1952-59 Ford Kovid Kustomline build thread

Update for anyone following along. Good news is the new water pump arrived today. Even better news is that I now suspect that the serpentine belt may be the culprit. I was beginning the removal of the old pump and was attempting to loosen the bolts holding the pump pulley with the belt still in place (as seen on youtube) when I found the pulley would turn without slight pressure applied to the belt. I now suspect the belt is elongating as the temp rises in the engine compartment and is causing the pump to not spin as fast as it should. As luck would have it, none of my local parts stores have a replacement belt in stock so one is now on order. Hopefully will know if that fixes the issue later this weekend. If not, I'll replace the water pump. Fingers crossed.

 

Good find! Had that happen to a friends OT Hyundai recently, the serpentine belt looked fine but in his case it was slipping and the A/C wouldn't maintain temperature. No noise but it was slipping. New belt fixed all problems but only after messing with the A/C for way too long. If you don't know how to check a serpentine belt for wear look it up! I didn't and got a lesson, I thought the belt looked great. Tensioner can be an issue as well, they can and do loose tension after a while. Mark

 

Had a loose v belt on my tractor cost me a head gasket couple years ago. Thankfully that was the only damage.

 

Here is a simple tool to inspect serpentine belts for wear, the grooves wear down and allow slippage as the contact between the sides of the grooves and the pulley grooves are what drives the load. the belt can look perfectly normal but be worn enough to allow slippage. https://www.aftermarketnews.com/gates-corp-introduces-new-serpentine-belt-inspection-tool/

 

New belt did not change anything. Temp still is climbing to 180* holding there for a little while and then continuing to climb over 200*. Radiator has been flushed, all new hoses, new industrial thermostat (higher flow), new coolant. Lower hose warms with engine while upper stays cold until thermostat opens. Fan comes on @180*. The continued rising temp from 180*-200*+ is all while driving so elec fan should have no effect. Unless I am missing something, the only thing I see it can be is the water pump. Maybe an impeller eroding away or I need to pull the radiator and flush it once more?

 

Decided against pulling the radiator but did drain the system once again in prep for the water pump change. Found a lot of rust particles stuck in the ripples of the radiator tank (looked like a Gold Rush clean out) so I decided to flush and back flush the tank. Pretty sure I have most of it out now. Will give it a few more cycles before closing it all back up again. This is what it looks like at the moment which is a lot better than where it started.


Old water pump impeller was fine.


New pump is painted and ready to go.

 

I am sure you know about the different front covers and the different water pumps for v-belts or serpentine, standard or reverse rotation. Here is an article on the differences, many stock serpentine applications use reverse rotation pumps. https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/pit-stop-ford-small-block-v8-front-cover-water-pump-interchange/

 

Yes, thank you. This is a reverse rotation pump. It is now in and waiting on the RTV to set up. Should be adding water back to the system tomorrow night.

 

Preliminary indications are that I am making progress. I added water into the pump before connecting the hoses and it held without leaking so I hooked it all back up, filled it up with tap water and brought it up to temp in the driveway. Temp held so I let it cool down a bit, topped off the water and took it around town. Temp held and at one point, when I was able to get it up to a higher speed, even came down a few degrees. Not a perfect test with the temps being cooler than when I started seeing the issues so I really need one more hot day to verify it is fixed. I'll hopefully be able to get back on it today after work and I'll drain/flush it once more, fill it with 50/50 and get her on the highway to see how she does.

 

I did drain it yesterday after work and found more***** in the top of the radiator as seen before. I was able to get a magnet in there and determined it was ferrous (yikes) and so I spent a little while getting out all that I could. I then refilled the radiator, ran it up to temp and got the thermostat to open, and then shut it down and repeated the tank cleaning. I did this a few more times until I am now sure there is no more in there. I also pulled the temp gauge sending unit and fan temp sending units and cleaned them up and then swapped their positions in the intake manifold. The temp gauge sending unit is now closer to the thermostat and the fan sending unit is closer to the firewall. I did this mainly because it makes more sense to me to have it this way but also the temp gun on the manifold by the thermostat more closely matched the 180* when I felt the upper hose get hot (thermostat opened).
I filled it back up with fluids and drove it around the block before getting stuck in traffic for a high school football game which got moved due to the hurricane. Temp creeped up close to 200* (but not over) while sitting but quickly came back down to 190* once I got moving again so I am gaining confidence that I have fixed the overheating issue. I did one more quick check when I got home to compare the manifold temp to the gauge temp and both were in agreement.

 

One additional note on my cooling updates. The back manifold port (now holding the fan sending unit) is noticeably cooler than the front port so I wired in a bypass switch for the fan so that I can turn it off and on before the fan sending unit reaches temp. Should be good to go now.

 

Well if it's not one thing, it's another. Took her out for a decent cruise on Saturday and the temp never climbed over 180*. Happy with the results I set out on Sunday to run some errands with the wife in it. Backed it out of the garage, put it into park so I could help her get her door open (still has a hard time reaching in and pulling the handle) and then went to put it into reverse and there were no longer any detents in the transmission. Gear shift would just freely move. Shifter was still connected to the trans so that wasn't it. Fluid level is still perfect. I jacked it up and disconnected the shifter and was able to freely move the gear selector at the trans still with no detents so it's something internal. Glad it happened in the driveway and not out somewhere. Car was stuck in park in the middle of the driveway so had to go purchase some wheel dollies to get it back into the garage. Guess I'll be dropping the trans pan soon to see what's going on. Initial thoughts are the roller spring snapped or the gear selector shaft broke.
Mini update - the nut on the end of the selector shaft had worked itself loose allowing the selector plate to come out of the squared hole. Easy (but messy) fix.

Good news is that I will now be able to install the Lokar shifter linkage and will also replace the trans pan with one that has a drain plug****uming no real damage. Might as well change the trans filter while I'm in there.

 

New AOD trans pan with drain plug, gasket, filter, and Lokar shift linkage have now all been installed and the good news is she once again moves under her own power. Bad news is there is now an interference issue between the Lokar shift linkage and the Lokar Eliminator floor mount throttle pedal I have been using all along. Seems they both want to be in the same place when the trans is shifted into Drive. Lokar makes a 1/2" spacer to go under the floor mount which should solve my issue but I am not spending $50 on a hunk of billet with 4 holes drilled in it. I'll be working to resolve that issue today and then hopefully I'll be able to get out and enjoy this beautiful fall weather.

 

I was able to get the pedal sorted, trans shifting, and cooling issues in check so I took her to a local show today and won my first trophy with it. The trophy was nice but it was better to hear from a spectator who understood the vision of the car and said it was exactly like they were building them in the 60s. Hard work paid off.

 

In case anyone was on the fence about changing over to LED bulbs. I have them all the way around and they are VERY visible at night.

LED bulbs front and back by Dos Cincos posted Oct 27, 2022 at 9:51 PM

 

That is bright. Headlights too, or just turn/tail lights?

 

Headlights as well.

 

Front are these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/232525007882

Rear are these in clear: iBrightstar Newest 9-30V Super Bright Low Power 1157 2357 2057 7528 BAY15D LED Bulbs with Projector Replacement for Stop Tail Brake Lights, Brilliant Red https://a.co/d/3k5BoiR

Front turn signals are Rear turn signals for a motorcycle and are mounted between the Plymouth grille and head lights.

 

They look good, did you need to make any changes for the turn signals?

 

When you switch the front turn signals and rear taillights to LED you also have to change the flasher to an LED flasher. If you leave either( front or back) as an incandescent then a regular flasher will be fine

 

Most of the chrome on the old Kustomline is driver quality at best and I'm fine with that for now. Too much shiny stuff begins the slippery slope of making everything else look better. Having said that, you can clearly see where the rear bumper guards once were as well as a State Farm sticker. I recently found a vintage SF sticker online so I had to stick it back in place which I normally would never do on any of my cars but seemed right in this instance. I will definitely not be putting another one on if/when I get the bumper chromed.

 

That’s pretty kool. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but that old sticker brings back lots of memories as well.

 

I havent updated this thread in awhile mainly because I've just been driving the heck out of the kustomline since fixing the overheating issue. I have however noticed recently that the car smells of gas, more than usual, after every refill so after finally remembering to not refill the tank I thought I should first check the gasket around the sending unit.
I was today years old when I realized you didn't need to drop the tank to get to the sending unit. I wish I was yesterday years old though because I didn't realize this until I dropped the tank and went to disconnect the sending unit. Oh well, now i know. I'm still waiting on the new gasket so I went ahead and put the tank back in the car because the smell of gas was not making for a happy wife.

 

Yes, that access port was definitely one of Ford's better ideas.

 

When you get your new gasket in and tight, go back and retighten it several times over a period of a few days. I was complaining to my buddy about mine losing some gas when I filled it up and the smell. He told me I needed to tighten the screws some more. I told him they were tight. I had to eat that. I opened the trunk and sure enough they were loose. I tighten them several time over the next few days and now my gas smell is gone.

 

Thanks for the tip. The gasket is in and the tank refilled. The smell is better but not gone so I'll go back and check the tightness of the screws.

 

I was skeptical like you, and also like you, I found mine were loose as well. So much so that there was gas on the outside of the gasket pooled on top of the tank. Guess I'll keep checking them after each ride until I can't tighten them anymore. Thanks again for the tip!

 

Turns out the screws being loose wasn't the full issue I was having. I'm running aftermarket gauges and as such have an aftermarket sending unit in the tank.

The gasket between the old sending unit and the sending unit flange was gone. Most likely what contributed to my fuel system issues a while back. Gas was leaking up through the hole in the flange where the sending unit post for the sending unit to gas gauge wire attaches. I wound up cutting a thin piece from some Fuel Injection line I had and used that as a replacement gasket. Should last at least as long (but hopefully longer) than the last one. So for now, back to Kruising!

 

Another thread on here about getting the interior dome light got me itching to get mine working again. I also wanted to add courtesy lights under the dash so I ordered a pair off Amazon for a Jeep Cherokee (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VD8SYXB?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1).
I followed the steps @danman55 documented in his blog and cleaned up the door switches and made sure they worked properly. Most of my wiring was already in place and I only had to run a new wire from the passenger side to the driver side to complete the circuit. The wiring diagram below is one I put together and used. I'm using an EZ Wire kit which included a white Dome Light wire as the power wire instead of coming off the light switch. The stock wiring is a black wire with blue tracer and a green wire with a yellow tracer and I have used those colors below.

The lights now come on when either door is opened. My dome light was in bad shape so I have a replacement coming but once installed, the lights will come on with the doors closed and using the switch in the dome light.

 

That looks great! The courtesy lights are really bright. Did you only use two?