Water neck

Today, I installed the thermostat and its housing also called the water neck. I also test-fit a couple of hoses that I bought for the cooling system. Here is a picture of that stuff.


The thermostat is a special one, about 3 times as expensive as normal ones, that has a special feature that if it fails, it fails in the open position, so coolant will still circulate even if it breaks. It went in easy enough and the housing around it seems okay too. A lot of people report that this type of chromed one has a tendancy to leak. I won't know for a while, but nice aluminum necks can run $50 to $120, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for this $12 one. Here is a picture of it installed on the intake.


The hoses have to wait for a later time. The small L-shaped hose above is called the bypass hose and needs to be cut down pretty drastically at both ends, if I am going to use it. What that does is ensure that coolant gets to the engine immediately at startup, regardless of the engine temperature. Not that big of a deal actually. To use it, I will have to also buy a special fitting to get it to connect to the water pump. Right now, it is just plugged.

The other, larger hose in the picture above is the upper radiator hose. This is how hot coolant leaves the engine and goes to the radiator to be cooled back down. Naturally, I could not test its fit until I start to work on the radiator. That is still a few weeks away. I want to have it roughly in place now, though, so I can finish off the running of the fuel line from the fuel pump to the carburetor that I started a few weeks ago.

I also spent a great deal of time today trying to test fit the ignition coil on the front of the engine. Not to my surprise, I could not make it work. It is just too crowded up there where many people put it because I have all the power steering stuff already in that spot. Instead, I will end up mounting it on the inside of the passenger side fender, the other common spot use by many builders.