Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Several years ago, a man read an article I wrote for the paper talking about the 215 V8 engine going in my TR6. He had the same engine in his ‘62 Skylark and was looking to have it rebuilt. He needed a rebuilder and, since they usually don’t pull the engine for you, some help on that preliminary chore.

Have engine hoist, will travel. I said I’d pull the motor for him and recommended Adelmann Engine, which rebuilt my 215. Conceptually, removing an engine from this era is not hard, but there was some grease involved. When I got home I looked like I’d spent the day on the Exxon Valdez cleanup.

Rebuild and resto turned out nice, but there were two imperfections still dogging owner Tom Veilleux. One was a tendency for the engine to get hot when it stood for too long on a summer day. The other was the grille, which had gotten cracked somewhere along the way and was crooked to boot.

I had an extra six-blade fan to replace the stock four-blade item and Tom had picked up a nice stock grille at Sonny’s Auto Salvage to swap out his broken one.

So we drained and pulled the radiator, unbolted the four-blade fan, and swapped in the six. The blades on his original piece were longer, so there’s some question how much more air the six-blader will move. We concluded that a shroud would be a big help. I also noticed that the gap of 2 inches from the blades to the radiator was too much. At about an inch, he’d get better cooling. A spacer would correct that and I have a 7/8 inch one that would be about right. Unfortunately it was on my garage shelf.

The car won’t be on the road quite yet, though, so the spacer can go in shortly.

Straightening the grille proved more time consuming. It’s a three-piece item–the wide center, with a two-headlight piece on each end. The Sonny’s center and driver’s-side headlight pieces looked best but we reused Tom’s passenger-side headlight piece because the headlight bucket was very rusty on the replacement.

(Gaps were worse than this–this is after a little fiddling.)

The driver’s-side headlights were low, while the other side nearly touched the top of the grille cavity. Loosening and repositioning with the stock holes wasn’t enough. I kept out the bolts, positioned the grille in a spot where Tom, viewing from the front of the car some ten paces out, was happy, then marked with a Sharpie the additional sheetmetal surrounding each mounting hole that needed to be removed to allow it to bolt up straight.

In his 46 years with the car, Tom doesn’t remember the grille being crooked. Somehow during the recent body restoration, things got out of kilter. But no problem–we got things squared up and bolted down.

The final touch was to adjust the rubber stops on which the hood rests. These were threaded in too far, allowing the hood to rest too low. We backed each one out until Tom was happy with where it sat. (Sharp, well-informed eyes will notice that the front radiator mount has been bent out on its back piece, which now projects over the fan when it should sneak in front of it parallel to the grille. This suggests that someone may have run into fan interference and bent it out of the way. Perhaps they removed an important spacer at the same time to create too big a gap for proper cooling.)

All the minor adjusting pushed this job out to five hours, but the car looks a lot better and when the sun is shining and you’re out cruising, that’s important peace of mind.

Some readers ante’d up with suggestions on bumpers that might be suitable swaps for a BMW507’s (since a friend is building a 507 body). Here’s the round-up so far:

Genuine 507 article:

1965 Mustang (suggested by Gary):

1950 Ford (offered by Dave G):

Late 1960s MGB (my thought):

If anybody else wants to test your parts/classics/junkyard memory, please post your thoughts!

It’s certainly possible to custom make a bumper in steel and have it chromed. Sleuthing can be more fun though.

Anybody got any suggestions on a donor car for a BMW 507 bumper?  (See this post for the point of this query.)

OK, it’s in place. My friend Bill is going to build what there are too few to buy without spending a very, very large sum–a beautiful German sports car manufactured for only a few years during that styling breakthrough-period in the late 1950s.

The car is the BMW 507. While its performance would be tame by today’s standards, the car’s looks have few peers. Problem is only about 250 were made. Most of these still exist, but are locked away in collections. I saw one for sale for $235,000, already sold. Bill says his research turned up average prices in the $400,000 range.

Spending that kinda money was not in the cards. But this is the 21st Century. Anybody who watched Monster Garage knows that fabricators can build just about anything. Jesse James built a flying Panoz Esperante sports car!

So why not build a 507? There are talkers and doers. My friend is a doer’s doer. Truth be told, he didn’t want a half-century old 507. That would be neat, of course, but he wants a car that looks like that yet can be driven any day, anywhere.

Hot rod time! Using 507 and hot rod in the same sentence may seem strange but that’s exactly the concept, for what is a hot rod but an old car fixed up with newer parts to perform better?

Bill got hold of Vescio’s Customization and Fabrication and the game was afoot. You need a starting point and Bo Vescio keyed in on the MGA. His shop restored a rough one for a customer so he and his crew know the car well.

The game plan is to keep much of the MGA’s middle section–doors, passenger compartment, cowl, windshield, as well as the rear portion of the fenders and the forward portion of the quarter panels. Fore and aft of the wheel wells, the sheet metal will have to be changed. Likewise, the hood (or bonnet, since it’s an MGA piece) will change and of course the nose and tail. The front shut line is similar but the MGA bonnet says narrow, while the 507 one fans wide to give access to the wider V8 configuration engine.

Most of the bodywork will be metal. The Vescio’s crew can fabricate the required pieces. (I saw a pre-war fender Ryan Ladda made from flat sheet with an English wheel and other tricks and it was amazing. Dead on for contour before a lick of filler was on it.)

As with home renovation, there will be innumerable choices to be made along the way; the plan’s nuances will likely shift many times. For example, what under hood? Initial prospects are Chevy V6 or V8 or 5-liter Ford.

A starting-candidate MGA is fitted with wire wheels. This style may stay but who knows…. Regardless of particulars it should be a fun project. I’ll keep everyone posted, ’cause I like it.

It’s never wise to count Minnesota’s winter out, but…. seems most of the big blizzards are behind us. If you have a classic car, you’re now doubt scheming of those first long drives of the season.

Before you fire it up and head for Red Wing or Duluth, here are a few checks worth performing to make sure things go well.

1. Check the fluids. In our joy over the return of fun-car weather, it’s easy to sit down, press the pedals and turn the key. Pop the hood first. A slow leak in the clutch or brake system might have drained them over the winter. Just because the pedal shows resistance on the first push doesn’t mean the system isn’t low.

2. Air up those tires. Tires lose about a pound a month, average, and underinflation isn’t always easy to spot by sight. Proper inflation will reduce excess heat and extend the tires’ life.

3. Charge your battery. If you own a classic car, you probably own a battery charger. Boy is it annoying when a classic starts up, fills us full of summer-cruise dreams, then refuses to start when the sun is setting and you’re 30 miles from your house.

4. Check the wipers and wiper blades. In a perfect world rain and your classic car will seldom meet. When they do, the issue of where that water is going and how much acid is in it is a lot less important than seeing formidable and immovable objects ahead. If you don’t do it during a pre-season car wash–covered car?–spray a little water on the windshield and hit the wipers. They should clear the glass as well as your daily driver’s do.

5. With a friend’s help, check the headlights, turn signals and–most importantly–the brake lights! Older wiring connections are not as secure and weather-tight as modern ones. Things loosen up, corrode, get scummy and fail to work. The bulbs and lenses on an older car can be pretty dim by modern standards. At the very least, you want them to work. If the light is too dim to see well, look into new lenses, a modern headlight conversion, or adding a middle brake light.

6. Puddle check. Look under the car for telltale pools of coolant, brake or clutch fluid, or gear oil. Do this before you move the car. The location of any puddle or spot will provide good evidence of its source.

7. Check those belts. A broken fan or alternator (generator) belt can leave you stranded or overheat your classic’s engine. Check for proper play and make sure the belt is still strong and pliable without excess wear.

8. Fill ‘er up. Gas gauges can get a little fussy on older cars. That half tank it’s promising might be two gallons instead. Also, evaporation has been at work over the long (long, long, long) winter. If your gauge isn’t solid as Sears, reset the trip odometer with each tankful and use that as a backup miles-to-empty reminder.

See ya on the road!

A wrecking yard transmission often doesn’t come with the shifter. The ‘63 Buick Special T-10 four-speed I scooped up from a Wisconsin yard did. While I have no immediate plans to use it–Hurst, baby, all the way–letting a rare piece like this sit rusted and seized wasn’t right.

So in she went to meet a few shop friends–wire wheel, glass-bead cabinet, hammer & drift, and hand press.

Disassembly was not easy. Even though this gearbox sat inside a wrecking yard warehouse for maybe 30 years, corrosion seized the pins that move the levers and hold the gear stick to the main shaft. It also locked the shaft in place. Nothing budged…. but this is what shops are for.

It took a hot wrench to get the pin out that grabs individual levers. A good penetrating oil soak, hammer and drift coerced the pin holding the gear stick to let go, and the main shaft, with equal oil dousings, finally listened to a large hand-press’ well articulated arguments concerning shearing force and pounds per square inch.

The wire wheel, with a little glass-beading for tight corners, buzzed off all that grungy, scummy, crud, and we were back to the plain metal pieces GM workers put together 45 years ago. These would not have been painted by the factory but they lie unseen once installed–by anyone who might end up with this piece–and I wanted the nice appearance to stick around and rust to stay away.

Assembly awaits another day, though I won’t wait too long or parts might disappear. (We have cats and batting around small objects provides them the same fun that a good game of pool gives us opposable-thumb types.)

A friend of mine with a ‘62 Buick Skylark called yesterday to say the Coen brothers were filming in Minneapolis this summer and needed cars from the 1960s as background vehicles. He was sending in a shot of his car–good choice Joel and Ethan, if you ever see this site–and suggested I offer my cars.

(Bracket before wire wheel, primer, paint.)

Though mine are too new–the ‘69 MGB GT would pass notice by all but hardcore MG enthusiasts–once the conversation turned to my garage, my buddy had to give me some grief for not having the TR6 done.

(Bracket after wire wheel.)

On that note, here’s the bracket started below, all painted and ready to keep my battery from wandering into the engine cavity on a hard stop. See T.V.–I am working on it! Hope readers are nudging things forward too now that you can hold a wrench outside without the bones in your hand hurting from the cold.

(Bracket after wire wheel, primer, semi-gloss black paint. Good ’nuff.)

Parts gathering for the long-lived, slow-moving TR6 project is mostly complete. The car was short a battery bracket, though, and traveling without one is a bad idea because a loose battery can hop around, short across the terminals and start a fire.

Ebay is a pretty good spot for such odds ‘n’ ends and an original one for ’72 Triumphs turned up for 15 bucks. It wasn’t flawless, but flawless is boring anyway.

When I go back to get the back bumper overrider, which I left with a friend who cut the Bolt from Krypton out with a cutting torch, I’ll use his wire wheel to buzz the rust off this and give it a nice coat of primer and semi-gloss black.

First, though, it needed some straightening. For slightly misshapen flat steel, a few level hammer blows got the job done just fine. I hit directly on the steel since I’m going to repaint it and used a flat block of wood behind for support. (In the photo below, the little flare to the left of the hammer head is a stamping mark.)

One of the mounting rods was also bent. No big deal as these are soft steel. A vise handled that task, used two ways. I clamped it just below the bend and did a little hand straightening that way, then clamped lengthwise to press out most of the rest of the deformation.

A couple small wood blocks, a little observation and some crushing a couple different directions did the job. It isn’t perfect, but I use the can-anyone-see-it? standard and when the answer is no even for myself, it’s OK.

Finally, chasing the threads with a die will make for easy clampdown when the part goes in–soon!

Sustained puddles are beginning to appear outdoors. That means the ancient oracles may be right–the ice and snow may indeed recede, producing a period of milder weather across much of the hemisphere.If this prediction proves true, we can actually use our classic vehicles again! Anybody open the garage door and start up anything interesting lately? Â

Rust is the bane of the classic car world. It’s ugly, it’s destructive and left festering long enough, it can gnaw important chassis or steering components to the point where they are no longer strong enough to trust.

But surface rust is rust you can beat. This slip yoke was bolted to the back of a 45-year-old Borg Warner T10 that sat on a wrecking yard’s shelf in want of a buyer (a lucky buyer!) for decades. It looked rough–in other words, perfect for my favorite rust removing tools, a bench grinder with wire wheel and a glass-bead cabinet.

The wire wheel buzzes off rust with aplomb, leaving a polished shine on this steel casting.

It’s a wheel though, and while careful angling can get its rust-scrubbing bristles into some nooks, others are too tight for a large spinning disk to reach into.

That’s where the glass-bead cabinet shines (figuratively). In fact, it leaves a satin finish, but its gritty blasts can reach tight gaps and corners and blow rust into the ether.

These two shop bulwarks and about ten minutes’ effort brought a piece rough enough you might throw it in the scrap bin back to like-new condition. Now that’s just fun.