motorman7

I'll pass. You are mistaken on items 1 and 2 so you already have discredited yourself. If you care to belabor the point, you can refer to the earlier pictures here which show you are incorrect. If you doubt the authernticity of this motor, I can show you my personal vehicle which has been in the family for 55 years and is well documented showing the same thing.

I tried my MAPP Torch and it was not even close to getting the exhaust manifold red, so I think I will pop for the Induction Heater.

That seems like the best approach, but they are a little pricey. I saw that you used one on the intake manifold tube fitting and was intrigued. I've used a torch and ice cubes in the past, but it was not very effective on the manifold because of its size I think.

The exhaust manifold will be a bit of a project. I don't beleive that the air galley will be salvagable as the attach fittings are pretty rusted onto the manifold. I will soak these in rust penetrant for a couple more days, but most likely I will need to cut off the air galley, remove the fittings and re-tap the holes.

I have two fuel pumps, the one that came with the car and one sent by the owner. The one that came with the car looks like it had the cap replaced for some reason. The base looks like the original Nikki, but the cover is an Ampco. I cleaned up the original and will go with that. If anyone has a Nikki top cover, please contact me. Thanks

Currently I am working on cleaning up the electrical harnesses. New Connector blocks and terminals from Vintage Connections came in last week. Harness pics are below. The last one is the cleaned up section. Also looks like the ID tags are in good shape and salvagable.

I have been pre-assembling some of the suspension parts. Looking forward to actually puttling these on the body. The owner sent me two radios to check for operation. One produces sound but the seek is slow, so I will clean that one up. The other operated nicely, but couldn't find a station. Both had the same antenna set-up, so not sure what's up with that one. 20250222_125123.mp4

The body is now at the weld shop and the replacement panels from KF Vintage have arrived. The welder, Larry, said the panels were very good quality and nice thickness. Panels are now being installed. Pics are below. Work is being done by L&L Restomods. https://www.llrestomods.com/

I have two 2400 valve covers, one from the original motor and one that the owner sent. I was not happy with the painted valve cover, although it looks pretty, as it would get dinged by the ZCON judges as not the original finish. Also, it's not the original finish. So, I just decided to clean up the original valve cover. I am much happier with that. Looks much better. Pics below

I have been delinquent in posting updates, but finally have a little time so here goes. I will break this up into several posts so the pictures won't be overwhelming. It took almost 5 weeks to get the engine parts from Motorsports, but once they arrrived it gave me all the hardware I needed to finish the engine. The shipment was delayed for the stock piston rings. The motor went together pretty smoothly with no hiccups. The only item that was odd, and I'm guessing it's an early car item, is that the timing chain did not have the two timing links, 42 links apart. There was just one bright link and it actually had a clip feature on it so that it could be easily removed. Can't say I have seen that before. I did not take a pic of it, but may show that in the future. Pics of the engine are below.

Now I need to find a Nikki top cap.

That is perfect, Thanks!

I know this is an old thread, but can anyone get me a side view of an Ampco pump? I am curious to see if it says Ampco on the side housing.

The body shop finally had room availabe so we brought the car and all the panels down to the shop. The plan is to media blast next week and then determine what panels will need to be replaced. Got the Block and Head back from the machine shop today. Both look great and nicely done. The block only needed a hone which is good, so we can stick with the original stock pistons and just get new rings. Bearings will be replaced with new stock rod and crank bearings. Oil galleys were cleaned and oil filter check valve and filter screen replaced. The head had just one bad valve and all of the intake valve seats were replaced with the modern 'bronze' seats. Valve guides were replaced. The exhaust valve seats had been replaced during previous machine work. I spent a little time sorting some of the plated hardware putting some of the more common parts in bags. This will help things to move along a bit quicker during assembly time. Pics are below

This is what I used. I initially used an Olive green but it was too light, so I went to Ace hardware and got a darker green. I used the center part of the horn as the 'master' as it was in the best condition. The Camouflage paint is flat, so I added the gloss clear. A thin semi-gloss may be a little bit better replication. I think the green is maybe a bit on the glossy side, but they do look pretty doggone close to the original.

Since we were on the subject of horns, I just went ahead and rebuilt them. Pictures are below. I added a view of the horn coil. You can see that the copper is not plated. (Also, aluminum or any material other than steel will not plate) Also, I noticed the inside of the horn has a round metal part versus the later rectangular part. Maybe that is unique to the early car horns? I am pretty happy with the color of the horn front cover in its match of the original. I used a dark forest green camouflage paint with a clear coat for the color. I was only able to salvage one gasket from the original horns out of four, so I scanned the gasket and made 3 more.

No problem at all. I have rebuilt several sets of horns with this plating. No issues.

This is the inside. I put the rest of the parts in a zip lock bag

The Zinc parts came back from plating and look great. Pictures are below. Also shown are a couple examples of the shrink sleeve used to protect the plastic carb linkage ends and sealing of the cavities of the anti-backfire valve. The oil pan had a few dings in it so I used a little bondo to smooth those out prior to paint. Front grill was a little tweaked, to I disassembled that, straightened the pieces, then re-assembled and painted.

No, I just put everything in a zip lock bag as I know the boxes will get beat up in shipping. Also, I do not overpack the bags, but everything fits comfortably, bags are cheap. I also add a little packing material around the bags. Can't say that I have had any parts lost. Even the small lock washers do fine and are returned nicely plated. Only issue I ever had was a few leaky parts that dripped onto the batch and stained some of the plating on return shipping. (Smog check valve and distributor vacuum chamber are examples of parts that need to be plugged)

The fuel and brake lines were also sent to Sav-On plating. They were put in the large-long box in the earlier pictures. They will be rack plated. So there will be three plating batches run at the plating shop: one batch of barrel silver/clear zinc, one batch of barrel gold/yellow zinc, and one batch of rack plating gold/yellow zinc for the larger parts. Cost is roughly $250 per batch. The smaller parts are processed in the 'barrel', and Sav-On does a good job of cleaning these. I believe they are tumbled together for cleaning, so plastic portions of parts need protection. (I used shrink sleeve on the carb linkages). Not sure what they do to clean the larger parts and tubing, so I clean these up better using solvents and light sand or steel wool. Also, any parts with cavities need to be plugged or they will retain processing solvent and leak on your parts during return shipping. (Learned by experience).

Yes, that is basically what I did, every single nut and bolt. That's why it ends up being so many boxes. The only exception is the carbs and fuel pump. Owner has a pretty set of rebuilt carbs and fuel pump. Horns were disassembled and fasteners sent to plater.

Progress continues on S/N 00042. A number of items are out at vendors and should be returning all before the end of the month. Undercarriage parts will be media blasted tomorrow and then sent to the paint shop. Plated parts are finishing up and should ship either tomorrow (1/17/2025) or Monday. Engine block and head are at the machine shop and should be here before the end of the month. The body will be sent to the metal repair guy before the end of the month, so lots going on over the next couple weeks. At this point, I am most eager to get started on the engine, so I will monitor that one closely. I already have the engine gasket kit and am cleaning up parts so I am ready to go. In the mean time, I have been cleaning and painting some of the different parts. Below are some pics of the finished items. The motor mount brackets were pretty interesting as they were all of three colors. The base color is black. Over that is a light blue overspray. on top of that is a dark blue overspray. I am pretty sure this is all factory, so it must have been an interesting process for these early cars. Since the base color was black for the mounts I went with that,as the blues appeared to just be overspray. I do not think that I will try to replicate the overspray. I cleaned and painted the rear half shafts in the original black. The rubber boots were in good condition so I just cleaned them up. I kept the overspray on the original metal ties intact, although I was tempted to clean that off just to get a little color in the assembly. The half-shafts of S/N 2614 are shown below for color reference.

Like this...threaded hole on lower part of wheel well.

I am starting to clean up parts now, so figured I would start with the differential. A lot of the undercarriage parts have a healthy coating of dirt on them as you can see in the picture of the differential below. I think the combination of dirt and oil on the parts created a nice protective coating as there does not appear to be much rust....just a lot of oily dirt. Typically I would leave the aluminum bare on the differential as I think that looks very cool, however, we are planning on making this as close to the original as possible so the entire diff, except for the stud threads, are painted black. Pics below.