Beck TD, Part 8: Getting Close!

In the last post, I described some custom nuts and washers for mounting the new steering rack and the front body pan. After posting, I did a bit of cleaning and painting, and started putting things back together. I quickly realized that I needed one more bit of lathe work to get the steering rack reinstalled - some heavy steel washers to use with the Grade 8 socket head cap screws I had chosen:

I took the time to make them exactly fit the recesses in the rack, so it was very precisely located.

On the underside, you can see the special washers described in Part 7. They are beveled on one edge to clear an obstruction, and thick enough to allow easier access to the Grade 8 nut on the bottom. It all worked as planned:

Once the rack was back in place, I proceeded to reassemble the cooling system. I had previously done a lot of work to reassemble the grill shell, which had been disassembled for painting by prior owner Mark. He did a nice job of painting the grill slats a bright red. I had some initial confusion about how it all went back together, but finally figured out there were no less than five different styles of slats, varying in length, and in the size and placement of mounting holes.

I also had to repair a mounting stud for one of the slats, using JB Weld, and one damaged slat required a similar repair. Once all that was done, the grill shell looked great:

There was other work to accomplish. Mark had bought a new battery box because the old one was partially cut away. However, that is a serious cut-and-weld job, requiring the entire front body shell to be stripped. Once I pondered it a bit, I realized that I could use some gentle hammer work to "stretch" the existing box, and modify the new box so it would fit inside. I did that, and made a new box bottom from plastic. That's better than the original wooden one, which had totally rotted away:

The TD didn't have a muffler! There was just a rusted open pipe terminating under the passenger seat. Part of the extra parts that Mark gave me included a "Cherry Bomb" style muffler, but it was a different size than the existing pipe. A combination of AutoZone and Amazon provided enough adapters and clamps to cobble together this temporary system. It will work to get the car to a muffler shop to have a custom system made:

My plan was to completely install the hood tops and sides, because I had read that alignment was a real fussy task, largely controlled by the placement of the radiator. I wanted this radiator installation to be the last one! Charlie and Cor warned me that getting the nuts started on the chrome caps that locate the center hood hinge was a very difficult task. Then Cor had a bright idea: make a custom steel strap nut that had the holes in precisely the correct spot, tapped to match the screws. I made them for both the front and rear hinge mounts:

Just to keep up with them, I'll store the drawings for those two nut plates here. You can click them to make them big enough to read if you want to make some someday:

I roughly installed the radiator and lower hose, but the rest of the work was a two-person task. Today, Troy Nace helped me with the installation of the bodywork and cooling system. He was the perfect accomplice, because he's strong, has good mechanical skills, and he's patient. After nearly two hours of fussing around, we had the hood aligned as well as we could, and the radiator firmly mounted in place. It looks a lot more like a car now!

After that, we filled the radiator, reinstalled the plugs and battery, and gave it a try. And.... it really wants to run! It will run for a couple of seconds on starting fluid, but isn't interested in running on the gas in the tank. I've been there before, with Kate's MG. I had to drain the tank and do some rebuilding on the carbs to get that MG to run. I suspect I'll be doing that again. I'll start with the same sort of testing we did with Kate's MG, hooking up an outside fuel supply and running the engine from that.

But for now, even this trial run was very promising. The fuel pump tests fine, with a steady stream of fuel running into a container. The oil pressure came up very quickly after the few seconds of running. No leaks in that brief run, so maybe we'll be ok there. More to come!

Continue on to Part 9...