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Yes, rear drivers side of the head.

A few more parts ready for bodywork.

This just in; After 24 hours above freezing, one tank split open across the top. All of them are swollen up pretty good but only split. The metal at the crack is considerably thinner than what I saw on the sides of the one I cut open. Temps will be in the single digits tomorrow night and a couple of days after. BTW, I didn't hear a thing.

Same here. They crush better metal than we can usually find to start with.

Yep, think you'll be a bit busy the 1st trip but April might be a plan.......lol........will look forward to hearing from you when you get to Oz.......andyd

I bought this suburban in October. It has a '55 230 engine and an overdrive transmission. Now that the suburban is at the body shop I will pull them and find out what I have. My plans are to put them in the gray suburban. I didn't run it before I bought it!

Well to put it in cat terms........it looks like the crystallized crud of a crimean cat that crept into his crib and crapped

Nice patina on that V8.

Frank..if that translates to ugly...then yeah, you right on....

I have seen some of your cloaked pictures.

I'm in ! I've been talking to Hank and am still hopeful he will make the trip also.

Understand the price is a hit. For what it's worth, the U.S. aluminum unit is an all welded assembly which is repairable. I believe the other more affordable units are all glued assemblies often with plastic tanks. They cannot be repaired, only replaced.

Hey, hey! Easy now, I think I'm the only one so loyal to dodge trucks I rebuilt the same one twice!

Before you remove all the exterior paint, take clean the surface, you may be very surprised at how much of the original paint is hidden. I certainly did.

Super cool of you Kev! To be clear on what the BBQ costs me personally (I have never talked about this on the forum) it breaks down like this: food/trophies/portable bathroom/misc : 1000.00 minus donations (avg per year) 400.00 total: 600 bucks Now, I don't mind at all....the guys who fly, or drive out...get a room etc....spent more than that. So i'm fine with my cost. I'm just always amazed at the kind hearted efforts by everyone to make it fun year after year. For example Brent digging weeds with a screw driver out of my walkways....and his wife pruning the daisies! John T mowing, and Jim Shepard hauling! It's stuff like that I'm talkin' about. So thank you for the thought, gesture and effort Kev.....you rock! 48D

The OD units are very nice. But, getting to the place where they work without any issues for years on end takes more than meets the eye. Old time people on this board will remember my issues with my OD. I had a respected person sell it to me as rebuilt and it would not work. In the end, I personally took the entire unit apart and rebuilt it as if I was doing a race engine. Many of the parts were out of the factory specification range and some parts were never even removed from the case. Every part was inspected and checked against the original specifications. If it failed the inspection is was replaced. In the end a number of parts had to be replaced, that should have been replaced when it was supposedly rebuilt. Once done correct, the unit was installed and the unit ran fine. It has been running in continuous service for years now, it IS our daily driver, and has never missed a beat. My point of writing this is that sometimes you can "sort-of" clean up an unit and it will work fine. However, I keep hearing from people, mostly off-line, that they get a unit that is rebuilt and they have issues. The only way to make sure that an BW Overdrive will work for years is to take it apart and rebuild it by the book. One item that is over looked, and was by a reputable source, is the blocker ring. This ring works by friction. Over time it digs a slot into the part it rides on. When this happens you can get odd behavior with it shifting sometimes, sometimes not, and sometimes not working at all. The part and its mate are very hard to find. I had to pay Frank Mitchell a lot of money for a set and it may have been the last one he had. One could take the original and weld it up, lathe it down, and then have it hardened. Same with the ring. My point is that every part should be checked to the specifications. Just looking at it is not enough. If I were to do another OD, I would just buy a couple of cores and take the time to do it myself. James.

The pressure plate was completely rebuilt. Looks like new everything minus the cage. Any tricks for removing the old pilot bearing and installing the new one? Also going to need to get the flywheel cleaned up and get all new hardware.

Well the clutch came in today. Man she's a beaut! Randall took really good care of me. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Everything got stripped down cleaned up and ready for install. Got my e-brake band got relined Clutch is now all one piece/full faced

Well the clutch should be here this week. Hopefully the motormount i ordered will arrive around the same time. Also thanks to Brent and TrampSteer I'll have another set of running boards to work with to make my Express truck come to life. Also while I was cruising the interwebs I decided to look up the logo on the side of the truck. It says "Funky Junk Farms" so i googled it and it turns out it used to be used as a prop truck. When i searched a little more through the pictures guess what i found? You bet a picture of the truck as it used to be. So this truck looks like it used to be a motorhome! Too bad the side view mirrors are no longer there.

Well it's been a while since the last update. Haven't really done much to the truck. I did start to clean up the trans from the 48 so that's going well. I think it was Jeff that said it but yes all the dirt and grime from the desert definitely kept the case in pretty good shape. Took to it with some wire brushes and a pick to get the majority of the dried gunk. I hope within the next few weeks i'll have ordered up new mounts for the engine and have gotten the ball rolling on the clutch/pressure plate/flywheel situation. Also started looking at some electrical options as far as connectors and either creating my own harness or buying one from painless and converting the truck to 12v. Anywho on with some pics. Yes all the crap on the floor came off of this trans...

Setting that FD coupling that way (upside down) could cause the graphite seal to leak. I don't know if you care but those couplings are kinda $$$ these days to find and replace. The truck couplings are the same as Straight "8" 10" clutch Chrysler cars 1949-50. Bob

I fully agree with marking the flywheel position to the crankshaft. I used a center punch and a paint stick. Makes re-assembly much easier.

Some of the extra switches. Check out the exposed wiring. This is where the floor boards and trans plate came in from the 48 dodge i have. I'll be needing another set when that time comes. Also I noticed the firewall brake release compared to my 48 that had the floor/transmission e brake set up. Starting to clean her up. Removed the extra switches and pulled the radio delete. I hope have a radio sitting in that slot soon. (Thanks Keven!)