The beginning of last week talked to the friend I’d borrowed the 46RH case I’d borrowed from. He had a few spare OD housings so he didn’t care if I cut this one for clearance. The trimming did the trick and we were finally able to get the transmission where it belonged.


OD Trim by M Patterson, on Flickr


The transmission tunnel pretty much dictates how far forward the engine sits in the engine bay. The clearances are snug but it should work and I’ll still have room to get the cooler lines and components for the controller in. With bracket for the transmission mount and the mount installed there is not a lot of room between the bottom of the OD housing and the crossmember. It’s fine with a new mount in place but over time or god forbid if the trans mount gets oil soaked I’m afraid it might collapse enough to create a problem so I’ll probably swap out the rubber mount for a urethane one (this was an issue I had with the 57 Plymouth and the solution I came up with).

Next weekend we’ll work on motor mounts (which means also figuring out what we’ll have to do on exhaust). The fun never ends.


This afternoon I worked with Austin finishing up the gauge cluster. Time to turn the wiring diagram into a functional gauge cluster. It was a lot of repetitive work connecting the circuits but in the end we hooked a battery up and checked the function on everything we could. He was impressed when we hooked up the sending unit and the fuel gauge worked.

z aust wiring by M Patterson, on Flickr


I know it’s not as pretty as the work a lot of you guys do, but it’s functional.


z AW2 by M Patterson, on Flickr


At the end of the day I asked him if he knew that grandpa knew how to make magnets…..he looked at me with that “ok what’s the joke” look. I showed him the trick of wrapping a coil of wire around a screwdriver blade and touching it to a battery. I think he tried to pick up everything in the shop with that darn screwdriver. Anyway I told him an old mechanic had shown me that trick when I was about his age. He looked at me and grinned then said “well an OLD mechanic showed me that trick now” (darn smart aleck LOL).



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