Re: A Tale of Two Patricians

Posted by Packard Don On 2018/6/26 14:57:38

I'm back at my Oregon shop now and have gotten more disassembly done on the parts car. It seems to have been virtually untouched with most of the copper 359 paint still there under all the dirt. The head was replaced by a cast iron one (the running car still has the aluminum head) and I could see that the water pump had also been replaced at some point as was the distributor. This was a complete car when I bought it other than a missing radiator so I'm not sure why it was parked so many years ago.

I'm going to have a logistics issue with where to put all the large parts as the shop is only so big! The goal is to replace the body on the running car, restoring underneath and in hidden areas as I go which means that two complete cars' worth of large parts must go somewhere and I already have an extra set of doors stored there so eight now and soon to be twelve, not to mention a set of 1956 Patrician door shells and three 1953 Patrician door shells that are there in another corner.

The first day here on Sunday was just doing some other logistics as one of my newer cars (1985 Mustang 5.0) is going to be taken to California and one from there (1985 Plymouth Voyager with rare Magic Camper option) is replacing it at the shop so I had to make the Mustang accessible for easy pick up. It was very hot that day too but cooler now. I was out there all day yesterday and got the front fenders off (only a couple screws were holding them on so it took only a few minutes), then started disassembling the 359 engine. So far, accessories and the head are now off and, as I had never checked as long as I've owned it whether or not it turns over, I did so but it is stuck, which is not surprising or unexpected. A stuck engine is actually not usually a big deal and they are not difficult to get un-stuck but that will be for another visit.

With the work yesterday, I noticed that the distributor in the parts car is a Delco-Remy 1110841 which apparently is for a late 1953 300 and a few others. My running Patrician has the proper Delco-Remy 1110848. In researching these, I noticed that the parts book appears to have an error in that one of them is missing a 1 but I don't recall off-hand which it was but I have the Delco-Remy catalog which cleared it up.

I will append some photos to this message just as soon as I figure out how to re-orient them here on my Linux PC but I want to send it before I get timed-out.