Legopnuematic’s Shop Projects

I thought it might make more sense to make a thread dedicated to sharing and discussing my shop projects, versus posting snippets here and there in The Conversation Thread and in other places.

It’ll be actual shop projects and projects in the shop and whatever other shenanigans I find myself involved in.

Starting off with, the Green Goblin has found its way back to me lol. This was planned as the car would get up to 220⁰ and never cool back down, getting even hotter when sitting and bad vapor locking (boiling the fuel in the bowls bad). I made the suggestion to ditch the electric fan and go back to a mechanical fan. Not that there is anything wrong with electric fans, just that they have to be good ones and setup right.
It was a Spal fan, but upon looking it up, only 1200cfm, no shroud, no wonder it wouldn't keep up. Ford windstar fans are rated at 4000cfm, which are well regarded.

Luckily, the owner still had the mechanical fan that was on the car before, so simple job of removing the electric fan, and bolt the old fan on right? Wrong!

Thanks to the ribbed flat belt CVF pulley setup, it's much wider than the stock V belts would be, making the fan hit both the crank and power steering pulleys. Requiring a spacer. I used big stacks of washers to see what I needed to make for clearance. 1/2" is what it needed

Also realized the car has a 26" radiator when it should have a 22." That's not necessarily an issue, but no one cut the core support to make use of the extra width rad.

Made up a 1/2" 6061 aluminum BILLET spacer. Some longer bolts and it is good to go.

Or so I thought.

Get it buttoned back up and take it for a test drive, temp had greatly improved. 180° while moving, idling sitting still it gets up to 200°-205° start moving and immediately begins dropping, getting back down to 180°. Heat soaked after shut down got up to 210°, but restart and drops back to 200°, then down further once moving. Big improvement from 220° all the time and heat soaked to 240°+. I’m calling it a win. The owner did buy a factory style shroud, I did not install as it is not compatible with the champion aluminum radiator, and I told him the amount of work it would take to adapt them to work together wouldn’t be worth it for what would really likely be a small improvement.

Discovered the alternator wasn’t charging, it’s a Powermaster 1 wire job, but I noticed that the internal regulator wire was disconnected and was hooked to the firewall mounted voltage regulator. Hmm. Being connected to the firewall regulator it showed 28v at the charge post, connected to the internal regulator, zero volts. Neither configuration showed any change at the battery. This is when the comedy of errors began. The Violet wire from the alternator is the feed for the horn relay, checking the horn relay was nothing, but checking the ground for the horn relay (that goes to the column) had 12v, odd.

So I popped the harness off the bulkhead. Bingo. Burned up terminals at the bulkhead. Kind of a shame, all new M&H harnesses for under hood, but the dash harness is original.
Not its first time getting toasty. It’s a real shame whoever did the install on the harnesses completely ignored the decrepit bulkhead. His has been an issue for a long while. The terminal opposite of the charge wire is the horn ground, so when it burned up the packard terminal and melted the bulkhead, it allowed for the two to touch and thus sending 12v through the horn ground, meanwhile the charge wire and horn feed had nothing as they were a dead end.

So I called and explained my findings and go the go ahead to go through the electrical and make it right. Also removing all the extra un needed stuff and just tidying it all up.

Found this under the drivers seat, I found out this was the current owners doing lol. Best insulated seat in the Midwest I believe.

Removed the orange box ecu as it has a MSD ready to run unit, and all that looming I removed. I don't really care for it myself. I'll leave it in the trunk if the owner wants to put it back on.

Bigger the gob, better the job.

And the burned up packard 56 at the charge wire.

New terminals for the ballast resistor connections.

Someone had added a relay for ignition feed to the MSD, I removed all that and used the factory coil wire and just bypassed the ballast resistor like I have done on my car, Greg's roadrunner and Dart

Got the engine harness cleaned up and reinstalled

Then started tearing the interior apart to pull the interior harness

Lots of odd bare spots on various wires, plenty of which are energized.

Some nice old work for a gauge install.

Twisted and taped for the radio that doesn't work.

First time I've seen a spray painted in place dimmer switch.

Wasn't too bad to get everything apart to pull the harness though.

Get the harness out and boy oh boy.
This isn't a new problem with that amount of corrosion on the charge wire.

The heavy red wire is the feed for the interior, its a fusible link to the starter relay on the opposite side of the bulkhead.

For reference, where the bulkhead is looking through the cluster hole. Why it makes sense to pull the entire harness out versus doing it in the car.

Where key on and start position power was tapped into for the relay for the distributor, cut that out and respliced and heat shrunk

Yummy.

Depinned the harness from the bulkhead

Burn victim

I was able to source a new used not burned up bulkhead thanks to Greg.

Fixed a broken trace for the panel illumination on the gauge cluster.

Man. It never ceases to amaze me what atrocities get found when going through an old, modded car

TotalyHucked said:

Man. It never ceases to amaze me what atrocities get found when going through an old, modded car

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It truly is amazing some of the stuff to be found. It’s one of those (for me at least) that some stuff is so bad I can’t look away.

I was very pleased that the harness itself, minus the bulkhead area, the crummy splice at the ignition switch, and those few odd bare spots of wires, it wasn’t hacked up.

nice work man.

Nice work!

Before the other bright green object showed back up, I had dug into the free chainsaw I was given a few months back. It had sat under a deck for about 20 years (in the case), I got it to pop off on some spray, I had put some fuel mix in the tank and it pumped fuel, and proceeded to leak fuel from the handle all over. I set it aside and finally decided to take a look as I had gotten the other free chainsaw a coworker gave me running (needed a new primer bulb of which I had on hand).

Luckily on this saw a single screw and the handle top comes off exposing the fuel line. Or well, what once was a fuel line. It must have been mostly one piece as it began pulling fuel before it crumpled. Removed the chunks and replaced with a new piece of line and got it to pop off (after a little oil and carb cleaner sprayed down its throat) and after the smoke cleared was running off the tank.


For a smaller saw (32cc I believe) it seems pretty peppy. I need to get a shorter bar and chain for it. I think a 12” bar would do nice on it. I have my big old Homelite (super xl 925, 82cc) for big stuff if needed.

This makes three free chainsaws that required $0 to make run and operate.

CountKrunk said:

nice work man.

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89Suburban said:

Nice work!

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Thanks guys!