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.

Differential complete

I finished getting the gear oil in the differential today and have some decent pictures to go with the story.

The first problem was figuring out how to remove the drain plug. Unlike every other plug I have seen, this one did not have a hexagonal hole in the head; its was square. Here is a picture.

It turns out that instead of using an Allen wrench, you have to use a 3/8" ratchet wrench without any socket on it.

So the next problem is how to get the oil out of the bottle and into the third member. The big problem is that the hole is on the side, perpendicular to the ground, so the oil has to go in sideways.

Having run all of my brake and fuel lines precluded me from getting the nipple of the bottle into the right position. And I did not want to undo any of the other work I had done, just to make room. Here, the internet did not have a solution.

I ended up taking some leftover aluminum tubing from my fuel line and cutting off a piece to form a fill tube.


Here is a picture with the tube going into the fill hole and the top of the fill tube visible, but a little blurry.


That tube is only 3/8" wide, so filling this way was very slow. The first quart, squeezed in by hand, took about 45 minutes. Today, I put the second quart in and punched a hole in the bottom of the bottle, so it would drain out fast and that let me finish in about 10 or 15 minutes.

I also had to add a 4 oz bottle of friction modifier. That is required for non-synthetic oil used in this limited slip differential. It prevents annoying chattering. I just mixed it into the bottle of oil and fed it in with the rest. Here is a picture of that. It is only noteworthy because it is the nastiest, evilest smelling thing I have ever encountered.

Getting into the Zone

Auto Zone. More on that in a bit.

Today, I bought a bunch of things that I studied about last week. From Summit Racing, I bought:

My transmission shifter (backordered for 3 weeks)


my transmission oil cooler


and my oil pressure gauge line (backordered for a month)


The backorder status is unfortunate, but I have plenty to do and these prices were very good.

I also decided to buy a bunch of things from AutoZone. Normally, I prefer buying from Advance Auto Parts, because they support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. But AZ has a cool deal where if you are a frequent customer who makes at least 5 purchases of $20 or more within 6 months, you get a $20 credit. So they will be getting some of my business now too.

Today, I got my water neck (where the coolant exits the engine on the way to the radiator), a rubber bypass hose (needed to make sure the engine has fluid in it at startup), and a quart of rear end gear oil. These cost me $22, wink-wink. Tomorrow I will be going back to buy an upper radiator hose, a thermostat, and another quart of gear oil that will also cost $22. Later, there will be plenty of more little things to buy like the lower radiator hose, motor oil, transmission fluid, a battery, etc., all of which will get done in as close to $20 increments as possible.
Every little bit will help.

I even got to work on the car then for a couple of hours too. You wouldn't think it would take that long to add 1 quart of gear oil to the differential, but it did. I probably should have done it a year ago when I put that together, but it did not need the lubrication since it wasn't going to be moving anyway. Now, since I am getting closer to putting the cockpit tub in place, it would be harder to access that if I waited any longer. I took some pics, but they aren't very clear so I won't post them til I finish the job tomorrow, if at all.

Pictureless progress

All things considered, this was a decent week, but there were no good photo opportunities. I was able to figure out what was wrong with my kickdown cabling from the last post. It turns out I was trying to use the existing nut rather than the special new one that came with a spacer attached. Swapping that out made everything work very well. It is still in mock up mode though, for now.

I spent a great deal of time this week on the computer, researching more stuff I am going to need to do and to buy. I have figured out what I need to do for the gauges to work, and what I want to get for the water outlet and thermostat. I also still need to buy the shifter and driveshaft. I was able to take the measurements that I need in order to supply the people who will eventually make the shaft. I did have a slight problem with one measurement, since I did not know what a U-joint cap diameter was. I posted a question on the Hurricane owner forum and got the answers I needed within a day, so I should be able to get one made now. Hopefully, this week.