50070 AKA Walt from Iowa to Rennsport and back

[Vic Skirmants]

I hope you put a 644 nose on it.

[Jules Dielen]

I hope you put a 644 nose on it.

there are only very few things a torch can't fix.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

Yes, we had a donor 644 for nose and shift rails.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

Before we took trans out we made a jig that slipped over the shift shaft and bolts to the monkey motion pad. Lots of measurements were taken at the bell housing area where engine mounts.
Trans is a 741 that we disassembled to check out, we used the empty case along with the 644 nose cone and shift shaft for mock up. Once the empty case was in and front mounts were bolted on, we modified some mounts we cut off of a old crusty beam.
When we were confident everything was where it needed to be we welded them in. If/when the original trans goes back in all that needs to be done is cut mounts off.
After mounts were done gears/bearings all looked mint so buttoned it back up and put axle tubes on from Walt since early cars have a different shock angle.

[Vic Skirmants]

Nice!

[Neil Schlabaugh]

The mounts were modified but fully welded up before being welded on to beam. Just looked at the pics again and thought oh no, I hope people don't think we didn't finish welding them up....
We were in a time crunch so pics get a bit sporadic.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

So with the trans mounted the next thing was clutch cable. Since its a later trans the throw out arm takes a clevis rather than a ball nut we were able to adapt a later cable with clevis and bowden tube.

We chose Heidenau tires from the thread here about 16'' tires. We have a old shop that deals in BMW motorcycles and we ask the owner if he had ever heard of Heidenau tires and he said yeah, I get them for old BMW's. We gave him the info and a week later he got them in.

Here's a couple of pics of the inside of the rims when we dismounted tires. The rims weren't all correct, but the green was kinda a cool surprise.

2018-08-14 02.26.31.jpg[/attachment [attachment=0]rims2.jpg

[George Kehler]

Look forward to hearing your opinion about the Heidenau tires.

[Martin Benade]

Is that car on those tires fun to throw around on a twisty road, or just slippery and frightening? Either way, I like it!

[Neil Schlabaugh]

While doing a search on 16" tires here I thought we read that some didn't like the Firestone's but I cant seam to find the thread so, maybe I was dreaming..

We have used Firestone's from Coker on 2 previous cars. The one thing we did notice, the tires we used seam to be out of round.

We were able to find a tire shaver or sometimes called a tire truing machine at a auction house literally 3 mi away!! It was consigned by a old garage that was closing in the local area and it was in mint condition. The last car we did with 16s was Chip Perry's Adria blue '51 coupe. We had the machine and we shaved them, made a big difference on out of round. They are still marshmallows but at least when you come up to a stop sign you don't feel them hopping up and down.

We would have shaved the Heidenau's but our shaver wouldn't work. After you mount the tire in the machine you have a template for the profile, then you adjust the machine to that profile. When it shaves, the machine follows the profile of the tire. There was no way to adjust the machine to the Heidenau's profile, they were too rounded. We thought if they are really bad AFTER we actually got it on the road we would deal with it then.

I will say I am impressed with the way they feel in regards to out of round and any imbalance/wobble. Yes we balanced them but the rims were not, ahem exactly true themselves. They are still marshmallows and as Lee says "They make for an interesting dance partner." 30-40 mph cross winds in Wyoming was a little work, but hey, people used to do it all the time right. To be honest we ask quite abit from them and they didn't let us down, 75-80 the whole out and back.

I drove on the parade lap at the track and 1st lap was kinda nervous, on the second lap I felt pretty good with it drifting/sliding around. It was prolly good we didn't get a 3rd cause maybe I would've done something stupid.

I must say I am getting close to 50 but my inner hooligan likes the Bias plies, especially for around town. ANY corner taken with normal speed results in tire squeal. I know not very mature but, oh well!

I just tried to load pics of us shaving the '51 rims but the pic is to big to load, I will try tomorrow to see if I can get it to work.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

I had a friend walk me thru resizing these pics, so here's the tire shaving experience. After you mount tire in the machine you use profile gauges that fit the tire. There is a number on the gauge, you take that number and use it to set the arc of the motor/cutting wheel. There is a powered roller that contacts the tire so now the tire is slowly spinning. The motor/cutter can now shave the tire in the proper arc. The last pic shows a normal initial shaving. The dark spots indicate shaving, the light gray areas have not been shaved yet.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

I guess I never responded to your question Martin. The answer is yes to all of the above!!! Cross winds and rolling along at a fairly good clip was kinda scary at the start but after a while you get used to it and you kinda know what to expect so it wasn't such a big deal.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

When it came to brakes we rebuilt the stock wheel cylinders. The reason being that the wheel cylinders up front have no provisions for bleeder screws in the wheel cylinder themselves. the upper banjo fitting has a port for the bleeder screw. This is not a very good pic but you can see the top fitting has the bleeder screw with a rubber cap on it.

We like to get oversize shoes and fit them to the drum. We measure the drum then take that number adjust the brake arcing machine and grind the shoes. I dug some pics out of a customer car since I didn't have pics of this process on Walt.

We also used a dual circuit master cylinder and mounted the reservoir on the bulkhead above the master cylinder. All new hard lines and hoses of course.

[Neil Schlabaugh]

So when we got Walt there was some vintage containers in the trunk. Some times it's like Christmas when you open them, other times its not and you have a bunch of misc. American bolts and washers, maybe some lead fishing sinkers.
This day turned out to be early Christmas. There was some other goodies in the containers that we used on the car. Hoods for the gauges, original Ignition switch, dome light etc.etc.

[Vic Skirmants]

HOLY ....!!!!