Frame-Up

The new gloves for the blast cabinet showed up on Thursday and I received an e-mail from Harbor Freight that the glass bead has been shipped. Should have the cabinet back in service this coming week.

I received an answer to the e-mail I sent to my brother from a different mother concerning the pros and cons of running the distributor on the slant-six without the vacuum advance. He gave me chapter and verse, as I knew he would, about the need for it. Besides quoting the whys and wherefores, he even cited some of the results of his own research on his big block Chevy motor. The bottom line is I should run the distributor with the vacuum advance.

After giving some thought to a couple of different remedies I fell back on a welding/fabricating solution. Makes sense, right? Since that's my strong suit, I'll go with what I know. I'm going to cut a 5" section out of the frame rail, bridge underneath the missing section with a 12" piece of tube the same size as the frame rail, and make a plate that will close in the outside of the frame rail that will bolt to the top and side of the original frame rail and to the piece bridging the bottom, the pattern for which is in the photo. I'll weld some nuts inside the tube bridge and on the top side of the original frame rail. I'll also weld in some pieces of round stock that have been drilled and tapped in the side of the frame rail. The plate to replace the missing section of frame will then bolt to the bridge and the top and bottom of the frame rail. I'm also thinking about bridging across the top of the joint with a piece of round tubing.

I need to bolt up the cylinder head and valve cover to see where the tubing bridge might go. Be nice if I could make it work right underneath the hood. The engine is going to stick out on the right side of the car and the exhaust will stick out on the left so there won't be much in the way of side panels to cover the engine. I should probably get the distributor clearance taken care of first thing. If that's not going to work, no point in thinking about anything else. I still don't have a clear vision of what the front grill shell should look like. Once I get the engine position finalized I'm hoping that will help clear the fog so I can figure out the radiator placement and the grill.