Jun 09

The rest of my junk showed up and now I have been able to get a little more time in the shop. I got a lot done today. Mostly just little prep work in trying to get it started this month. I created my custom high pressure hose, it is approximately 20" long and has the connectors facing just right so it can do a contortionist act from the steering rack to the pump. Then I took the polished reservoir out and attached a 3/8" NPT to 5/8" hose fitting for the pump feed and a 3/8" NPT to AN-6 fitting for the rack return line.

I like to tune my cars by engine vacuum and to make this easier I am mounting a vacuum gauge on the intake. It may not work well once the engine starts shaking but I want to try it at least. Then I worked on the water again or a while. I got the surge tank out and rigged up all the heater hoses and radiator connection. The car should hold water now. Then I decided to see if the warmer weather would make it any easier to prime to the oil pump. It made quite a big difference. I rigged up a drill with a bar clamp and it took about 5 minutes to get a good solid flow to all push rods.

Then I got around to making the low pressure hose. I really don't know where the reservoir will be once the body is back on so I just used all the remaining hose. The ends are reusable so I'll be re-terminating it shorter at some point. The challenge is finding some place to put this reservoir that is above the pump and out of the way. I finally just used a bungee to connect it to the radiator support. Next stop was fuel. I had to get the fuel pump hooked up to the regulator and it needed connection to the carburetor.

For my next trick, it was putting the rocker covers on, but no sooner do I get them on and I remember that I need to find cylinder #1 top dead center on the compression stroke. So I pull that side back off and pull the #1 spark plug out. While I am at it I start cleaning up the distributor as well. While I am working on fire I hook up some more electric accessories. I connect the ground for the radiator (the thermostat for the fans is in the radiator) and rig up a 12V 20A power supply to run the ignition, fuel pump, and electric fans.

Of course I run into a problem. The Taylor Spiro pro spark plug wires I have will not fit on the driver side because of the headers. So that means I have to find something else. The Taylor's might have 50 miles on them. Looks like I may be in the market for an MSD set.