"Brakes" in The Action that has been keeping me away from my project - Kind of.
So I have a lot of balls up in the air, The Dart is still at the body shop getting beautified. This winter has been insane so the guys have been working hard to keep up.
Ball 1
I did have a small issue with my AMD order. it turned out that the supplier accidentally shipped two left door jambs... no problem I made a call and worked it out got the RH piece in and good to go.
BUT wait!, the AMD skins looked so good on the left quarter I thought - Hmmm, maybe I should consider the right side also.
I call up the supplier and ask for a RH Qtr. skin. "NO prob I'll ship'em both (skin and jamb) together is that cool?" Of Course that's cool
[Five Minutes passes] "Hey, guess what?" What? "AMD is no longer making the Qtr.Skin..." WHAT! why? "Not selling not worth manufacturing.." Oh man that sucks, let me get back to you. Now I call AMD and it's true no more Qtr.Skins and no plans to fab any more. I ask what about a full Qtr. Those are on Back order and they target late April or June but not likely. Dang! Now I have to hunt down supplier stock.
We talked it over and it was borderline. Meaning that the right side looked better than the left but it still had a lot of filler and a cluster of dents just in front of the wheel. Now We dig deeper since we might have to save it.
Ball 2
The 340 is sitting on the "Run stand" ready to go. I was waiting for a couple of hoses and a sensor to come so I could wrap up the run prep [Done} Just needed to mount the a cheapo set of header and start the party. BUT the headers Ended up hitting the run stand. The angle of the header and the length of the drop made it unusable.
Big deal you might say... well not really but kind of, modifying the stand is out of the question so I pulled the HP manifolds I just finished and will use those instead. except they don't have the heatriser and I haven't plugged it yet because I am hopeful I will find one for a reasonable price
. In the mean time I am working through the exhaust solution in between other things. As much as I want to hear it run life interrupted.
Ball 3
This came out of the blue... I picked up a set of K-H brakes from a 68 Barracuda. I've been throwing around the idea of upgrading my drums to discs for a while. My main requirements were keep it period correct and hold on to the small bolt pattern. So, when had a chance to pick up a set with everything I needed l from a member, I pulled the trigger . I picked up the master cylinder, reman calipers and Rotors from rock auto, and the prop valve from inline tube.
This is what it looked like when I received it.
I started with the right side [clean up]
Then the full POR-15 treatment. [Got some POR in the caliper threads on the spindle and had to chase them with a tap]
Replaced the bearing races and reused the wheel studs
installed the spindle gasket, and packed bearings, then loaded the hub with grease. Installed the bearing, seal and the calipers.
on to the next one as time permits.
btw, not having the Dart in the garage right now is really nice.. BUT.. I do miss seeing it when I come in.
Happily stumbling along.
