New World Datsuns...

Something like that. This may actually work in my favor. I think he's been working on my cab because it's in his way. He wants to build his chassis and swap over his body parts. Unfortunately he has no place to work.

Nice score on the parts.

I do the pinewood stuff with my kiddo too. This last year, his mom told me the night before it was race time. I literally had an hour to work on it. hate that shit

Next go around we should have more time!

Nice trailer. Good idea on that. Should be perfect for behind a bike. Those little ass trailer tires like to pop. Good a good quality one. Also maybe think about going with a tubeless tire and having it filled with that foam/plastic shit so you don't have to worry about flats. It's no fun when they pop and you're cruising Very scary.

That trailer is already for sale. He's already planning the next one.

Spent the weekend moving stuff. Hauled my brother's Z-and-a-half to new storage.



Hauled my nephew's bug-and-a-half to my house. They're going to be selling/ parting it soon.





Loaded the tractor and sent it to live in Idaho.

Progress being made, I like it.

I thought you were out in the country somewhere, I guess you are not anymore, the city has found you.

Haha. Nope. That's a lot of the reason I'm moving. When I was a kid you could only see 2 other houses from here and 3 cars backed up at the 4-way stop was rush hour. Hard to believe it was ever like that now.

I was given this old vise a few months ago. It spent years in the corner of a damp garage floor. Lots of surface rust underneath and a heavy layer of crud on the top.


Worked all the threads and pivots free then hit it hard with the wire wheels. Now it spins like new and the original dark blue-green paint is now barely visible. It got a heavy treatment of WD40.

Looks nice. I love old stuff like that.

I do too. I've been trying to find any info on it as far as how old it might be but so far have come up empty handed. I can tell you it's very well made and not at all sloppy in the slides and pivots. Once I got them freed up and lubed it's really smooth.

Here's a few other trinkets that we're in my brother's shop that used to belong to my grandpa. The old cans are just future garage art, the tall thing on the right is a track roller greaser for an old Cat, and I grabbed the old chainsaw bar for a someday knife project.

Cool stuff. I went to a buddy/coworkers house for a load of scrap he was getting rid of (extra spending monies for me) and saved a can like those from the pile. I also got some of those '60's metal lawn furniture pieces with the green or yellow outsides with white inserts: a glider and 3 chairs but they were too far gone for me to save.

Finally brought this thing home.


Battery was beyond dead and the gas was pretty old. Once I got around those issues it fired right up. It's thumpy.



Then I started breaking down the Shot Rod engine. There was a dead mouse and nest under the intake.



When I wrecked this donor car the engine got a couple minor injuries. The drivers side valve cover got cracked (I have a second set) , the timing cover got cracked ( I have a replacement), and the balancer got tweaked and damaged the keyway in the process so now I need to hunt one down. The crankshaft is not bent.

Motor looks pretty cool undressed that far.

Yeah, kinda cool for 25 year old domestic technology. I'll be cleaning parts for the next week or two. Plus, I'll have to track down that key, which seems to be an oddball.


Spent 2-3 hours cleaning this thing up. It's been sitting for about two years and looks like it's last trip out was mud/trail riding with zero cleanup after. It's not as clean as I'd like it but as good as I could do with the tools on hand.
Battery on order.

Haven't been working as hard as I should have been the last couple weekends but did manage to get the 4.6 pretty well done. Cleaned all the parts at work but before I could reassemble it the snout needed to be addressed.






Then I could reinstall the timing chains before bolting it all together.





Knuckle sammich.


I'll have to wait for Ace to open to get some missing timing cover bolts then get a replacement idler pulley to set up the rerouted belt. I'll be deleting the A/C compressor and PS pump that it had in the Lincoln. I'm still undecided about the valve covers. Tempted to blast and clear one set and paint the other to compliment the body.

The next phase will be to do some relocation work with the coil packs and vacuum components related to the IMRCs. Then the task of harness dissection and revision. Somewhere in the mix I need to clean the transmission and toss a new filter kit in it.

Its nice not having the motor in a million pieces.

It really wasn't as dramatic as it looked . And I still have a lot to do.

That manifold looks super restrictive.


But it is a good looking motor with as bare as it is.
Adding all the other hoopla makes those things normally really ugly, cluttered.


Did these motors have the broken/stripped spark plug issues? Or was that just the 5.4?
Been so long since I have touched one.

The spark plug thing isn't an issue for this particular engine. As far as the intake goes, looks can be deceiving. If you counted runners you probably deduced that this has the dual runners with the hi/lo rpm butterflies -- aka IMRC. My understanding from the reading I've done is that when compared to the box style intake used on the later Mark VIIIs and Cobras, these actually perform better up to about 3500rpm. At that point the box makes a little more power until around 6500rpm, then gets passed up by the tube style again in the higher rpms. There's no extra power up there but they'll spin to 8K pretty safely. So, they run pretty neck and neck. It'll cruise at around 2000rpm. And keep in mind this thing is probably only going to be in the 300-320hp range when I'm done. Factory rating is 290 but even in a 4000 pound Lincoln it would smoke tires at will. The car it's going in might weigh 2500 wet when I'm done.