Luv2Wrench

Alignment is really looking good, and boy that car has some lines!!

Ah.. the giant quarter returns!

More great work, love seeing the pictures! I've really fallen in love with that car... just the right mix of wood and steel and such a nice size to work on.

Agreed, the manifold fits perfectly with the engine in every way. Job very well done!

Great job, thanks for posting the steps!

Great news, looking forward to more updates!

Fantastic job with the clear. If you can lay it down like that you could have used finger paint as your base.

Yes, this was what I referred to in my post above, "tendency to split parallel to the direction of force is minimized as it can't expand (bound by the hole)" . As Spinneyhill suggests, you can get a plug drill and make a custom plug and this works great for bigger holes. Excellent work on the door, very enjoyable to tag along via your pictures! Please keep them coming!!!

Clutch disc finally came in and I was able to get the clutch, pressure plate, bell housing and gearbox on the engine. It is very nice to have the engine in the car!! I have a bunch of things to add tomorrow and over the next week. I'm hopeful that I can try starting it next weekend though we do have plans to be out of town.

Great progress!

Screws into end grain are not as bad as nails but yes, you'd like to avoid that. Drilling a pilot hole well help with that and using the correct screw helps as well. The big difference with the plugs is that it is contained in a hole with glue such that the tendency to split parallel to the direction of force is minimized as it can't expand (bound by the hole). If you have a bigger hole to plug you can get a dowel bit or use a small hole saw to create a plug that will orient the grain perpendicular to the screw.

At least it still floats...

Love this car and love that you'll keep it at least mostly original. Can't wait to see you progress!!

This is a really great view of the car with the motors for the rear windows just visible where the rear seats will be. It does put the effort required to work in 1:12 into a wonderful spotlight... all of the amazing detail that looks so natural is made even more unbelievable when you see the size of the motors!!! I mean those little motors are tiny and the look HUGE sitting in the car. That gives you a much better perspective of the work required to do the ash tray on the arm rest that looks perfectly normal until you see it is just a *fraction* of the size of the otherwise tiny motor. The solder joint is bigger than the ash tray!!! The door latches are smaller as well. Just amazing work.

Great to hear you're doing OK Matt. NC has definitely been in our thoughts and prayers!

Yeah, that looks really nice, should be perfect after the coating.

Took the bottom half off and even with the gasket dressing the gasket ripped into a million pieces. Fortunately I had another gasket. Here's a shot of the upper half of the engine with the flywheel installed. You should be able to see how the casting goes around the flywheel thus the flywheel has to go on before the two halves are joined. Fortunately there was room to get my hand in there between the flywheel and engine stand mount and get two bolts in to hold it in place. I put the other two in, torqued and safety wired them after taking the engine back off the engine stand. Now I'm waiting on the new clutch.

Wow, you got a lot accomplished! I don't know what to do with those tacks, that looks like a real pain. I guess you'll have to remove some wood to get a grip on them and then fill that back in.

Yes, the flywheel does have to be installed before the bottom half it attached. I don't think it is a huge issue because of a couple of things: First, I used a gasket dressing so I should be able to remove the bottom half pretty easily without disturbing the gasket. Second, I don't actually have to get the flywheel installed onto the crank, rather, I just need to get it in there and then close up the bottom half. I'll post a picture tomorrow and I think it will make more sense. The other fun news for the day was to find out that the new clutch the PO purchased and carefully wrapped up for storage somehow got oil in it. Time to order a new one.

So the BIG milestone of getting the engine off the stand so I could put on the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, bell housing, gearbox etc was rudely interrupted when I tried to install the flywheel. Seems that the flywheel has to be installed before the lower half of the engine (oil sump) is mated to the block. Not 100% sure how I'll proceed with that. I'll test fit the engine stand again to see if it is possible to get the flywheel in there with it attached and if so, then that will be pretty straightforward. If not, well, that's not going to be fun. Live and learn...

When I asked SPI about epoxy over paint they recommended 80 grit DA scratches in the paint before applying the epoxy. They said this would help the epoxy get a bite. I would imagine the epoxy primer you have is similar. 80 grit seems excessive so I might just mask the primer you have now and just shoot the wood. The work so far looks fantastic!!

Thanks jp! As to why the ears face the wrong way, I don't really know... maybe just to infuriate you? Maybe they designed a special tool such that only they could easily pull them off. Yeah I should have run some 600 in the bore but I didn't think about it. I'll remember that in the future. Thanks for the reply and tips!

Indeed... when I'm down in the dumps over some issue in my restoration, I just come back to this thread and read a couple of posts, realize how easy I've got it and head back out to the shop re-energized.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/323/875/ Looks very tasty... I shall see if it is possible to get some here. Update: Lucky me! My local Total Wine location has some in stock.

Not sure if I posted the last couple of video links. Here is the latest one, not really anything you guys haven't seen.