I've been known to have opinions about cars. Yes, I do humbly admit to having strong and sometimes unreasonable opinions about cars. The truth is though, I'm part of a lucky generation. We get to experience the wonderful freedom of an automobile, albeit tainted, as it is these days, with the growing crisis of climate change, to which the transport sector contributes about 15-20% of the damaging gases.
We are still lucky, though. The ability to independently and easily cover great distances, on our own schedule, is an ability that we have only been imbued with in the past hundred years or so, and with increasing affordability and practicality. I just got back from Tasmania. We rented a car, a Suzuki Swift. Superficially, it's not my cup of tea. I don't like the styling of modern cars, I don't like the materials, the sound, the feel, the driving experience. I particularly don't like the soullessness; they are simply goods, the byproduct of the profit of a corporation. Still, I couldn't help myself but to love that little car, in a way.
Yesterday, we were due to fly out at 5:50 pm. That meant we had most of the day to accomplish what we planned, which was to visit historic Port Arthur, which is about 80-some kilometers of beautiful, winding road from Hobart. It's a convict settlement, and in it's heyday was serviced entirely by ocean, there being no road through the rugged forest of the peninsula it occupies to nearby Hobart, and it's remoteness made it the ideal place for a convict settlement. There were frequent escape attempts, but many of the escapees returned willfully, upon finding out just how hard it was to make their way to anywhere at all. This is no small fact- their return to the settlement after escaping would have resulted in torturous punishment to say the least. But us in our little Swift, we allowed just over an hour to get to the airport.
This is my point- we are lucky to live like this. We are blessed. Any car is a good car.
27 February 2011
19 February 2011
Change of plan- 383 for The Red Lady
Back in October 2004 I scored on ebay a motor for $2600, which was a bargain. It's a 4-bolt 350, 010 (meaning 10% nickel, high-strength block) with World Sportsman II heads, Victor Jnr manifold, Yella Terra roller rockers, and a ridiculously big cam. It also has, stupidly, a cast 307 crank, factory rods, and forged pistons. What all this adds up to is a motor that is not well thought out, with a top end that will support, even require, rpm in the 7500 vicinity, but a bottom end that will have disintegrated long before that point. Sort of like a bodybuilder with osteoporosis. It's a mess.
This is not to say it wasn't a bargain; the collective value of the parts is in excess of $5000 even by conservative estimate, the heads alone are worth the $2600 I paid for this engine, while a good 010 350 with no core shift can be worth upwards of $1000 and it was with this in mind that I bought it in the first place. My intention, after a few years of mulling, was to use it as it was for a while but eventually pull it out and build a big-inch, 400 based smallblock capable of using the heads more sensibly, and being a far more satisfying drive in general. The more I have thought about this engine, though, the less interested I am in driving it the way it is.
Concurrently to all this, I bought another engine, another 4-bolt 350, in pieces in 2009. I got it for the bargain price of $400, and it's been rebuilt and run-in, but then disassembled. Presumably, the scores on the crank are the reason it was disassembled, though they are not bad enough to have prevented it from running, and it seems unlikely that they would even cause a detectable symptom while the engine was running. The heads are '65 327/300 or 350hp factory heads with larger 2.02 inch intake valves installed (standard for these heads are 1.94). So this engine is a bit of a mystery, having been abandoned by it's builder after considerable effort had been expended. Not that I mind of course, being the beneficiary of whatever loss of momentum befell the previous owner, but it does frequently baffle me as to why projects seem to get routinely abandoned after considerable cost and effort has already been contributed.
The plan that slowly coalesced around this new acquisition was to built a stout, cheap, streetable 383 to go into Teddy, along with his T5 gearbox. I also bought a good 400 block, crank, rods and pistons in late 2009, and this was intended to become the engine for the Red Lady. Ever since this last purchase, the question of how to assemble my now impressive pile of parts into two well-planned and well-executed engines while keeping the spending to a minimum has occupied a lot of brain cycles whilst the long hours of workdays roll by under the wheels of Sir Bertram St Rodeo Delacroix.
I bought a bunch of new parts in October last year that were intended for Teddy's 383, ancillary stuff, like a harmonic balancer, timing set, timing cover, a cam that's just a bit 'bigger' than the one in the Dodge now and perhaps most significantly, a Scat cast 383 crank for the absolute bargain price of $230, from VPW. This is an astounding amount of engineering and quality for this price, by the way, as a comparable Eagle crank is more than double this price. I can only hope it's not indicative of some sort of change of management at
Scat where the good name of the company that's been hard earned for 40 years will be stripped of all it's worth in exchange for a couple of years of selling second rate garbage by some disrespectful corporate punk.
The 383 was intended to be a cheap thrill engine to build to fling Teddy into the 13-second arena of fun, fast street car whilst spending the barest minimum to achieve it. This was the state of affairs up until late last year when I realised that even on the cheap, the 383 was going to cost a few grand once I figured in things like exhaust, crossmember fabrication for the T5 box, an ignition system, carby and so forth. I decided to shelve that particular project for the time being and concentrate all my effort on the Red Lady, and this approach has served me satisfyingly well for the past couple of months.
Still, that engine sitting between her frame rails mocks me with it's poor selection of parts, and about a week ago the pieces all sort of fell together in my head. It was one of those satisfying epiphanies that makes you say something out loud, to nobody in particular, and that epiphany was that the 383/T5 combo should go, temporarily, into the Red Lady.
Yes, it will involve more cost and complexity for The Red Lady, and, realistically, make the goal of registering her on the 25th of November 2011, 13 years after her last registration expired, untenable. However, it is unacceptable to me to put all that work and effort into a car I won't enjoy driving because of a long ago idiot's selection of parts. It'll also bring the long-term goal for the Red Lady (a brawny, torque monster 400 with triple deuces and a strong, capable 5- or 6-speed box backing it up) closer to fruition, because if I sort out the mounting of the cheap, EA Falcon-sourced T5 now, I can later purchase a strong T5 based aftermarket box and bolt it straight in. So this is the current state of affairs- the stupidly built 350 will come out, the heads and intake will be used on probably the non-010 block 350 (the 010 block is overkill for what I want, and is valuable to sell... though I might just use it anyway... haven't really decided on that yet) with the parts I have been accumulating for Teddy's ultimate transformation from tired old 253 that still has a ton of panache to a hot 383/5 speed street warrior that'll be quick enough to embarrass all those generic taxicabs out there sporting misbegotten Chevrolet bowties. That engine and box will then be fitted to the Red Lady, involving the installation of a clutch pedal, a modified crossmember to hold up the T5, and a hole in the floor, filled by a shifter that'll (hopefully) clear the front of the bench seat. It's a sort of 1 1/2 birds with one stone deal.
Later, and I indulge a little here, I will build the motor I really want to build for her, which is going to use the 400 block, possibly a stroker crank, have a short cam so that all the power happens between 2500 and 5000, and topped with the undeniable beauty of 3x2s. She'll also get a gearbox befitting her near royalty status, probably a Richmond 5+1, which I believe is designed to fit into the same hole as a T5. Only then will Teddy get his funjection. Looks like that little 253 has some life left in it yet.
This is not to say it wasn't a bargain; the collective value of the parts is in excess of $5000 even by conservative estimate, the heads alone are worth the $2600 I paid for this engine, while a good 010 350 with no core shift can be worth upwards of $1000 and it was with this in mind that I bought it in the first place. My intention, after a few years of mulling, was to use it as it was for a while but eventually pull it out and build a big-inch, 400 based smallblock capable of using the heads more sensibly, and being a far more satisfying drive in general. The more I have thought about this engine, though, the less interested I am in driving it the way it is.
Concurrently to all this, I bought another engine, another 4-bolt 350, in pieces in 2009. I got it for the bargain price of $400, and it's been rebuilt and run-in, but then disassembled. Presumably, the scores on the crank are the reason it was disassembled, though they are not bad enough to have prevented it from running, and it seems unlikely that they would even cause a detectable symptom while the engine was running. The heads are '65 327/300 or 350hp factory heads with larger 2.02 inch intake valves installed (standard for these heads are 1.94). So this engine is a bit of a mystery, having been abandoned by it's builder after considerable effort had been expended. Not that I mind of course, being the beneficiary of whatever loss of momentum befell the previous owner, but it does frequently baffle me as to why projects seem to get routinely abandoned after considerable cost and effort has already been contributed.
The plan that slowly coalesced around this new acquisition was to built a stout, cheap, streetable 383 to go into Teddy, along with his T5 gearbox. I also bought a good 400 block, crank, rods and pistons in late 2009, and this was intended to become the engine for the Red Lady. Ever since this last purchase, the question of how to assemble my now impressive pile of parts into two well-planned and well-executed engines while keeping the spending to a minimum has occupied a lot of brain cycles whilst the long hours of workdays roll by under the wheels of Sir Bertram St Rodeo Delacroix.
I bought a bunch of new parts in October last year that were intended for Teddy's 383, ancillary stuff, like a harmonic balancer, timing set, timing cover, a cam that's just a bit 'bigger' than the one in the Dodge now and perhaps most significantly, a Scat cast 383 crank for the absolute bargain price of $230, from VPW. This is an astounding amount of engineering and quality for this price, by the way, as a comparable Eagle crank is more than double this price. I can only hope it's not indicative of some sort of change of management at
Scat where the good name of the company that's been hard earned for 40 years will be stripped of all it's worth in exchange for a couple of years of selling second rate garbage by some disrespectful corporate punk.
The 383 was intended to be a cheap thrill engine to build to fling Teddy into the 13-second arena of fun, fast street car whilst spending the barest minimum to achieve it. This was the state of affairs up until late last year when I realised that even on the cheap, the 383 was going to cost a few grand once I figured in things like exhaust, crossmember fabrication for the T5 box, an ignition system, carby and so forth. I decided to shelve that particular project for the time being and concentrate all my effort on the Red Lady, and this approach has served me satisfyingly well for the past couple of months.
Still, that engine sitting between her frame rails mocks me with it's poor selection of parts, and about a week ago the pieces all sort of fell together in my head. It was one of those satisfying epiphanies that makes you say something out loud, to nobody in particular, and that epiphany was that the 383/T5 combo should go, temporarily, into the Red Lady.
Yes, it will involve more cost and complexity for The Red Lady, and, realistically, make the goal of registering her on the 25th of November 2011, 13 years after her last registration expired, untenable. However, it is unacceptable to me to put all that work and effort into a car I won't enjoy driving because of a long ago idiot's selection of parts. It'll also bring the long-term goal for the Red Lady (a brawny, torque monster 400 with triple deuces and a strong, capable 5- or 6-speed box backing it up) closer to fruition, because if I sort out the mounting of the cheap, EA Falcon-sourced T5 now, I can later purchase a strong T5 based aftermarket box and bolt it straight in. So this is the current state of affairs- the stupidly built 350 will come out, the heads and intake will be used on probably the non-010 block 350 (the 010 block is overkill for what I want, and is valuable to sell... though I might just use it anyway... haven't really decided on that yet) with the parts I have been accumulating for Teddy's ultimate transformation from tired old 253 that still has a ton of panache to a hot 383/5 speed street warrior that'll be quick enough to embarrass all those generic taxicabs out there sporting misbegotten Chevrolet bowties. That engine and box will then be fitted to the Red Lady, involving the installation of a clutch pedal, a modified crossmember to hold up the T5, and a hole in the floor, filled by a shifter that'll (hopefully) clear the front of the bench seat. It's a sort of 1 1/2 birds with one stone deal.
Later, and I indulge a little here, I will build the motor I really want to build for her, which is going to use the 400 block, possibly a stroker crank, have a short cam so that all the power happens between 2500 and 5000, and topped with the undeniable beauty of 3x2s. She'll also get a gearbox befitting her near royalty status, probably a Richmond 5+1, which I believe is designed to fit into the same hole as a T5. Only then will Teddy get his funjection. Looks like that little 253 has some life left in it yet.
Big Brake Day (The Red Lady)
February 7th was the day I somewhat arbitrarily picked as the Big Brake day. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the involvement of a professional in working on the car adds deadline which provides motivation to do peripheral tasks, plus the work done on the day itself, and so it came to pass that I contracted John The Mechanic (whom I have known since I was about 12) to render his services for the day and get the braking system working.
In the leadup to this day I finally pulled my finger out and mounted the master cylinder on the firewall and attached it to the pedal box. The master cylinder, bought from Master Power brakes in the USA, was equipped with brackets for '58-'64 Chevy fullsize, but of course they didn't fit my righthand drive car. At least not straight out of the box, but it was a fairly simple job to make it fit. The existing mounting holes on the firewall side of the bracket were in the wrong spot, so I had them welded up and redrilled them to fit the four studs on the pedal box that poke through holes in the firewall and perform the dual task of securing the lower end of the pedal assembly and mounting the master cylinder. After that was done, the lower part of the bracket on the left side interfered with the steering column hole in the firewall, so a little cutting and reshaping was required. Sure makes for a more confidence-inspiring setup than the old single circuit, manual master cylinder.
It's also been interesting, incidentally, to check out these two pictures of the engine bay, separated by almost 15 years. I had all the holes welded up in the inner guards with the intention of running the wiring out of sight, tucked between the inner and outer guards.
Anyway, most of what John did on the 7th of Feb was laying the plumbing for the brakes, flaring tubing, adding the fittings and connecting everything up. In hindsight I probably could have done all this myself, it's not rocket science after all, but the tradeoff of money vs expediency in this instance was a good one anyway. After filling the master cylinder and beginning to bleed the system out, we found a leak, not at one of the fittings oddly enough, but at the plug at the back of the proportioning valve where, after machining out the interior from a block of brass, a plug was put in the end of the hole that the bore passed through. This plug was ever so slightly out of square with the seating surface, and as a result it leaked. This is obviously a manufacturing fault, but since I acquired these parts all the way back in April 2004, it's probably a little too late to make a warranty claim. One of the pitfalls of procrastination I guess. A little thread tape seems to have fixed the problem and with that done the Red Lady now has WORKING BRAKES!
Time spent: About 30 hours all up
Cost: Labour, $442, Parts (entire brake system) $3715.15
In the leadup to this day I finally pulled my finger out and mounted the master cylinder on the firewall and attached it to the pedal box. The master cylinder, bought from Master Power brakes in the USA, was equipped with brackets for '58-'64 Chevy fullsize, but of course they didn't fit my righthand drive car. At least not straight out of the box, but it was a fairly simple job to make it fit. The existing mounting holes on the firewall side of the bracket were in the wrong spot, so I had them welded up and redrilled them to fit the four studs on the pedal box that poke through holes in the firewall and perform the dual task of securing the lower end of the pedal assembly and mounting the master cylinder. After that was done, the lower part of the bracket on the left side interfered with the steering column hole in the firewall, so a little cutting and reshaping was required. Sure makes for a more confidence-inspiring setup than the old single circuit, manual master cylinder.
It's also been interesting, incidentally, to check out these two pictures of the engine bay, separated by almost 15 years. I had all the holes welded up in the inner guards with the intention of running the wiring out of sight, tucked between the inner and outer guards.
Anyway, most of what John did on the 7th of Feb was laying the plumbing for the brakes, flaring tubing, adding the fittings and connecting everything up. In hindsight I probably could have done all this myself, it's not rocket science after all, but the tradeoff of money vs expediency in this instance was a good one anyway. After filling the master cylinder and beginning to bleed the system out, we found a leak, not at one of the fittings oddly enough, but at the plug at the back of the proportioning valve where, after machining out the interior from a block of brass, a plug was put in the end of the hole that the bore passed through. This plug was ever so slightly out of square with the seating surface, and as a result it leaked. This is obviously a manufacturing fault, but since I acquired these parts all the way back in April 2004, it's probably a little too late to make a warranty claim. One of the pitfalls of procrastination I guess. A little thread tape seems to have fixed the problem and with that done the Red Lady now has WORKING BRAKES!
Cost: Labour, $442, Parts (entire brake system) $3715.15
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)