It’s been a whole year

[Ulu]

As it turns out I did much more than just straighten my muffler. I wire brushed and repainted the whole thing in barbecue black. I also dressed all the flanges neatly.



I still haven’t solved every fitting issue with the intake manifold but I did two things that improve the fit.

Both of these little flanges for the heat riser tube were cupped. In other words nobody flattened them after they were stamped out on a punch press.



As you can see only one of them would fit at a time. The other one would be pulled way off.

I flattened both of those flanges as well as I could with hammering and I will dress them off on a belt sander until they are nice and flat.

If that wasn’t enough because one of the heat riser tubes was not quite bent to the right angle. I was fortunately able to correct that without kinking the tube.

But that still doesn’t provide 100% alignment. The cast aluminum center section was not machined flat, and so it doesn’t sit correctly on the engine block. It has about 1/16” anticlockwise twist.


Fortunately the design allows for some material to be removed, such that I can file it to get it flat and square with the engine.

 

[Ulu]

There was a big cleanup effort in the boatyard after I moved the project car chassis into my garage. For the first time in over two years I was able to get around things easy enough to access all my junk.

Right before Christmas I decided what I didn’t need and loaded up 1200 pounds of steel for the recycling depot.

But I kept some important parts so that I could do two projects immediately. One was to build this heavy duty bench for my big vise.

I cut my stock rack down from 8 feet to 4 feet long. That Steel was rather rusty but it’s heavy quarter inch wall tubing and so ideal for this project.

I also had a big discarded steel weldment about 8 feet long with 3 foot legs on each end made out of heavy quarter wall and thicker steel tubing with big plate gussets in the corners.

This represented a huge amount of welding that I did not have to do, just by judicious cutting and planning. Here it is cut into the appropriate pieces.




There were also all these bits which got cleaned and dressed and beveled on the edges.


Here we are on the welding bench setting it all up square.






There it is all tacked up so it can come down for full welding, cleaning and painting, plus drilling of the holes required to mount the vise and the wooden top.

 

[Ulu]

I had also saved some steel from the cart I was using to hold the fiberglass car body.

This was once from the hanging blue print racks from my engineering office. They got retired about eight years ago when the biz “went to paperless.”



These tubes were cut and sleeved to make two identical frames.

You can see this is only 1/16 inch thick steel. 1/4 the weight of my vise bench steel.

That unpainted angle iron frame was the original gas tank frame from my project car.

Here at all is with a rough coat of gray Rustoleum touch-up paint. You can see that I painted my vise bench black. It’s holding all the short length of steel that wouldn’t fit on my 8’ stock rack.


So what am I building? Here I’m cutting open the plastic fuel tank that came with my car.

Now it will make the perfect tank for a 10 gallon parts washer.

I made this wire rack to go inside.


And it got a steel lid.


Here it is sll painted. The silver blob is a magnet that holds up the lid.

 

[Ulu]

Now I can finally get onto washing all the greasy tin parts of my engine down with kerosene, before I put it all back together.

As it turns out this one had the mounting ear half ripped off, so I cut a new one and welded that in.


There it is after cleaning and spot painting. Now I need to clean the rest of the tin.


Also the manifolds get cleaned, but I have this issue with the intake manifolds. They both need a little surfacing so the gasket surfaces will be flat.

This one had a vacuum port which someone smashed flat to close it. Unfortunately it was brass and it just split in the process causing a leak.

I had to trim it off and drill and tap it for a permanent repair. I will take my vacuum line from the base of the carburetor.

 

[FJB]

I love the big ass vise table. The cleaning tank assembly too, but I just love the vise. You are very handy and doing lots of cool stuff. The car is looking superb!!

 

[Ulu]

Thank you FJB. I gave that vise it’s first big workout since the pix.

My neighbor wanted some lead to make fishing weights. I took this lead bar (formerly 4” x 4” x 12”) clamped it in the vise, and cut it in half with a sawzall.


That table was solid as a rock.