Twelve Volts, Cheap

When I was working on the Volvo M41 overdrive transmission as documented in the Beck TD blog posts (Parts 51 through 57), I had need of a power supply that supplied a LOT of current - 20 to 25 amps at a nominal 12 volts - to actuate the solenoid that made the overdrive engage. To get there, I just used the battery from the car, which worked great but is an obvious inconvenience to remove and carry over to the workbench. I resolved to find a better solution...

Mounting a Drill Press Vise

 Work has been kind of crazy-making lately (blame Covid-19), so I wanted to make best use of a rare full day in the shop today, plus a couple of hours yesterday. I set these parameters for a quick project:

1. Make something that would be useful in the shop.
2. Finish in about a day or less.
3. Make something that, if I messed it up, would be absolutely inconsequential - I was trying to decrease stress, not increase it!

Beck TD, Part 66: Wind Wings, cheap!

 Well, this is yet another complex and time-consuming fabrication project to save a few bucks. My lovely wife enjoys an occasional cruise in Beck TD, but she says she doesn't like to be "buffeted." There's just so much you can do in a very open car with a flat windscreen, but I did notice that both Charlie and Cor run "wind wings" on their windshields. Here's a close-up from an old photo I took of Cor, with the wind wing annotated:

Say Hello to "Evie"

My maternal grandmother's name was Evie, pronounced "EH-vee." The latest addition to our automotive stable is named Evie also, but we are pronouncing it "EEE-vee." You see, this 2012 Mitsubishi i-Miev really is an EV - a totally electric vehicle.

Beck TD, Part 65: No More Jingle!

At the end of Part 64, after fixing a bad rattle in the muffler, I noted there was one more annoying noise - a "jingle" when moving. It was driving me nuts, because I couldn't find it. But now I have!

Beck TD, Part 64: An Ugly Weld Is Still Strong

This is a rarity, a blog post without photos. It's because I am not willing to show you my welding, especially on sheet metal! But I did have a nice success with the outcome.

I've had a nasty rattle in Beck's exhaust system, and as it worsened, I finally had to admit to myself that it was inside the nearly-new AutoZone muffler. Since the fix would be a new muffler anyway, there was no downside to exploratory surgery. I removed the exhaust and used an angle grinder to cut a window the size of most of the top. Sure enough, one of the plates that hold the silencer assemblies was loose.

Beck TD, Part 63: Cylinder Head Musings

The readership of this blog contains both serious mechanic-types, and "casual" readers - friends who just want to see what I'm up to. If you're in the latter group, move along... you have my permission to skip this very detailed post for the Volvo engine geeks! For the rest of you, let's take a look at the various options for cylinder heads for our B18/B20 engines.

Beck TD, Part 62: Two chokes, choking

Beck TD has a pair of SU carburetors, and like all carburetors, each one has a choke mechanism to help the car start when cold. For the first couple of years, Beck's worn engine required the carbs to be set with such a rich mixture that the choke was never needed, but since I added a new, sound engine, it really wants the choke. And that was a problem, because there was no choke linkage...

Beck TD, Part 61: A Great eBay Find!

Part 60 was all about replacing the wooden rail to which Beck TD's convertible top attaches, and once that was successfully completed, I wanted to complete the effect with an addition called a "tonneau cover." I'll start with the end of the story, photographically. It's installed here - the black canvas cover behind the seat, covering the open "trunk" of the car.

Beck TD, Part 60: Replacing the Rear Top Rail

Honestly, when I'm doing something geeky for Beck TD, sometimes the hardest part is deciding the blog post's title. I finally settled on "just the facts, Ma'am" - yes, I replaced the rear top rail. Now to tell you what that is!

At the end of Part 58, after rebuilding the driver's door hinges, I included this picture and noted that it was the first time I had ever driven Beck TD with the top up. But there's something I didn't tell you...

Beck TD, Part 59: An M41 Shifter

I'm writing this on April 14th, 2020 - almost exactly a month into the COVID-19 quarantine. It was Friday, March 13 when we decided to cancel our Sunday worship services at Lancaster Church of the Brethren, where I work. By the next week, we were doing online church, and the building was basically closed. What a change! All those changes have kept me away from the Grant St. Garage, because I was the person with the tech skills to get us online. It has been a wild four weeks!

But... as I came to understand some things about video production, audio editing and live streaming, the pressure has eased a bit and I made it back to the shop this afternoon. The project of the day: the shifter for the M41 overdrive transmission I laboriously rebuilt beginning in Part 51, extending for multiple posts. When I got that rusty, seized transmission, it came with a coveted remote shifter, but it was totally broken - something heavy had fallen on it and destroyed it. The upper photo is of the remote shifter currently installed in Beck TD, and the lower is of the broken shift extension from the one I rebuild. In addition to that irreparable break, the entire top plate of the shifter had warped and cracked. I needed a new shifter!

Too Many Indicators!

There is a thing called Segal's Law which states, "A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." It's about the limits of certainty when measuring, and also a caution about trusting an instrument without verification. That Wikipedia link has some really daunting math to back it up.

Well, while quarantined by COVID-19, what better time to check various test indicators to see what I have? And I actually had a good reason: my Sherline lathe is not giving a great finish to the cuts, and I wanted to test it out. I gathered up four different indicators to get a consensus measurement.

Beck TD, Part 58: Those Suicidal Doors

Way back in December of 2017, Part 14 of this saga told of my efforts to repair several problems with Beck's "suicide" doors - so-called because they open swinging from the rear. If they open when  you're driving, they are ALL the way open in a heartbeat, and if you aren't belted in, out you go! That actually happened to my cousin Joyce when we were little kids. We were all riding in the back seat of her Mom's car, and Joyce leaned against the door handle and opened the door as we were going around a slow right-angle in a parking lot. She tumbled out, but fortunately wasn't even skinned up much.

In Part 14, I thought I had adjusted the door latches so that both the primary and secondary latches would catch, but I made a tactical error: I did the adjustment while the car was on the lift. When I put it on the ground, everything shifted and both doors would only engage the primary latch. I tempted fate and drove it that way for a couple of summers, but I needed to fix it.

A Beginner's Welding Table

Fair warning... if you are looking for expert advice on how a beginner can create a welding table, move along - nothing for you here. This is the chronicle of how a beginner created his first homemade welding table. That's a long tradition. Woodworkers make their own tool boxes and workbenches in the course of learning their craft, and welders weld up their own welding tables and welder carts as part of the initial practice.

Beck TD, Part 57: Overdrive Success!

After my recent post about my attempt to understand how my M41 overdrive does its work, I was ready to reassemble. I used a lot of new parts, including all three bearings in the overdrive unit, and all the parts still available via Moss Motors - mainly o-rings, a spring or two, various seals and washers. I won't bore you with pictures of the assembly, because it is extremely well-documented in this pair of videos by John 'The Box' Roseby on The Sunbeam Alpine Channel on YouTube:

Disassembly: https://youtu.be/Ht6eb7w4gto

Assembly: https://youtu.be/WvAjwhIaSzw

Once it was done, I installed the overdrive unit on the transmission, and set it on my crude but effective test stand:

Beck TD, Part 56: Understanding my M41 Overdrive (Laycock D-Type)

At the end of Part 2 of this overdrive saga, when I had just gotten the transmission working (minus the overdrive unit), I promised I would try to actually understand how the overdrive works. I've made some good strides toward that goal, so I'm going to try to tell you what I've learned. Nothing like trying to teach something to tell you what you don't understand...

Here's the problem: most of the multitudes of books and web pages I reviewed assume you know certain things. For instance, what all the parts inside of the overdrive are called, and maybe how they go together. So, if it refers to the "annulus" you have to have some sense of what that is. In addition, there are cryptic, color-coded cut-away diagrams that are difficult to read if you've never held the parts in your hands. Not ideal for beginners.

I'm going to try it a different way, leading you through discovering certain points based on pictures of the individual components. Let's start with this one:

Beck TD, Part 55: Tom Bryant's SU Carb Tuning Procedure

When I rebuilt the SU HS6 carbs in Beck, I followed the online procedure published by Tom Bryant, who has rebuilt hundreds of sets. It worked great, although I couldn't know it right away because the engine in Beck was in such poor shape. After installing a used engine I procured from Joe Lazenby, I installed my rebuilt carbs and proved that I had done it right.

When I first set them up, I purposely left them "fat" at Cor Engelen's advice - he noted that it would do no harm to be a bit rich, but you could burn a valve if they were too lean. It ran fine, but blackened the plugs after a few hundred miles. I decided today, when PA weather was gloriously warm and sunny, was a great day to tune them better.

Beck TD, Part 54: M41 Overdrive, Part 2

In Part 1 of this saga, I unveiled a "what if" project - a Volvo M41 overdrive transmission that was locked up, with a broken shifter from something heavy falling on it. Upon opening the case, I found this rusty mess:

Part 1 detailed the disassembly of the main transmission. From there, I continued to start to disassemble the overdrive unit. It's a Laycock D-type overdrive that was used in various cars, and I wanted to understand how it works! Of course, since the trans and overdrive share the same oil supply, it was a rusty mess too: