1934 Plymouth five window

[Skip]

Thank you all for the attention. I love it!

Actually, I can only take credit for a percentage of the manuals written for Freightliner and Western Star over the last 20 years. Having well over half a century bending wrenches in my history, I have a pretty good idea of what my brothers and sisters in the shops want and need to get their jobs done. I know, I am an anomaly in my current profession but I do my best to share with my fellow writers. They are getting better.

I have a small collection of really bad instructions, many of which were originally written in Chinese then poorly translated to English. They are great fun.

Don't even get me started on translating "engineereze" into something mechanics want to read.

 

[MercuryMac]

I did go through some of my camera settings but found nothing that I thought would help alleviate the fuzziness I get sometimes.

For the signal light cancelling gismo, I bored a hole in the steering wheel centre piece, ground a trough in the steering wheel hub, split a little wee pipe and ground it down to about two thirds of its circumference, drove this pipe into the new hole and clamped it in place, All this to slide over a plastic arm that sticks out of the signal light cancelling device. It's a little too rough to be picture-worthy, so you'll have to trust me on this one, that I didn't just make up this whole story. Oh ya, the cancelling mechanism has been tested and it seems to work, and it looks like the horn wire has to come up through the little plastic arm and my homemade pipe.
I needed a nice looking shield to go from the bottom of the steering wheel to the top of the column, from 4 and 3/4 inch diameter down to 4" diameter in about an inch and three eights. It turns out that dual headlight cars have the right tin conformity in the little tubs that hold the headlights in and align them. I cut an inch and 3/8 strip out of one and welded tabs in it to hook it onto the steering wheel centre section and voila, a cover that looks pretty darn OK.
I sandblasted the perimeter of the wheel to clean it up so I could start putting on the POR 15 steering wheel rubber/plastic/goop.

 

[Skip]

LIKE!

 

[earthman]

veeery interestiiiing [P

 

[soltz]

Stuff like that is what makes this place so much fun

Good job Mac[cl

 

[Bamamav]

Craftsmanship! [cl[cl[cl

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you guys. I like doing this sort of stuff, but the downside of fiddling around so long on each little piece is that I might not get done all of my projects until I'm one hundred and forty years old, [now, before you go pointing a finger at me for my misguided dreams, I've already realized that I'll be slowing down in my 'hundred and thirties']. Thank you again, you've warmed my heart.
The little band for under my steering wheel is now bondo-d, sanded down and primered.
I also cut a square-ish hole in the floor so I can install my pedals and hook them up to their appropriate functions. I was going to do the pedals first, but then thought that the steering routeing around a Hemi, would be more important, and the pedals could be secondary. The pedals are out of my donor car, a '33 Plymouth sedan.

 

[MercuryMac]

The hole is cut in the floor and the pedals were fished through it. Now I had to line the linkages and get the pedals to sit in a comfortable place. It would have been much easier to hook up the pedal pivoting housing if there had been no motor, transmission, or body to contend with, but I wouldn't have known where to put it at all. Some things have to be done the hard way. Anyhow I had the pedals cobbled up in the right place and I made a cardboard template for the bracket. Here's the bracket, too. It turns out that I can just weld this bracket to my bellhousing crossmember.

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Nice rabbit.

.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you Dr. Crank, but I can't take full credit for the rabbit. I save nice thin cardboard pieces from birthday and Christmas present boxes so I can make gaskets and templates. I was hoping none of you guys would notice that I got a cute little bunny on my birthday gift.

I did get some stuff done today. With the new bracket drilled out everywhere and bolted to the pedal pivot housing, I clamped it onto the crossmember and hammered it around until I was happy with it. After it was all fished out of there again, I started welding. My mig welder gives me no end of grief and today was no exception. The welder cannot push the wire through the liner successfully for more than a minute a day.

 

[Old Iron]

"My mig welder gives me no end of grief and today was no exception. The welder cannot push the wire through the liner successfully for more than a minute a day."

Do you have a wire lube roll on your wire, just ahead of the feed rollers???
Then soak it with wire lube.

 

[MercuryMac]

Whoooa, you are the light at the end of a dark tunnel, OI. I have one of those little felt things on the wire, but I thought it was only a cleaner, never dreaming it could also be a lubricator. My welder was one of the first Migs, I think, and it has some bugs to get worked out yet. Also, the company stopped making these in the '90's so it's getting hard to find parts. It's a Powcon. Thank you for the tech trick.

 

[bob w]

After 20 years I finally had to replace the liner.

 

[MercuryMac]

I also replaced my liner, Bob, but I couldn't find any PowCon parts so I had to put a Lincoln one in and adapt it to my cable/cord. Well I didn't adapt it well enough, I guess, because it is a bearcat to rethread every time. I have to take the whole line apart from the tip to the welder and thread the wire through each piece individually and then reassemble it.
Anyhow, I lubricated my wire cleaner and rethreaded the wire today and welded my bracket on to the crossmember like I knew what I was doing. The Imagineering has been done on the second bracket for the pedal pivot housing so there won't be any flexing of brackets when I step on the clutch or brake.

You know, if I wasn't so dang ornery and defiant, I could have just unplugged my Mig cable and plugged in my stinger cable, flipped a toggle switch and stick welded my stuff. Too late, smart, I guess.

 

[Bamamav]

Never knew they made a lube for the wire. I have a piece of a fake chamois held by a clothespin on mine before it enters the liner, it wipes off any gunk on the wire. Need to find me some of that lube....

 

[Old Iron]

The lube will extend the life of your rollers, tips and liners.
Before each use, put some lube on the wiper but, don't soak it where it drips off.

 

[Skip]

The lube will extend the life of your rollers, tips and liners.
Before each use, put some lube on the wiper but, don't soak it where it drips off.

Dang. I best get on this bandwagon too. No issues yet, but no point it letting them develop. Thanks, OI.

 

[MercuryMac]

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Skip. OI's advice really woke up my old welder, the lube job and cleaning the tip.

 

[Old Iron]

Here's another little helper too.
Nozzle Kleen #2
Helps keep the tip and nozzle from caking up with spatter. I like this better than the type you dip the tip in, it doesn't cause wire crackling when you first start welding as bad.
You can even spray this on the material you're welding to reduce the spatter on it too.
Don't waste your money on the water based stuff.

 

[MercuryMac]

Here's my crossmember with the pedal pivot mounting bracket welded to it and then painted.