Old Car BS thread

Working on a basket case, full restoration, or having low buck fun?

Share your tips, tricks and pics here.

Vintage steel only! This is for pre 1972 cars and trucks!

 

Subbed

 

Our current semi hacked up beater project, 49 Chevy Styleline Deluxe.

Getting an SBC swap, new roof with redone chop (3/4 probably), new frame, new drivetrain, new interior.


Currently have a 1951 model donating its roof and stock, untouched frame to the cause. Found headlight assemblies on another forum, some other small stuff on eBay and an early 60s Thunderbird rear seat which will look absolutely titties when it's installed.

51 parts car when I pulled it.



Have a late 60s 327 SBC cleaned up and almost ready, except VHT paint used is flaking off of it. But here it was looking nice.

 

Come on in Jake. The water is fine.

 

@Noelie84
@Bentrodder

 

Not a great Pic but I have learned a little about this '65 C10 in the short time I've had it.
I also love the simplicity of the I6, so much easier to work on than a V8.
I'm really considering rebuilding the factory 230 CI motor as a 250 CI and having the head machined a little to bump horsepower and compression, and doing dual carbs and maybe custom intake manifold that wouldn't make cylinders 1 and 6 run lean like the factory manifold.
Valve cover off, head is now off as well, cylinder 6 is seized and I'm not sure that I want to do anything else with it until I can pull the block and rebuild.

 

Love that truck.

Front ends make me tingle.

 

One of my first trucks was a 64 step side with the 230/3 on tree. I had that thing straight piped, and it sounded mean! Damn thing was torquey as hell and is still in the road today from what I understand. I will have another one sometime in the future. Keep the 230 and throw the 3 speed in the floor. Hurst makes a kit for it

 

This is how the Tbird seat fits/looks in the back of the Styleline also.

 

Does this count? 1978 Honda CB550

 

Vintage bikes are good for me, pre 1980.

 

Cool. I'll leave these here then.

 

Not mine, but my best friend just finished this last fall. I will get some better pics soon. It has a built 350, auto, air, aftermarket front end and the boards in the bed are from a old barn here in town. This was an Allis Chambers dealer pickup when new here in our town. It was kept in a garage by the original owner for years until recently.

 

Wut.

Only one of my old ones qualifies, lol. And it's not the one that needs most of the tinkering!

But I'll play. Got her out of storage last night and gave it a spring tuneup (checked plug gap, cleaned the cap & rotor, fresh dielectric grease on the wires, checked the timing, cleaned the carb, and gave her an oil change) And then away we went!


Sheet metal work is on the menu for this summer, though. The driver's front lower fender, the leading edge on the hood and the passenger rear fender are all in need of some sheet metal surgery. After that it'll be due for a paint job and some new gaskets in the cab. First I need to find a brake fluid leak, though.

Love old vehicles, but something's always needing attention.

 

1962 impala. 350/350 combo. Runs and drives. Currently stacking my chips waiting to do paint/body, interior, full suspension/brakes. Long term goals include big horsepower (either stroker motor or LS power) hooked to Tremec T56 manual.

 

Yanking the non-original 340 and trans out of this '67 Barracuda before my Dad sells it after sitting for a decade plus.

 

Only really major thing I've had to do with my Sweptline so far has been to rewire the bulkhead connection (a weak point on old Mopars). Mine was in lousy shape and would randomly lose connection. The truck would run fine, but wouldn't start again once you shut it off, until you got out, popped the hood, and jiggled the connection. My final straw came when I popped the clutch and stalled it at a traffic light like a noob. During rush hour. Was NOT excited to have to get out of my dead truck in heavy traffic without even hazard flashers to wiggle a connector, so I tore it apart that weekend to see what I'd have to do to fix it.

I started by pulling the terminals through the male and female connections (I had to break one of the terminals off because it had fused with the bulkhead connector's plastic). Looking at them closely, it's no wonder I wasn't getting a reliable connection!








The old alternator current wire in particular had been burned pretty badly from heat buildup at one point, and had clearly had a poorly-done splice done (probably to get the truck up and running again, since it was a farm truck in a prior life)




I removed the fuse block/firewall block and drilled the former holes for the battery wire and the alternator wires, and did the same with the connections on the engine side.
Then I crimped/soldered/heat shrank new lengths of 10ga wire and threaded them through the holes







I ran new 10 gauge wire (with new connectors crimped/soldered/heat shrank on them) from the mounting points on the back side of the dash, and put new 10 gauge connectors on by the fuse blocks (these pictures taken before I taped them and zip-tied the excess wire up out of the way behind the dash). The grey wire on the end of the battery wire is a length of fusible link to help prevent fun fires behind my dashboard, and there's another length of it mounted to the starter solenoid as extra insurance that I forgot to take a picture of.



Once all of the new wiring was in its proper place and connected (and tested!) I took some electronics cleaner to the remaining connections and scrubbed them with a toothbrush until they shone, then loaded them with dielectric grease and reconnected them. I've got about 12 inches of extra wire from the new 10ga wiring inside the engine compartment, but they zip tied and tucked away nice and clean





So now everything works properly. The engine fires right up every time, and my headlights are super bright and the wipers move at their proper speed regardless of engine speed (unlike before, where the headlights dimmed and the wipers slowed considerably at an idle). The gauge also still functions properly and the readout matches up fairly closely to my multimeter at different engine speeds, so that's a win. I sized the wiring and the connectors up so that burnout shouldn't be a risk, but I added those lengths of fusible link as a 'just in case' insurance. As an added bonus, the setup looks factory while everything's plugged in, unless you really look closely (or lay on your back in the footwell and shine a flashlight up at the dashboard!)
I also thought ahead enough to have the same 10ga connectors on both ends of the fusible links, so if one of them should happen to self-torch I can just unplug the burnt section and plug the wire in directly to the connection points, sans fusible links. That way I don't have to worry about being stranded somewhere if it does happen to fail.
Overall I'm happy with the upgrade so far, but we'll have to see how it works long-term.