Fred's Page

  

Hello one and all,

Well last month I mentioned Dan Schwartz and I, have projects of building a new rear end for our ’32 coupes. For my project I had picked up “literally in a field” an old Ford rear end for $20. When I unloaded it off my truck I noticed a weld ring around the torque tube. That told me that it had been shortened at some time. I took a tape and measured from the back of the “bell”, (this is the bell shaped enclosure that houses the universal joint at the back of the transmission and in front of the drive shaft housing) to the flange at the back end of the drive shaft. Then I crawled under the ’32 and measured it, well to show that a blind sow can sometimes find an acorn, it was the same distance. Oh happy day!!! I really thought I had cut a fat hog on my $20 gamble. Last week I got it apart and the thing looked as though it had been in “Davey Jones Locker” for 20 years! Water had ruined everything inside, I think I can save the drive line tube and maybe the drive shaft.

These are the two items that I would need special work on for the project, but was hoping to get more out of it than that. I have another rear end in my shop now to disassemble and I hope to get more parts from it.

On the race car end of things, Lynda and I went to Oregon for 12 days so she could meet my family and friends. I did an 1/8 mile drag race at Coos Bay where I pulled a major boo-boo of getting the C-4 trans. in park at 90 mph. I inadvertently got my finger ahead of the shift handle and raised the t-handle that releases the reverse lock out lever. Apparently when it went into reverse and the drive train came to a stop I must have had pressure on the handle and it allowed it to slip on into park. The front tires stayed on the ground so I could steer it, the back tires started bouncing and leaving rubber marks every 10-15 feet. Then it settled down and let two solid marks for quite a ways, then it started going right and came off the ground, so the left tires were leaving a mark. At that point I remember thinking “by golly this thing just might roll over”. I steered to the left and it came back on all four wheels, then pulled right again and slid to a stop cross ways on the track. One of my first thoughts was “I wonder if I have any fresh under wear in the tow car”. I started it up and gave it a really good shot of acceleration on the shut off area and every thing seemed o.k.

The next weekend we raced at Medford. I gave it two runs on Friday evening and every thing appeared to be o.k. We put Lynda in the car that evening for 3 runs and she did every bit as well as I did. Saturday she made 5 runs and did great. Sunday we were going to get 3 practice runs, then elimination begin. The car didn’t work right on the first run. The second run she told me it wasn’t shifting right although while stopped it appeared to work properly. She tried running it again and it appeared to be in drive, but was stuck in 2nd and it got the engine so hot that smoke was coming out of the breather, my take apart micro-oil screen is showing bits of bearing material. It was time to rebuild it anyway, 5 years without any problems.

I am happy to say that Dick Flynn’s advice about running 190 degree thermostats in the ’32 seem to be working. I haven’t pulled any long grades, but according to the temp. gauge on these hot days we’ve been having it seems to be staying under 210 degrees. The gauge for the left side of the engine shows about 8 degrees less than the right side. I figure it’s just a difference in the gauges’, but if anyone should know of a mechanical reason for this, I would appreciate hearing about it. Contact me
@ 530-878-2438 and we can discuss it on next month’s page. All for now, stay right side up.