Thanks for letting us follow along. Will enjoy the next update when it happens.
Thanks for letting us follow along. Will enjoy the next update when it happens.
The adapter to use the '32-36 V8 water pump arrived. I thought the four hole flange (same as a Model A water pump) would be the same as the four stud water pump mount on the Miller head.
I was wrong. As nice as this casting is, it won't fit. Time to make one that fits.
I traced the water pump to some 1/2" plate.
I roughed it into shape on my horizontal bandsaw.
Then I started on the four hole part and was happy the holes lined up first try. I measured three times and drilled once.
After more drilling and some time on the belt sander, I had some nice flanges. They'll be connected with 2" tube.
The test fit confirmed this should work and give clearance for a fan. Welding and a fan mount come next.
I never get tired of the bolt holes lining up.
More progress on the cooling and charging systems.
Jack tacked, test fit, and finish welded the water pump adapter, then faced off the flanges to be sure they'd be parallel. I think we had about 8 hours in the adapter between the two of us.
I was going to use studs to mount the water pump to the adapter, but then I thought they'd rust and maybe break off in the future if someone isn't careful. So I decided to use bolts. However, there isn't room to get bolts that are long enough in from either direction. The current bolts have about 2 threads holding the nuts. I guess we'll be using studs after all, but with nuts on both sides instead of threaded into the adapter. Noting this mistake for future me.
During the test fits, we found the generator was still a little too low and there wasn't quite enough room for the lower radiator hose to fit well. I made up this riser to get some more clearance.
The generator is actually a PowerGen alternator, and it arrived a couple of days ago. Everything seems to be fitting. Just need to find a fan and make an adapter for that.
Dang. Can I get a shop tour? Lol. Kinda jelly on the coolness.
In reply to Ranger50 :
Any time! I keep thinking about hosting a GRM meetup sometime.
In reply to Carl Heideman :
You need to get some close up shots of those air cleaners. They are SPECTACULAR. I think you mentioned they are one-offs.
Carl Heideman said:In reply to Ranger50 :
Any time! I keep thinking about hosting a GRM meetup sometime.
This. 100% this.
Please host one. Would love to come hang out 😉
We've gone from the Thanksgiving Thrash to 15 minutes here or there. So I spent a little time getting the hoses done.
I made a pattern for the upper hose from some welding rod, then went to NAPA to find a hose with the right diameter and shape that had a profile to cut down to the pattern. This hose did the trick.
I was a little worried about fan clearance, but with the angle of this hose, there is plenty of room for a 17"(ish) fan. We recently upgraded to a better used (new to us) lathe, so I'm waiting to make the fan adapter until we've put the new lathe into service.
For the lower hose, a stock Model A setup fits well. And it only took four trips to the store to get the right size belt.
Indy - Guy said:Carl Heideman said:In reply to Ranger50 :
Any time! I keep thinking about hosting a GRM meetup sometime.
This. 100% this.
Please host one. Would love to come hang out 😉
We'll host one--maybe February or so--we're 3 hours from Detroit and Chicago and about 3.5 from Indy, so I'm thinking a Saturday late-morning/early afternoon if anyone wants to come from that far away. I'll probably post something on the main board sometime after Christmas to nail down dates.
Carl Heideman said:Indy - Guy said:Carl Heideman said:In reply to Ranger50 :
Any time! I keep thinking about hosting a GRM meetup sometime.
This. 100% this.
Please host one. Would love to come hang out 😉
We'll host one--maybe February or so--we're 3 hours from Detroit and Chicago and about 3.5 from Indy, so I'm thinking a Saturday late-morning/early afternoon if anyone wants to come from that far away. I'll probably post something on the main board sometime after Christmas to nail down dates.
IN
Same here! East side road trip and I'll drive.
We're not doing a big thrash over Christmas, but we are going to make some progress.
We really wanted to run twice pipes all the way to the back and have them exit on the passenger side. We found very little room between the frame and the rear spring on the vertical and almost less room between the fender and the gas tank on the horizontal. Nonetheless, we pressed on.
We decided we needed about 1/4" spacing between the pipes, so we had to make custom clamps/hangars for such a close fit.
Here they are midway through. We threaded them 1/4-20 and will eventually drill them for split pins and castle nuts to make them look more Ford-like.
Here's one in situ, along with a bracket that bolts in where the houdaille shock used to be. We'll also make these brackets look more Ford-like when everything is fitted.
Jack's a little disappointed because the spacing isn't consistent front to back. Nick and I both think it looks cool, and it would be hard to keep it consistent anyway due to the width of the mufflers.
The kink was required to get around the frame rail. Jack will finish weld the pipes and I'll finish making all the hangers and clamps.
In reply to Carl Heideman :
This pipefitter approves of those hangers Carl. That's some pretty work right there! Such a cool project.
Jack finished welding the pipes, now I need to finish the mounts. But I needed to spend some time cleaning/rearranging at Eclectic as we're putting in our own dyno in 2025. And while I was at it, I took the heads and other goodies off of the V8.
The cylinder that had water in it now has a holed piston. That explains why that plug fowled so quickly and it was smoking so much more.
The top of the piston was probably thinned from the water damage (pitting in the cylinder walls is as much as .125"), plus I wire-wheeled it to clean it when the head was off, plus more compression with the new heads.
So I've answered some questions from pages 1+2.
I think I've spent more time making brackets for the exhaust than Jack did building it, but they're finally (nearly done).
As mentioned in a previous post, I made them look like old-time Ford parts with castle nuts and split pins. While I mentioned 1/4-20 in a previous post, I ended up using 1/4-28 and 5/16-24 (fine thread instead of course thread) because the nuts I could find looked more authentic. Since the exhaust needs to move a little, I used compressed springs on the mounts, much like Ford did with radiator and other mounts that need to compensate for flex.
We'll probably trim the pipes to the same length. Jack left a little length on them for final trimming and I'll admit we are considering keeping the stagger.
There are similar mounts underneath, but that will make this post even more of a boring photo dump. I used 5/16 rod and nuts for those as they're a bit heavier and carry the mufflers.
We made one mistake that ended up costing about 3 hours. Since we reused the mufflers from a previous setup, they had a little bend in them. I decided to rotate them so the seams were aligned and facing up (you know, in case someone crawls underneath). When I did that, I had to spend a bunch of time manipulating things (and sometimes heating with a rosebud torch) to get all of the alignment spot-on again. Spacing is tight at the rear, and a tiny bit in the middle made a big difference 3 feet later! Anyway, I should have either put up with the mufflers as is or we should have built the exhaust with them aligned correctly in the first place.
We were ready to fire it up again, but first needed to make some gaskets for the water outlet and pump. I made these up quick from file folders and greased them liberally before installation.
Still need to make a fan adapter, but we wanted to run it for a little bit and see how everything was working as well as look for leaks.
We're still figuring out the starting procedure for the Winfield carbs (no chokes, fuel pressure, etc.), so it took a few attempts, but we got it fired up and it sounds great. Lots of smoke and fumes as everything burned off for the first time. We need to tighten the header/front pipe connection as it leaks a little there, but it ran well.
There was too much snow outside to drive it, but it feels healthy in the 20 feet I drove it in the shop.
Indoor burnout or it didn't happen!
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:Indoor burnout or it didn't happen!
No burnouts with a stock rear end and Ford 3 speed gearbox. Notoriously weak...
Well, maybe in the snow.
Since it got started in this build thread, we are having a GRM meetup at Eclectic Motorworks (Holland, MI) on Saturday, Feb 15 starting approx 1:00. We're going to use Feb 22 as a backup date if the weather is bad. See more here: GRM Meetup in West Michigan in February?
Okay, if I would have had my act together, I would have had the truck running for the GRM Meetup. But I didn't. But we still had fun. Thanks to everyone who attended on Saturday.
On Sunday, I found some time and I put things back together.
When we did have the engine running, there was some shaking/rocking back and forth. Ford had a solution for that--basically a friction shock for the engine that bolts to the firewall. So I pulled one out of my parts stash.
Of course, it wasn't designed to work with an OHV conversion and barely fit. I had to eliminate the star/spring thing, but it still generates decent friction with the friction disks and a bolt tightened appropriately.
Grille, headlights, and hood back on. With the radiator switch, the hood doesn't fit quite right yet, so there is some adjustment in my future.
We fired it up again and it's running pretty poorly. Since is was running fairly well before it was pulled a few years ago, we were hoping to get lucky. I suspect that one of the carbs is dumping fuel and needs to come apart to find faults as things are pretty rich, but before going to fuel I always start with spark. This has a fixed advance magneto, which isn't ideal for a street car, but so cool. I know Nick really struggled to time it and had some other people play with it to get it to the best compromise for timing. The trouble is, they did it all by ear and didn't mark anything or write anything down. I suspect it will be fairly happy at around 25 degrees (too much at idle, not enough at higher RPM, but a compromise).
The timing is adjusted at the coupler above. There are slotted holes and three locking nuts that are used to adjust the timing. I put some quick marks on the crank pulley and got started figuring things out, but my dial-back timing light wasn't getting along quite right with the magneto. I ran out of time to keep going, so stay tuned for the next installment.
I found some time this weekend to dive into the magneto, timing, and a little bit with the carbs.
Since I didn't get lucky enough to have the engine just run well, I decided I better go about it methodically as there are likely multiple minor issues leading to the poor running. I started with a compression check and got 90-100psi per cylinder, which seems about right. I could see the piston tops through the spark plug holes and the pistons look brand new. I could see "125" stamped into a couple of them, so this engine is likely overbored 1/8." With the compression good, I could go on the the ignition and carbs.
Google helped me find some scans of original Winfield and Bosch magneto instructions. I have much trivia to learn about these things, but these helped me get a little further with my knowledge.
Since I haven't found much useful information besides these original documents on the interweb, I'm leaving some details here for myself and maybe someone else searching for information in the future.
The magneto generates its own electricity for the spark and I was wondering how it does the switching. It turns out that it works much like an old distributor with a set of points under the cover shown. Also, like a distributor, there is rotor arm that gets the spark to the correct plug wire (pointing to #1 right now). The Model A firing order is 1243, by the way.
The cylinder the safety wired arm is attached to is not perfectly round on the inside. There are two indents that barely show in the picture and there is a block rubbing on the inside of the cylinder. When the block gets to an indent, the points open. The arm/cylinder handles the timing adjustment--about 20 degrees according to the manual. Rotating it up retards the spark.
The magneto does not have a centrifugal advance like a modern distributor. Stock Model A distributors didn't have a centrifugal advance either--the driver adjusted it from the steering column. This magneto is setup to work the same way, with driver adjustment only. With most old cars that had this, the driver would retard the spark to get the car started and then usually just advance it fully or near fully and leave it there as the car ran. In this case, the arm was wired down to full advance--I guess so it wouldn't get messed with. But that likely means I'll have too much advance at starting or too little for running, so I'll need to address this at some point.
One other detail about the cylinder/arm is that when the arm is rotated fully up (retarded), it shorts out a little contact, which then stops the spark. That contact can also be wired to a switch that grounds it out to stop the spark, much like a lawnmower magneto.
On the carbs, there are four main adjustment screws. Going counterclockwise from the "IDL" screw, the screws adjust Idle, Acceleration, Mid-range, and High-Speed. All four screws manage a needle valve, which sure beats disassembling the carbs to change jets. The two smaller screw heads seem to be air bleed jets that I haven't researched yet.
Checking the float height involves removing a plug on the side of the float bowl and making sure the fuel is that high, but no higher. So it's just like checking most rear axle levels. The floats are really cool--a near perfect sphere with a flat bottom. I didn't get pictures this time, but will post them next time I have a carb apart. And I will as there are several minor leaks that I'll need to address, plus some inappropriate fasteners and at least one stripped out hole.
I recorded all of the adjustments and three of the four were near the recommendation in the manual. The acceleration was the odd one--completely shut. I left it that way for now as I don't like making too many changes at one and my main goal today was getting the timing about right.
Of course, there are some mechanical adjustments for the linkage and synchronization of the carbs, but I'll be dealing with that later.
Whew, that's a lot of detail.
Having some understanding of how the magneto and carbs work, I was ready to try to make it run better. I found TDC and put some timing marks on the engine. After more messing around with timing settings on the magneto and minor adjustments to the carbs, I was finally able to get the engine to run well enough to idle. I then put a dial-back timing light on it to find that with all the adjustments fully advanced, the timing is running at about TDC. I think it will be happier with somewhere around 20-30 degrees of advance. So either my marks are way off, or things aren't right. If my marks are close, I'm going to need to make some changes at the magneto drive, which I'll do next time I have some time.
It drove okay, not great, on a quick test drive. But I made progress as it was hard to start and barely driveable before. The exhaust sound has similarities to a rotary--must be the combination of the firing order and our twice pipes. I'll wait to pass judgement on how much I like it once the engine is running better.
I'm left a little confused how messed up things seem as this engine was running when my friend Nick had it in his pickup. I never drove it, so I don't know if it had much pep. Nick had several people mess with the tuning over the years, so a lot of cooks in the tuning kitchen and I'm not sure if any used a methodical approach. Let's see if I can do better.
I had a few minutes at the end of the day today, so I re-indexed the magneto drive.
I could only get TDC in this position, so I moved the whole drive 120 degrees as it looked liked there was around 50-60 degrees in the slots. Here I'm at 0 degrees, advanced as far as it would go and the magneto arm advanced to max.
I set it to the other extreme, and set it retarded as far as it would go, with the magneto arm also retarded as far as it would go. Worth a try.
Sure enough, it fired up very easily, which is a good sign. The timing light showed 30 degrees BTDC, which is sort of good news. Now it's maybe advanced a little too far and I can't back it off. I was thinking more like 10 degrees to start and 25-30 all in. I took it for a several block test drive and it's much peppier.
It's way too fat but with the ignition better, the next step will be to work on getting the fuel side better before fine-tuning of both ignition and fuel. I also might have to pull the gear part of the magneto drive out and move it a tooth or two to get in the middle of the adjustment range. Progress nonetheless.
In many projects, I've been at the point where I wondered why I started and I'll admit I was there as I scratched my head to get this thing running right. I've tuned thousands of cars after all. But I think I turned the corner today. Whew, it's gonna be worth it.
In reply to Carl Heideman :
I love watching you go through this process and document it. When I worked on boats for a living, fiddling with carburetors and tuning up the engine was my favorite thing to do.
Recon1342 said:In reply to Carl Heideman :
I love watching you go through this process and document it. When I worked on boats for a living, fiddling with carburetors and tuning up the engine was my favorite thing to do.
I'm glad you're enjoying it. I always enjoy these projects more at the end than in the frustrating middle. It's funny how something as simple as a nearly 100 year old engine can seem more complicated than something modern and sad that there are few people left knowing the trivia and necessary knowledge for these things.
In other news, I did balance the carbs and get the idle down to about 400RPM. I then made some changes to the various mixture adjustments and leaned it out in the midrange enough to need to richen it back up again. At idle it's a different story. I could close all four needles on both carbs and it's still on the rich side.
Jack and I took a few test drives and we're feeling good. The methodical approach has gotten it pretty close to a good tune and I'm about to declare victory. Before that, I have to get some minor fuel seeping issues resolved, get some available range for the timing, and some other sorting details finished.
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