FOUND: FINNED TIMING CHAIN COVER

Scored this aluminum timing chain cover from a fellow HAMBER. It's a Glenwood marine unit. My parts budget for February is now almost spent. Not a good sign seeing as it's only mid-January.  Nonetheless, I've been looking for one of these suckers for ages. One less part on the 327's bucket list. We going to let the fact that it wasn't on my prior parts list go this time.

REPRO HEADLIGHTS? TO BLINK OR NOT TO BLINK? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

Reproduction headlights with built-in blinkers. Nice.

It'll probably be a good while before I need eyes for the '29. In fact, I have an old pair of headlights that are pretty nice. But they don't have built-in turn signals. And while that might not matter to a lot of people, I'd sure as hell like to be able to tell folks in my direct path where the hell I'm going. Maybe it has to do with having a pretty nasty crash in my roadster that pre-empted the whole teardown to begin with. But I digress. A really cool solution is the reproduction headlights made by OTB. They may not be the 100% purist route, but I've never been very good at sticking to the rules anyways. They've also got some other neat goodies on their site. Worth a look.

WINDSHIELD RESEARCH

Two Words: Sellers Equipped. I put an e-mail out to ace metalsmith, Steve Sellers, who owns a company called Sellers Equipped and among other things, casts windshields in the Hallock-style. Steve's workSteve's work has graced the pages of all the traditional rodding books and his handiwork has appeared on more than a few high quality cars, including Nick Garfia's roadster, from its Rod & Custom feature. While copying another man's build is not my style, my car's overall direction will be inspired in part by Nick's beautiful car. Thanks, Nick.

Another Model A windshield that recently caught my attention is on a car owned by a friend of a gentleman named Tano, who I'm Facebook friends with. The car appears to have a very chopped model A windshield. I like this set-up very much, and am trying to get more details on the car. More on this set-up as additional info come in.

PARTS LIST FOR NEXT SIX MONTHS

After more thought, here's what the next half a dozen part purchases will be:

A used vertex magneto with tach drive or HEI "faux" magneto
A windshield
A dash panel/gauges
A cloth-wrapped wiring kit
The carbs on the 6X2 need to rebuilt or replaced, then synced and linked

I'll let the market dictate which items I acquire first, while allocating a monthly budget towards the list.
It's my hope to have all parts necessary by mid-summer.

WIRING HARNESS

Just read an article in the new issue of Street Rodder regarding old school cloth-covered wiring. It looks vintage but boasts all the advantages of brand new modern wires.
Complete kits are available through Sacramento Vintage Ford (916) 853-2244/www.vintageford.com
P.N. 17500 hot rod wiring kit list at $295.00

SEATS FOR THE '29

My son Drew, along with my wife Debbie and I were out antiquing and scouring thrift stores for embed-able items for shift knobs and vintage snap shirts when low and behold, we came across a pretty interesting pair of bar stools. I was immediately reminded of the lowback buckets found in early sixties Austin Healys

. 

Thirteen bucks later, I had a pair of seats for the '29. Will these be the final seats? We shall see. 

But they're definitely compact, they'll definitely fit and will work beautifully for mock up. I wonder what my upholsterer buddy Carlos @ sick strings could do with these bad boys. 

If you're not familiar with Carlos' work, check out the Lucha Libre shift knobs he's making for our site. Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his stitching talents.

 

6X2 PICS

Polished 6X2 Intake Manifold with Edelbrock Valve Covers

Got home this evening and look what was waiting for me. After a quick unbolting and inspection of the carbs, it looks like some rebuilding is in order. The air cleaners are in good shape and despite a couple nicks and scratches, it looks like the intake will clean up nicely.

I'll get to cleaning it up a bit and determining whether the carbs are all salvageable.

The intake has no markings on the top surface. I couldn't resist breaking out my Offenhauser valve covers for a little tease of what the top end of the  327 will look like. 

The Offy valve covers will look nice against the unmarked intake.

I'm going to start hunting for a vertex magneto or an HEI magneto next and I suppose I should also start thinking about whether I want to run all six carbs, or just the two centers, and plan my linkage accordingly.  

On that note, the guy I'll most likely have rebuild the carbs and plumb all the lines calls himself Dickster27 on the HAMB (aka Dick's Hot Rod Place) and he comes highly recommended.