whtbaron

Got curious this afternoon and decided to tip the Moon engine on it's side and have a look underneath. First we had to blow out another shovel full of Rockies remains... . There really is 6 connecting rods in there so the top of#2 piston is almost completely gone, and it does appear to be a 4" stroke. The crank has been emerged in squirrel remains for some time so it's looking pretty rusty and sad....

LOL... I am actually.... and now I have the floor heat on in the shop to make it nicer to work! It's a classic love story really. Iron gets separated from oxygen early in the steel smelting process, and spends the rest of it's life trying to be reunited with it's first partner. After a lifetime of trying to fix things in an unheated shop with a gravel floor, this is officially the first of the "old car project" parts to make it in the doors.... I am a little stoked! Now I need to get the Whippet chassis in there before it freezes to the ground for another winter... We're still soaking...

After blowing out the creepy crud, the back 2 cylinders are looking a little better, but getting the pistons out without breaking them is going to be a challenge. It's looking better since I started the WD-40/ Fluid Film soak. Hopefully we can still find some good parts in there, but I'm a lot less optimistic about the crank and camshaft now.

At this point I think I learned how Boyd Coddington felt when they unveiled Miss Belvedere. The motor had been stored outside with no spark plugs in the front 3 holes so not too surprisingly, the front piston was cracked from frozen water, as was #3. What surprised me was that there was no piston or connecting rod in #2. Apparently when this motor was put into farm duty as a stationary, they removed #2 piston and ran it as a 5 cylinder. (Edit... that may be incorrect. I now believe what I'm looking at is the wrist pin at the bottom of the bore, and the entire top of the piston has broken up and gone AWOL) . I've opened up some nasty motors in my time, but I must say this is the first time I've seen maggots in one. Note how #4 is the only cylinder that still has carbon in it instead of rust, despite one valve being open. I'm guessing if we can salvage one good piston, that will likely be it.

Pistons are the next item on the shopping list, so it was time to break out my new Gearwrench 1/2" 6 point sockets and my favorite homemade breaker bar. I like them. Yes, I could have used an impact, but sometimes I like the feel of doing things manually and I was afraid that those exposed threads on the 90 yr old head studs would snap off. I'm happy to report that I didn't break any.

Unfortunately while moving the motor into the shop, I shook about 80 yrs worth of squirrel and mouse nests loose in the bottom which proceeded to fall through the bottom of the oil pan. This pic is the 2nd pile on the floor after I reached in a dragged out what I could by hand. Yes, that's the bottom of the oil pan on my makeshift engine dolly. The long bolts out the back of the flywheel were for a wooden pulley. Apparently after this motor was removed from the Moon it was used to power a saw mill or grain elevator. I was beginning to have a bad feeling about the parts inside the motor at this point...

I can't believe it was 4 yrs ago that this thread was started, but it looks like it's time to drag it out of retirement again. For about a year Jan and I have been discussing the possibility of using some parts off my motor for his. Last winter it went under the snow before I could get to it, so when the snow started coming down on Tues I thought I better get it in the shop where I could work on it. While Jan has been patiently waiting for me to see if the parts are any good, I have been very impatiently trying to get my electrician to get my floor heat hooked up. After our last discussion it's supposed to be happening on Monday. Jan recently found out that the casting for the water outlet is a lot more fragile than it looked, so that was the first part I went after. Learning from his experience, I went very slowly loosening one nut at a time a partial turn at a time. The good news is that I got it off in one piece and it looks pretty good, but the bad news is that it is pitted quite badly where the hose was. It's about 11 1/2 inches long at the base, with the furthest bolt holes being about 8 1/4" on center. Apparently it was easy to remove because I had help on the inside...

Somebody can probably do it, but it wouldn't be easy. The amount of work it would take would be right up there with building a whole door from scratch. I may stand to be corrected, but I believe the 51 station wagon door is split in the middle, with the window hinging up and the lower door hinging down. The sedan delivery door is one piece and hinges to the side. He wants $500 with a title? That's not a hard decision at all... I'd snatch that up in a heart beat. If you can't find another door and give up on it, you could flip that for a profit no problem. I'd buy it on spec... a door will turn up sooner or later, like these guys say, they are out there.

We have to save some pics of that one. That's like my dream car... if it was any nicer it would be a wet dream car. I like it...

The motorcycle tank has a lot of complex curves in it. An early car hood is generally "fairly" straight due to the piano hinges in most of them. That being said, you could venture into curves with a 3 piece hood or the need to match curves on a cowl or more ambitiously shaped rad cover. If you are having to anneal a flat hood, I'd say you are probably doing something wrong. That being said, I think aluminum might be more prone to cracking if it were subject to a lot of vibration. As you will see in some of the other posts here, many hoods have been fabricated with aluminum so it can be done successfully, it just wouldn't be my personal choice to select for a first timer.

Aluminum is much easier to work with, but like Jan I would go with steel myself for a couple reasons. 1) I've never welded aluminum and don't have the equipment for it. 2) Not all paints adhere well to aluminum (although it isn't hard to find good primers that do). Since it isn't a load bearing part, you could probably go a little thinner... I might get in trouble with some of the more experienced members here, but it seems to me that most of the vintage sheet metal would be typically in the 18 to 19 gauge range for body parts. With the hood you should be able to get away with 20 to 22 gauge ( that's my best guess anyway). With that air cooled engine, you may want to seriously think about finding someone to punch some louvers in the sides for air flow. If you are uneasy about the task, there is a company (Rootlieb Hoods) that fabricate both 3 and 4 piece hoods for the hot rod industry. Yours would be a custom one off and would probably be a little more costly, but it might be worth a quote to see what they would charge.

My 23 Moon touring had slots like that in the rear fenders... I don't think that mounting tab on the rear looks right though.

So I guess he went from driving big Moons to driving a big Chrysler... and then went downhill to a Model T. Too bad there weren't any other Chrysler parts left around. Thanks for the info guys. lol... don't think you'll be seeing this one on Ebay any time soon.

Hmmm....interesting. From what I was told, the owner was a very small man, but he liked very big cars... hence the 2 Moons (although there was the remains of a 27 Model T touring in there as well). If this is from a Chrysler, it's the only piece of one that I found in the yard. Any idea on what year? I think the Moons were around 22 - 25.

I picked up these sad and twisted remains of an old hubcap in a yard where I had previously removed 2 old Moon chassis. I had always assumed it belonged to a Moon car, and with the somewhat moon looking crescent in the logo, it made sense. In searching other cars online however, all the ones I can find look like the last picture with the red attached logo. There are no screw holes in my hubcap that indicate anything else was attached. I'd say it's made out of an aluminum or pot metal alloy, so repair is likely out of the question, and I only have one. I was always under the impression that both chassis were Moons, but maybe one was a Continental? Or was this another insignia that Moon used?

Yep, those wheels and round tubing bumpers are a dead giveaway... it's gotta be a classic!

That is cool...lets save a pic of it before the ad disappears as it's sold.

We've had an extended harvest season up here so it's been a while since I checked out your progress Gary.... glad to see it's still moving along. My chassis is still sitting out in the pasture awaiting completion of my heated shop (yea, I know... I've been saying that for 3 yrs but I am making headway as well. The electrician that's hooking up my floor heating system is supposed to come and inspect things today) so I'm envious of your work. Yes, you do want the axis of the tailshaft on the tranny and the input shaft on the rear to be parallel. I know it sounds strange, but if you look at a jacked up 4x4 and the angles they are running at, I think it will alleviate some of your discomfort. Running a shaft like that in a perfectly straight line is actually discouraged because the grease in the U joints won't move around enough to lubricate them properly. If you don't like the amount of shimming you have to do at the rear, perhaps you can alter the angle of the motor/trans slightly at the motor mounts ( up in front or down in rear), but compared to what goes in in trucks, I can't imagine your angles will be getting very steep.

Oh, NYC, you should have told us that earlier. Have I got a deal for you....

The car is looking great Gary... with the quality of workmanship going into this build, I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

The Renault was certainly a different look compared the usual North American cars of the same era, and I know with the quality of your projects that what is there has been well built. Too bad these projects so often get sold before they are completed, but good luck with the sale.

If ceramic coatings look too modern for you, you could consider powder coating as suggested, or cheaper yet would be the spray bombs of heat resistant paint. With the work you put into that and how nicely it came out, I would think powder coat would be a minimum. I like the motor mounts as well... the first attempt was good, but these look much better.

Quality work... look forward to that being applied to your speedster as well...

Too bad, this seems to be the way a lot of these projects end. Good luck on the sale.

Everyone seems to think that an old hood is the easy way to start a boat tail back, but I can't say I've seen many done that way that I liked. I'm sure you'll be tossing some practice runs in the scrap pile, but if you persevere until you learn how to use that English wheel and plannishing hammer I think you'll be happier in the end.