'60 Cab project

[Jim Nelson]

We made some progress today as the deadline for taking it to the interior folks looms. Finding all the parts that need to go there has been an interesting exercise, cause you have to think of all the stuff they need, which is a lot. But we do have a good deal of bits to go there. Today we put regulators in the doors, as well as the various open/close parts, and installed the doors:

Looks a lot better with doors. A LOT of time chasing threads. We affixed the seat bottoms:

Larry rebuilt the petcock, and we installed the fuel tank:

This is the glovebox lock, and if you take it apart, be prepared for a lot of patience putting it back together (there might be some points where you turn the air blue, as well)...:

Larry got up early on Thursday and got a fresh start with this:

We got lucky and found the right narrow hood seal:

And things are starting to come together.....

[Jim Nelson]

We got a few things done today, like getting the rest of the petcock operating gear installed, properly aligning the hood, which we had to swap hinges to do, as their right/left markings got blasted off in all the excitement, made and installed the ground wires for the horn/turn signals, and started noodling over things like tool kits, key fobs, and stuff like that, All the interior pieces are boxed, and we're ready to head down next week.

So we finished up some little bits, as well. Apparently Mercedes still sells the ash tray for the car, but the bracket it sits in is just a little bit different than the Porsche one:

...and we tried to decide what Porsche was thinking about when they put just any wallpaper on the back of the bracket (remind anybody of their mother's kitchen?) :

But now the front lid fits...

..so we're moving on to the things like headlight drain tubes, more grommets, etc.:

[Jim Nelson]

More detail work. Making sure the electrical connections are clean, have great grounds, and are in the right spot.

We decided to use a day/night mirror in the car, which has a different mount than the original mirror, which was on the tension rod. The latches for the top have a different mount location, so that involved (nervously) drilling and tapping. Here's the mount, which also acts as the middle latch, but we'll wait until the car gets back to put the mirror on:

Rethinking the approach the guys that made the bumper guards used for the exhaust funnel. Gotta have a shorter stud....:

At the end of the day, it's starting to shape up:

[Jim Nelson]

We finally found a mirror we liked, the other ones we looked at had some issues. Wide variances in base sizes, some off so much there was no way to make a base gasket fit:

Baby steps before the interior gets put in, but it takes a long time to make sure its right:

Houston, we have ignition....(sort of...)

[Glen Hamner, Jr]

Lots of great shots with excellent enlargement qualities. Noticed the nose of the cab centered in the round mirror over the work bench, moving air in the barn and having good music in the air seem to maximize one working environment. What type music is preferred by your wrench, never understood shops without lots of moving air and good music.

[Jim Nelson]

Thanks Glen, we are having some fun doing this. Some days are BB and Stevie Ray, some jazz, some true classics (the Mozart/Bach stuff), some Zep, we're all over the place, pretty diverse mix.

Back bumper ready to go:

Ready for....ah....the bumper:

We did the front bumper as well, and the horn grills, and made a final inventory of what needs to to go to the interior folks; rear went on like this, we must have fiddled with the bumpers for a couple of hours:

Finally, it's all loaded and on its way:

[Dan Kalinski]

Oh, So, Nice!

[Glen Hamner, Jr]

Eclecticism, definitely a 356 thing, especially among the outlying outlaws and over the top preservation geeks. Its really been difficult to not visit our painter to have the same color coating layered over all this hard work. Well, I'm working on it, not. More piss and vinegar please, or, I'm never going to see the light of day with this compulsive obsessive diversion with things 356. Its not even an original color for my year, ohhhh what the hell, its what my dreams go all queasy that counts.

[Jim Nelson]

Next time we see it, it'll look a lot different.....

[M Penta]

Talk about a nut and bolt restoration. Amazing work, in record time too!

[Edwin Ek]

Who is doing the interior work?

[C J Murray]

When the car is finished I expect to see the "Wheeler Dealers" analysis. Purchase price plus all parts and services expenditures and the "Edd factor" subtracted from the price that you sell the car for. The original Edd factor was secret and undisclosed but recently the Edd factor is listed simply as labor hours without assigning a dollar value. When you write 100 hours it doesn't sound as shocking as $15,000 and 400 seems more friendly than $60,000. I feel sorry for Edd. I would much rather be Mike who does nothing while Edd works for free. Which one of you guys is Mike?

[Jim Nelson]

Thanks, Mark and Edwin, things really just happened to line up perfectly from a timing perspective, getting the outside vendors on the right day is really lucky, none of us has been to this stage this soon. Wonder how much of that is not having to really take it apart. Has to add a good bit of time, but it's like the PO did sub-assemblies, so there was some disassembly required.
Edwin, the car is at K&H in Garden Grove, they did a very nice job on Mike's orange/green '59 A, so we thought we'd try them again.

[Jim Nelson]

When the car is finished I expect to see the "Wheeler Dealers" analysis. Purchase price plus all parts and services expenditures and the "Edd factor" subtracted from the price that you sell the car for. The original Edd factor was secret and undisclosed but recently the Edd factor is listed simply as labor hours without assigning a dollar value. When you write 100 hours it doesn't sound as shocking as $15,000 and 400 seems more friendly than $60,000. I feel sorry for Edd. I would much rather be Mike who does nothing while Edd works for free. Which one of you guys is Mike?

Hah, I think if we added up all the hours it would be frightening. Bear in mind, though, that this is a "Happy Wife, Happy Life" project, so there's an offset factor that's hard to define, let alone value. But, we do have fun doing it, which is easily the #1 objective, and we don't have any time pressure--it gets done when it gets done--so the stress is low. If we want to take a day off, we take a day off. If we get stuck on something and it's late in the day, we can take it up when we're fresh the next day. But we've all had successful careers, so we also know that there's only one standard, and that's to make it right. So there can be many iterations before we like how it looks.
And I have to say, Edd's the man, his knowledge base is incredible. How can he change the timing belt on a Uracco and know where the timing marks are when most of what he's done so far have been other things? The guy is unbelievable.

[Jim Nelson]

Fooling around with the engine today. Setting crank end play:

Aligning the pressure plate and clutch disc after we've installed the rear seal and tightened the flywheel; not just the bolts, but the alignment holes as well:

Installing the front main seal before putting the front pulley on:

Putting on the oil cooler, the pulley sheet metal, the pulley, the distributor drive gear, the distributor, and the generator stand:

And, to our surprise (because the PO had taken such great care in selecting his parts to go together well) we found out that the Kolbenschmidt big bore kit was a great piece, but wasn't one that would work with a counterbalanced crank. So we're using the Shasta/JE combination, and will put the Kolbenschmidt combination in the Classifieds. Anyone?