Los_Control

The way Chad described the fiberglass on the seams .... it is a good deal to have it. The reason he gave for not sanding it down before mud is it takes time .... is a extra step. You become a faster builder if you simply eliminate that step ..... 🤔 ..... Holy crap, at least knock the high peaks off of it! His welding fabrication is about the same .... instead of butt welding sheet metal, will just overlay it with metal and weld it in ..... makes him a faster builder. Since he is going to flood the whole vehicle with bondo anyways it just does not matter. I might watch once in awhile, just to see what he will do next ..... I really am trying to learn some of this myself and I do not want to learn from him. Same time he does get the job done ..... To each their own.

I agree 100% with @Merle Coggins I would actually be surprised if you could build one for that price. A 6' piece of DOM online is $51 then the tie rod ends are $42.50 each .... Right there is $136. + shipping. The tie rods ends are marked right & left because one needs left handed threads to adjust properly. I do not know what size threads they are but you will need both a right hand & left hand threaded tap to create threads on the DOM. If you do not already own the left handed tap, the price of that item could easily put you over $160 for parts ..... Cheaper to just buy a new one.

Ok class, lets learn the proper way to apply body filler today He builds some wild stuff, I swear he must be using drugs to even imagine what he builds. Some people really like watching him .... I can only take so much of it myself.

LOL ... do so at your own risk He just has some really strange habits, while he may use templates sometimes .... Not sure he knows how to read a tape measure. Well I need a piece of metal about this long and then cuts it out ....oops not right .... I'll just add some more to it. He never works on a work bench or a work table .... everything he does is on the garage floor. He has built some custom cars that he has won a trophy for at major shows ..... you would swear he had to be taking LSD to dream up such a creation. I'm pretty sure in a interview he did admit to having a drug problem at a early age, but he has been clean now for many years, has a beautiful wife & successful now. But everything he does walk, talk, work .... he does it at least twice as fast as he should. While he has a decent paint booth and uses quality paint materials for a final paint job .... I would suspect some areas of his cars have over 1" thick of bondo in them .... to him that is a custom car. He can be entertaining to watch ..... many people do ..... I'm just afraid some of his work might rub off on me so I had to swear off watching anymore.

OMG please disregard that link ..... there is much confusion there. Just make sure when you put the distributor cap back on that the rotor is lined up with the spark plug wire that goes to cylinder #1. Then you know you have it right. NO NO NO! If you read the manual it is sometimes very vague .... but done properly when installing the oil pump .... #1 ends up at the 7 0'clock position on the distributor. #6 is at the 1 O'clock position. If a mechanic does not follow directions when installing the oil pump, it can be one tooth or several tooth's off. .... So we can not always rely on #7, #1 ..... My #1 is at 6 O'clock position and runs fine ..... when the mechanic installed my oil pump they were a tooth off. The photo is correct in showing you the location of the timing plug ..... the rest of the thread is fud unless you can decipher the idiots from it.

Well I never read the article, I was just doing a quick image search on google to show the plug .... You might actually enjoy reading the article. https://forums.aaca.org/topic/284782-finding-tdc-on-a-flathead-six/

Here is a photo of its location with a wire inserted.

Not sure if this will help you at all. First of all I have 1949 B1B that identifies as a 1950. .... I'm guessing the 1950 - 1953 would be close to the same. I do not know this for sure. I can not measure accurately from the center of the tie rod bolt .... I have rubber boots etc .... in the way. ... So I measured from the side of the knuckle on the steering box arm the tie rod is attached to. At the point where the bend begins that you can actually see daylight is 20.5" from the knuckle on the steering arm. At the rise to the bottom of the arm is 2.5" ..... while these numbers are not precise, it should give you a good start. The tie rod ends do screw in & out to adjust length .... I think. Just hoping this helps, if you need more information ask ..... I'm not going to remove it for better measurements .... will do what I can to assist though.

I looked at the roller tires on my 49 Dodge. They are a modern radial tire but all dry rotted and cracked and need to be replaced. .... They hold air & roll. I installed them in 2018. ...... I can not read the date code on them either, just to light ..... maybe if I spit on them and rubbed them I might be able to read them. The tire that is way older possibly might be a tire that could tell you the date .... the other 3 would not hold air but the 4th could so they kept it. In the early days they only put the date code on 1 side .... now it is both ... so it may be on the back side of the tire. Still I would not get to distracted and lost down the rabbit hole on dates ..... I would be more concerned with how the engine got water in it.

I got a 1991 chebby I would trade you straight across .... you will get more horse power. Beautiful solid car, I'm all for swapping in a big block chebby with a blower and 6 carburetors ..... That car is frigging beautiful. I'm betting it would not take too much to get it running & driving as is. Fix any rust issues you might have on the floor or other places and drive it a little bit. Then decide what has to be changed. You can do drive train swaps including rear ends & upgrading to disk brakes using the factory frame. I do not know about your specific car. I will use a 1957 chebby convertible as a example. Removing the top removes a lot of body structure and strength. So the convertibles have a totally different frame with a heavy X cross member to strengthen the car up. I only assume your car has a heavily beefed up frame because it is a convertible. ..... I could be wrong .... that does limit your frame choices though. You could drop in a 318/360 engine, 727 transmission .... Ford explorer rear end. Update the front brakes to disk .... We are talking a lot of work & $$. When if you got it running and driving as is, you might enjoy it. There are several speed parts available for these engines .... Your car your choice.

From the year 2000 on, the date code has been 4 digits, the first two are the week of manufacture and the second two digits are the year of manufacture. For instance 2407 would signify the 24th week of 2007. However, before the year 2000, the date code was only 3 digits, so the first two would be the week of manufacture, and the last would be the year, so without any listing of decade, a 247 date code could either be the 24th week of 1997, 1987, or 1977 (Date stamps went back at least to the 1970s). I just learned this, 25-30 years ago I retreaded semi truck tires and we only had the 3 digit codes at that time ..... so I was thinking your tires might not be 2019. Seems obvious with the new 4 digit date codes 2019 is correct for your tires. But that is only 3 of them ... the 4th one also has a date code but may be on the inside .... probably installed to move the car around though. I vaguely remember the thread about it locked up .... For whatever reason I was surprised it was rust and where the rust was located. I'm thinking it had a carburetor & air cleaner on it? .... thats a usual spot to allow water in. If it was full of water then froze & cracked the block, then thawed .... the water could get in interesting places depending where the crack is. Just as a hypothetical guess ... yeah it could rust up in 4 years .... all guesses .... have you tried filling the block with water? Knowing how the water got where it was will help you decide what to do. One deciding factor for age on how long it has been sitting for me, Was the wheel cylinders. When I opened them up the rubber was all deteriorated and flaking white corrosion while they were completely frozen. .... I was told less then 10 years from the seller who bought the truck from a estate sale ... I'm guessing at lest 20 years for that much corrosion. You really need to become a detective here to find the problem but also what caused the problem in the first place. Rust was caused by water entering the engine .... now you need to know how the rust got into the engine .... if you are confident you have that problem solved, then move forward. That includes filling the engine block up with coolant to see if it leaks. ..... Convince your brother he needs to change the antifreeze in his daily driver .... then put his used in the flathead 😜

I use to watch him .... I'm not sure why though .... Maybe just to see what he would do next? I kinda did like the car he was building for his wife .... it looked good 50 feet away. I'm sure I would feel different seeing it in person. I guess I was just fascinated at how everything he did was the perfect example of what you do not do ..... somehow in the end it works out for him though. I get a kick out of other serious youtubers. Dennis Taylor racing, he built some kind of tricycle over a weekend with some crazy V8 engine in it .... just for fun. He builds serious race cars .... on the interview about the tricycle ..... Weeeel .... I really pulled a bad chad on this build... I hear it all the time from others .... A emergency roadside repair? ..... Going to have to pull a bad chad here to get this home .... It is just becoming a common phrase over the internet.

The reason to use the pipe plug on #6, doing this particular task is exactly why it was installed on the head .... I have no idea why they did not install it on #1 cylinder though? 1, Our flatheads the spark plugs are over the valves and not the piston. So you can not insert a wire to watch when the piston is at TDC. 2, The pipe plug is smaller then the spark plug hole .... If the engine is low on compression, going through the smaller hole will concentrate the air increasing the pressure making it more noticeable. 3, The TDC timing marks on the pulley should be correct, for several reasons and 70+ years time passing, they are not always correct .... So mechanically setting it on TDC, now would be a good time to check the pointer on the pulley. If it is correct fine now you know. If not correct then fix it or mark it so next time it is correct. One problem I ran into with my timing plug. When I tried to insert the wire it was filled with carbon. I just took a nail and pushed the carbon plug out. Easy peasy. When I started the engine it sounded like a ball bearing bouncing around, then it got stuck under the exhaust valve and it ran rough as heck while the valve was pounding it into the seat for about 30 seconds before it got sucked out ....... I would not do that again! What I would do is use a small drill bit and drill a small pilot hole in it, then step up to bigger bits turning the carbon into a powder so it would get sucked out the exhaust without causing damage.

I would try a few things, first you need to clean the points. They sell a points file, or you could get by using sandpaper folded in 1/2 so it is abrasive on both sides and cleans the points top & bottom at same time. Corrosion will build up and give you a weak spark .... when done filing the points, then you need to check or set the point gap. When you are satisfied all is good the rotae engine so points are closed. Insert a piece of white paper in between the points and pull it through to clean the dirt off the surface .... a white business card is perfect for this. I only choose white because it is easy to see the dirt that you get off them and when it comes out clean you are done. You will have to find TDC in order to set the plug wires correctly. The proper way is to remove the pipe plug over #6 cylinder. ..... I use a tiny square of toilet paper over the hole .... it is light & fluffy Now when you rotate the engine by hand, coming up on compression stroke the compression will move the paper. It might blow it off the hole, or just wiggle it .... either way it is compression that made it move. Now you want a long stiff wire to insert into the hole .... at least 8" long, you do not want to lose it in the hole. Now rotate the engine slowly by hand until you get the wire at the very top of stroke ... when it starts to go down reverse rotation til it is back at the top. Now you are on TDC compression stroke on #6 .... This means #1 is TDC on exhaust stroke. .... one more complete rotation and #6 will be on exhaust & #1 will be TDC on compression. For what you are doing, just get #6 TDC on compression then remove the distributor cap and the rotor should be pointing about 1 O'clock or in that neighborhood. If it is pointing near 7 O'clock then your distributor is installed 180 out. Anyways, with #6 TDC on compression stroke, remove the cap & where the rotor is pointing that is where the #6 plug wire goes .... Then follow the firing order to install the rest of the plug wires ... just start from #6 instead of #1.

Those plugs kinda sorta look normal .... The head on these old flatheads have a dish where the plugs are installed ..... then the hoods generally leak in the rain and water gets on the engine and collects around the plugs ..... so they rust. Ive seen them get so bad that they break when trying to remove them .... while the rust on the plugs looks bad, just kinda normal for a car that has been sitting a few years. Seems several years ago AC plugs got a bad reputation for being cheap china junk ... so I do not have any around to compare the logo to.

I think the way I wrote I'm not really clear. I do live in a small town population 4300. It is just not big enough to have a walmart. But we have everything here in town thats needed. I live 10 blocks from downtown, so driving 10 blocks I will pass the library, city hall, DOL, courthouse, police sheriff & jail, post office. Grocery store, 4 gas stations a liquor store, hardware, DMV .... Everything I need is here in town. The hospital & my DR is 2 minuets away, Interstate 20 on ramp is 2 minuets away. Still walmart, tractor supply, The bigger stores are important when shopping on a budget. I feed my dogs chicken. Walmart sell nice fresh chicken at $4.72 for 10 pounds. I buy 40 pounds a month for the dogs. Also dog biscuits, they sell the large 15 pound box .... grocery store in town sells a very small box. I also buy the large tubs of ice cream, They are $3 cheaper at walmart then the local store .... I feed the dogs a scoop of vanilla ice cream for desert 4 or 5 nights a week. Just to feed the dogs it is worth the trip. So while I live in town, have all the conveniences of town, it really is not the living style for everyone. We all wave at each other as we pass on the road, people are very polite at the stores. The school district has a very nice sports arena where many after school activities are held ... I can sit on my back porch Friday night and listen to the ball game being played or the school dance .... it is a very boring life and not for everyone. My house was very decent 3bdrm 1 bath and move in ready condition, The property tax value is set at $32.5k ..... If it was located in a bigger city it would easily reach $55k-$60k .... I pay $400 per year for property tax. It sat on the market for 2 years with no sale. Price was lowered from $32k to $28k .... Wife wanted it, I liked it, I offered $25k cash to the real estate agent. I got a answer back in less then 20 minuets. They were paying the water, electricity, gas, property taxes for 2 years while the house sat empty .... These are the advantages of living in a small town .... You can buy a house a lot cheaper .... It would suck if I had a long commute to work each day. I just took a quick look at the local real estate market, saw a few houses for under $30k, saw one house in town for $850K .... Every price in between. That same $800K house if it was located in CA or Houston parts of Florida .... It would probably sell quickly around 3 million $$$ ..... not in a small town. My $25k house with fresh paint, roof, dual pane windows & storm doors is in a nice quiet neighborhood .... not some crack infested slum in the city.

It is also possible to check the DOT number on the tires for the date code. Still just a guess but by looking at how much tread left on them it can give you feel for how old they were when last driven. I figure it is safe to double the years that the seller says it sat ..... I was told by the seller they remember seeing the truck driven around town 10 years ago .... I know it sat at least 20 years in a field.

Always different complications going with a motor swap. .... The magnum V6 is a awesome choice .... you will need to build a wiring harness to work with the computer. Not to mention all the mounts & drive line. Same time you could get a old sbc 283 with a automatic trans and the old school horseshoe engine mount & adjustable trans mount ... run a carburetor Much easier installation .... would it be done in 90 days? Problem is, if you set a 90 day time limit ..... then you have no clue what engine to start with .... then you ask on a forum what engine to use ..... It's not going to happen. You have a 90 day time limit, you are confident and posting to tell us exactly what you are doing .... not asking for guidance. Just saying, be realistic in your abilities ..... I'm confident you can do it .... just not in 90 days. So what changes in 90 days? Take your time, have fun and get er done!

I think being retired & no schedule or job to report to everyday is not a bad thing .... If you have to worry about bills .... Not very relaxing. OTOH, if you building up a little nest egg .... your bills are paid, you have extra $$ to do the things you want ..... That is a very secure comfortable feeling that is hard to describe. I also found that living in a large or populated area, housing prices & property taxes goes higher ..... you pay for the convenience of living in a city. The further you move away from the city, the cheaper the real estate becomes ... fact of life .... no real job opportunities there .... but being retired it does not matter. Something to think about. I live 20 miles from the nearest town with a walmart, tractor supply, Napa .... North East or West 20 miles I get a bigger small town. If I drive 60 miles N, W, E, S, I get a city. ..... While I would like to live closer to a city, cost of living goes up. The further away from the city the real estate market is cheaper. So I'm right in the middle 60 miles from any city. If I moved 20 miles to the next town in any direction ..... The cost of living goes up. Choose what is comfortable for you. I chose the cheapest way possible because I retired at 48 not prepared. Some like to live in the middle of everything with fine dining, entertainment .... A lot of advantages to living in a city. ..... While others are more comfortable living 10-30 miles out of town. I'm just suggesting when you use Trulia to window shop real estate, check your comfort zone away from the nearest city to see prices .... some like to drive 20 miles to cars & coffee.

I'm probably not the one to offer financial advise or to say the best place for you to live. I can share what I did though. And remember I was medically retired when I was 48 years old, I was not financially prepared to retire. I had to battle the state for retirement for 5 years .... with no income and last 2 years ended up staying with the wife parents in Washington. We lost everything. So when my case finally went to court & I won it ..... I had a settlement coming and we had to decide where we would live. We had lived in New Mexico for the last 15 years and enjoyed the warmer weather. We looked at cost of living in surrounding states from WA, seriously it was all too high for us to live there. .... Idaho looked promising but we really prefer the warmer weather. We put together a short list of possible states we could afford to live in from my research of cost of living. Then I used this site here, https://www.trulia.com/ to search the real estate market in these states we were window shopping real estate from our home computer. New Mexico was leading for awhile then I started searching Texas & really did find some better real estate prices .... we could afford a better house for less money & cheap or reasonable cost of living .... We bought a house for cash in a small town, we pay our yearly property taxes and monthly utilities ... no mortgage. We don't have much money but we get by just fine during this crazy inflation .... that will probably get worse before it gets better .... On the other hand my brother in Washington retired a couple years ago, his employer talked him into working two extra years for a bonus + higher retirement pay. He sold his house for $240k had to pay off a medium mortgage .... he had a few acres he wanted to build his dream home on & lived in a 5th wheel while it was built. It has a big mortgage on it, he then paid 40k for a new John Deere tractor with a backhoe attachment .... He is retired living the dream. Then covid hit, then it was inflation .... his investments and 401k plan is losing money .... he no longer has the same assets this year as he had a few years ago but he still has the same bills he started with and they are increasing. ..... He no longer even wants to talk to people he is so pissed off, I have no idea how things are going he has become a hermit. I'm just suggesting to be smart, choose where you want to live, pick the best house you can afford but pay cash .... Just try to avoid debt. It is a nice feeling to have more income coming in then going out, you want to buy a different car .... save & pay cash .... new shop .... pay cash. These are crazy times we live in and it is not over yet.

My thoughts were what torque does the 4cyl produce? vrs the flathead. Neither one has much horsepower, it is the torque that does the work. So many times I have taught myself the lesson that free is not always cheap .... I just wish I would learn it. ..... Assuming you already have the 4cyl engine. I have heard of all sorts of engines stuffed into these old cars, big blocks, hemi, small block, 6 cyl ..... diesel ..... never a 4cyl .... hey who, is your car to do as you wish. I'm not even a purist .... I have a 350 sbc with a manual 5spd in my chebby truck, is a kick in the pants to drive it .... I would stuff it in a Dodge. Or possibly a Ford 300 strait 6, wonderful engine .... A Dakota V6 .... The only time I could think of installing a 4cyl is if in the aftermath of a nuclear war and just using whats available. .... My 2 cents.

The sewing machine is a machine, the layout and seams is nothing but skill .... your skills certainly do task your tools. I love seeing your work .... It kinda in it's own ways sets a standard we can reach for .... Not saying I could ever match it ... just nice to have a goal to shoot for. I felt like I had to tackle this issue, so I pulled everything out of the truck and was thinking about rotating the base on the seats. I decided to just cut my welds out and do the job a 2nd time ..... all the while mumbling under my breath about learning to spot weld til certain you want to weld in place. So I cut 3/4" off the front, it is still 4" at front, 3.5" at the rear .... nothing is welded down yet but I was able to try it in the truck with the seat held down ... I sat in it, then I sat in my 1991 chebby and compared the wheel height from the lap ... my feet on the floor .... I'm really satisfied that was all I needed .... take 3/4" out of it and do the job twice. The shelf is rough cut oversized, needs to be spot welded into place ground to shape then painted ... perfect spot to mount a fire extinguisher. The other side I'm thinking a first aid kit. Still have a console going in between the seats and picked up enough iron to build the base ... Then tabs to bolt the base to the floor. .... Lots of work to do yet, I now know the seats are correct height. What I really wanted to do today is tackle this dent. Not going to be easy, with advice from others here on the forum I'm setting up to push it out with a bottle jack .... no Idea how close I will end up at, but willing to tackle it ...... Right now is the perfect weather for painting outside in the driveway. Everything else on the back of the cab & roof is finished .... except more sanding, primer then more sanding & paint .... I want to get this part done this fall. Sad my ADD kicks in, I had to work on the seat base, I worked on the brakes ... I started sewing the cloth on the seat .... I never got to taking out the dent ..... tomorrow thats all I want to work on.

I sure hope you have better luck setting your priorities with your time then I did. When working it was simple, the job had first priority because we like to eat. When no longer working you get free reign to do what you think you want ..... do not forget your wife also has plans.... I also put my truck as first priority, I have lots of future projects ahead of me .... I just want to do them while driving a old beater truck .... Like driving to the hardware store while picking up materials to remodel my kitchen in my house that was built in 1948. In order to make this a reality, I had to teach myself to weld, do basic body work .... paint. Why I bought my project in 2018 and only got as far as I have ..... Now I'm confident I can do what needs to be done and get it done. ..... Mine will never look as good as yours while I'm alive though It is fun & a challenge to learn new things though. Only complaints I have come from my wife and her priorities 😜

Been a lot of years since seen them .... iirc they were used as a adapter for a large hole rim for a standard sized valve stem .... so the valve stem could not move around in the larger hole? .... I could be wrong, years since I've used them. https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Tube-Valve-Bushing-Adapters/dp/B081K73WKL/ref=sr_1_38?crid=3GLSN5182WNF5&keywords=valve+stem+adapter&qid=1695047837&sprefix=valve+stem+adapter%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-38

What I see it is flush at the top and sticks out at the bottom .... the bottom needs to go in not up? The threaded plates the door hinge screws into will slide in and out and drop into the abyss if you let them. Typically the doors were adjusted when installed 70+ years ago and the hinges not moved since .... so they tend to rust and fuze together with the body. This tells me the plates did not drop down into the body and needed to spend a hour with a magnet fishing them out I had one that fell, then I fished it out, cleaned it up and added some grease to the face so it would slide easier. The other 3 after I had the hinge bolts started I broke them free and cleaned greased them in place the best I could. Now I could adjust them fairly easily. ..... I still waited to adjust them until I got my fenders on .... want to line them and the doors together. I'm guessing if the doors came off of the truck and worked ok before, you probably wont need to bend the hinges to make them fit again ..... you will need to get them to slide in and out though.