Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Back On Track

Well, now that it has cooled off, a decent amount of progress has been made.  It is great to be back on track.  The battery box was hand made by Ron and welded into the trunk.  The battery cables were grounded into the trunk and the the other was run up to the engine.


A steel-braided fuel line was run back from the fuel pump to the rear end where the tank will be re-installed.  There are still some small dents that need some massaging.










We initially were going to go with a 10-bolt rear end, but we were able to locate a '57 Pontiac rear end that was a 17- spline as opposed to a 15-spline with the 10-bolt.  Now, I had no idea what that meant until Ron explained it to me.  I still walked away scratching my head.  But when he said it makes the rear end stronger, allowing me to "light the tires up" if I wanted...that made sense to me.  It is strange to me that I started this project with the desire to have a cruiser, not really caring if it went fast.  But the longer I hung out with Chris Parese (my buddy who helped me yank the original engine) and Ron, the more excited I am about the first time I have to back off the throttle because the back end is getting loose.

In this last photo you can see where we let the exhaust end with just a couple of turn-downs just past the Flowmasters. We left it like that so that we could run the exhaust over the rear axle once we lower it. I will throw a set of 3" lowering blocks on the back, then decide if we need to de-arch or remove some leafs. Then we can run the pipes over the top. But if it sounds cool, I may just leave it.


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