Another build thread? Yep, my track-style T

[J. Robinson]

Thanks, Don. You know the old saying - necessity is the mother of invention. (In my case, sometimes, necessity is a mother!) Anyway, I have to fabricate most of my stuff; I build such odd one-off things that nobody makes parts for them! It's like my coupe - who makes a kit to install a Jeep axle on Nissan torsion bars under a homemade Deuce frame? Besides, FABRICATION is FUN!! (I have to keep telling myself that.)

Perley! Good to hear from you; it's been a while. Man, cabin fever must be fierce; 10 below isn't fit for human habitation!! Yeah, I'm finally back at it on the roadster and putting this new garage to good use. Hopefully I'll stay on it now until it's done...

[stovens]

Jim cool solution for the hood support! Clever and simple is always the best!

[The Bat]

I like the way that was done a lot,your rod is really coming out nice. I like it. Been some time,and I missed some stuff not being on site.

A tought;The thing I think you may wish to redo at some point in time after having fun a little ,is steering coming out of cowl*,the bump steer is real bad as is,just jump up and down on your front frame some how near axle and look at your steering wheel turning a lot as your doing that. You can drive as is fine, but pick smooth roads,it's only going to act up on big bumps. A bumps input is what helps start wobbely if every thing is not just right. This was fine on a dirt track were we're sawing like hell on the steering wheel racing,but not so good on the street,I know it a look thing,like those guy the use them ribbed tractor tires on the front cus they some how think it looks good to them but they don't brake or steer good on street at all, except in ruff dirt racing.
*If you do deside on fixing that later and don't have the design worked out already[knowing you, you do],send me a email and I'll send a layout for much less bump.

[J. Robinson]

Never fear, Bat, the bumpsteer is pretty minimal on this. First, the picture above is not a true representation of how the drag link runs on this car. In that pic the drag link looks like it's running downhill as it goes forward. Since that pic was taken I built a different steering arm for the front spindle that puts the drag link level with the ground and parallel to the radius rod (see page 35). Also, the rebound on this frontend is pretty stiff, so the axle moves very little. I can jump on it with my 230 pounds and it only moves about an inch.

When I started this build I considered cross-steering it like my coupe, but I wanted the steering to more closely replicate the track roadsters from the 40s and early 50s. If it proves to be a problem I will change it later, but the geometry on this is very similar to my old C-Cab and it was a pleasure to drive. Thanks for your input, though. I know you've been at this (building race cars) longer than I have.

[Itoldyouso]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry, Jim. I fell asleep waiting for an update on your car. What the heck have you been up to? We keep talking about wanting to see it at TR.......think there is a shot at that?

From the pictures in Feb and March it looks like it is coming along great.

Don

[J. Robinson]

Sorry, Don. Didn't mean to put you to sleep. I guess I have been a bit slack on progress here. The heat has kept me from spending much time in the shop and what little time I have put in has been spent on my "other hobby". You can see that here:
Electrathon - A Different Kind of "Hotrod" As for the Turkey Run... I'd say it's about a 30% chance.

How's your roadster pickup coming along? Does Dan have his on the road? If there have been updates on those I've missed them...

[Itoldyouso]

Jim, you and I have a lot of catching up to do. You are so right about the heat, any time I go to the shop it is 95 degrees in there and even if I do the smallest thing I am fried when I leave. It finally cools off SLIGHTLY at night, but not enough to motivate me to get any work done. Dan and I spent Friday and Saturday completely cleaning the shop and office and I am sore and tired. It was a total wreck and probably one of the reasons we didn't feel like doing any work there.

My rpu project is still clamped to the welding table, waiting for Dan to weld some on it. I shelved working on it so we could devote all our attention this past Spring to getting Dan's rpu done for Billetproof in April. We did get his done, went to Billetproof, and he took Best Truck and Best of Show. That made all his work for the past 5 years worthwhile and he is still on cloud 9 about that.

But his engine is in a million pieces right now as we had a oil consumption issue. A new block is at the machine shop right now as we had had it with the one engine and are starting completely over. Turkey Run is only 4 months away so we are humping to get the engine done and running for that.

So there it is. This post was like one of the Xmas letters you get from distant family, telling you how wonderful their lives are and that the dog got neutered. Looking forward to seeing you at TR this year.

Don

PS, Jim, just to show you that his car actually, finally did hit the road for a while, here is a short video he made:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dhdh71#p/a/u/0/lSe7DfzSKUs

[roadster32]

Any thing puts the old chap to sleep

Project coming on good.

[Leon Renaud]

hi Jim;
I found this thread today and read all 56 pages. I read that you can't seem to find a nice looking valve cover for your S10 motor well heres a place to find nice cast aluminum finned rocker covers and side covers and maybe a nice aluminum oil pan go to your nearest boat salvage! Mercruiser uses Chevrolet based engines for several of their power packages! The boat engines can even be used in cars with just a little work and the boat versions come with more stock HP than the same car version ! I have the older Mercruiser engine as used in the old Chevy II Novas in the car they were I believe 90 HP but in the boat they came stock as either 120 HP or 140 HP with either a 2 barrel carb or a 4 barrel.These engines bolt right up to a almost any GM Transmissions. You might need to look at a few boat engines to find one like yours go by the year of your engine.My engine has all these aluminum pieces but they are painted on the boats so no one notices they are cast aluminum.There is also an Aluminum 3 ltr Mercruiser 4 cylinder that Mercruiser cast their own block for that uses the GM bellhousing bolt pattern but uses 460 CI big block Ford head and internals other than the crank and cam.Find a right side Ford racing Aluminum head and you got a real light weight screamer!These engines were all popular in midget racing and there's lots of aftermarket racing parts for all of them. I haven't found a reverse rotation boat engine but I hear they do exist but replacing the cam and distributor would correct that.There are a couple discussions on "Boat motors" in hot rods here chevy ll 4 banger ? - THE H.A.M.B. And here The elusive 224/3.7 MerCruiser banger - THE H.A.M.B. I was given my engine along with the hull (total junk) and trailer free just to get it out of the yard the motor runs fine! I been cutting the bad glass hull into small pieces and sending it out with the weekly trash.Lots of "free" extras as well this way like full set of Stewart warner guages and insert miles of color coded wiring and SS fittings fuel tanks etc.
Leon

[J. Robinson]

OK, for the first time in a long time, I am finally back to work on the roadster. I have been preoccupied with my Electrathon racing, but it's over for the summer and I've been itching to do something on this project for quite a while.

My biggest hang-up toward getting this thing running has been the fuel system. Chevy S-10s all came with fuel injection which I don't want to use here. In the first place, I have no earthly idea how to make it work. Secondly, the TBI manifold sticks out too far and I would end up either running without a hood or making some sort of ugly bubble in the hood side (which I've already made and had louvered). I was given an intake off an old Chevy Citation with an adapter to utilize a Holley 2-barrel, but I found out real quick that it won't fit. Somewhere in the evolution of GM's 2.5 four-banger, they moved the intake ports and the later heads don't match up to the earlier manifold. So.., I built a log manifold some time back to accomodate two Stromberg 97s or a pair of Speedway's 9 Super 7s. Then I ran out of money... again. Blowing nearly 600 dollars of my rather meager retired-teacher income on a pair of carbs simply isn't practical nor is it worth it to me. Therefore, as I've done many times before, I will engineer a more affordable solution.

A trip to the storage shed in my back yard reveals I have three of these old Rochester 2-barrel carbs on hand. GM used variations of this carburetor from the early 1950s up through the late 1970s and they're still pretty plentiful, so I am building another log intake that will accomodate ONE 2-barrel. When this is done I will run the fuel lines, install the distributor and see if I can put some "fire in the hole".

[J. Robinson]

The first step is cutting the plates. I won't go into a lot of detail as I've already done this in earlier posts when I built the first manifold. Simply put, I used the old gaskets for the carb and intake to lay out the cuts. For the intake plate, you can see there are holes that I didn't cut. The one at the left end is for a water passage which I don't need and the center one is for the heat riser passage which I would block off anyway. The carb plate is not fully cut out in this picture. I have marked the layout and hole-sawed the appropriate areas, but have not yet drilled the bolt holes. I will drill and tap the holes before I cut the plate off and grind the edges.

[stovens]

Good to see your back at it again Jim. I always enjoyed watching your builds. You have a practical, no nonsense down to earth solutions to problems we all face at some point!Keep posting.

[Bob Parmenter]

Give yourself an extra pat on the money saving back.....................those 9Super7 carbs don't have a very good reputation for reliability. The repop 97s out of England are actually very faithful to the original design, with improvements, and are as reliable as can be. Slightly more expensive than the Speedway ones..........................but only on the initial purchase.

[ScooterCO]

There are plenty of us out here that need you to finish this car… lol
Glad you are back on it!

[J. Robinson]

Thanks for the encouraging words, fellers...
OK, I've skipped ahead a bit. I cut and hole-sawed the "log" part of the manifold, cut the tubes, and welded it together. I didn't think I needed to do a step-by-step on that part since I already did it when I built the first manifold. Next part is to finish cutting out the carburetor mounting plate and fit it to the log. In the first pic it is obvious that the bore spread is wider than the 3 inch tubing. Solution: cut the top and side out of the log and fit a piece to widen the necessary area, pic 2.