Overly Distracted: 56' Vicky Part 2

The picture below is the result of two weeks of pressure washing and de-greasing. I would let the engine soak and go back to cleaning out the mice nests in the rest of the car. I had already gone though the brakes and dropped and cleaned the gas tank. A little hint use Oxyclean and boiling hot water in an gas tanks to clean out the garbage, just dump the Oxyclean in first, then the hot water on top, this will make a lot of good foam in the tank! after letting the tank soak awhile I used a small pressure washer to clean out what was left. I let the tank dry for a few days out in the sun before adding a gas tank coating protector.

OK, the car had been sitting awhile, I first pulled the spark plugs and shot a little marvel mystery oil down the cylinders to let soak while I tore down the rest of the external parts of the engine to see the status. I needed to prove that the car could run, before I could start parting any cash into fixing up.

So the only thing I absolutely had to replace off the bat was heater and radiator hoses. The thermostat tested still good, and spark plugs were just cleaned for now.

The Holly carb was removed, everything still moved fine, but if gas was still in the carb when it was parked, then it needed cleaned. Notice the old Sears high performance coil; I didn't trust it, so I tossed it to the side, I had a standard coil that I would use later.

Dan donated a new air cleaner housing, while I had the valve covers off; I figured that I would shoot a little paint I had left over from repairing the inlaw's car. I mostly likely will not use this shade of red on the finished car, but it would dress it up for now. You can see in the background, the shop is filthy at the moment; but after shooting the clear coat, only had one little speck of junk in the paint (a stupid bug!)

Although I had reservations about using a Holly, it was the last known running carb. Looking up the numbers for the engine, this wasn't the original for the 56'; which was fine since I didn't see a rebuild kit listed for that model. The carb that was on there, wasn't marked. had to do some looking up on the net and found it was a 2300 model. Apparently there are about 300 different versions of the 2300. Once again I didn't know if I wanted to run a Holly as I've never had any luck with them. So without wanting to spend and $ on this potential brick; I made some new gaskets and gasketed over the accelerator pump as it was bad, and I just needed the car to start.

During the initial test of cranking over the engine there was no spark, now the system was setup with a funky electronic ignition box, like an older MSD, but had a odd setup of a card under the dash that would switch between the electronic ignition and the standard points. I ripped out that system and switched back over to standard points. unlike modern Ford V8's the distributor is in the rear of the engine, what a pain in the @$$ it is to get to the points.

With a little mini gas tank hanging from the hood (didn't want to put gas in the tank yet), with in a half second of turning the engine over the car fired right up and idled beautifully. We let the car run for a half hour to check out were any of the other problems my be. One of the items on the list was that the clutch would not disengage the transmission to put in gear, the car was on jack stands at this point, so no fear of the car taking off. eventually figured out to some adjustment was needed on the throw arm, but that still didn't fix it. so the car was started in gear, pushed in the clutch and gave gentle pressure on the brakes, that finally popped the clutch disk free.

One of the first issues in the engine compartment was the battery holder; acid had taken the toll over the years and of course, modern battery sizes and changed a bit.

With the try out there was some damage on the inner fender where the battery tray had been flexing over the years

Here's a better shot withe the bracket out of the way, until I can repair this proper it needed a few spot welds to hold together.

Not pretty, but it will hold for now.

I removed the older brackets and cleaned them up a bit.

Drew up a quick design on some old transformer paneling, heavy duty 16 gauge

Trimmed and cut.

I used my break in the shop to give the center a X fold for strength and to make the center be the lowest part of the tray. then used the break again to fold the sides as far as I could.