Cool McCool's Garage

Once again, I’m not as far along as I’d hoped, but I’m making steady, if slow, progress on the ’34.  I’v gotten a big chunk of the final body prep done, it’s almost ready for primer.  Next week is another camping outing with the Spartan, so no work on the car next week,  but, it’s all fun, right?

I cleaned, detailed and blocked of the breathers on the old Cal-Custom valve cleaners I scored a couple weeks ago, the engine looks, I think, pretty dramatic and period perfect.  If it runs OK with those two carbs I’ll be even happier.  If it’s too much carburetor, I’ll pull the dual quad intake and put the single back on with just one carb and it’ll still look OK.  I have friends who can help me sort out the bugs if it ends up being beyond my skill set.

The crowing touch on the engine bay has to be the beautiful stainless steel headers, stupid cheap at $76, including shipping.  Much better than the flaking Jet Hot coated ones I had, and cheaper than blasting and painting them, and stinking up the house baking the header paint in the oven if I did.  Right Kim?

Finally, I bought a few trinket parts at Nats North last weekend at the swap meet, and a couple things from the vendors.  The best thing, and the one thing from the swap meet, was a Southward heater housing, which I plan to put an electric heater behind for the car.  Or, a small heater core if that doesn’t pan out.  Happily, I didn’t need much as it looks like vendor support at that show is on it’s way out.  That’s a topic for a whole ‘nuther discussion, but suffice it to say that, unless you wanted new roofing or gutter guards, you were NOT to shop multiple vendors for street rod goodies this year.  NSRA has some work to do…

In other news, the Spartan has a new pair of springs, to replace the sagging, rusted, nasty originals.  I’d put a new Dexter 7,000# axle  under it, but foolishly thought I’d save some work by using the original springs.  The right one started sagging after one use, and bottomed out HARD on the frame, despite re-arching it and adding one leaf.  The left side also bottomed out, so I bit the bullet and installed the (shorter) springs that had come with the axle.  This required making a “spacer” to mount the original hangers on, a
“C” notch for axle clearance, and a day laying on my back in the gravel drive under the trailer, but it’s all good now, and ready to roll.  This is why the roadster is not in paint right now.  At least, that’s my excuse…

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from “Cool McCool’s Garage”!