Gas, tires, oil.

Here’s the ‘55 with the front end installed (enough to drive around anyway):


And it tilts (it just doesn’t stop tilting):

Or “chrome won’t get you home”. I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up at the parts store, buying an edlebrock or moroso chrome aircleaner because I’ve switched carbs and/or intakes. They’re only $25, but like most cheap chrome stuff, they rust up after just a couple years. There are other alternatives, get a stock aircleaner from the junkyard, buy an expensive one or make one from scratch. This time around I remembered that a friend had got him self an aircleaner from the junkyard that was made of aluminum. Turns out Ford used aluminum for some aircleaners in the ’70s and 80s.

I picked this one up for $7.99 at picknpull (think it was a ’80s granada, 2 barrel, but with the large 5 1/8″ 4 barrel flange). It’s pretty ugly and loaded up with various vacuum hoses, but it’s incredible light. I decided to bring out its inner beauty with tin snips and air nibbler.

Here’s the parts I didn’t use:

And here’s whats left.

It’s very light and if it starts to get corroded I can polish it up with a buffing wheel. A word of warning, some ford aircleaners are unpainted, plated steel and may resemble aluminum at first glance.

Last time I showed how to french in turn signals in fiberglass. I used the stock lens to shape the tunnel, but I decided not to use the factory socket and base. The sockets were in pretty bad shape and the contacts no longer made a good connection to the bulb. Because the tunnel now defined the lens shape, I can use any turn signal that is bigger than the stock one. First I made a flange for it to sit on. I coated a piece of cardboard with release wax and taped it to the end of the tunnel.

Then I laid fiberglass strips over the tunnel and the inner face of the cardboard. I went to the junkyard and found some front turn signals from a ’80s chevy van. In spite of their size they are extremely light. They use a socket that just twists out from the back. This socket is replaceable (the same one as on millions of chevy pickups). Because the housing is plastic, it’s already equipped with a ground wire (very important for a fiberglass front end). For now I attached it with foam double sided tape, but I’m going to get some aluminum or fiberglass threaded rod and bolt it one also (I just can’t stand the thought of the hardware weighing more than what it holds on).

Here’s a pic from the front, it needs some more spot putty and sanding, but it gets me back on the road. The amber color is solely from the bulb (which is not on).

I’ll post in the future about mounting the headlights and making the front end tilt.

In order to get the ‘55 going again with the new fiberglass front end, one of the things I needed to do was to get the turn signals mounted.

Here is the turn signal on the stock fender.

Since the stock turn signal bezel was pretty corroded and the bulb sockets had given me trouble in the past, I decided to french in some new turn signals. First I used the lens as a template to cut out an opening.

Then coated some heavy paper with release wax and rolled it in a tube. Then I used the lens keep it the right shape.

I wanted to fill around it, so I made some filler out of white gel coat and glass micro-balloons. This sort of filler is much stronger than the bondo-types that use talc.

Here’s a shot from the inside, I used some tape to hold the paper in place and prevent filler from dripping through.

Next I coated the part of the tube on the inside of the fender with some gel coat and a couple layers of fiberglass cloth. Also shown is a piece of fiberboard that cut to fit over the tube. This is a guide so I can trim it down evenly with a die grinder.

If I was just frenching the stock turn signal, I’d just make some mounts to hold it as shown below. The thin fiberglass tube actually fits around the lens and between it and the housing.

Next time I’ll show the new turn signals and how I mounted them.

The middle boy had his 5th birthday last spring and we had a party for him at the local park. He got lots of presents from his friends, but everyone of them was a) made of plastic and b) made in china (probably made from lead-filled plastic by political prisoners who get shocked by cattle prods if they don’t make them fast enough). Every present except the ones I gave him that is:

A real Crescent adjustable wrench and Channellock slip-joint pliers.

He has loads of fun with them, and if he doesn’t lose them he can use them the rest of his life. Not likely, I admit, but how long before those plastic toys are in the landfill? And they weren’t that pricey, $13.10 for the 8″ wrench and $10.61 for the channellocks from McMaster-Carr.

With my cam bearing tool made, I just had to put it to work. Below I am using it to remove one of the old bearings.

It worked really well, but I was worried about dropping a nut or washer down inside the engine. I didn’t replace the rear-most cam bearing, it was impossible to get to. But it looked pretty good, the bearings got worse toward the front of the car (farther from the oil pump). Next was the reassembly, I soaked the lifters in some oil and worked them with a pushrod to get some oil inside.

Below the cam and lifters are in, new timing chain (if you have the opportunity, always replace the timing chain and/or oil pump on a pontiac motor), new pushrods and new roller tip rockers (some of the pivots were galled on the old ones).

It runs great: no more ticking lifters and I think the oil pressure has gone up a bit. In spite of it being rather mild performance cam (mellings mtp-1, 278 duration and .422″ lift on the intake and 288 duration and .444″ lift on the exhaust), the gas mileage doesn’t seem to have decreased (16-17 mpg on my commute to work).

From the last post you can see that I need new cam bearings, but I didn’t have the installation tool. You can get one for chevy for about $75, but a universal one is about $300. A quick look on google shows several people making their own out of threaded rod and an aluminum mandrill. I didn’t have any suitable aluminum stock, so I looked around for something I could modify. I found a tapered bearing race driver that was already close in size.

I chucked it up holding its handle because I needed to turn the whole outside. I didn’t want to turn half and then flip it over because I wanted to keep the 2 steps concentric within a couple thousands of an inch. I know it’s bad practice to hold something so far from the chuck, but aluminum turns easy.

Basically I just wanted an area that would support the bearing and keep it straight, then a step that would be just a tiny bit smaller than the OD of the bearing. This way the tool can also be used to remove the old bearings. Below I’m testing a bearing for fit.

Just some 1/2″ threaded rod, nuts and washers and it’s ready to use. Next time I’ll show it in use and show the reassembly of the engine.

My ‘68 Tempest has had clicking lifters for the couple years that I have owned it. Not a big deal, but I hooked up an oil pressure gauge and saw that the oil pressure was actually pretty good. That meant that the lifter problem was either a worn valve train part or clogged hydraulic lifters. I found a new cam (mellings) on ebay for $92 and thought it would be a quick fix. Unfortunately, when I pulled the cam, I found this:

The cam bearings were shot, several had pieces flaking off. This was a Friday night, nobody local had cam bearings for pontiac and it was going to rain the next week, so I didn’t want to take the Harley to work. So I ordered some bearings from summit (and pushrods and rockers, might as well make a clean sweep) and rushed to put the ‘55 back together before monday (that’s a future post). The other problem was that I had always had cam bearings replaced when I got an engine rebuilt, so I didn’t have a puller. Next time I’ll show how I built a cam bearing installation tool and put the engine back together.

Turns out that St. Patrick’s Day is now a school activity staple (google “Leprechaun traps” to see examples), so my wife pulled a few pranks on the kids and blamed the leprechauns. Now the kids blame leprechauns for everything (the 5 years got a bug or spider bite one night, I asked him what bit him while he was sleeping and he said “It was a leprechaun!”). So one night after the kids went to bed, we pulled the front sheet metal off the ‘55.

The next morning we had the kids look out the window and said “Look what those leprechauns did to the car last night”.
But the next night, they were good and replaced the front end:

The new one is a one-piece fiberglass front end I got off of Craiglist.

How much did it lighten the front end? I haven’t weighed it yet, but the suspension is at the top of the travel, you can see the rubber bumper against the upper A-arm in the pic above. Next I have to mount the headlights, turn signals, radiator and bolt the whole thing down some how. If the suspension hasn’t come down, I’ll have to cut a coil off the front springs. Now I just need fiberglass trunk lid to balance out the rear (of course then I’ll need ‘glass doors to even out the middle).

After putting in a new clutch bearing, I needed to plumb an air line and regulator to the air conditioning compressor. First I turned it over by hand to determin which was inlet and which was outlet.

Then I cut the outlet tube off even and drilled it out to 7/16″.

Using lots of oil (aluminum likes to gall) I tapped it for 1/4″ npt (pipe threads).

At this point most people would use a pressure switch to engage/disengage the electric clutch to regulate the pressure, in fact I had a pressure switch just for this (I had picked it up at a yardsale). But I has something even better, the regulator off of a gasoline powered air compressor. Unlike electric compressors, the briggs and stratton powered ones that contractors use run all the time, they just have special pressure relief valve that keeps the tank from over pressuring. The white nylon line on the right hand side goes to that valve. The main inlet from the compressor is underneath (normally this goes to the tank).

It also has a over pressure valve in case the main one fails, you need this no matter what kind of air compressor you have, an over-pressurered air tank can let go like a bomb.
Next I wired up a toggle switch for the clutch. Even without a tank, and with the engine idling, it put out a lot of air.

Above is a rig I made to air up or down 2 tires at once. Its faster and keeps equal amounts of air side to side. To air down, I just attach the air chucks to the valve stems and open the valve. To air up, I just hook up the air hose to the compressor and open the valve. In either case the gauge doesn’t read correctly with air flowing, but its easy to close it and check every once and a while. In fact, I’ve found that its nice for even just one tire: it has a built in gauge and you don’t have to keep bending over. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it doesn’t fill both tires equally, and it takes a really long time to equalize on its own (one air chuck probably has better flow than the other). But I still hook it up to two tires at once, then I just check each one individually.