Keeping up the pace set yesterday with the install of the motor, I decided to spend most of the day today working on the car. I’m exhausted now, but it was nice to get some more done on the car. I started by thinking about mounting the radiator but ran into issues, then went to installing the driveshaft but ran into issues and ended up with mounting the radiator… with issues.
I started the day off wanting to get the radiator installed. I hadn’t really looked at the Factory Five manual to see what was involved and figured (correctly) that it was going to be different because I’m using a Ron Davis radiator and not a Ford Mustang radiator. I also figured (correctly) that the manual would be very little use.
I had bought the radiator fan shroud from Breeze Automotive, and started off with getting the fan from Factory Five traced on the aluminum face and cutting out the opening on it. A couple bolts, and that was all set.
It turned out that there really isn’t any parts included to get the radiator mounted. I’m not sure yet exactly how I’m going to do it, but I may just order Breeze’s setup. (Once again kicking myself for not having just bought all this stuff from Breeze — I’m convinced I’d be mostly done by now if I added up all the days wasted because I didn’t…) Their setup has a piano hinge on the top and an insulated crossmember it rests on along the bottom. I’m betting that I get it in and find that I don’t have the right hoses I need either. Just wait a couple weeks, I’m sure I’ll have a post about that, too. Thankfully I think the hoses I need I can find locally fairly easily.
I set the radiator aside and decided I really needed to replace the computer in the garage. All the searching for information about radiator mounting just made it massively clear it was finally time to do it. I had a Dell Dimension 4400 sitting in the house unused, so I took an hour and ripped the guts out of the old dual Celeron system I had in the garage and got the Dell up and running using the harddisk and stuff from the old system. Its MUCH better now.
I figured a quick task I could do next would be to install the starter. Its two bolts, drops right in, piece of cake. Well, not so much…
For some reason, the bolt holes in the aluminum spacer plate are not 3/8″, the size of the bolt that needs to pass through them to the threads on the bell housing. This set me back most of the day, but I finally did get it worked out this evening. I had to go to Sears and drop $80 on a standard tap and die set…
Thankfully the mounting holes in the bell housing were accessible from behind. I ran the 3/8″-16 tap through them two holes and basically threaded the aluminum spacer plate. A little loctite and the two bolts were in.
In between realizing I couldn’t mount the starter and getting the tap/die set, I also did some work on the fuel lines. I got the 5/16″ mounted temporarily to the car, although I forgot to take pics of that. I also worked on the fittings for the return line in the rear. Much like I had to run through some adapters and flex lines with the fuel line running to the front of the car, I had to do the same with the return line.
I had bought a double-ended stainless line a few weeks ago from NAPA that fit the quick-connect connector on the line running back into the fuel pump. The first thing I did was cut it in half with a pipe cutter. This little piece of metal was $15, so I was crossing my fingers this was all going to work. Once that was done, I bent one of the two pieces and then used my double flaring tool to put a small bubble flare in the end.
It turned out though that the card line I fabricated worked well, it wasn’t really going to fit the way I was thinking, so I had to bend the other one and mount it in a different spot.
This seems to work well. I used two clamps to hold it in place.
The one last thing I did was look at installing the drive shaft. Unfortunately, contrary to what we guessed putting the engine in, there really is no way to fit it into the tail of the transmission without at least lowering the transmission and I may need to unbolt the engine. Thats going to need help, so I’ll wait until the weekend and get someone to come give me a hand.
In all, a fairly productive day even if I lost a few hours trying to figure out the radiator and starter issues.