With the decision to rebuild my original 460 into a "460CJ", I've started reassembling the 460 that is in the Tomato now so I can get the car mobile again and get her into a shop for final bodywork and paint. When I pull the current motor out of the car I will then detail out the rest of the engine bay components that I'm unable to access with the engine in place. With that decision made, I've started putting the 460 back together....
I have a very good friend of mine, Charlie Mills who is now retired, acting on my behalf visiting local engine builders to see what their capabilities and knowledge of the 385 series Fords are. He has found a couple very good prospects to tackle the task and one even has an in house dyno!😍
Now the race is on to get the car mobile by the end of Spring so she can finally 🤞🤞🤞get her final colors on!!!
Well after a very long hiatus due to weather and lack of drive, I FINALLY made a bit of progress on the Tomato this past Saturday.
I had recently scored a rare '71 429CJ Rochester QuadraJet carburetor for the rebuild of her original engine. I had also picked up the 429CJ intake a couple years ago and got it all blasted clean in December of 24 so I figured it was time to pull it out and see how things looked together.
Here is the intake before...
and here it is after blasting.
A drive screw that holds the baffle in place on the underside of the intake had it's head snap off during removal. The remnant can be seen in the upper left corner of the baffle area. Also have a little work to do on the baffle itself to get it straighten out...
Once I got the remnant drilled out, I flipped the intake over and set the QuadraJet in place to see how things lined up and what was missing for it's use on my engine...
Couple items I noticed were the bracket and throttle solenoid for use with air conditioning as well as the bits and pieces for the divorced choke arrangement on the Rochester.
Did a quick Google search for the original FOMOCO parts but there are none available at this time. I'll do some digging and see what I may be able to substitute or fabricate.
UNTIL NEXT INSTALLMENT...
ZEBRA 3 OUT
I guess one bright side to pulling everything off the engine
and removing the front sheetmetal is once again being able to access the
firewall, suspension, chassis and transmission lines to address a few things I
noticed weren't quite up to snuff.
FUN FUN FUN
ZEBRA 3 OUT
Well been a couple weeks since I last posted, but I did make some progress the past few weekends.
Got the AC condenser line straightened out…
and marked the core support opening to trim a bit for the transmission auxiliary cooler hard lines to pass thru cleanly.
Next up was to slot the mounting holes on the latch brace to
mount the transmission auxiliary cooler…
and then remounted the cooler level between the latch brace
and headlight bucket brace.
Now that the cooler was positioned correctly, I turned my
attention to designing the transmission auxiliary cooler hard lines. I
straightened a coat hanger to use as my bending pattern and started forming the
hanger to mimic the centerline of the hard line runs.
I was able to use one template to layout the two lines.
The cooler supply line (red) will be hard mounted to the radiator cooler outlet port…
and the cooler return line (blue) will hard mount to the
transmission return line.
I need to find a couple dual 5/16” R clips to keep the two
lines together as they run from the cooler up the core support to the opening
to the engine side of the support.
Once the 5/16 stainless tubes are formed, I’ll add the fittings
and flares to the lines for attaching to the other components.
Next on the agenda is to start breaking the core support
back down and doing another final cleaning/painting of the various pieces
involved with the core support assembly.
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL….
ZEBRA 3 OUT
Well had a somewhat productive day on Saturday. Got the Pertronix ignition coil relay kit about 90% installed on the Wagon. I need to find a male bullet connector that will plug into the female coil wire connector so I don't have to cut into the factory harness. After all she has survived this long without any major modifications so why start now??
I then jumped over onto the Tomato a bit. The new hardware arrived last week so I set about reinstalling the headlight bucket support bracketry onto the core support. I believe the headlight buckets have already been painted but if they haven't, I may rehang them as well to insure everything is where they need to be. With the core support up off the ground, at eye level it's a bit easier to see how things line up.
One thing I did notice is the transmission cooler isn't setting level so I'll remedy that another weekend.
Felt good to work on the 'Mater a bit and see some progress, even though it may be tiny in comparison to all that still remains to get done!!
BABY STEPS ARE BETTER THAN NO STEPS 👍
ZEBRA 3 OUT
