Hot Rods The (mis) Adventures of a Compulsive Tinkerer

Some things just bug me. The rear bumper on the Stude. It’s a little too high to my eye, it’s wrinkled in a few places and it’s held on with hex bolts instead of real bumper bolts (remember those?).
Looking for instant gratification, I wasn’t going to remount it or try to straighten it, but I could at least deal with the missing and wrong bolts. The ones circled in green were missing and the ones in yellow were rusty old hex bolts.


I dug into my stash of old bumper bolts and made it look a little better.

 

Last but not least, I worked on the Austin last night. I bought some carpet off of eBay and have been cutting and fitting it to the back seat area. It’s a bitch kneeling in the car, marking and cutting. There will be no photographic evidence presented because I’m useless as a trimmer but hey, it’s supposed to be a race car not a show car, right? I have all of the pieces cut, just need to do a final trim as I glue it all down.
My reasoning for carpet? Many of the early gassers had full interiors (like Stone, Woods, and Cook) like the street cars they were supposed to be. My Austin has nice plain black panels and headliner so I decided to cover the sheet metal in back with thin black carpet. Besides, it might hold out the fumes slightly, making it more hospitable for when the wife decides to go to cruise night. lol.

 

Hey Bob, I've been using Blue Magic Metal Polish Cream. It comes in a short little glass jar, I found it @ O'Really's. This is the best I've used in a long time.

 

Thanks. Does anyone use an instant detailer type product on their chrome? I used to use it on my roadster on the black paint and the polished aluminum. I was thinking of maybe using it in between the deep cleanings but I wasn’t sure if it might take off the wax or just supplement it. I don’t know how it works.

 

I went to Bakersfield last weekend for the California Hot Rod Reunion. I decided to hit the swap meet right off the bat. I was looking around my shop for a steering wheel for the Austin and noticed that my steering wheel inventory was getting low so the first item on the swap meet list was cheap useable steering wheels. I stopped at the Mooneyes booth for comparison and a simple black steering wheel is $130 or $150 now. I found these three for $15 each…… one is foam, I’ve never used a foam one, we’ll see

I was also looking for a suitable tach for my Stude pickup and found these. One for $60, one for $20. I’ll test them on the Stude tomorrow. Either one would be just fine.

My phone was misbehaving so I couldn’t take any pictures at the swap meet, but although it was small, there was some interesting stuff. A complete Holman and Moody 2x4 setup for an FE with the big cast aluminum scoop and the H/M timing cover, some Halibrands, various 2x2 and 6x2 setups, magnetos, etc. Prices seemed reasonable.

 

Good hunting Bob!!

 

Well, I’m glad I didn’t pay too much for the tachs. (or did I?) I looked up the wiring for the nice Stewart Warner one but when I hooked it up to the old Stude it did absolutely nothing, it didn’t flinch. I tried several different grounding points, nada. Who repairs S-W tachs?
I had to repair/replace a couple wires on the other one and it works, kinda. It shows 2000 rpm at idle (actual = 650) and it does climb with increased rpm.
I just took an educated guess at the wiring of the little one based on the remnants of wire left behind. Two were obvious: the red wire led to the light, and a black wire led to case ground at the light base. The green wire disappeared into the mechanism, so I assumed that it was “coil - “. There was a contact that had a brown wire jumpered over to the black wire at the light ground. And there was another separate contact next to the brown wire with a stub of copper wire sticking out of it - I assumed that this should go to the ignition switch.
With that last wire connected to the ign post at the switch, the tach reads full scale, with it disconnected, it acts normally but seems to read high at idle. Any thoughts?
Oh well, at least the steering wheels work like they’re supposed to….

 

Every tach I've installed has had 4 wires:
Red, Ignition hot
Black, Ground
Green, Coil Negative
White, Light.

Devin

 

Yeah, me too. And the S-W tach was true to form, but the little cheapie tach had a factory red wire going straight to the center contact of the night light. Pretty obvious. There are two small round contacts protruding from the insulated back plate. One had a brown wire which jumped over to the outer shell of the light socket along with a black wire that exits the case. Again, pretty obviously a ground. The other contact had a wire broken off right at the contact with no insulation left for identification. I assumed that it would be “power in, from the ignition switch”. The green wire disappears into the body and I can’t tell where it goes. All of the wires were cut very short, just barely sticking out of the back.
I’ll probably just have the Stewart Warner tach fixed if I can find someone to do it.

 

Bob, these guys might be able to help. Worth a call maybe.
Palo Alto Speedometer: Repair, Restoration, and Sales of Automobile Gauges

 

Williamson as well

https://williamsons.com/

 

Thanks! I’ll check them out.

 

Bob
I had one of those S-W tachs in the late 70's, thought it was a thing of beauty, don't recall where I got it, it wasn't new, I never could get mine to work either, sat in a drawer for years, finally put it in a donation box during a "decluttering" session.

 

Come to think of it, the only tachs I’ve ever had trouble with were Stewart Warner. My other tachs were Sun, Autometer and Airguide, no problems. The S-W tach in my roadster died, to their credit they replaced it. The S-W tach in my Dad’s boat died, I just wrote it off to age and exposure.

 

I completed a couple projects around the house and got back on the Austin. I pulled it into the shop for an intake swap. (The wife caught me working instead of sitting and watching the drags on tv)
Off with the huffer….


and on with the tunnel ram.

Things are a little cramped with the ignition switch and wiring. I think I have a way to relocate the switch away from the carburetor with a minimum of rewiring.
I should have moved the engine forward when I installed the blown motor but it meant lengthening the driveshaft and building new headers. I was in a “minimal changes” state of mind at the time so I left it alone. Now, even with a long water pump, the fan is 7-8” away from the radiator. I’m going to try running it with just the electric fan I guess.
Taking tomorrow off to go look at another bucket list acquisition. Unfortunately it’s a year outside of the HAMB guidelines - a big block ‘67 Ranchero. The madness continues…..

 

Ha...the rear carburetor, to back of dash / wiring, looks like the mess that I recently bought !
At least you have two carburetors, I can only fit one.

Mike

 

I moved the ignition switch from the middle to the far left, made the Headlight switch a toggle instead of the big push-pull switch and made a fascia plate to spruce it up a little. The wife has been watching “The Crown”. I guess it got to me subliminally ‘cause my plate came out looking a little crown-ish. Well, it is an English car. I didn’t have a big enough piece of engine turned material to cover all the way to the ign switch.
After some redressing the wires clear the carburetor much better.
The intake and carburetors are installed, distributor, linkage, everything is back on. I did have to make brackets to relocate the alternator.
I’ll do a sanity check tomorrow, hook up the battery and hopefully fire it up. I have no idea how close the tune up will be, the #1850 Holley carbs have factory jets. We’ll see.
Nothing amazing, just progress…..

 

It runs!!! It fired up instantly and ran pretty good right off the bat. A little ear tune up and it was idling well and seems very responsive. As usual, there were a few leaks but they are fixed now.
Looking forward to taking it for a little spin. Gotta build a battery hold down and check a few things. After messing with the wires, the headlights don’t work. There’s power going in and out of the dimmer switch but it seems to stop there. I’ll fix it.

 

So why did you dump the blower?

 

Well damn Mark, I think he had that unit sitting right there on the table! I didn’t know that I needed it. The seller didn’t seem to know much about anything he was selling.

Mostly because the blower came off of my 392 Hemi. I plan to sell the Austin this year and I didn’t want to have to buy another blower for the Chrysler at today’s prices. The other reason is that my experiment with using a remote marine water pump wasn’t a total success. It barfs the water out of the system and eventually overheats. I did that to retain the “old gasser” look. I would have to add a later manifold with water or one of the modern inline water pumps or something. It’s time to move on to the rest of my projects.

 

It was a Jabsco stand-alone bronze pump with fresh seals and impeller. It pumped water in through the front water pump openings and returned to the radiator via the water openings in the back of the Weiand competition blower manifold. It moved some water, that’s for sure.
Admittedly, the temperature sender was in the side of the head since there is no place in the manifold for one. I’ve always heard that you get higher readings in that location. It seemed to circulate well but it pushed the water out of the radiator cap and overfilled the catch can. It was worse with the lower pressure cap, I put on a higher pressure cap right away. Maybe I should have slowed down the pump, it ran at about 60% of the crankshaft speed. (Based on pictures of old boat pulley installations)
I really only used the car for car shows and an occasional run to our local cruise night so it wasn’t a big deal, just annoying. (I took a gallon jug of water and topped it off before heading home) It was the people pointing under the car and saying,”your cars’s leaking” that bugged me the most. I didn’t really dig into it to figure it out. I was planning on swapping in a “street-type” manifold and drive but decided that it was time to let someone else have fun with it. I have a few other fish to fry before my expiration date. Lol.
P. S. It was fun, a little old car thundering in to a cruise night with the blower whining. Got everyone’s attention, that’s for sure.

 

I dragged some old wheels out of my stash and spent a little time cleaning them up to use on my latest acquisition.
Ford factory 15x7s.
Real American Torque Thrust wheels from the late 60s. I finally get to use them. The color is a little dark in the picture, better outdoors.

 

After searching the internet for a suitable under dash bracket for two 2 5/8” gauges and not finding anything that I would spend my hard earned money on, I decided to try my hand at making one. One piece of scrap aluminum and a few hours later, I had what I wanted.

I put some angle into the mounting surface so it will be facing the driver instead of the seat bottom.
After a little sanding and polishing…..

I had to swap parts with a couple oil pressure gauges to get one that matched the temperature gauge, it was worth the extra effort.

 

The new engine for my Stude pickup is still at the machine shop. I stopped by to let them know that I’m still alive and interested in getting it done. They are swamped with interesting work. We are going with new screw in rocker studs so I brought the heads home to pull out the old studs and the oil plugs. It was easier than I expected. Next will be threading the holes for the 1/2-13 studs and spot facing or milling the tops of the bosses (not necessarily in that order)

 

Time for a little catch up. I’ve been tinkering with my slightly off topic 390 FE, cleaning up the clutter on the top of the engine, adding gauges and a better fuel filter.

The Austin is running and driving again. The first drive revealed that the gas pedal was too hard to push and the brake pedal needed some work. I reinstalled the throttle linkage that worked well on the blower. Much better….


I added a piece to the brake pedal to make it bigger and slightly closer to the seat. It’s better, but still not quite right.

Driving it around also revealed a little brake fluid leak at a fitting at the left front caliper. The brakes work so much better now with a modern M/C and new calipers in front.
The tunnel ram runs great, nice lopey idle, good throttle response, makes the little car pretty snappy. Fun.

 

Good buddy of mine here in town had a A40 he calls his A440. It has a 440 with 727 trans.
This one has all the goodies, A/C. power windows, bagged, 9", power tilt nose.