Well, at long last and long delay, I think the '57 is going to be finished tomorrow. I haven't tested it yet, though I have started it up. All that's left is to make and weld the small tab on the throttle rod that will hit the overdrive kickdown switch and after that, I will be pulling the '57 outside, taking my '31 over to my dad's barn where the '37 is and bringing the '37 over here to my garage to begin disassembly.
The parts came in to mount the rear end for the '37 so I'll probably be going to the local you-pull-it yard and getting one of the 8.8 Ford Explorer rear ends.
To get the '57 done today I had to fabricate a few parts. My nephew Jacob is 11 and seems to enjoy working on old cars so he comes over and helps me out from time to time. He and I put the transmission in this weekend and I finished up getting the new bearings in. Today I wired everything up and finished up the rest.
First there was a pin missing that mounted the cable that comes from the handle on the dash to the transmission. This engages and disengages the overdrive. The pin is supposed to have a hole in it for the cable to run through but I couldn't find one anywhere so I went to the parts house and bought a pin and used a die my dad recently bought at an estate auction to make a bolt.
It is absolutely necessary that the pin be able to rotate as the lever moves, otherwise the wire will bind up and the assembly will not function. I will probably have to go back later and add some type of grommet to this setup so the pin will not wallow out the hole. Fortunately, this cable is not something that's used often so it's not vital at the moment.
Next I had to make a bracket to mount the kickdown switch to. These brackets are reproduced for v8 applications but none are remade for 6 cylinder. I made a template from cardboard first then made the bracket out of 1/8 inch steel like the original bracket.
Pretty close
Knowing this project was going to happen one day I got an extra throttle rod from a 6 cylinder in a junkyard a while back. The "new" rod was badly bent out of shape and very rusty so I had to reshape it to match my rod.
Next I used some cardboard to mark the location at wide open throttle so the tab that has to be welded on the throttle rod will just hit the switch but won't bottom out and impede full throttle.
Hopefully the next post will be bringing the '37 over to my garage!
