BODY WORK

Had other things to do last week but got around to doing some digging on the body with propane torch and putty knife today. I found what I expected to find. Bondo was 1/2" thick in some areas and rusted out holes underneath it.

The rest of the metal looks to be OK, I hope. I'll use Aircraft stripper to take the paint off and then sand blast to clean it all up. I think that cutting out a 6" wide strip and welding in a new piece will be a good repair and much easier than making a new body.

DASH BOARD

A dash came with the parts but was unfinished and needed to be fitted to the scuttle. That was the job last week. The wood is African Padauk and is a lovely piece of wood. The instrument panel is a reproduction and I sprayed it with wrinkle paint. The paint needed to be cured so I made used a wood box and placed the panel inside and aimed a Harbor Freight heat gun into the open end for 45 minutes to cure it; worked great. It took some filing to fit all the instruments but now is finished. I still have to form up the glovebox.

BODY TEST FIT

With the chassis finished it is time to do a test fit of the body parts since they have never been fitted to the chassis. I'm glad I did this as it took about 6 tries, with trimming here and there, to get it to fit. Also the floors have been painted and bolted in place.

Since there are no drawings for the F type chassis showing the distance from the crosstubes to the crossmembers it is easy to get these off a bit and that happened here. The crosstubes are a bit forward of where they should be but I cannot see that this matters. Everything still fits, with new bolt holes, and you never see the difference.

CARB INTERFERENCE

When I put the engine together and into the car I found that the left wing support panel came right up to the lower part of the front SU carb. I didn't want to cut into the wing or bonnet so I cut a notch to allow clearance for the carb jet. To remove the carb I made it so that the nuts could be removed and the lower stud was replaced with a bolt that could be backed out of the manifold toward the engine. This permitted the carb to be rotated on the top stud until it cleared the wing support. No room for an air cleaner but I think it will work OK.

FLOORING

Oct. is car show month so things have been busy. I finally got around to cutting some plywood floor. I found something called "sheathing" which is a 4 ply sheet, 1/2" thick and reasonably smooth. It just does slide under the torque tube so I don't have to take anything apart to install it. YEA.

Also there was no bulkhead panel behind the seat back. Instead there was a construction made of a box over the gearbox and a bulkhead back about at the rear wheel axle. It was poorly built and lookes awful so I made a new panel and box as it should be done (close as I can tell). You can see in the 2nd pic the angled line where the old bulkhead was located and the unit on the floor in the 1st pic. Nice idea but poorly executed.

FRAME BRACE

I added another frame brace. It has been shown that the frame sides at the bell housing crossmember can crack over time. This bracket is supposed to reinforce this spot. The diagonal straps shown on the bottom of the chassis might be a good addition too.

IT RUNS!!

The past week has been all about finishing all the hookups. Brake bleeding, hot wiring the coil and fuel pump, throttle cable hook up, add fluids, rob chain off the '35 Sports, exhaust and seats. The first big thing is to get oil pressure; I never crank a new engine until I know I have oil pressure. Well I didn't have any. Drop the pan and remove the pump and check it; was OK. Next thing is the valve cover gasket failure so remove carbs and manifolds and remove the side cover. THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.

The Aquaplane side cover won't work on an E93 block and may not work on an E100 or they are only to be used with a fully modified oil system. The inside of the cover is machined away and won't seal off the oil gallery. I could have easily lost a new engine with that. Here you can see the original next to the Aquaplane.

That finally worked out it was time to crank it up.
First startup

Well that went well so why not take a drive.
First drive
What a great day!!

HOOK UPS

Now hooking everything up. The throttle pedal had a broke return spring so that had to be removed and fixed. Manifolds are all on with exhaust wrapped with fiberglass tape and sealed with high temp silicone paint. Rad fitted and hoses secured. The exhaust won't fit up without some bending so a trip to the muffler shop is in the future. It fits well enough for test firing. I have to add fluids and fuel pump and bleed the brakes to be ready for a test drive. Hopefully by next weekend.

IT'S IN THE CAR!!!

This was quite easy and took about an hour by myself. Really exciting to see it get to this point. Lots of stuff to do to get it running but that won't be too far away.

I did have to re-drill the holes for the mounting plates and the engine sits about 1/2" high so the hand crank won't fit. The only way I see to fix this is to raise the gearbox up about 3/4" so as to tilt the front of the engine down. For some reason the bellhousing crossmember is holding the engine up.

ENGINE READY

The engine is buttoned up and ready to install. Should happen this week.

I was able to separate the scuttle from the rear body so I set it on the chassis for a dry fit. That will also make the body work easier.

BRAKES

The juice brakes are now all plumbed up. The master cylinder has several fluid cans; direct or remote mounting. I'll wait until the engine is in to decide which way to go.

PISTONS

I installed the pistons this week. My ring compressor wouldn't tighten up enough and hold so I made a compressor sleeve with the top tapered. Also mounted the flywheel and clutch. About ready to button it up, just have to work out the proper torque for the rod ends.

FITTING THE CRANK

The crank measured right on the std. dimensions so I just had it polished and ordered new bearings from Small Ford Parts. The rear main was a tight fit on the crank from the thrust bearing surfaces. After working these down on Emory paper I ended up with .002" clearance. The bearing clearance was also .002" so good to go.

FRONT SLIDERS AGAIN

This chassis came to me with one slider installed but the inner dirt sleeve wasn't installed. When I put the other side on I did some things wrong so here we go.

If an F type has the up lifted lugs on the top cross tube then the king pin has to come out the bottom and the long thread goes on the top so that you can mount the wing bracket. The short thread on the bottom holds the diagonal brace to the chassis.

I read Clarrie's method for mounting the slider on this type Morgan and it worked fairly well. I made up a 3/8" all thread rod and made the 2 slotted plates. The plates should be made from 1/8" X 2" flat bar about 8" long so you have a handle for pulling them out. That takes a bit of brutality to get them out under all the spring pressure but it can be done.

Here is the whole bit all compressed and ready to install. The rebound spring is loose but could be compressed with the rest of it. See the next try.

Here it is in place and ready for the slotted plates to be pulled (2nd photo). I pulled the bottom one first and tapped the spring into place. When pulling the top one there was a big BANG as the energy was released. Be sure your flying wires are in place. I dropped the threaded rod down from the top to hold it all in place when putting the king pin back in.

 On the second try I did it different. I put the rebound spring on the rod also along with a 1-1/2" long piece of 1/4" standard pipe. This worked much better because the whole assembly was put in place and the bottom nut was removed allowing the springs to relax into place. Then I removed the slotted plates. It was still tricky getting the top end of the pin into the cross tube.

VALVE JOB

I installed the valves yesterday and today with the adjustable tappets I had ordered. Wow was that a tricky job. Trying to adjust the clearance with the valve guides falling out over and over. I finally figured out to turn the engine on its side. I used a regular valve spring compressor but it was too big so I had to place a spacer block on top of the valve head to make it work. Very tedious. #7 still needs a keeper (on order).

Following that chore I needed some inspiration so I hung the bling on the block to see what it will be like. I like it!!

I am waiting for the machine shop to finish up the one bad rod babbitt and then the crank and pistons go in and the engine can be finished up and installed. WOW.

BLOCK WORK

I got the block back from the machine shop. He installed a new sleeve to replace a sleeve that was bored too far. He also did a valve job on the block and valves. I've ordered adjustable tappets, new rings and main bearings and an oil filter kit.

Some cleanup on the block is recommended such as opening up the water passages to match the head gasket. Here is to original and the finished job. I'll be adding a water pump also.

Cleaning up the manifold studs I found 2 of them with frozen nuts. Here is a quick trick to fix that. Cut a slot across the nut flat down almost to the threads. Put it on a hard surface and put a cold chisel in the slit. A sharp rap with a hammer will split the nut making it easy to remove. A die cleans up the threads. The Ford engine has all modern American threads.

FITTING THE CONNECTING RODS

The machine shop polished the crank and all bearing surfaces are within tolerance so I started fitting the connecting rods.
I had considered getting new shell rods or having these re-babbitted but the machine shop guy thought they were in very good condition. I got some Plastigauge and checked the fit of the rods.

After loosening the rod I can read the Plastigauge. 3 of the rods came in at .002" clearance which is within tolerance. One rod was out so I'll have the machine shop shave the cap face and hone the bore.

I got my big thumb in the way but the reading is .002.

GEARBOX INSTALL

I decided to strengthen the mounting of the gearbox and made these plates to under the cross members.

At the same time I modified the studs so they could be tie wired together. They were too short to just drill the end of the stud. I installed them with RTV on the threads so I hope they don't leak.

NEW CLUTCH

Along with all the parts I got was a Spridget 1275 pressure plate and disk. Also the flywheel was turned on the ID and face and drilled and pinned to accept the 1275 clutch. This lightened the flywheel as a good bit of metal was removed.

STEERING COLUMN

I tackled the steering gear yesterday and today. It felt very stiff and what I found was the inner and outer tubes were both bent and the bracket that holds the reduction box to the scuttle was cracked and bent. Otherwise the internal parts were in very good condition. I also found that the draglink was bent indicating a wee bit of a bumping at some point.

I cleaned it all up and straightened the two tubes, welded up the bracket and then reassembled it all. I did lub it all during assembly and will pump more in. the spline and key way were perfect.
Here is Mr. Before:

And after:

THE ENGINE

I have been studying the engine ever since getting the car in March and here is what I found.
1. The crankshaft is in excellent condition and mic's at std. size. I'll have it polished and get new bearing shells.
2. New Sport cam shaft.
3. Lightened flywheel with 1275 Spridget clutch
4. Aquaplane head and valve cover.
5. Aquaplane intake with new SU carbs.
6. Aquaplane exhaust manifold.
7. I'll need new valves and guides
And now the bad part.
8. The rods are OK but I'd like to get new ones with bearing shells.
9. The cylinders were bored to 30 over but a sleeve was installed in #1 cyl. It was bored about .004 oversize so the ring gaps are at .028" and the piston will probably rattle. I have a new Ford sleeve on the way from NY (thanks Chris) and a shop here will cut the old one out and press in the new one.

I could have just put the engine back together as is. The other cylinders were in excellent shape with no wear and like new clearance. I intend to put some miles on this car so I'll fix it the right way.

PROPSHAFT SHIM

Nev's new book gives a dimension from the bell housing face to the front of the propshaft spline. I found mine was 1/4" to the rear so a shim is required. I found a penny stuck into the gearbox input shaft that was dated 1971 so I assume the car was restored in that year. It looks like the 1971 penny was soldered to the end of the propshaft at some point.

I made a plug from some nylon shaft I had on hand and deducted the thickness of the 1971 coin plus the 2019 coin that I added. Car value is going up!!

REAR SUSPENSION AGAIN

After reading Nev Lear's new book I decided to go back to the rear suspension and make some changes. The first was to make up a fork reinforcement bracket. This was welded up from the Tie Rod, two 3/8" plates and two 1/2" bolts. I checked many times to be sure the alignment was square.

Here is the finished product with wrapped springs coated with Boiled Linseed Oil.

Just a shot of the machinery and  milling the fork bracket.