iamjeff171

Got her to fired earlier today. i still dont have the fuel pump situated, but at least i have the wiring figured out. here is the youtube link:

Probably rides like a wagon wheel too... there isnt any air, just several layers of $20 bills.

Got the front sheet metal trimmed and set back on. Hoping to hear her fire up some time next week.

mrwstory, those arent "rubber band tires." these are rubber band tires...http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/5351/30series.jpg i also had those magnum wheels on the front of my '50 with a disc brake conversion. i never tried them on the rear. I did have a set of crown vic 17's and they fit on the rear, but looked very funny without any spacers. the crown vic's would not work on the front without an awful big spacer.

Thanks. that's why i have to make it lower. you know, to reduce drag...or something. :-)

they are 17"s. i'm not sure of the width/backspacing because i haven't put a tape measure to them yet. i bought them used, though they were practically new and had obviously been used on a car stored indoors. i think the are 7" wide with a "standard" offset. tire size is offset front/back, though i don't remember exact size at the moment.

not a whole lot of progress. however i did manage to get the rear end mounted and a new shiny set of wheels.

im curious, what are those with v8 swaps running for radiators?

that isn't the crown vic wheel, but the vic wheels do have the same offset. so i guess is didnt get away with great a deal as i thought, such is life. good news is i can still use them on my DD. I picked up my 8.8 rear for it. I went for the higher gear ratio 3.27 with traction lok. My other option was 3.73s but i figured i would be traction limited anyway and i might get a little better MPGs with the 3.27s. I havent got it mounted yet, but i couldn't resist putting the car on the ground to see how everything looked. I was surprised at how low it is with the dropped spindles. I imagine my springs are a little tired. I've only got about 3.5" of ground clearance between the frame and ground. glad i mounted the engine/tranny pans above the frame. the rear will be probably an inch taller than in these pictures.

after actually putting the crown vic wheels on, they wont fit due to interference with the idler arm. i might jsut end up running the stock 15"s. This may be a kinda dumb question, but can you run tubeless tires on the factory tube rims?

My dad just sprayed some lizard skin on the interior of his 63 galaxie. We dont have the interior all put back together yet, but you can tell a major diference in sound resonation just from tapping on the exterior panels.

My parents neighbor just hapened to have a pair of texas 51 plates that were in there garage... they are in decent condition and i think they will clean up nicely. I forgot to post my finished brakes. It went pretty smooth. Only issue is that the rotors suggested with the scarebird kit have a very larg hub that causes issues with finding wheels that will fit over the hub. For now i am going to be running a set of late model steel crown vic (police car)wheels that i picked up for $100 that had tires with lots of tread left. these i had to clearence a little in otder to get to fit. I will be running an s10 firewall mounted vaccum booster and hanging pedal. Here is a picture of one ot my idler arm. i ground them down for clearence and chamfered the holes. As they are i have zero interference with the A-arms. while i swapped the idler arms from side to site to compenstate for the dropped uprights, i will likely still need to heat and bend the idler arms down a little more. we will see when i get my power rack installed. next on to-do list is power rack, rear end, rockers/floor/firewall.

here is the transmission mount. i was able to use the original dakota mount and used 4x2 box tube to make a frame mount. i will be cutting the original top mounting holes of the transmission mount off so that it is flush with the frame mount. The nice part about using the dakota mount is that it has a kick down on the pass. side to run the exhaust between it and the body.

Got the engine mounted. it is just tacked in at the moment, i will be boxing it in and probably add some gussets. I dont think im going to quite my day job to be a welder any time soon.

paramedic. rescuing people from toe pain and tummy aches at the speed of life.

I am planning on running an under dash unit.

Made a litle bit of progress. Getting the engine/transmission mounted. I decided that I didnt want to just hammer in the passenger firewall, and also wanted to mount the engine a little further back to give me more room for radiator/condensor (it gets hot sitting in traffic in austin). So i decided to take the plasma to the firewall. Made a little more work for myself, but i had a good deal of work to do on the floors/kick panel anyway. I think the end product will be much nicer. I will probably end up moving the engine a little further forward then it currently is. The mounts havent been made yet but im hoping to finish them up this weekend. Let me know what y'all think also, it looks like i am going to be able to use the late model magnum style mounts. I was concerned because they are much wider than the LA style mounts. But they are further back on the block where the frame is wider. The Magnum style mounts appear much better with a lot more insulation for vibration. (the magnum engine can use either LA or magnum style mounts.)

ok, i feel like this is probably a dumb question. my 51 is essentially ready to mount the 5.9/tranny. I am just waiting until next month when i will have a day off on the weekend and my brother can help me get it into position. the last thing i need to get out of the way is the factory steering gear. I haven't messed with it yet, but wanted to make sure there weren't any tricks to getting it off. i did a quick search and didnt find any threads discussing its removal (which means it may be just that simple...) so, how does one remove the factory steering gear on a '51? thanks -Jeff

Thanks

For those of you running small block mopars, how much clearance do you have between the top of your carb and the hood. I know this is going to vary based on engine mounting, but i just want to get a basic idea

im definitely not painting it out of laziness. fortunately it also happens to be the cool thing to do at the moment. hopefully will still be cool when i get it running. I plan on making it a realiable driver, and driving it regularly without having to worry about door dings in the parking lot wars. when i get tired of the "patina" i will paint it...

making a little bit of progress (always slower than one would like of course). getting my dropped uprights installed. still need to get hardware for my disk brake swap. it is amazing how much caked on grease there was on everything. good news is with all that greasing all of the bushings appear to be in very good condition. only the drivers side upper control arm appears to have very slight slop in it. I think i'm just going to run it and see if it has driveability issues. fortunately these front ends seem to be pretty easy to disassemble, epecially since the fatman uprights replace the king pin friction fit retainer (not sure what its official name is) with an allen head set screw. i dont really see where the adjustment is on these front suspensions for wheel alignment. no shims anywhere. good news is the guy i plan on aligning it is smarter than the average bear and im sure will be able to figure it out. here is a before/after

3" dropped uprights means zero change in steering geometry. 3" blocks in the rear means no change in spring rate. i fail to see the problem? though i do recognize that many on this site dont like the look of lowered plymouths. outside of personal preference i dont see a reason to advise him against lowering (though i might be biased as i am in the process of doing the same thing) as far as an answer to cybers actual question regarding fender clearance, i have no input, yet.

I don't plan on painting it for a while. however i will likely need to do something to protect the roof as it is pretty much completely bare and already has a couple small pinholes near the drip rail. havent quite figured out what i'm going to do with that. I have been told epoxy primer is the way to go these days. and yes that is austin,tx. the car itself is at my dad's shop in taylor, right down the road from james in georgetown.

Austin area