Got started on installing the brakes

We had one of those days today, a couple steps forward and one back. We kept looking at where we had installed the MSD Ignition box and came to the decision that it was going to be visible under the dash when the body is installed so we took it off. We are now looking for a new home for it. I like it back in the trunk where I can get at it easy but that makes it harder for Steve in the wiring department because the wiring harness isn't long enough to reach back there and he would have to add extension to each wire and there are quite a few wires. We'll just have to see what will work best.

On the going forward front we started installing the Wilwood brakes today, the ones I've waited so long to receive, and we got the front brakes installed. It was a long wait to get them but they are so much better than the standard ones. They are black but the brake pads will wear off  the black under them and it will the be silver looking. The black makes it so the other areas will not rust, which you see a lot on cars and it looks pretty crappy. Will try and get the back installed yet this week and the brakes bled.

The red box is the MSD unit we removed.

                           This is the Wilwood brake disc I had been waiting for.
                            Slotted and drilled.

                      Here the red thing is the brake caliper where the brake
                       pads are installed in.

                        Inside look at the caliper with brake line hooked up.

                                  Finished on the front, I like the look !!          

All parts needed for now are here and we're moving along quickly to engine start

We've now finally received the brakes we've been waiting for and got the incorrect drive shaft yoke problem sorted out. There have been many things done since the last post but several of the larger ones were:

• Steve has been plugging away at getting the wiring all sorted out and hooked up. We're trying to get done what's needed to start the engine up.
• Exhaust. Spent a lot of time getting the exhaust fitted and ready to go. I think we are mostly finished all but a few final things we'll need to do when we put on the body. Hoping that everything is tight and there are no leaks. Friend Bob helped a lot on the exhaust.
• Drive shaft. We had a problem where the yoke supplied wouldn't fit into the rear housing of the transmission. What we found was we had a wrong yoke and also a bad rear housing bushing. Somewhat frustrating but all worked out now. Drive shaft is now installed.
• Finish fuel line. Got the fuel line finished and looking good with help in cutting the braided line from my neighbor Jim, aka the tool guy. He's a life saver when we have a tool problem. So we have the fuel line now in place. I changed the carburetor lines over to a stainless look.
• Fluids. Filled the radiator with anti freeze and water mixture 50/50. Also put in the transmission fluid but made a mistake in doing that. Didn't read the instruction : ( It says engine should be running. I put in 7 qts without the engine running and the yoke not installed. Got some transmission fluid on the floor to clean up, but once the yoke was installed all was well, at least for now.
• Parts. I'm the head parts guy and it seems like I'm either making a parts run each day or ordering them online or both. Hope we're getting near the end of this.

I'm kind of getting anxious to start the engine, which will be a good bench mark on the build for us.

This is the rear tranny housing with the yoke in it. The yoke is the Y shaped thing at the top, which will hook to the drive shaft, it has a shaft on it going down into the rear housing, that wouldn't fit initially.

I changed out the coupling attached to the carburetor to a more chrome look.

 The braided fuel line we made ended up being a little too long so I needed to route it differently to not look so bulky up in the engine compartment..

              Rear tranny housing re-installed here ready for the drive shaft.

 Neighbor Jim has a really neat tool for flaring lines. Here he's helping me with flaring the fuel line I shortened to take up some of the extra amount of line in the engine compartment.

 
Here is the new and improved fuel lines in the engine compartment. The silver covering you see is just there to protect the painted firewall from being scratched. We'll take all of that off when we're ready for prime time.

Here's the drive shaft hooked up to the tranny. You can see a little bit of the yoke sticking out. The thing sticking up out of the tranny is the gear shifter. This is a 4 speed auto with overdrive.

                        Here's where the drive shaft is attached to the rear end.

Checking off items on the engine start list

We made good progress again on Friday and Saturday. We are knocking off things on our engine start list. On Friday, our friend from church, Bob, was over to help and worked on making a battery access door for the trunk. Steve was buttoning down some electrical items and we did an initial install on the exhaust system. Did a lot of small items from the list. Saturday I completed the initial exhaust install and a bunch of small things. Made a trip to the hardware store to get parts, lots of parts : )

I can almost hear that motor roaring to life  : )

          Here we're hooking up the passenger exhaust pipe to the header.
          Starter giving us a small problem.

       Passenger side under the car exhaust pipes and muffler with rear pipe.

                               
                                On Saturday I installed the drivers side exhaust.

 
  Here is the radiator fan switch, gold thing, without elec lead installed yet. It will
  monitor the water temps and turn on the cooling fan when he temp hits 185 deg,
  then turn it off when it goes down to 170 deg.

  Here's the radiator overflow hose hooked up to overflow tank.

Here is a grounding bus that Steve needed to take all the wires on top in the
picture and distribute them out onto the grounding bus. More efficient and tidy.

Working towards engine start, I hope.

We've been making some good progress lately and I decided I would make up a sub to-do list for the items we need to do in order for us to be able to start the engine. From that list we've been able to complete some fairly major ones.

I got a call that they're finally shipping me the brake discs I've been missing, hooray for that one.

Also on my drive shaft problem, I've sent in the rear housing of the transmission and they will send me out a new one. I think the bushing in the one I had is not correct.

Here is a list of the items we completed since my last post.

• Installed radiator hoses. It took some grunting and groaning and trips to O'Reilly's, but we finally got the upper and lower hoses installed.
• Installed coil. We tried to figure out a good location for installing the coil and Steve came up with the idea to make a mounting bracket to allow us to install it at the rear of the engine. Looks good.
• Installed  temporary gauges. We will use temporary gauges for the first engine start and go cart. Go cart is where you drive the car without any body on it so it looks like a go cart. The final gauges are at the painter's and he's making a bezel for them to install in the dash.
• Ran battery cable and starter cable. Had to get ends for the cables and crimp them on. My neighbor Jim down the street has a good crimping tool and he did the honors on these two cables.
• Completed some wiring needed for starting. Steve is the wiring man and he's been hooking up some of the wiring harness and other wires we need.
• Installed plumbing for oil pressure sensor hookup. Boy, it took multiple tries at the parts store to get this one accomplished. Had to install a 90 deg fitting and couldn't get the right combination because of the 90 hitting the engine block when I tried to install it. But finally got the right combo.
• We're going to tackle installing the radiator overflow tank tomorrow and finish up more of the wiring.

Here are the radiator hoses we installed

                  Here's where we installed the coil. In the back out of the way.

               Here's our crude gauge setup, but what the heck it will serve it's purpose. 

           Here's the problem I was having installing the  oil pressure sensor unit.
          You can see where the 90 was hitting the block so I couldn't thread it on.

         Here's where I finally got the oil sensor unit installed. I used a longer
         connector and took off the oil filter to get it on.

       We needed a wiring  grounding bus and I ended up finding one at a Boat Shop.

Making some fairly good progress.

We've been making some fairly good progress now that we have the car on wheels and the engine installed. Still don't have the brakes yet, crazy huh.

We installed the grill and it really looks great on the car. Finished up putting the header bolts in with locking clips so the bolts can't work loose. Hooked up the initial exhaust pipe to the header and it was a bit of a struggle because of space.

We re-installed part of the power steering system. We took the steering arms and power steering unit out prior to installing the engine to be sure it didn't interfere with the install. We re-installed the front arms without much issue but then in re-installing the electric power steering unit we started running into the problems. First we couldn't get it back on because the oil filter was to long and interfering with the install. For some reason when we tried to take off the oil filter it was on so tight, we actually crushed it trying to get it off. It must have been put on by King Kong : ) but we finally got it off. I bought a shorter one, but then we ran into the problem that the lower part of the electric steering unit was hitting the oil pan when we tried to bolt it in place. We had to drill all new holes in the power steering mounting bracket to allow us to turn the unit down and away from the pan. We finally won that battle with some pretty tight fits.

We then realized that the rigid oil dip stick that came with the engine wasn't going to work with the BBK Shorty headers I have, so I had to order a flexible dip stick, which we were able to get it to fit into another tight spot. Not the ideal location, but what the heck, it works and this is a new engine that shouldn't have need to check the oil all that often.

Now came a big time bleeder. As I posted previously the drive shaft yoke wouldn't go into the rear housing of the transmission. After checking the sizes we realized that the yoke was not the correct yoke and I had them send me another one. Well, you can almost guess what's coming next. The new yoke came in and it wouldn't go into the rear transmission housing either. After much trying, checking, cussing and phone calls we are having the transmission folks send me a new rear housing. Somehow the bushing in the housing I have, which is to keep the yoke aligned, is not correct. We'll find out when the new one comes in, but the bad news for me was I had to take that rear housing off again to figure this out. I sure hope it's the housing, otherwise I have to start all over.

Steve was over today and Bob and his son Frank. Everyone kept pretty busy and we got quite a bit done. We buttoned down the gas tank and now need to hook it up to the fuel pump and power. Also got in a new battery power cable which we got ready to install. Installed the ground onto the battery.

Steve and I put a grounding strap onto the engine and that turned into a little more time than we thought it would, but all's well that ends well I guess : )

                  Here Steve and I are installing the front grill and radiator.

                                                        Grill in looking good !!

                    Here's where the power steering unit is hitting the oil pan.

                         Here's how badly we had to crush the oil filter to get it off.

                                             Some more grill pictures.

       
           Here I had to take off again the back housing on the transmission.

                                        Here's the tight fitting oil dip stick.