What are you doing today?

[Boyd Who]

Geez, that sucks about your wife's truck. I hate thieves.  :x

Today I set the Essex cab back on the frame as I want to make some new cab mounts before I box the frame. I also wanted to see how much room I'll have for the engine.






From the firewall to the rear of the front crossmember u-bolts is 28.5". From the rear of the block to the front of the damper is 25". I plan on using a short water pump and single-pulley belt setup. I think it's going to fit with room to spare. Depending on how low the engine sits in the frame I may not even need to notch the firewall for the distributor.


I'll hopefully mock the engine into place tomorrow, then take the cab back off and start to work on the boxing plates.

[enjenjo]

I went to the ACCA swap meet in Adrian Mi today. I bought a test light, saw some other stuff I could use, but did not buy it.

I saw a 26 Essex pickup there, another cut down sedan. Asking price was $2,500. There was a 41 Willys 4 door sedan there, stock, running, unrestored for $3,500, I thought that was a deal.

I looked at a 9" rear housing and axles, 35 spline axles by strange. They had a 5" bolt pattern. They were too long, and at $175 for the package, by the time the axles were shortened, the pilot hub turned down, and redrilled for the wheels we have, I can buy new axles. I was thinking about the Crosley

[GPster]

I looked at a 9" rear housing and axles, 35 spline axles by strange. They had a 5" bolt pattern. They were too long, and at $175 for the package, by the time the axles were shortened, the pilot hub turned down, and redrilled for the wheels we have, I can buy new axles. I was thinking about the Crosley

Dave's and Ed's Performance Swap Meet is in Canton on November 5, 6 . Depending on how our daughter's surgery goes on the 1st I may still be up in that area. I might be tempted to look but I don't know if I'm up for buying any more shares at this point. Is there a Swap Meet coming up That we could all donate parts to, to help the Crosley fund? I have some stuff that could find another home that I wouldn't mind GIVING up. GPster

[enjenjo]

Friday I hsd the 50 Chevy ready to start. After I started it, while I was setting the carb, it stalled,when I went to restart it, it made horrible grinding noises, and I figured it ate the flex plate. :evil:

I was mad, seeing myself pulling the engine to change it, so I went to another job to cool off.

I had cooled off by today, so I slid under it, saw no damage to the flex plate. I pulled the starter, an aftermarket mini, and found it had exploded the Bendix drive.    I had another starter for it, so after installing that, it would start again.

I'm happy now.

[kb426]

We go from happy to sad and back with the same speed. This is probably a real good thing.

[chimp koose]

Good news! police called today and our truck has been recovered apparently gently used. My wife is very happy. She is the kind of person who cries when a vehicle leaves with a new owner,she names her vehicles.'Blue' is a 92 silverado ext cab short box ,she loves it. The last time it was stolen she was nearly inconsoleable, I bought another one not quite the same shade of blue to ease her pain. We got home with that one to find out that the real' blue' was recovered.

[Boyd Who]

Glad to hear your wife got her truck back, CK!  

I did some more mocking up in the shop tonight.

"Welders Series" engine mounts that I'll be using.


Rick from Lowboys Rod Shop in Baldur MB made up some really nice boxing plates and rear u-bolt plates for me yesterday on his CNC plasma cutter. What a cool machine to watch in action! Had a great visit with Rick while he worked, too. Next time I'm down there I'll have to take along my camera, he has a lot of cool projects on the go in his shop.


The engine is somewhat located. Yes, I understand that I still need to tilt it down at the trans to get the angles correct.




Note the fancy "billet pine" engine locators.  


With the hood and rad shell mocked up. I'm thinking the whole engine is sitting a little low and should be raised up a couple of inches. Opinions?








Plans are to run a short water pump and single pulley setup. How much room between the lower pulley and the front spring u-bolts is needed? If I can slide it forward another inch or so I might get away with not having to indent the firewall for the distributor.

[jaybee]

Y'know, a blower would fill up that space nicely, and you wouldn't have to raise the engine...

[chimp koose]

A sbc carb base is tilted 4degrees down in front. If you want it level ,tilt the engine down 4degrees in the back so the carb sits level at ride height. If your frame is mocked up at actual ride height,you can set your pinion angle to 4 degrees up. now measure the height of your pinion and the trans output shaft. If the pinion is higher than the output shaft I would raise the engine.You can calculate the driveshaft angle by making a right triangle using the difference  in pinion and output shaft heights as the short side ,and the length of driveshaft as the hypotenuse.short side/driveshaft length = sine of the angle . Inverse sine of that # ,or 2nd function sin on the calculator  will give you the angle of the driveshaft.Try to get the angle to be a degree or so greater than the 4 degrees of trans to diff or your driveshaft will be in a straight line from trans to diff,not the best for u-joint life.

[Mikej]

Looks, like your oil pan might be below the scrub line. Are you going to use an electric fan?  If not you might want to put the pump and fan blade on to test for fit.

[GPster]

Well yesterday the "Middle Jeep" made the big move. I drove it from behind my garage to the driveway out in front of the house. It made that trip (about 250') OK so because it's had licence and insurance since I bought it, I ventured out for a real trip to see what still needed to be repaired. It seems to have enough power because it can move in-spite of the emergency brake that I forgot to relaese (first check) but I don't know how fast or how far because the speedometer didn't work (second check). The brakes seemed to work but they seemed to require a lot of effort but then I remembered that everything else I drive has power brakes. I stayed on the back roads but didn't venture too far because I don't know how much gas is in it. The gas gauge doesn't work (third check). I tried to stay away from trafic because there isn't any dash indicators for the directional signals (fourth cneck). I know it has brake lights and I think directinals but I'm not sure about headlights (fifth check) so I probably won't take it out today because it looks like rain. I won't drive it in the rain with-out headlights on to see if one windshield wiper is enough.. Probably should get a new switch for the heater/defroster fan (sixth check). Even though I can see daylight through every seam in the doors/top I wouldn't want the new windshield to get fogged up. Even though George Poteet says every vehicle has a character and some short-comings it will take me some time to live down to this one. Maybe when the "Trade Paper" comes out tomorrow someone will want to swap something for it. They had mud racing at the fair grounds last weekend but I chose to ignore them. GPster

[papastoyss]

For appearance purposes I would certainly raise the engine a few inches.If you can make room for an HEI distributor you won't be sorry.

[enjenjo]

The 50 Chevy left yesterday. Back on the Ghia. Helped Fatcat getting his store ready today, and put the BBQ trailer in storage.

[kb426]

I painted a few more parts today. The nats won't leave my paint alone. I'm going to get to repaint one.  

[GPster]

I got daring and drove the middle Jeep up the street to lunch Wednesday (it looked like rain). When I finished eating I walked outside and sure enough rain. Everything was fine and I drove it home and put it in reverse to back it into the driveway. The column shift wouldn't go into reverse or park position. I drove it around the block and drove it into the driveway nose first and left it because of the rain. Later I checked it  and the bellcrank for the linkage between the engine and the frame was making the linkage hit the bellhousing so that it coulddn't go to the last two gear positions. When I bought this Jeep the guy told me that he had had trouble with the shifting but had gotten it fixed. I figured the problems had come about due to the body lift kit so I corrected some of his "Mickey Mouse" fix and thought it was OK till I had driven it enough for everything to rattle into position. I modified the bellcrank to get some clearance because I had no way of knowing if his "fix" involved using the right parts or not. Put it together 2 different ways to see if it looked engineered and started to look on line to see if I could find a parts diagram that might show the proper positions for the parts. Found nothing except people on Jeep sites complaining how bad Jeeps shifted and how they were happy with their B&M shifters. Found a site with 17 Jeep profesionals to answer your questions FREE. The only free part was where they allowed me to ask the question. It would be $38.00 to give me a satisfactory answer. It took me so long to type the question I gave them my Discover card number with the hope I would be satisfied that much. Got a reply this morning wanting the s/n and the build number before they would go any further. I've bought enough stuff for this thing that I know that most of these kind of parts are '80 to '86 and the common stuff is '76 to '86 and I told them I just wanted a picture. It took me 1/2 hour to fill out the forms for a refund. I figured that $38.00 might go better towards a floor shift kit. Went through Jeep sites for shifters they were recomending because B&M wasn't showing Jeep as an application. This Jeep has a 999 torqueflight transmission which is like the 904 but if it was going to require a special installation kit that would add to the price. While fumbling through a Jeep site there was a question from a guy that was having the same problem as me. In the answers there was a parts diagram but it was hard to see and it wouldn't inlarge. I squinted at it closely and I think I found the problem. The bellcrank was installed downside-up so that the arms were positioned for the rods to be long enough. I put it together the way of the picture and it worked. So I turned the jeep around in the driveway so it doesn't look like a casualty. Fixing that and typing about it it what I did today. GPster