unimogjohn

Bill, I pulled these pics from my files. My distributor vacuum points to the carb, not the firewall. I do not have the shielding on it as it is out of position for it to fit correctly. Looks like your is hitting the firewall, 180 degrees from mine. Or am I just confused as to the position of your distributor? And here is a link to the Studebaker Info site that discusses timing and limits. http://www.studebaker-info.org/text3/timcurv.txt

Bill, let us know how the condenser search goes, and if the Avanti runs better when you get the correct one in. Monday, PM, December 7th. Busy day, but little car or garage stuff. I did stuff in some more insulation into the ridge vent, about half done. I need to move cars around to get to the rest of it. May move the Buick out of the third bay tomorrow and get another ten feet done. But I did get to install a little bin compartments next to my work bench. Pretty good quality. From Northern Tool and equipment. Only $25 plus about $10 shipping. Now to get stuff out of jars and cans and into the bins. I am getting so organized. I also spent an hour or so working on the snow blower. Getting it ready for snow season. Last year I had a real hard time with it, would not go thru snow and I was struggling to make it work. Now I know why. One of the augers had a broken shear pin. Just so happens that I have a dozen of them so put a new one in. Put in some fuel and she started right up. Let it run for ten minutes to let it get warmed up. The rest of the day was spent doing farm stuff. Buzzed up a couple of dead trees that I had knocked over with the Kubota a week ago. Alice is happy, and they are now on the burn pile.

Being on the farm we do have lots of critters including rodents. But the cats seem to keep them in check. They actually like to watch the birds, very rarely do they go after them. The birds know they are there and stay out of reach. We have lots of crows also, they get dry dog food. Camaro Steve picked up his engine from Corvette Wayne and brought it over. Safe and sound in the garage. I can almost hear it run. We are hoping for installation next Saturday.

It's Saturday, December 5th, early PM. Headed out to the garage early. Decided to try to finish up fixing the insulation above the soffets. I got about 3/4 of the way done when I ran out of the special sticky aluminum lined tape. So I am done until i get more, which I did order yesterday. Here are a couple of pics so you can see the issue with the insulation. In the first picture you can see the insulation pushed out, the second picture shows the insulation all taped down. Without taping and sealing, the wind just pushes the insulation out and lets the cold air in. I also got the little WEN drill press. Funny, all the tools I have are small. I spent about 30 minutes assembling the drill. Works good. The drill was $63 including shipping from Home Depot. And a couple of days ago Alice wanted me to put up a platform for the birds. So I put up a nice board to hold the plates of food she puts out for the birds each morning. However, now we seem to have a problem.

Richard, it looks sooooooo good. What a great job. I am sure you will enjoy it for many years to come.

Al, I know what you mean. Alice is worth every penny. I am sure your help is also. Went back to the garage and finished one side of the garage, six, ten foot soffet lengths are now all insulated and secure. Only six more to go.

Friday, December 4th, PM. Spent the morning in the garage. No car work, but did get two sections of insulation all tacked and sealed. That makes a total of three done, nine more to go. And as luck would have it, Greg just send us a report. "Work has been progressing, mostly on the Dodge topping. I've been slow getting the pictures out.....good old MSN has taken it upon themselves to upgrade my email which means that not only did it slow down this computer even more, I also have to relearn how to navigate it. Something for which I have little patience. We'll see if I can load a few for you now. Pic 1 David Coco (Trimacar) had marked the edges of the decking. Straight to the bystander, not so much when on the sewing table. Pic 2 Cut, hemmed and reinforced, top deck ready for attachment. Pic 3 Ditto from rear. He's making good time. Nice work , he should be tired of it and kicking it out into the cold soon."

Al, I could, but the Camaro is all set up on the lift. It was easier to have my trusty partner come help. Got a note from Camaro Steve, he said that his transmission will be done early next week. It will be fun to get it all back together. Corvette Wayne is going to bring over the engine this weekend. Steve also found out that one of his exhaust manifolds was cracked, so he ordered a new set.

Thursday, December 3rd. Spent the morning and early afternoon putting together the shop hydraulic press. Not very difficult, but everything is heavy. Alice came out and helped me put up the top plate. Without her help there was no way I was going to get in the bolts to hold it to the frame. It was all I could do to hoist up the top plate to the top of the fixture. It is all up now and ready to work. I do not know where it will ultimately will reside in the garage. Thankfully it does not take up much room.

Wednesday, December 2nd. It is late afternoon, and it has been raining for two days. The pastures are muck. I had to be very careful feeding the llamas. One misstep, and you are down in a flash. The Virginia clay is mighty slippery. I follow the fence line where there is some grass. Last night I got a Harbor Freight flyer in the mail. Wow, lots of good deals. One was a 20 ton hydraulic shop press for the money of a 12 ton unit. So with money in my pocket from a couple of Ebay sales I headed off this morning to the Harbor Freight store about thirty miles away. I plopped down the coupon and $150 cash and the press was loaded into the truck. I will put it together tomorrow. While there I bought a couple of 6 inch magnetic cups, a couple of wire wheel kits, and some small tools. That trip cost me about four hours so the day is about shot. I also received the cut-off Black and Decker saw that I ordered a couple of days ago. So it was a good day in spite of the weather.

Just saw this article in today's Washington Post. Looks like Greg is going to be very busy soon. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/aviation-buffs-launch-campaign-to-rebuild-a-wright-brothers-plane/2015/11/30/f9fbb2fe-92d9-11e5-a2d6-f57908580b1f_story.html

Thanks Scott. Will look them up. BTW how is the van coming? Quit for the winter?

It's Monday, November 30th. Only reaching a high of 37 degrees, pretty chilly. But it is nice in the garage so that is were I headed. I finished up the table top bead blaster. Another project done. But before I use it I have to get an air dryer for the compressor. And speaking of a compressor I am on the hunt for a 5 HP, 60 to 80 gallon, vertical unit. Corvette Wayne has one that he wants to sell, but probably not until the spring. I doubt I can wait that long. A few years ago I bought 50lb of glass beads for use in a little hand held blaster for small spots of rust. Somehow I have kept 49.8 lbs dry for all these years. Now some can go into the table top blaster. I have found one at our local Tractor Supply store that fits the bill and is rated for 100% duty. Maybe I will pull the trigger in January. The price looks to be around $800. I will have to think about that. I can get a 3.7 HP unit for about $600, but I think that it will be marginal at best. I have looked on Craig's List, but the compressors listed our priced high and look well used, or just junk. Since it is cold today I went around the garage and felt for the cold air coming in. Found lots of leakage around the window frames. So I pushed in fiberglass insulation around both of them. Now no leaks. The garage seems pretty well sealed, but I will keep looking and insulating.

Bill, we had a fantastic Thanksgiving with friends. So much food that we will be eating leftovers for many days. It is a bummer on your Avanti. You will have to let us know what you find out. It's Sunday PM on November 29th. Spitting rain and rather cold so headed out to the garage in the morning to start work on the blast cabinet construction. All went well. Pretty good quality also. Got most of it done except for the gloves and a couple of other items. I am sure glad that my Dad bought me an Erector Set when I was a lad. Great practice for today's work. But football was calling so gave it up for the day. And Alice told me to order some tools for the garage as my Christmas present. So I ordered a 5 speed drill press and a metal cut off saw. I did not get expensive ones, just those that were on sale. The drill press was about $60 and the cut off saw $80. I am sure that they will suit me just fine. Thank you Miss Santa!

Maybe there is a chance that I may get close to that "break even" cost point on the Avanti. http://www.thedrive.com/article/366?iid=sr-link1 Chris, you are way below the cost point. Start spending money!

Looks to be an interesting restoration. Will be great to follow the work being done. Hope that you keep it up to date for us to follow progress.

It is Saturday afternoon, November 28th. Rain is suppose to come in so while the pastures are nice and dry I moved the Taurus SHO into its winter home. With that job done I decided to finish up the Kubota tractor seat. Took about two hours, but it all done. Not David (Trimacar) Coco quality, but good enough for the farm. I used 3M contact cement to stick it to the foam. Worked great. The seat is back on the tractor and ready for duty for the next few years. Camaro Steve stopped by, and he said that he has received no word on the transmission. Hopefully, we will see it sometime next week.

It's Wednesday, November 25th, PM. "Make hay while the sun shines". I guess that is the farmer's credo, so that is what I did today, sort of. Finished putting away all the summer mechanicals to include the two little tractors. They went into the white enclosed trailer for the winter. Going to put in a couple of small garden dump trailers in there also to keep them out of the rain and snow. I had to figure out a way to dry out the Kubota tractor seat foam. The pellet stove was going this morning so I decided on a solution. So after twelve or so hours it is finally getting dry. I think that by tomorrow I can start to fit the new seat vinyl. Believe it or not when the wind blows hard, it blows out the insulation in the new garage eves. So I spent a couple of hours permanently sealing one ten foot section with staples and metal tape. Let it blow now. I am going to redo all of them now. I did not do it initially because folks were telling me that the underside of the roof would get a lot of condensation and drip onto the cars. So far I have not seen a drop and everything is dry. Only eleven more sections to go. Figure I would do one or two a day.

I for one really miss the ads from Matt. I hope he decides to again join the for sale forum. As for Motoringicons, he is a straight up guy. Three years ago I bought a Jaguar XK 120 brokered by him. He was very easy to deal with and represented the car in a very truthful manner. I could not have been more happy with the experience. Of course I did travel 750 miles to inspect the car before the purchase, but his description and honesty really made it not required. I would buy a car again based on his description and approval.

Bernie, what does the other block look like? Cannot be worse than the other one to showed to us. Is it your plan now to complete the engine and gear train rebuilds and get it in the car? I know you are bleeding on the build, but it would be great to see a driving car in the future. We are all following along so don't despair.

It is sill Tuesday; and still doing farm stuff. Today was Kubota tractor day. I had to move the Camaro up a bit so I could get the tractor into the garage. It has been 50 hours of run time so I changed the oil and filter, and in general checked everything over. The only thing found amiss was that positive battery post was corroded. So I pulled the battery and cleaned everything up to include painting the battery tray, which was a little rusty. I put the battery terminal in baking soda for an hour or so, and it came out nice and clean. Everything went back into the tractor and she fired right up. Oh, it is a 1997 model with 799 hours on it. And the seat needs to have new upholstery again too. So I pulled off the old vinyl and have taken the seat into the house and put it over one of the heating vents. The foam, while in pretty good shape is soaked at the bottom. I am going to let it dry up before I glue on the new upholstery. The material is a maroon, marine grade, vinyl. My color choices for marine grade vinyl locally were about nil, only purple or maroon. Maroon it is. I actually have enough material for three covers so I am good for the next fifteen years. A new factory seat is around $300, a knockoff about $200. This one will cost me about $20 and a few hours of pleasant work in the garage. Tomorrow I plan on moving the Taurus SHO into its winter home, the big black enclosed trailer. I have it all stabilized so I can just drive the car into it. It will be a great spot for the car this coming winter.

It is Tuesday morning, early like 5 AM, 30 degrees. So we must have an early morning from Greg. " News from the top shop. The Dodge top is really taking shape. The rear curtain is nailed in place and he's started to make the final markings on the top decking in order to get it hemmed. "Got to mark it on the car. It looks like a straight line but when laid on the sewing table it describes an arc." says he. Really looking good. Matheson engine project. With some of the heavy parts back from the plater I can resume assembly. Over the weekend I prepared the components, tonight was spent pressing gears into place on the cam tower and trying not to forget something in the order of assembly. Avanti R3. My son Nathan stopped by last night to teach me how to assemble the valve train rocker arm assemblies. Nice. Time well spent and more parts ready. Cold outside. Hate it already."

It is Monday, PM, November 23rd. Spent the day winterizing stuff. Put heaters in the critter buckets and hooked the heaters in. Cleaned and put in fuel stabilizer in all the mowers and equipment and put them all indoors for the first time. The new garage is full. The garage fans have been turned so they blow up gently so they can push the heat down from the ceiling (Thanks Camaro Steve). I spent the rest of the day in the garage sorting car parts and putting them on shelves and boxes. Am about half done. Everything seems to be finding its place. I did turn on the heat to 66 degrees, just nice and comfy. I have quite a few of old vintage car parts that I really do not need so have started to list them for sale on the AACA buy and sell site. So far I have been selling a few things, which does give me some cash to buy more stuff. Yesterday Camaro Steve dropped by, and he put on his differential cover, refilled the case, and finished installing the shocks. He is all done for now, until the transmission returns from the rebuilder. I got another garage item via FedEx and Amazon Prime, a paper dispenser to go beside the wall cleaner. Ahhhhh, clean hands.

Roger, great work as usual and expected. Question: Now that most of the "big" parts are done, does it get harder to do the smaller ones? When is small too small, and you just have to skip them?

It is Saturday, November 21st. Camaro Steve came over this morning with his new front and rear shocks. He got them on without too much trouble. Steve did some more painting of the rear end cover and some of the engine bay and suspension parts. The car looks really good from a detailed standpoint. Corvette Wayne completed the engine and painted it. It is ready for installation. We are all getting excited to put it in. No word on the Transmission rebuild yet.