Donor search

This week, I did not do any work on the car. I did contact several people about used vehicles for sale that I saw on Craigslist. Today, I even braved snow to go look at an F-250 pickup from 1984. Nice guy, but when we tried to back the pickup out of his garage it died 4 separate times, each requiring a jump start. We never did make it all the way to the street, all of maybe 30 feet from his garage. There seemed to be a problem, so I passed on it.

Rethinking

I did nothing concrete on the car this week. Mostly did some rethinking/research and am now leaning towards using a different engine than the one I bought last fall. It is a long story, but I think I will have an easier time registering the car if I build it with an engine from an existing vehicle. I have been looking on Craigslist at a couple of 1984-85 Ford F-150 pickups as possible donors. The reason for going back to such an old vehicle is that it would be most similar to what the other one was, so I would not have to change much in the way of fuel, air, and spark delivery systems.

A riveting task this week

This week, I finished riveting the aluminum panels to the fiberglass cockpit firewall. It turned out pretty nice, actually, despite the fact that I had never riveted before. I even got Baba to play Rosie the Riveter for a couple of minutes and put one of them in. Here is a finished picture...



I started out using my neat air driven riveter. It was a cheap tool from Harbor Freight. It was really cool, when it worked, which was pretty rarely. I am not 100% sure why, but I think it had trouble ejecting the little nail thingys that are on the end of the rivet and used to pull it through the hole. I ended up buying a hand operated one at Sears for $10 and it worked much better. Here is a pic of that tool along with a couple of rivets...



I ended up running out of rivets, coming up about 10 short. I went to Harbor Freight to buy some, and the smallest package they had was 500. Fortunately, the box only cost $2.99. So if anybody needs some riveting done, I still have about 490 left. I will use a few later for connecting things like the ignition system and some other aluminum panels, so I figure it was a good investment. I also broke a couple of 1/8" drill bits. Gotta get a replacement sometime. Sears sells em individually; most places have them packaged in sets and I already have a couple of those.

Happy New Year

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time lately on polishing the aluminum firewall pieces. It is very frustrating--I know that I am following the directions properly and there is a lot of black grime that comes off when I rub, but it never gets noticeably shinier. So I think I am going to stop and leave well enough alone. Along those lines, today I affixed the heat shield to the cockpit which goes behind the aluminum pieces. Here are a couple of pictures...




In the first pic, you can see the loose fitting sheet being test-fitted on the passenger side. In the second, I am finished with sticking it on both sides.

I have also been working the phones and Craigslist trying to acquire a transmission, and possibly an old engine that would be easier to get registered. There may be news on this soon.

The next step on the build is to drill and rivit in the aluminum firewall panels. I expect to be working on that soon. You may have noticed that I moved the cockpit on top of my pool table for easier working.

Progress still terriby slow

I did not work much this week on the car. I spent some effort trying to acquire the transmission, and did a little bit of unrewarding polishing of the aluminum panels for the firewall. And that is about it.

PS pump part

Jerry got the part done for the power steering pump bracket that we ended up needing to fabricate. It turned out great, though we did have to file off a little on one corner. Here is a picure of the part before putting it on the engine...


I still need to get a different bolt to get it mounted, and Fastenal seems to be the only place that carries such an unusual size. Sadly, they are not open on weekends, so it will have to wait til Monday. Then it will be on to making the engine fit perfectly in the engine compartment, test fit the exhaust headers, and continue the search for a transmission.

Nothing done

I did absolutely nothing on the car this week. I made turkey soup and did all kinds of preparation work for several days of work at Wash U for an offering of Tycoon. I should be getting back to wrenching by late this week.