56 Ford Fairlane hardtop.

[MercuryMac]

Today the organizing lady phoned again to see how I was doing, --- and to get me to promise which car I would be entering. So it's official now, this Fairlane is going to be shown.
The radiator is in finally, the valve covers have new gaskets and the distributor is dropped in. The cool thing about a Y-block is, there are no visible sparkplug wires. The really uncool thing is that if you put your wires on the motor after you have it in the car, [this is to save the distributor cap from damage during the install], the wires are a rotten bear to get threaded through everywhere. That job is done.
There is not much left for tomorrow.

 

[MercuryMac]

My appointment for the carshow placement was today, Thursday at 10:00.
At 2:00 AM last night I gave up on the Fairlane. I think I have a faulty oil pump. The oil just sprays out of a mounting bolt for the pump. I monkeyed with it a few times, but it is in a really bad place to get at so I gave up and went to bed. This morning I phoned the organizing lady and begged her to let me bring something else. She nodded.
Both my other trucks hadn't been started or even looked at since last fall. They had been in a big shed, but when I got a chance to redo a tractor that was in the same shed, I had to pull the pickups out with another tractor. So they've sat outside, neglected, right where I dragged them to, because it was to cold to get them to start.
This morning, I boosted my black thirty six truck and roared away to town. I shut it off in the wash bay and when it was clean, I found that it hadn't charged up much on the way to town so I was stranded. 10:00 o'clock came and went. So I pulled into the show building quite late with the wrong vehicle.
My last week hasn't been great.

 

[Old Iron]

Sometimes no matter how hard we work, it just doesn't materialize
On the brighter side, look how much farther along you are than maybe you would have been if you hadn't of thrashed on it.

 

[05snopro440]

I almost got stranded with one of mine the other day when I took it to town. Same thing, dead battery after winter storage. I carry my 2000A boost pack with me for the first several drives of the year. It kept me from being stranded on Sunday.

Too bad about the oil leak, Mac. Hopefully you can figure it out without too much trouble.

 

[MercuryMac]

Yes, OI, I'm further ahead of where I probably would have been without a deadline hovering over me. But, you know me, The Flaming Optimist, I wanted to be even further ahead. Oh well.
Snopro, as it turned out the young girl that worked at the wash bay said "Do you want to use our battery pack?" "Heck yes," I thought, but said something more polite. It also turns out that you probably have to recharge your battery packs once in a while. It didn't help at all.
You know that look on your face, when you want to swear a blue streak to relieve your frustration, but you can't because there's a young girl standing right there, well, I had that look. Then the young girl shyly said, " I could boost you with my car". I quickly had a reality check, I'm nosed into a washbay and my battery is inaccessible, is she old enough to have a car, and is she progressive enough to have booster cables?
I started pushing my truck out of the bay, slightly down hill, and with a little momentum, I got it partly into the bay across the centre alley. Now anybody can get to my battery cables at least. In rolls a Jeep and the girl gets out with some booster cables and hooks them up to her car. I had no choice but to hook the other ends up to my truck. It started right up. I thanked her profusely for being so 'on the ball'.
You know how you need a hotrod to drive to a three day car show, but your car is already in the show, well, you need another one even if it's going to sit out in the parking lot. So, I walked up to the other truck that I had dragged out of the big shed in the middle of the winter. I boosted it, got it going, replaced the back bumper which I had ripped off in mid winter, and took a front wheel off the truck to replace a tire that was separating. The rim was too wide and the tire was to slim to bead with what I have here at home. After waiting in a line up at the tire store this morning, I got both of my front tires change over, and got to the car show in time to polish my '36 before the show started.

 

[dutch]

well... another story for in the campfire...

 

[BillM]

Thanks for sharing Mac. I'm pretty sure we have all had adventures like that, at least I know I have. You put a smile on my face this morning!
As Torchie would have said - good on you for "keepin on keepin on!"

 

[Bamamav]

Glad you made it Mac. Sometimes the more we want to go somewhere, the more crapola pops up to keep us from it. Keep on keepin on![cl[cl[cl

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you Guys for the sentiments.
Although I had to keep moving, today went pretty darn OK. Starting with a quick walk through the carshow, then lunch, and the Vintage Tractor Club meeting in another venue, I scrambled back to the carshow in time for their supper. At supper, there were, guest celebrities introduced, auctions, speeches, awards handed out, oh --- and a very nice meal. Three of the guest celebrities were the TV stars that almost made me famous. I was in the supper line-up right by their table, so I talked to them and I'm to meet with them tomorrow morning. They have some questions.
Anyhow here's a picture of my replacement truck in the show, [pic one] and the day to day driver to get to the show [pic two].

 

[dutch]

[cl

 

[Old Iron]

Let us know how that meeting goes.

 

[05snopro440]

Always love to see your Merc, she's a beaut.

 

[Burgerman]

Thanks for bringing us along Mac. Your trucks look superb.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you guys.
Snopro, when you told about having to use your power-pac to start your vehicle, I remembered my power-pac so I charged it up and took it with me. I needed it to start the truck to get out of the show. [So did quite a few other people]. I had snuck in and secreted my booster-pac in the truck, so when it came time to leave, I just hooked the pac up and started the truck. Hardly anybody knew anything was wrong.
In the picture, I am standing next in line to talk to the TV stars of Lost Car Rescue. The white haired fellow in the picture is a friend of mine, and the head organizer of this show. The young woman is the pilot of the show. Anyhow, the tall guy wanted to know about a certain car in my neighbourhood. Also, I'm to send him a list and pictures of what I want to sell.

 

[zzrodder]

Cool! Hey, don't give away the good stuff! [cl

 

[05snopro440]

I'm glad I could help you be prepared!

How was the rest of the indoor car show? Any new and exciting builds?

 

[MercuryMac]

I have a partial correction to make. In the picture of the Lost Car Rescue stars, the white haired guy is the organizer of the Grande Prairie car show, not the TV show that my poor wording suggested.
Yes, there were a lot of nice cars in there. I'll put my car show pictures in the pictures column. Some of the unique ones were, a 1926 Kenworth, a Champaign Edsel, a Model A roadster with a Cadillac flathead motor, a flat white early 50's Chev and a '58 Desoto hardtop. There were quite few Mopar Muscle Cars, new and old.

 

[MercuryMac]

After walking away from the Fairlane in disgust, I went back to it after talking to my engine builder. He said my pump was good and not the problem, but there is a gallery plug just behind and above the pump mount that might be leaking. I thought he was talking about the oil sender hole but no, he said there's another one that's close there. Tonight I checked. He was right, there was a threaded hole just above the pump mount casting. Of course you can't see it when the engine is in the car.
There was no plug in that hole.
In slightly less than an hour and half, I was able to screw in a small pipe plug. I had to make a few different wrenches.
If I'd have caught this when the engine was out on the floor, I could have screwed the plug in there in about one minute.

 

[Bamamav]

I’ve heard of stuff like that before and never could figure out why the guy that took that kind of plug out didn’t put it back in? I mean, we all have memory lapses and forget things like that, especially if it’s been a while between tear down and assembly, but some guy that does it for a living should remember, shouldn’t he?
Glad you found out about it Mac and didn’t go yanking it out again.

 

[MercuryMac]

It was going to be a long, long time before I yanked that motor out, Bama, don't you worry about that.
I'm pretty sure he didn't put that plug in there because he guessed I would put the oil sender in there. If I would have put the sender in while the motor was out on the floor, it would have been easy and I would have seen the open hole. I didn't want to put anything on the motor too early that I might break while I was manipulating it into place. So, after I had the motor in I removed the plug that he did put in, set it in my plugs tray and screwed the sender into the hole I could see. Many days later, I retrieved the painted plug from my plugs tray, and put it in the hidden hole. Now today, I sharpened up my gasket scraper so I can cut metal with it and finally scraped all of the siliconed gasket off the bottom of the block.