[Essex_29]

Thank you EDNY, though it's all a matter of taste.
 
Here's my day in a nutshell:
 (weirdly enough, I posted this on Sunday night, but it disappeared later, so here we go again)



The rear carb here is one that I'm intending to use on this engine, a 500 cfm #1404. The front one is
a 600 cfm, from an Olds engine I have. Still some shopping to do.

[chopper526]

Very sharp looking, great idea.

[Essex_29]

Thank you chopper 526. I have a thing for those old oil bath air cleaners. I had
something similar on my Essex the last couple summers, an old oil bath air cleaner
 that I found in a junk yard in Canada.

Here's the first try at making a flat merge collector. There will be four of these three-into-one
collectors, where the primaries turn back in under the frame. They will continue in a short, maybe 4"
pipe, that goes from flat to a round 2-¹/₂" collector flange.



There's not enough room for round collectors under the frame. That's beside the point, really, this is much less work.



This would be much easier to do...

[TFoch]

I like the air cleaners! Nice work!

[Essex_29]

Thank you TFoch. I'm happy with them, especially the fact that they still look
like two air cleaners to me.

After a week long fight with the flu I finally got to buy the car I have been searching for the last
months. It's time to upgrade my daily.



This one's four years newer than the black wagon I've been driving for almost ten years now. This
new one is now my eleventh full size boxy body GM car. I like them. Obviously.

I got a few hours in the shop, and got work on the first collector started.



I fought with the stainless, and even at 1mm thickness (40 thou) it was hard work, and I feel that
thicker material would be  the way to go. So I'll try making them in two parts, probably, and thicker material.

I got three primaries merged.



It took me some thinking and planning to get this done. I don'treally TIG, so this was a challenge,
but it seems it can be done. Just four more to go.



An extra cylinder head would make this work much easier...

[chopper526]

For a guy that doesn't really TIG, that sure looks pretty good to me. That is going to be sweet when you are done.

Let me ask you, and the group a question: my 67' Mustang has a set of chrome Motorsport headers on it that I installed 20+ years ago. They are looking beat now and I want to replace them, so what do you guys think chrome, stainless or ceramic coated, and why?

[62131]

Me I would go coated, chrome will rust, stainless will turn blue. The coated headers I have on my 32 still look like they did when I installed them. 

[sammons]

Essex, looking good on the headers. I've had my eye on the same color/trim mid 80s wagon with Cragar SS wheels here in town. It got away last month and a Ford pick up showed up in it's place😕

Chopper, stainless lasts, but usually top dollar. Chrome seems to have a shelf life but cheaper of the three, and betting shorter life than your 20yr old ones. Ceramic good choise for longevity. Me, lol.... i'm a thrift guy. I'd get steel and paint, spend money saved on other things😁

[Essex_29]

Thank you chopper526 and sammons, for the nice words.

Looking forward to get back to work, productivity has suffered
from a lot if chores and also, as I had a bunch of friends over on
wednesday nigt, I put a bit of effort into tidying up the garage.

I don’t know if attachments will show up, but here’s my daily
beater since almost ten years. It looks decent, but it’s a rust
bucket, salted roads have eaten away a good chunk of the
frame and right hand side of the body.

Regarding the headers, I,d probably vote for the ceramic coated.
I only had one pair of new headers, and I had to modify them to fit.
In any case I’d avoid anything chromed, I’d assume they will rust.

[sixball]

I see, you have to have friends to have a clean shop.    Maybe if I was a nicer guy I'd have some friends and a shop I could work in. 

[Essex_29]

Yep, sixball, you gotta have a reason for cleaning the garage 

Last night I got all the ends of the primaries made (nine more), the ones going into the collector.
Some welds look almost decent. Not like looking good, but they will probably not fall off.



I guess my rod project has run into a s tand still. I got my new wheels home today, and am
going to start working on it to get it out of the way.
 What's better than a wagon? Two wagons!



On jackstands now, I'll have to get the engine out and get the rear crank seal replaced, and
as the PO has started the project by removing in fron of the engine, I'm going to do the maintenance
out of the car. I so not looking forward to getting everything mounted, with all the parts lying in the
back of hte wagon, probably a few pounds of fasteners missing. Luckily I've worked on
a few of these before.



The sun coming along the side of hte body makes ten years of collected dust show up. Pic taken
an hour or two after the previous pic, where it looks prery decent. And no, it didn't sag that
bad, it's the panoramic effect of my phone camera.

I think it's funny how boxy GM cars looked the same for so long. The Chevrolets hardly changed
in 11 years. Compare that to what happened between 1954 and '65, for example.

Biggest change the boxy years is the dash.



 ... and even then, if you haven't seen one recently, you wouldn't probably notice the difference

[Essex_29]

Not much useful happening here as usual during summer. Lots to do. House needs paiting, still working
on the Caprice, mounted a hitch today, and still have to connect the electricals. We have to have orange turn
signals on trailers, so they have to be run from the front blinkers. The brake lights too, so I ran a four in one 
cable all the way to the front.

I just got in a day to work on the headers. I decided that a jig is  the way to go, so I measured the spacing
 and drilled six holes in a short piece of H-beam to bolt the primaries to. Then (after I took the pic) I welded the
primary tubes to eachother, and made the parts for the collector. Stainless is very hard to form, maybe I
should have gone for thinner material, I'm making them from pieces of 1/16" wall tubing. As this is the
first one of four, I might still try to find some thinner stainless sheet metal.



Late one evening I got inspired to draw new stickers for the air filters. I beleive they are from some kind of
Brittish trucks, but since I'm planning on making the engine look somewhat American, I changed some
of the text to make it look like the filters are American made. Just for shi#!s and giggles.



I will have some stickers made sometime down the line

[TFoch]

Amazing work on the label!  Looks great!
Headers are coming along!

[Essex_29]

Thank you TFoch.

I've been working on the tank some lately. Fist, where to put it. Second, how to make
 it fit, and still not be in the way. Third, how big it needs to be to take abot 20 gallons
of gas, and then draw plans for it. It's a process.
That done, I drew the parts onto a bigger than usual (49"x98") sheet of steel. I decided
 to cut out and make the end pieces first, and that was a good idea, since I need to
adjust the big sheet slightly as the bottom of the end pieces ended up being about
⁵/₃₂" oversize.

The top, front, bottom and back side drawn out in one piece.



End pieces laid down on the big sheet. A really great thing I did the side pieces first, as
I had made a mistake drawing the big piece out. Much easier to adjust the
measurements now, and cut to fit.



My son is a maths and physics teacher, and I had him chack my calculating. The tank
capacity will be 21 gallons and change. I was a few ounces off.

[Essex_29]

I used a friend's sheet metal brake to bring the big sheet into shape. Seen here mocked
up with the end pieces.



Also, I brought home a fuel tank sender, a gauge, and materials for making reinforcement
plates that will go inside the tank, threaded to take the screws from the sender unit and
for the the still to be made lid for fuel feed-, return- and breather lines.
Feed will be ³/₈", return and breather ⁵/₁₆".