Harmonic Damper

The rebuilt harmonic balancer showed up the other day, whereupon it was sandblasted, marked for timing (TDC, 12, 13, and 14 degrees for ignition timing, and 38, 40, 42, and 44 degrees for advance timing), painted, and then attached. I should have taken a shot of the front motor-mount as well, but I got ahead of myself. You will notice that I also attached a stainless steel tab for reading the damper markings. Hopefully, if I did this correctly, the tab and markings should be visible with a timing light adjacent to the distributer so it's easy to set, and partially hidden behind the lower radiator hose. Hopefully.

Then the crankshaft pulley is set. and the polished cast aluminum fan blade is put into place.

In other news, the head is getting new valve guides and new valves have been ordered. We have not been able to figure out who manufactured the camshafts and so far have not quantified the cam characteristics. The helicoils have been redone with appropriate length replacements. The machinist wants to take this one step at a time- get the valve guides and valves, install the guides, lash the valves, then measure for the correct bearing shells, shims, keepers, and valve springs. Patience is a virtue. But progress is being made. The engine still awaits a $2 oil pump gasket before the oil pan can be installed. I'd really like to get the bottom buttoned up before some dirt finds its way in.

Patching Dash, Heater Box

Showing the metal patching on both the dash and the heater box. The dash had seven extra holes that have been patch welded. And the heater box had a rectangular cut out where the two heater core pipes come out of the top. With the patch in place, the two holes need to be rebored. I don't know where they need to go exactly, so I'll need to get some dimensions or a heater core to get the measurements.

Passenger side seat frame

The passenger-side seat frame has been uncovered and oh my. What should be a single piece of 7 ply baltic plywood is a 5 ply series of pieces that are nailed together with 10d nails. Also the seat pan is heavily rusted and I don't think will hold up to sandblasting. But, I'll give it a try.

Wiper Mechanism 2

One before and three after shots. Wow- talk about exciting. You would think that I would be running out of pieces shortly, but as Dee says" There must be dozens of parts to that car".

Wiper Mechanism 1

These are before shots of the wiper mechanism. Generally it is in good repair except that the grease has become rigid and will barely allow movement. The tape is simply holding a little grommet for where this penetrates the cowl. All that is required is a good cleaning and relube.

Rear License Plate Holder

All of the extraneous holes in the license plate holder have been filled. I also had to fab two of the capture nuts on the back side. From here there needs to be a Non-industrial Smoothing Party to flatten the weld areas and prep this for paint.

Front brakes

The front brakes arrived. First shot is of right side, second is of left. Drum is on the right also. From here I can mount the front wheels and drop this beast back on to the floor.

Seat slides

Since the car is getting so close to drivable, I thought that it would be a good idea to redo the seat slides. The first shot is of three of the four slides and the mounting bars that go below the plywood floor. They were very stiff so they were taken apart and the balls that act as the bearings were rusty so they are being replaced. Next shot is of the sandblasted pieces. The last is of the painted pieces. One of the mounting bars was missing so I fabricated one of those. I'm going to allow the paint to cure for about a week before the slides get reassembled. There is certainly no rush on these and it is likely that replacing the little slide balls will cause some paint chipping.

Front brake scoops

I couldn't find a useable set of these front brake scoops, so I made these out of some stainles steel and aluminum screen. Notice that this is designed to force the air into the brake drum area through the hole in the backing plate. There is another hole on the other side of the axle to let the air out. Apparently these scoops were often pulled off because they brought in as much water in the rain as they did air.

The brake shoes should be here this week, so I'll be able to finish the front brake assemblies.

Rear Clip

I continued a bit on the rear clip with some smoothing. The first shot is of the left rear toneau where the bumper bolt goes through. Fairly beat up but as you can see in the second shot it flattened out fairly well. The next two shots are of the rear clip after this repair.


On other news, the head went to the machine shop to start the valve job. It gets cleaned, then pressure tested, then the valve guides get removed and the seats get checked for height. This head has been rebuilt and the seats have been ground before. The exhaust looks pretty meaty yet but the intake not so much. The number one and six spark plug holes need to be checked that they can be properly heli-coiled as they were stripped out and a very short coil was inserted. In any case, I'll know more next week. One thing that the machinist noted is that the cams are not stock so I was wrong in saying that they were reground. Apparently Jag cams have numbers cast into them when they are made and these don't. There are no other markings of any kind that I could find. I don't know who made them or what they were designed for. Looks like we will need to bolt it to the top of the block and with a degree wheel in place check the valve action and duration. It's really interesting that this engine was hot-rodded back in the 50's. I wonder what the carbs and distributer were (they are missing)and if they were hot-rodded as well. If they were a hot item it helps to explain their going awol.

Water Pump

The front cover and the water pump installed.

Since the sanding parties are still lightly attended, I've decided to steal a line from Seinfield and change the name of the gatherings to Fat Cat Non-Industrial Smoothing. The shots are of the rear clip where some smoothing activities have occured. Can you tell where the smoothing happened? Interesting in that the paint inside the trunk was painted over the rust.