Surfin' 66
Oct 10th, 09, 9:58 PM
On the way home from the air races (Reno, NV) coming down 395 my p/s pump mount broke at high rpm (shhh!) and caused some damage.
I located a used pump (walking, car inop) by talking to a guy I met in a store, who also told me to go see an older man with a shop who might have the brackets.
He had only one, and I installed the pump but engine vibration caused the unsupported bracket to vibrate badly. I figured it was only a matter of a few miles until it too would break.
So, sitting in the dirt with a borrowed extension cord, drill, tap, and a few bits and pieces I found in my tool box, I built a brace for free.
I had to adapt a 1/4" Heim joint to a 3/8ths hole, so I grabbed a spare header bolt from the bottom of the toolbox and drilled it and tapped it for 1/4" threads. This threaded into the side of the cyl head, and then allowed the 1/4" bolt for the Heim joint to screw into that. It was pretty scary keeping the drill (and tap) straight, since I had to drill and tap almost the entire length of the header bolt, and I only had the one. It took some concentration to keep it all centered.
The rod is an old carburetor linkage (Heim at both ends threading into aluminum rod) that I tossed into the toolbox when I converted the gas pedal to cable operation.
I cut the rod shorter with a bare hacksaw blade also from the bottom of my toolbox, and tapped it. Because the dia. of the aluminum tubing was so small, I couldn't hold it still and the tap would only go in about 3 threads before I couldn't hold the tubing.
I looked around and found an old inner tube (pure luck!), cut it into a long strip, and wrapped it around the tube over and over until it was about 4 inches in diameter. I gripped that with pliers, and the tube held steady for finishing the tapping.
The clevis is a brake pedal clevis that was on an extra brake pushrod (that goes into the back of the m/c) that I also had tossed into the toolbox some time back in distant memory.
By assembling all these parts together, it made a passable brace for the p/s mount, and in fact is still in the car doing a great job.
The pictures have a few optical illusions- everything is tight, and there is plenty of clearance between the rod and the #1 header primary.
The adapted header bolt in the first pic looks loose, but in fact there is a machine washer between the steel and aluminum, and it is quite tight.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b203/aero80/297f1357.jpg
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b203/aero80/3229cbfa.jpg
CA Highway 395 is a time-warp Twilight Zone trip to the past. It is one of the last traditional cross-country highways, and is very enjoyable to drive.
Having just come from wrenching 500+ mph full-race aircraft and sitting next to my Elco repairing it's high performance engine with parts I scrounged, found, and borrowed reminded me of scenes I've seen of crew chiefs working on high performance aircraft in the bushes of Guadalcanal and the other Solomon islands in the dark early days of WW2 where parts were non-existent and often tools were field-invented, even some being made from wood found on the ground.
Hot rodding has always had roots in the WW2 guys who found so much excitement in machines they built themselves after coming home from flying the fastest machines on earth in open combat.
If I had to break down, I'm glad it was on 395, and not some modern non-descript offramp on an equally boring interstate.
All this took a few hours of walking, searching, asking, inventing and figuring, and then fabricating. It was cool seeing high performance cars heading out of town. A Z06 Vette got on it and it reminded me a lot of old Route 66 and the cars you used to see.
When I was finished and gave back the extension cord and drill/tap, I washed up in an old sink and headed out onto the highway's late afternoon sun, in the same place High Sierra (Humphrey Bogart) was filmed, and shifted out of town through all 5, foot on the floor and diggin' it all the way, connecting to the 1940s with piston power and high octane AVGAS in the tank. Come to think of it, China Lake where all the B-29s used to be was only a couple hundred miles down the road.
If I could only have found a roadside diner with 15-cent hamburgers and 5-cent coffee, and a new '47 Plymouth parked under a tree. That would'a been jake, man.
I actually enjoyed breaking down. That proves I'm nuts, right guys?
Eric
I located a used pump (walking, car inop) by talking to a guy I met in a store, who also told me to go see an older man with a shop who might have the brackets.
He had only one, and I installed the pump but engine vibration caused the unsupported bracket to vibrate badly. I figured it was only a matter of a few miles until it too would break.
So, sitting in the dirt with a borrowed extension cord, drill, tap, and a few bits and pieces I found in my tool box, I built a brace for free.
I had to adapt a 1/4" Heim joint to a 3/8ths hole, so I grabbed a spare header bolt from the bottom of the toolbox and drilled it and tapped it for 1/4" threads. This threaded into the side of the cyl head, and then allowed the 1/4" bolt for the Heim joint to screw into that. It was pretty scary keeping the drill (and tap) straight, since I had to drill and tap almost the entire length of the header bolt, and I only had the one. It took some concentration to keep it all centered.
The rod is an old carburetor linkage (Heim at both ends threading into aluminum rod) that I tossed into the toolbox when I converted the gas pedal to cable operation.
I cut the rod shorter with a bare hacksaw blade also from the bottom of my toolbox, and tapped it. Because the dia. of the aluminum tubing was so small, I couldn't hold it still and the tap would only go in about 3 threads before I couldn't hold the tubing.
I looked around and found an old inner tube (pure luck!), cut it into a long strip, and wrapped it around the tube over and over until it was about 4 inches in diameter. I gripped that with pliers, and the tube held steady for finishing the tapping.
The clevis is a brake pedal clevis that was on an extra brake pushrod (that goes into the back of the m/c) that I also had tossed into the toolbox some time back in distant memory.
By assembling all these parts together, it made a passable brace for the p/s mount, and in fact is still in the car doing a great job.
The pictures have a few optical illusions- everything is tight, and there is plenty of clearance between the rod and the #1 header primary.
The adapted header bolt in the first pic looks loose, but in fact there is a machine washer between the steel and aluminum, and it is quite tight.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b203/aero80/297f1357.jpg
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b203/aero80/3229cbfa.jpg
CA Highway 395 is a time-warp Twilight Zone trip to the past. It is one of the last traditional cross-country highways, and is very enjoyable to drive.
Having just come from wrenching 500+ mph full-race aircraft and sitting next to my Elco repairing it's high performance engine with parts I scrounged, found, and borrowed reminded me of scenes I've seen of crew chiefs working on high performance aircraft in the bushes of Guadalcanal and the other Solomon islands in the dark early days of WW2 where parts were non-existent and often tools were field-invented, even some being made from wood found on the ground.
Hot rodding has always had roots in the WW2 guys who found so much excitement in machines they built themselves after coming home from flying the fastest machines on earth in open combat.
If I had to break down, I'm glad it was on 395, and not some modern non-descript offramp on an equally boring interstate.
All this took a few hours of walking, searching, asking, inventing and figuring, and then fabricating. It was cool seeing high performance cars heading out of town. A Z06 Vette got on it and it reminded me a lot of old Route 66 and the cars you used to see.
When I was finished and gave back the extension cord and drill/tap, I washed up in an old sink and headed out onto the highway's late afternoon sun, in the same place High Sierra (Humphrey Bogart) was filmed, and shifted out of town through all 5, foot on the floor and diggin' it all the way, connecting to the 1940s with piston power and high octane AVGAS in the tank. Come to think of it, China Lake where all the B-29s used to be was only a couple hundred miles down the road.
If I could only have found a roadside diner with 15-cent hamburgers and 5-cent coffee, and a new '47 Plymouth parked under a tree. That would'a been jake, man.
I actually enjoyed breaking down. That proves I'm nuts, right guys?
Eric