[60man]

Boy...you're moving right along...Tempest should be a blast!!
I need to find a energy streak to finish putting my ex NSS 60 back together for street duty while the IAII is being opened up to a 537/541 for the GP...
Converter just arrived from Summit. The missing link.
I keep telling myself I like building the cars to.....but my body hates it
Headed for garage..

What ya drinking ???:

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by 60man

.....
Headed for garage..

What ya drinking ???:

Drinking? Is it 5PM already?

Jim

[60man]

Originally Posted by twooldgoats

Drinking? Is it 5PM already?

Jim

It's 5 o'clock someplace...as Jimmy Buffet says..

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by 60man

It's 5 o'clock someplace...as Jimmy Buffet says..

Or, as Tom Waite said, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

Jim

[60man]

5 o'clock again....Miller time !!
Still think Tri-Power would look neat....

[twooldgoats]

I'm staying busy while I wait on the engine. I finished the Lexan windshield today. The old glass windshield had to go, since the blower will take a chunk out of it. I made the new windshield out of two pieces, since I didn't have a single piece around big enough to do the whole thing at once. I split it at the center brace and that worked fine. I cut up the battered old Lexan windshield that I originally used in the car and used it for a pattern. I did all the trimming of the new pieces with a hand-held jig saw and a 20 tooth/inch blade. I decided to pop rivet it in, since there are several "blind" attaching points at the bottom and sides of the windshield. I figure if 16 1/8" pop-rivets have held the front end on the car at 155mph, fifty or so of them will hold the windshield in place at higher speeds.

A few months back I decided to convert my puke tank fittings to standard 1 1/4" fittings instead of the -12AN fittings I was going to use. I cut off the old AN inlets and found a 3" long 1 1/4" aluminum radiator hose connector at Jegs, cut it in two and had the two pipes welded to my puke tank. The tank will hold ten quarts (which is the oil pan capacity) so if there's a catastrophic piston failure, the oil that the blower pushes out will have a better spot to go than under my tires.

Jim

[60man]

Nice work Jim...

[mechanickeith]

Looks good Jim... Smart move with the tank fittings. With a blown application, if something does let go, it will fill that tank in a hurry!! The new size is much bigger than -12. It should be fine just in case!! How's Paul coming on the motor?

[Blued and Painted]

Originally Posted by twooldgoats

I'm not trying to rotate the earth with this.
Jim

I'll have a firm grip on the grandstands just in case.

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by mechanickeith

......How's Paul coming on the motor?

As always with race stuff, it takes too long. Right now we're waiting on the custom cam. It's a 55mm with a 4-7 and a 2-3 swap. I'll have to write the firing order on the firewall or something. I'll never remember it otherwise. The heads are welded up for dry deck, all the other internal parts are here. The block has been O-ringed. We still have to cut a couple of new 1/4" keyways on the crank for the Ford blower drive hub.

For my part, I have to send the converter in to see if Hughes can re-do it for the blown application. It was way too tight for my 8-second NA engine when I first got it and Hughes redid it for me. I'm hoping they can reverse the process and set it up for the new application now. It's a 9 1/2" converter, so it should be big enough.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by Blued and Painted

I'll have a firm grip on the grandstands just in case.

And I'll probably be white-knuckling the steering wheel, too, at least for the first few passes.

Jim

[marks73ta]

You're doing great Jim. Everything looks great. Racing season is not far off now, so I assume you'll be getting it out there soon. Maybe our Pontiac club up here can get together for a road trip and come down to watch you run some day (no pressure hey??).
I know we would enjoy that.

Mark

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by marks73ta

.......Racing season is not far off now, so I assume you'll be getting it out there soon. ....

Mark

I've got a ton of work to do after I get the engine back from Paul. I'll be putting together all the blower-related stuff, making fuel lines, hooking up sensors, etc. I'll probably do a track rental to get started, depending on when they have one after I'm running. I'll be lucky to get out before the first of the year.

Right now I'm just trying to do whatever I can while the motor's out. Today I did some work on the new hood. Tomorrow, I'll epoxy some more hood pieces together (to even it out in the front) and then, in a few days, I'll see if I can figure out fiberglassing well enough to cover up the patching.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

I've been messing with the hood the last couple of days. Earlier I had pop-riveted the VFN cowl piece to the main hood. Yesterday, I installed eight of the Dzus fittings to establish the location of the hood to the front end and then did a little trimming along the sides to even it up. I also used some two-part epoxy to finish up the two sides of the hood/cowl splice.

Today, I set out to extend the front of the hood by epoxying some pieces to the front to extend it an inch or so. I was taking my time and and had to mix a little more epoxy. During the few extra minutes making the second batch, the epoxy I had already put on "went off" before I could get the piece in place. The directions said to allow 16 hours for it to air cure, so I was more than a little surprised to have it set in 5-10 minutes. I guess it's hotter out there in the garage than I thought. The batch went off as fast as Bondo would.

After grinding the dried epoxy off, I did again--faster this time-- and all was well. I'll let it cure overnight and continue with the hood tomorrow. I included a couple of pictures of how I clamped the piece in place. There's nothing like a row of thirteen clamps..........

Jim

[GTOGEORGE]

Ford hub? Is the crank snout the same DIA. As a standard Pontiac crank because 2/4" key ways are to large I have 3/16" key ways BUTi also am using a Pontiac hub.


GTO George

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by GTOGEORGE

Ford hub? Is the crank snout the same DIA. As a standard Pontiac crank because 2/4" key ways are to large I have 3/16" key ways BUTi also am using a Pontiac hub.


GTO George

The Ford hub fits perfectly. I first became aware of this when Brian Baker did all the research on it. If you're having your crank repaired by having another Pontiac-sized snout welded on it (not BBC-sized), you might want to buy one of Brian's crank supports if he has one left. If you're interested, I can give you the part numbers. RBS Superchargers sells a piece that bolts to the Ford crank hub and provides a surface to ride inside the support bearing on the front of the support. The availability of the support set-up was one reason I decided to go with a forged crank instead of waiting forever for a billet crank (and paying 4-5 times as much). We'll see how it works.

Jim

[vin63]

Looking good, Jim!

[BruceWilkie]

Originally Posted by GTOGEORGE

Ford hub? Is the crank snout the same DIA. As a standard Pontiac crank because 2/4" key ways are to large I have 3/16" key ways BUTi also am using a Pontiac hub.


GTO George

Fords 429/460 crank snout is exact diameter as Pontiac but longer. Ford 460 uses a spacer(later 460 have a balance weight on them) between timing gear and balancer. The spacer is handy to cut down to a short spacer and use it to fit modern crank and retain an early Pontiac cover. The 429s I've seen dont have a dampner just a hub like our late 400's. The Ford hubs and dampners are short and they use the spacer instead of lengthening the hub.

The Fords Crank bolt is same thread and maybe a bit longer I can check... I think I have one. IIRC its got a really thick washer.

460 Ford has alot in common with our Pontiacs.

FWIW at the Holley HotRod reunion a few months ago I was checking over an old A/FD was running a blower with 2 port Hilborn on a 59 AN motor... used a modified 392 hemi blower drive, simple and neat, had an old Edelbrock blower intake on it. Not sure what he used for a hub. He said when he originally built it in 59 his only choice was a chain drive!
Heres some so-so cell phone pics

[twooldgoats]

After some thought and some on-line research, I decided my Tempest needs some front down-force to insure stability at high speed. It's always felt stable at speeds over 150 mph, but I'm hoping for quite a bit more from the blower engine. One book I saw estimated about two PSI air pressure at 180 mph, so an air dam of 300 square inches could conceivably see 600 pounds pressure. So maybe by adding a lip on the bottom I can create as much as 300 pounds of downforce. It can't hurt anyway.


The bottom of the front end was just over 11" from the ground, which allows a lot of air under the car. Over the last few weeks, I've built a front air dam/splitter for the car to lower the front end to about 6". I followed the style of the rear wing kit I added earlier, using 1/16" aluminum sheet for the surfaces and 1/2" square .060" wall steel tubing for the support structure. To complicate things, I had to add a removable center section to allow access for the winch cable to pull the car up on the trailer. I used four Dzus fasteners to attach the center section.

[twooldgoats]

Some more pix. I turned the fiberglass front end upside down and bent up the aluminum and attached it with Clecos. Then I built the 1/2" square steel tubing frame and attached it with Clecos as well.