A Frustrating Day With the Model A

Still no sign of my wheels. They are officially 200% late from the quoted return date.

After paying $185 to boil and rod out my radiator, I reinstalled it and it started leaking out the passenger side... ugh. Back to the radiator shop. It just kills me when you pay for a service and people don't do their job. They saved 5 minutes not pressure testing before calling it a day. It wasted several hours of my time uninstalling, swearing, driving across town, etc. ugh.

A little progress

I haven't been making as much progress as I would like lately, but still a lot of fun in the garage when I can make it down there. I discovered that I was missing the bottom half of my front motor mount (washer, spring, nut & cotter pin) so I replaced those. The rear motor mounts are the Float-a-Motor style and the rubber was worn out! (left side the original, right side is the replacement) I replaced the rubber and all is well in motor mount land. This is the first time I've had proper mounts on the engine in 20 years, so it will be interesting to see if some of the noises and vibrations go away once I get the car back on the road.

The other big thing going on is I sent my wheels off to powder coat. There has been a debate going on in the house about orange vs. black. I ended up bringing down two sets of wheels and we'll decide which ones go on the car when we get them back. I'm now leaning toward orange, as that is what has been on the car since my grandpa restored it. Plus that's what the wife wants. And you know what they say... happy wife, happy life!

I have six new Goodyear blackwalls ready to install when the wheels get back. For those keeping score, that is new brakes, shocks, springs, wheels and tires... The ol' woody should be riding quite nicely when all is said and done!

Timing Gear Inspection

Lots of progress in the last couple of days. I took off the Timing inspection plate and found a nice looking timing gear. The plunger spring felt weak, so I'm hoping that might be the source of my random noises. I'm going to replace the gear while I have it open, and also replace the camshaft nut and plunger / spring.

I also discovered a missing oil pan bolt, which resulted in a loose engine pan. That could also be a source of the random squeaks and ticks I've been hearing.

On top of all that fun, the radiator hold down had separated on one side. I took it to a shop and they suggested I also rod out the radiator since 3 tubes were plugged.

My current challenge is removing the front engine mount "yoke" to repaint and respring. I'm going to have to loosen the rear mount in order to jack up the engine enough to clear the crank pulley.

Still learning and still having fun!