Gas, tires, oil.

Here’s some scans out of a 1960 JC Whitney ad. As a kid, I didn’t have money for comics, but JC Whitney and Edmunds Scientific came for free. Check out these stickers, I would have assumed that this sort of thing wouldn’t have shown up till later than 1960. Anyone know the artist (or if there are color images anywhere)?

Hey Coop, how about re-doing the “girl with head” with one of your devil girls?
The “Voodoo Head” shifter about halfway down the pic below is interesting

I think they still sell the exhaust cutout (and use the same artwork).

In case you don’t know, turducken is a dish where you stuff a turkey with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. The rather unprepossesing vehicle below is an IHC Loadstar 1700 moving van that I bought at auction for a couple hundred bucks about 10 years ago.

But it’s what’s inside that is interesting.

My chopped ‘52 chevy pickup, which itself contains another International Harvester: a 1962 Cub Cadet.

And a ton of GTO parts.

I had an interesting day at the yardsales today, even though I didn’t buy much. At the first sale, I talked to a guy about his truck for a while. I’d seen it from a distance every day when I’m on my way to work, but I wasn’t sure about its actual make up. It’s Ford 1 ton 4x4 flatbed but it seemed to have much larger running gear under it. Turns the guy put in a 500 hp Caterpillar (3408?) v8 turbo diesel and 10 speed ranger gearbox. Then supplimented the suspension with airbags and 19.5″ rims. Said he gets 16 mpg unloaded. We talked diesels a bit, I mentioned how much I liked my 6.2 L suburban and how I’d like to get a Cummins 4bt from a chevy step van.

Then, at another yardsale I found this aftermarket oil filter (from back when cars didn’t come with oil filters):

The guy said he bought it for his truck, which he had bought new 50 years ago and still drives today. And then I looked up and saw a very nice ‘57 Chevy Cameo pickup. He said the stepside was $1800, but he sprung for the Cameo at $2200. He had used this add on filter until 1972, when he put in a 350 and automatic.

He recommended Scott toilet paper (seriously, it’s made so a full roll of toilet paper fits inside).

A few minutes of wirebrushing, then 320 grit on the DA and finally some tripoli on the buffing wheel and it cleaned up very nice. I have to wonder if it would actually work better than modern oil filters, the oil has to pass through a whole roll of toilet paper lengthwise, whereas in a new filter it just goes through a single piece of corrogated paper.
All of my cars currently have oil filters, but actually I want it to remove oil and water from compressed air for painting. I’ve been wanting a toilet paper air filter from TP tools, but I don’t paint enough to pay $79 for one.
I think this one will work fine, maybe I’ll use it with this nice airbush set I got at a yardsale last weekend:

Not bad for $5, its got a lot of tips and a bunch of baby food jars with the fittings already installed.

I needed some rubber washers to mount the gas tank on the trike, but the hardware store didn’t have the right size. I decided to make some myself. First I found an old inner tube that I had stashed behind the workbench, just for this sort of thing. Then I got an arch punch that I had found at a yardsale. I quickly punched out the ODs.

The ID needs to fit a 5/26″ bolt, but I don’t have that size punch. However, when at a recycling center I noticed some empty cartridges in their scrap brass bin. I bought a selection at scap price (and got the bucket for free).

5/16″ is .3125″, so 8 mm at .315″ is a nice fit. This is the cartridge head of an 8mm mauser (or 8x57mm) that I found. If you want you can sharpen the end, this also allows you to vary the size slightly, you can sharpen the inside (with a small round file or chamfer tool) for more clearance or the outside for less. So what cartridges should you look for? Well, obviously 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm and 10 mm will work for the corresponding metric sizes. An inside sharpened 17 caliber should work for a #8 screw and outside sharpened it should work for #10. The new 204 ruger might work for 5mm or #12. 25 caliber (25-06, 257 roberts, etc) or 6.5 mm for 1/4″ bolt. 8mm for 5/16″. 375 caliber or 9.3 mm for 3/8″, 44 or 45 caliber for 7/16″. And of course, 50 caliber for 1/2″. Good luck finding a 600 Nitro Express for 5/8″. Also, some cheap military ammo uses steel cases, obviously these will be sturdier.

I didn’t bother to sharpen the end and it worked fine.

Here are the rubber washers in place on the top tank mount, trapped between stainless washers. I have previously shown the bottom mount.

And here are the fat bobs finally mounted. The dash and filler are just sitting on top, they’re next.

After I got my NP 833 transmission installed in the ‘55, I needed a shifter knob; the 3/8″-16 threads were pretty sharp. I went to the flea market and some yard sales looking for some likely canidates, I even eyed some of the kid’s toy’s. Then I found a nice antique glass doorknob at the flea market, it even had the right threads in the shank (some older door knobs used threaded shafts). I used it for a while, but the glass was a bit loose, so I removed the nut I had below it lock it in place and ran it down until the threaded end the the shifter touched the glass, thereby imobilizing it. Then one day I found that the top part of the glass had popped off from the pressure.

It was disapointing to wreck something like that, but I found an almost identical one at a yard sale. Mean while I had settled on green for the interior color (see here for the construction of the door panels) and had found some green glass knobs for the window winders. I would have loved to have had a matching green glass shifter knob, but I came close by painting the underside of the glass green with model paint.

So what’s next for the ‘55? Finishing the rust repair in the floor so I can put the carpet in, maybe giving it a new coat of flat black on the exterior (or maybe flat green). Modern suspension and brakes would be nice… and sensible… and responsible, but let me just say that in my garage there is something on an engine stand with nice, fresh crosshatching on its cylinder walls just waiting for assembly.

I didn’t include a pic yesterday of the case top. Unfortunately, some one ran strapping tape around case at some point and put something (probably a plant) on the top that left a ring .

My wife got an early christmas present last friday (the eve of christmas eve) when I found this coffin top Singer sewing machine at the fleamarket.

Interestingly, the base has a slot for a belt so it could also be used on a treadle base, but most bases would just take the bare machine. I haven’t seen a treadle base that would accept this wooden base. But it is set up for hand crank use right now.

After some oiling and some web research to find out how to thread the shuttle, it started to sew nicely. A look up online of the serial number showed it to be made in 1904 in Scotland. That night, my wife used it to sew a christmas stocking for the baby.

Not bad for 101 year old machine.

Check out this strobe light I got a yard sale:

Here’s the back:

In case you can’t make out that date, it’s Nov. 6 1979. I wonder if someone got this for Christmas in ‘79. I used it to illuminate my front yard for Halloween.

I picked up this transformer somewhere (yardsale maybe), its made to run the ignitors (like big spark plugs) in an oil burning furnace.

I decided to make a jacob’s ladder out of it (you know, like in the horror movies, an arc strikes between 2 rods, then climbs). I threaded a couple inches of the ends of some 3/16 brass rods, crudely bent them, and threaded them into a puck of scrap PVC. I can rotate them to adjust the minimum arc length.

Here’s the arc after it has risen. The arc strikes at the closest point, but heats up the air inbeween. That air rises, but because it is ionized, it has less resistance than the lower, closer gap. The arc rises until the distance gets too great, then starts over again.

Click here to see a jaw-dropping video of a 20′ arc rising to 100′ at 500,000 V (1.5mb mpeg video), via long arc.

I picked up the car-shaped sanding block at a yardsale for a couple bucks (actually, nearly everthing in the picture is from a yardsale, flea market or auction, including the shelf itself).

Maybe blocking out a car won’t suck so much with this stylish block.