Phew. This was surprisingly easy and there are no real misadventures to report. The 351 Windsor and C6 tranny slid right into place with no profanity.

At first I thought we’d have to cut the hump inside the cab to get it to fit, but there was enough room that I was able to slide my hand all the way around the tranny housing. The oil pan clears the steering arm beautifully as if it were made for it. The exhaust manifold will dump the exhaust behind the steering box.

Unfortunately the cross-member engine mount I bought on the previously-discussed shopping spree will not fit, but we will fabricate new engine mounts from scratch.

Since this automobile (I discovered after spending copious amounts of time underneath her on my back. Sometimes it’s just a nice place to nap…) is two cars welded together and not a single car with an extension, it has two drive lines.  The front shaft - the smaller of the two- has the carrier bearing.  Before removing the carrier bearing from the car, I spun it and it crunched. Call me old-fashioned, but bearings shouldn’t crunch. As I removed it I got an eyeful of Idaho sand. Oh, central Idaho. Land of dry, parched, deserty despair. And then freezing, icy, wasteland in the winter. Instead of using salt on the roads in the winter, they like to pour sand all over the fucking roads. Because salt is apparently precious and not to be used willy-nilly all over the streets. In the end, it was good for us because the salt didn’t eat away at the car. But as a young man living in Central Idaho, cutting my teeth on all the vintage cars I had over the years, I’ve had MANY an eye full of Idaho sand. I thought those days were past. The gritty, burning tears now running down my face were tinged with a certain fondness.

Anyway. Here’s the carrier bearing itself after I disassembled it. The bearing looks good, but the seals are bad. I will take them to work and repack them with new felt and a brand new zerk fitting. It should last us another 50 years.

I’ve have been removing the grime and grease from the 351 Windsor for two weeks. That thing was encased in gross. We’re talking a paint scraper and a flame thrower.

I finally got it clean enough to paint. I go to my local O’Reilly parts place to get the correct engine paint. Standing in line for what seemed like half an hour, patiently (or trying to appear patient) as a very small old Asian guy who spoke no English tried to explain to a small, not so old Mexican man what it was he was holding in his hand and what kind of car it came off of.  Right about the time I was going to step in and say “Give me the fucking thing”, I hear “Hey, Boss. What can I do you for?” from the manager who appeared from the back. So I was not, unfortunately privy to the resolution of the fascinating mystery auto part.

I say to the manager: “I need some paint” while making the hand signal of turning a key so he will unlock the chained up paint cabinet. He’s looks suspicious and pauses, looking me up and down from head to toe. He reluctantly picks up the keys and says “I know you from Alhambra”. I say: “No. I’ve never been to Alhambra.” He responds: “Yeah, man. It was you.” I respond: “Nope.” and point to the grey engine paint in the case. He says: “Holmes” with a tsk and a phhht. I straighten up to my 6’4” and say “I’m Long Beach all the way”. He instantly realizes I am not the infamous Alhambra paint huffer and back pedals, trying to gloss over the awkward moment by telling me a story of his forty-something year old cousin who is a tragic figure with paint stains around his mouth. What?

It is always a fun time at the parts house. Another time we will discuss how I bought a single gasket and was asked by the employee: “Ooh! Are you rebuilding a motor?!”. It was one fucking gasket.

Anyway, I digress.  Here’s a photo of the engine in it’s new stately and oh-so-handsome grey coat.

Here’s the old straight 8 at work. If you’re following along, you’ll know that my boss wanted the old engine for parts.

Yep, there’s an adventure in this step too. It slid to the back of the truck and broke out the glass in the door. I was happy that it didn’t leap out on the 710 freeway.

The engine and I arrived at work safely together and got the behemoth unloaded after lunch… on company time. Yeah! But since the boss is a car guy, these things happen….

So, in this shot we see Dave in the saddle, and Ramsey operating the Coke can.

First off, this is the fucking worst picture of me. (Vain much?) 

I went on an ill-advised but necessary shopping spree. I like to pretend I have the money to have hobbies.

First up is the Edelbrock Performer. A good, split plenum design that works well for the low range and the high range.

Next up is a Holley twin float bowl 600CFM carb. A nice mid-range combination of performance and stability. Our goal is to run this car down the road at 85 with no issues.

(Oooooh, you can hear the ocean….)

Lastly, the cross member for a 351 Windsor. From Speedway motors. Good quality and cheap. Two things that do not normally go together.

(Shop smart, shop at S-Mart. Gimme some sugar, baby.)

Because this straight 8 has the density of a black hole, it was going to be hard to get it past the hearse (12 inches clearance at two points) without using the cherry picker.  As stated in the previous post, the weight of this old engine caused the hydraulics in my half-ton cherry picker to screech and fail. 

I used the cherry picker to put the engine on an old wooden moving dolly with iron wheels. I attached a chain to the engine and used the jack handle to pull it slowly down our very long driveway.  Thankfully, my cherry pickers legs fold up so I was able to squeeze it past the hearse and use it to put the old straight 8 in the back of my pickup truck. I did have to keep pumping it as it was being challenged to hold up that old engine Which incidentally caused the truck to drop at least a foot once it was loaded.

The engine is going to my boss at work who also owns a 1952 Pontiac. His is a 2-door Chieftan. He is (also) a hoarder of all things vintage and he wants it. Better him than me. Goodbye, iron monstrosity.

You’d think this would be a fairly easy operation. But as you can see, our driveway is narrow and we don’t have more than a foot of space on either side of the hearse after we pull it away from the fence. There is one wide spot, but then there are two arches (four stucco pillars) behind me that make the drive even narrower than what you can see. Our house was built in 1921 and anyone in an old house (at least in CA) will understand that the driveways and garages were constructed with the Model A in mind.

Because of the excessively narrow driveway, it was nearly impossible to remove the rear engine mount on the passenger side.  I couldn’t wedge underneath the car from the side and had to roll under from the front. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m 6’4” and that didn’t help matters. Neither did the fact that I don’t have an acetylene torch here. Just brute strength and a can of WD40. All those issues were compounded by the fact that I decided to start this project during the heatwave. I realize that a lot of the country was hit by that nasty heat wave, but here in Long Beach, we are spoiled by temperate weather and it never gets really hot or cold. Except on this particular weekend when it hit nearly 100 degrees. But here, in the sunshine, on the concrete, sandwiched between two buildings made of more concrete, my garage became the eye of Hades. The thermometer by the garage door said 112.  I temporarily lost control of my mind. I stared at that red line for 30 years, or maybe 10 seconds; hard to say. I set my tools down and went inside and laid on the floor. I decided to start again early in the morning the next day.

The next day:

Grease, road grime and general filth had turned to a concrete-like substance that encased the entire underside of the carriage.  On the plus side, all the nuts and bolts are in great shape and nothing was actually rusted solid. With all the bolts off, I was ready to pull the engine out. But wait. There are adventures.

It’s rare, but I’ve heard a machine groan in protest. But on this occasion, it was more of a mechanized revolt. I realized at that point, that this straight 8 weighed fractionally more than the sun.

Halfway over the crest of the radiator support, the high pitched squeal of hydraulic failure was an unwelcome sound. I pulled as fast as I could so the tail section of the trannie did not rake itself violently down the front of the car. Once cleared, the engine descended to the pavement and sat there benignly disinterested in the next step which was to get it loaded into the truck to take it away.

The hearse on the first day of Operation Bionic Chief.  About to pop the bonnet and pull the old Straight 8 out.

We went North to sell and barter goods and services with the woodland creatures. Yep. But that is an entirely different story.

So, here we go. And to kick things off, here’s a picture of our amazing and fabulous blue Pit, Ajax. Who is actually quite chubby and has gigantic bat ears. He’s doing a bang-up job as a ghetto-pit in this photo, looking all lean and crop eared.

Back in high school I dated the girl whose father owned one of the local funeral homes and this hearse sat in the back.

Many attempts from people over the years never resulted in so much as response from the owner of the hearse. This hearse was not for sale. He told one person “I will let it rot before I sell it.”

Until, for some reason, my future wife made a vague offer to buy the car while he was sitting in her bar. He said “Sure. $500”. She had no idea how monumental the willingness to part with the hearse was and just how many people had asked to buy this car over so many years.  

Unfortunately, he was an odd man (asshole) and when she didn’t call the next day he decided to have the junk yard tow it away; no doubt thinking “That’ll teach her”.  So when she did call two days later only to find he’d had it towed for scrap, she had to go to the junk yard and buy it for double the price. Yep, a whopping $1,000.  And although it was the mid-90s and that was more expensive than now, it was still a ridiculously cheap price.

I remember going over to the house that afternoon after the junk yard delivered it, and there it was, parked outside her back fence.  In my excitement to fuck around with it, I put a battery in it. I jumped inside, thought “Ooooh, what’s this little button do?” (Starter button. Didn’t know.).  WHAM! it shuddered and launched forward right into my 1972 Dodge van, busting out the Indian Head bumper medallion. Still, that wasn’t the worst damage done in the first hour. My roommate at the time decided to kick the tires and he kicked out the glass Indian Head hubcap center. Fucking monkeys, the both of us.

My wife just stared at us.

Here’s a photo of the bumper medallion. The hubcaps are long gone. Probably stolen in the years it sat behind the house we used to live in. Her mother owned the house, so when we left the state, we left it parked there. Eventually, we made a trip back and squeezed it into the one car garage. At that time, she had two hearses, but the other one, 1965 Cadillac hearse from the owner of the competing funeral home, was mistakenly sold to a “friend” who turned around and sold the fucker. She never spoke to him again. By the way, she saved that white Cadillac hearse from being sold to a guy who planned to turn it into a monster 4x4 kegger party wagon. That one she got for $700.

It took us 15 years before we were reunited with the Pontiac hearse. Fortunately for the hearse. Because in those years I have grown mad skills with other rebuilds and am considered a master mechanic.  Finally we are ready to give our love and attention to the Rusty Old Beast.  She hasn’t yet told us her name, but when she does, we’ll let you know.

So here is a photo of the grill medallion. Not the same one of course. Not the one that was in bright shiny condition, because I broke that one as my wife likes to remind me. This one I found while walking with my friend Charlie through an abandoned junkyard in Southern Ohio that was so wet that every car there was rotted to the window sills. As I sludged through the mire of brambles, poison oak, and tetanus inducing booby traps, I spotted what was once a canary yellow Chieftan convertible. In my excitement to run (the kind of ‘running’ you do in a nightmare) I went to reach for the medallion in the grill and tripped and fell through the grill. Literally. There was no metal left. There was only a ghostly latticework in the shape of a grill. And when I hit it, it turned to dust. Muddy sludge dust.

As we pulled the motor from the back of the truck, a large puddle formed at our feet. To my dismay I found that the trannie mount on the tail section of the C6 is fucked.

A call to Brother Watts who we got the motor from: “Give me the numbers, I may have one for you”. Problem solved? We hope it is that easy!

Off to packing for a week’s vacation… more when we come back.

July, 2012