackets as jeans and a t-shirt certainly are no longer suitable.

We make it back quickly with the idea of heading to the brakes. I find my pedal position is correct after spending an afternoon drawing lines on photos of the set up, looking at photos of how the toe board bends when installed, and what it all looked like before i took it apart with the clutch pedal frozen all the way up. Well that and sitting in the car for about 2 seconds.

I grabbed a piece of card board and after cutting it to size and bending it in the proper location I mock it up in place and start cutting to make the arm clear. Either because of bending it to clear the bellhousing, ****ty speedway parts, or any number of reasons the "length" part of the brake arm is above the floor slightly instead of allowing the "vertical" to p*** threw a single hole.

oh well, the new floor was only $150 and if i come up with a better way to do it later I'll do it then. So after some sharpie and razor blade surgery i had a cardboard floor to fit the drivers side and figured we'd better bleed the brakes before we cut up the new floor and bolt it over the...well were the M/C used to be. Now just forward of were it resides under the seat.

With a nice tube funnel set up we went to work filling the M/C with fluid and cracking the right rear bleeder. A couple of tries, and a couple more and it looks that fluid is making its way to the evidently not that tight p***enger front bleeder but not so much as a gasp of air is coming out the rear.

We notice some teeny dots of fluid were the lines meet the wilwood proportioning valve and crank them further down before noticing that it seems the wilwood residual valves also have a little moisture coming from them as well. I've heard of these residual valves being prone to leaking because of what they are made of but we gave it a couple turns and hope for the best.

After two hours of laying under the car it was 3:45 am, I had a funny nock and mc that wont push fluid to the rear. With a declaration of '**** this' we called it a night and started to clean up before the hour drive home in the dark.

The friend who's shed im building in was hopeful of the car moving or being gone so he could unload some pallets of shingles to roof his house later, he got them right before the price nearly doubled if not more, so knowing where the gears are located and that i had no brakes steven and i played a game of catch with the car and i pushed it outside, he stopped it and we blocked it up to no move outside of the door so shingles could make there way in.

rolled the windows up and said jokingly "not like its going to rain, hasn't rained in a month". of course I woke up this morning to rain. ha, oh well maybe its not to late to let it do the crops some good they could use it.

Post script. I was thinking that maybe I had the proportioning valve set all the way forward and thus the fluid wasn't going back? But a quick google search makes it sound like its a pretty common thing to have happen and its just a fight with air pockets. It looks like a big syringe to the bleeder should force fluid into the line and pop the air out the master. I'll be looking for tips and advice on that as well.

 

Oh, and for all you problem solvers out there it starts up super easy and does not appear to have any bind or trouble at the starter

 

Are your transmission mount and motor mounts tight? All your bellhousing bolts tight?
I know it sounds crazy, but I've pulled a few all nighters, and some of the piddling **** is the easiest overlooked. Good luck. We're going to have fun with our cars!

 

yup i made sure to go back and tighten them down a few months ago. the cushions are squishy but i cranked down on them pretty good. figured i didnt want to split the rubber or something weird though and go ape **** on them.

I dont see the car till monday at the soonest so im going to check the converter bolts and now that you say that re check the bellhousing bolts and mounts.

its awefully tight under there, the motor doesnt move a whole lot idling but maybe its rocking just enough to tap something underneath? hmm

im hoping that in day light things are a little clearer to see

 

my only opposition to it being a lose mount or it rocking just enough to tape something is it didnt make any noise at all until itd been run a totally of maybe 15 minutes all combined. id think youd here it before then but i guess the open manifolds could have masked alot.

 

could the knock be the flexpipe you mentioned touching the wishbone ?
Have you had an oil pressure gauge connected ? If oil pressure drops as engine warms up the knock could be a tired bottom end . Just thinking out loud here man .



.

 

Good thoughts. It doesn't seem like an exhaust noise but that had crossed my mind. I'll add it to my list of spots to check and listen to.

I have posted the question as a post independent of this one looking for non flex plate ideas and some one mentioned the starter having a worn out return spring possibly. And that could lead to a little knock which I could understand echoing through the bellhousing making it a little harder to pin point the noise. So I'm going to grab a starter just in case that's what it is.

No work today and no car time so even though video is a horrible way to have to listen to an engine I thought I'd YouTube some of these theory's and see if the sound in the videos is similar to what I'm hearing.

Thanks guys I'll be sure to keep you posted

 

Quick update, spent all day trying to seal up brakes and hunt down knocks.

I was on the bleeder side of the system last time and have no idea how my friend missed it raining fluid from almost all ports into the prop valve but they are tight now.

I do need to grab copper washers for the rubber lines to the calipers however as the kit didn't supply any or make any mention of them so the p***enger side isn't totally sealed and is just barely letting enough out to drip on the after a pedal push and a little wait.

The knock! After checking bolts, fly wheels/flex plate which ever it is, for flatness and etc, exhaust for hitting and on and on I found nothing so I went inside te car and listened to it run with the toe board out.

I put my ear to the trans/ bell housing and it was coming from the starter area. I pulled the starter and though I didn't bench test to see if the return spring was worn out I did see that I could push it back in a little further.

What I saw next is likely the culprit, the bearing on the end if the shaft has a ton of play. It probably wobbles a good 1/4 inch! So I imagine it was tapping the backside of the flex plate, a non 3 am listen makes it sound right.

I bought a new starter this morning to swap but it was the wrong one so I'm going to make the drive up again tomorrow or the next night and hope for the best.

Hopefully I've got it figured out! I'll post with results when I have them

 

Sweet. Too bad I'm not close by.. I've got a couple SBC starters here that I could have lent you.

 

yeah im sure i could have thrown a rock and hit one haha, oh well. figured if i was going threw the effort to pull the heavy ******* id may as well replace it with a new one.

until i get the new one on i wont know for sure that that is the culprit but im really hoping it is. in the mean time here are some out side in DAYLIGHT photos haha













and how everything looked leaving tonight



one step forward, and two steps back...

 

That actually looks pretty good! If I had never seen this, I would have never thought that car has an IFS clip or a SBC. Dark nighttime shots with the car 3 feet away hide a lot. Haha. Are you planning on leaving the patina?

 

I found one of them one in a million girls too she won't set a date just tells me to go play in the garage. She bought me a car when we were first dating a 66 fairlane and took me to jets to look at parts and tires and stuff I really didn't think them women were real I've heard about them so good luck with yours and your other new love affair too I know you both will enjoy her once shes on the road

 

Matt your a **** lol, there's no ifs and you know dang well I'll spray paint those rough spots before I show them off.

Phyco Sean, thanx! I'm pretty stoked to have found Sarah

 

"I really didn't think them women were real"
They are out there. I had 46 years with one. She put up with a lot of sh&t with hot rods, and dragsters and motorcycles and such.
When you find one, hold on for all you are worth.
Now, Tim, have you made a choice on wheels/tires? Mine has chrome reverse/baby moons. I was going to run full moons, but the chrome reverse is really growing on me. I don't have to unscrew baby moons to check tire pressure!
And,..you have me wanting to paint my firewall white! A great place to put a bunch of speed equipment stickers!

 

Yeah I don't care how much yarn or how many spinning wheels I have to buy her she's not going anywhere! Haha.

The white is. Sorta off white ivory color, found it at Walmart wish I'd of saved the can or at least took a photo do I could grab another.

As for wheels I have an old trailer baby moon cap and laid it on there a bunch of
Months back and seeing the stock wheels turn into one giant disc realy lit me up. I'll be running either 40 ford caps or trying to find some of the trailer style caps.

I found the one I have in a scap metal pile I walked by behind the shed and it just happens to fit! I'm not sure if it clears the front dust caps but it looks so much better keeping that arc one continous flow compaired to some of the later caps that have a different radius and kinda bump up out of the rims arc.

When I get it on the road I'll take a weekend to scrub down the paint and re shoot them gloss black. They are black with old green showing threw right now.

Also it looks like my front spring is continuing to settle so I should have just a little bit of noise down rake eventually. I think right now it's even or 3/4 lower on the front depending on what you measure. ~the rocker under the door is pointing down for sure

 

Ha, just noticed that top photo the "pantina" is in stripes so on an iPod it almost looks like rows of louvers. Think it's trying to tell me something?