Cool! The US Mail is still a form of magic! The bigger it gets and the more losers it emploies the more the magic matters. You are very welcome! Maybe you'll go through it and pickup on things I missed. Leo spent many years gathering this information & putting the book together. He is a bit touchy about having it posted. So just use your Artistic Self as your judge. I am comfortable with quotes that give credit and maybe relating it to our own pictures. I'm not sure of the rules. They are our books & Leo got his money but I hate it when people sing my songs and don't even say thanks.
58 chevy yeoman wagon air cleaner! don’t have one but not bad looking! Just thought I’d add it to the post
It really is packaged very slick when you look at it all in one dusty crusty color. You see the shape and not all the pieces maybe I just don’t see s lot of inline motors in mid to late 50’s chevys but it does remind me a little of the mega buck street rod stuff with engine covers and etc. probably reads different when it’s cast, stamped, formed, steel, iron and rubber in a half dozen different colors and tones. Enough late night rambling. It looks neat, I agree
It's later there. It sorta' looks like a Pontiac logo without the Indian face on the front. In Canada the Pontiacs used the 261 Chevy six used only if trucks here. A picture if Leo at the 2012 Inlines International convention wearing a shirt with the Logo I did for the event.
Pushed it outside to paint the new motor for the 46’ looks good. Gonna get the 46 back together and clean the shop. Got some more fun stuff happening. Stay tuned
Getting closer to having the 46 back on the road, it’s fighting me like one would expect. I did get a great little mail day from @Hitchhiker today though! Some early Cadillac dash/ map lights and a the spare tire arm/plate I’ve been missing! Hoping to be back on the A by fall.
@Rand Man yeah maybe @Hitchhiker has some In inventory and you can get one too. havnt touched the car still trying to get the 46 ready for the roc while adding some tools to the shop… and mocking up a third car lol. progress will hopefully resume this fall
Yep! "Make Hot Rods Dangerous Again" kinda just poking fun at myself and my love of bangers with that one. I got a real hankering for a tire fryer right now.
That is just scratching the surface of my excuses. But some progress would be nice. For the roadster the shop is the key. Too much junk is the lock and I just keep getting more. Why Halloween?
Almost Halloween and my to do list has been delayed by lots of rain and feeling under The weather but I have started messing with the A again a little. big updates soon ish.
Looking forward to the news. The first frost on the windshields this morning. Almost done with my road work and ready to get back to the shop. I hope we both make some progress.
Yeah so far I’ve been mocking up bits and pieces, a little puzzle solving etc. the 46 needs work but I just don’t wanna. Thinking the cars will swap bays Sunday if the weather holds out
Funny how the many hours in the tractor seat doing road work has fired me up to do some shop time. I've had to spend some time in there repairing tractor stuff and I've run across roadster parts that have not been posted on my thread. Some little up dates would feel good and maybe get us rolling again.
What’s that guy doin over there? no deep in there yeah the chevy is cool but go in the shop look behind that 34 5 window with the caddy flathead in it oh there it is! and away we go
Some wrestling and it’s in place swap ends and get it blocked up on some dollys so what do we have here anyways? best I can figure it’s a 1955 Studebaker 259 cid “bearcat” with the power kit. Bolted to a T-86 three speed with a r10 over drive. And would you look at that? It’s damn near duchess blue… which @EV34 is actively helping my hunt down a real live route to so when this thing finally gets painted I’ll have it figured. time for dinner, to be continued.
So originally I went after this motor because I had decided I wasn’t going to use the olds motor I had set aside. I’ve been mocking up a chassis around it and anyhow after the drive home from the roc I really felt like I wasn’t going to be happy fighting crazy wind up and down long hills and 75 mph for a couple hours at a time with 153 cubic inches of torque. I was trying to shake it when my wife caught wind of the Stude motor and let it be known that she wanted it in her car. She’s always liked Studebaker stuff for various reasons. So I figured it was worth mocking up. I pulled the extra grill and cowl bits off the mocked up chassis and started measuring - sorry if some of these photos are small, camera on my new photo apparently takes a photo to large to load to the hamb full size so I’m just taking screen shoots of them thrres no way around it this suckers huge. If I keep this between the hood sides I’ll be shocked. Anyhow I had decided with all that I’ve already done and what would need done to not only change the entire drivetrain but make it sturdy enough for it that there were a couple things that had to happen for me to move forward with it. There’s some things I just couldn’t let go of. It had to keep my existing steering set up. I’m a ton of time into it and I can’t stand seeing joints in steering columns under the hood on a car like this. I also wanted to keep the motor in a normal position and not towering over the rails, as well as run a mechanical fan and clear the firewall mounted masters. tall order and I stacked on top that I need to fit the exhaust under hood. quite a lot of messing around and I took these two photos lined up and scaled the tape and got this one I played with engine placement more or less in scale until I found something I thought could work and then went about drawing headers. There’s just enough space to make that back primary wrap around and fit between the column and hood side A few nights later I spent about an hour trying various cowl heights, which translates to engine height in the real world. I bet I tried half a dozen different spots over a range of 10 vertical inches and finally in a fluster of frustration that this just isn’t going to work I went a full 8” different from where it was and bam! It looks like it works! I check, I double check, I triple check and sure enough the steering mast dives under the corner of the valve cover, over the back primary and with a header with out a solid one piece flange it cuts down right to the steering box. completely surprised I take a look and it’s put the stock engine mounts maybe a 1/16 to a 1/8 under the top of the frame rail. That works. Looks like the starter might be real close but we can be creative there. Currently lacking a starter but got someone who’s going to measure on of theirs. Then reality sink in that during the first mock ups I needed the motor way further back. So I measure from the second inboard hole in the horizontal firewall flange to the closest point of the grill shell and then mock that up hot damn! We might have something. Quickly I measure the fan blade on my 394 and find its furthest forward point is an inch ahead of the pulley face. I measure how far in the stock rad is into the grill shell and I come up with a full inch between the fan face and the radiator! Jack pot! I will likely not run a stock radiator on this bigger motor so I need to figure out how thick the cheap aluminum A radiators are that I see on the bay before anything’s cemented but looking at the tank size and overhang compared to mine I should be ok… I think took three photos with my camera in a tripod and moved the wood block each time. It’s roughly the height of the frame rail top. Basically melted them together so there’s three blocks and drew a line across and started a little scribbling and brain storming. I like a good puzzle. With the header On this position should have plenty of room from the steering to rear primary, the block and just the close spot will be basically the flange of the valve covers. Gonna have to make sure the motor mount biscuits are stiff but I think we are good! I don’t think the firewall will need cut, it’s mounted pretty low. Possibly keeps the bottom of the bell housing higher than it is now actually, the distributor isn’t in the center but it’s close enough to tuck into the stock recess of the A firewall. I have it butted up against the firewall with the stock stude throttle linkage bolted to the back of the head so that not only helps it be easy to locate in the real chassis but removed gives the back of the heads a good 1/2” of wiggle room. Motor mounts just under level with the frame top, heads all the way against the firewall with the linkage on. Mega easy to transfer placement to the real chassis for a look see. I might even measure where the contact point where the throttle linkage bracket hits the firewall is and mark that on the real car. im sure there are road blocks ahead as this is just a bunch of parts laying together but it’s given me a lot of good ideas and solutions for going forward. little more documenting placement then I’m in for a lot of cleaning this drivetrain as it is just absolutely caked on. then if the weather isn’t freezing rain I’ll swap cars around start preparing to try this out for real life. Kinda curious to see what exhaust options really exist. I’ve got a couple more ideas but I need at least a cardboard starter mocked up to work around once it’s in the rails
Just a few comments . 1. Tom Branch (?) put one of these if a '28-29 roadster and one in his wife's '32 sedan. 2. These things are heavy. I knew a guy who claimed to have taken over 100 pounds off of one. 3. It will fit anywhere a 331 Caddy will. Or an 303 Olds. 4, The difference in a 259 & a 289 is the crank & pistons. 5. The top shifter form a T96 Jeep tranny can be adapted to your T86. 6 There are creative ways to wire the OD if you can't fit the stick linkage which is part of the throttle linkage and involves an ignition cut out. 7. You'll love using the OD. 8. All Stude cranks are forged. 9. The pickup bell housing uses 2 round pad mounts on the sides. 10. There are Stude guys on the HAMB and I bet they will find you. 11. Measurements to follow.
@Six Ball 1: I met them a few weeks ago and took a ton of photos of his roadster as well as meeting Tyler … I think his name is flat black not sure he’s posted in the last decade? Has a stude powered, full fendered channeled A truck. Good guys 2: yeah around 650 so 100 lighter than the 394 olds and about 70 over a stock sbc. Based on how heavy the olds intake was when I removed it I bet you could shave damn near 50 pounds just swapping the intake and exhaust manifolds 3: yeah it’s almost the exact same size as my 394 other than the olds having the extended bellhousing hanging off the back and the exhaust manifolds are a little further out but just barely. I took a fair amount of photos of olds in early A reference photos at the roc that have really come in handy 4: I’ve heard that, apparently the 259 is supposed to be a little faster reving from what I read 5: everything I’ve seen says t90 but I’m not that deep into it yet. I sat a 39 ford top and shifter on it and it looks like it would dang near bolt right on! 6: yeah I’m curious about how that will all end up. I need to really take a look at the stock set up before I commit to anything. The less reinventing I can do probably the better when it comes to that stuff 7: looking forward to it 8: yeah I hear they are beefy motors 9: that’s good information I was considering some sort of mid mount just to help stiffen things up. Pickups, at least some, have the starter on the passenger side as well 10: hope so 11: awesome should be just what I need
The Jalopy Journal
