While waiting for the carb kit, my brother -in-law and I took a look at the brakes.

Things looked good inside all of them, except for the driver's front brake cylinder. One of the boots had a small bit of moisture in it (see picture) so I'm assuming it's leaking? If so I will replace it.

All the shoes had plenty of meat left on them. We messed around with the brake adjustments a bit but most of them felt pretty good already. We tried adjusting the eccentric on the passenger front (the first wheel we took off), but it wasn't operating like it did on my car. Overall things felt pretty good on all of them.

The pedal is pretty soft, and the brake fluid has been sitting around for 7+ years, so a brake flush is next. I ran out of brake fluid, so Saturday morning we'll do that. Hopefully that gives me a nice firm pedal.

-Kevin

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Waiting for a carb rebuild kit to come in from Daytona.

Meanwhile, I noticed the distributor was installed in the wrong position according to pictures of how the car was originally, as well as other Super 8's. So I removed the distributor, set the engine at #1 TDC, and clocked the distro to the right position (vacuum advance), used a multimeter to set the points correctly, then redid all the plug wires into the correct places and order.

Also confirmed the vacuum advance is working correctly. Car started right up and seemed to idle a bit better than before, though I didn't test it long. Once the carb is rebuilt I should be able to dial in the last of the tuning.

Lastly, I need this adapter plate for the manifold vacuum line. We had it when the engine was first disassembled 7 years ago. It's long gone. I would like to get the vacuum lines all back together before I put the front end back on. Does anyone have one??

-Kevin

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I got a lead on a replacement bumper for the Panama. It was 3.5 hours away, but one does not turn down a bumper for $100.

Made the drive and met a nice family. The guy has a '54 Panama also. This was had a Continental kit added to it, non-original paint, but fully original interior in good shape. A solid driver.

The bumper is in much better shape than my original, though definitely not perfect. My old bumper had all the chrome peeled off the lower half, and the lower edge was all sorts of bent from jacks in the past.

The new one had some bad pitting on one of the guards. I replaced it with a good one from my old bumper. I polished out the other defects the best I could. I cleaned all the rust off the inside, converted the remainder with Ospho, then painted it black. The overall finish is much better than my old one but still not perfect. For $100 I'll take it though.

-Kevin

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  Cleaned and Ospho.jpg (111.49 KB)


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Thanks for the reminder about Daytona. I had forgotten about them. Looks like they have a kit, so I may go with that. But if you have one and aren't going to use it, I'll buy it off you.

Stromberg EE-23, stamped "10-28".

-Kevin

My brother in law and I were able to pull the fuel pump and rebuild it with a kit from Then and Now. It took quite a while for the kit to arrive, almost a month.

The kit was great, and they had a video of their machinist rebuilding nearly the exact same pump. It made the job easy for us, especially with it being our first time opening a fuel pump.

The fuel pump no longer leaks. Now I need to figure out the carburetor rebuild. I'm not seeing a kit from Mike's Carb Parts. I'll call them on Monday and see.

Also need to go through the whole ignition system. The car idles rough and is really rough on acceleration. I noticed today that the distributor is "clocked" one mounting hole off where it was before, and where other cars have it mounted (3 mounting holes). Does this mean the oil pump was installed incorrectly? I remember we set #1 at TDC and put the distributor on according to that. But I want to go through and check it all again. Something isn't adding up.

-Kevin

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Thanks for the link Bob! I went ahead and ordered it.

-Kevin

I got 75" length for front and back. The back is way too long, but it works well enough for the front.

-Kevin

Another option is RetroBelt. I went with the aviation buckles on mine.

They do have shoulder belts also. I couldn't use them because I don't have a B pillar in my car. But they looked pretty straightforward.

-Kevin

Good price for the glass! I need to see what I can get mine for.

When I said "Dynamat" I was referring to any brand that does the same thing. ?I probably should have clarified. I used Noico on the floors and roof, and it worked great. For the inside of the doors I was planning on just putting some strips of it in, and not covering every square inch. This stuff just absorbs vibrations to deaden sound, and that can be done even if the whole surface is not covered.

Kev, did you have issues with mounting the panels with the dynamat placed there?

Thanks both of you. That was my assumption as well. Testing with the temperature gun last night showed me similar to what you are seeing JWL.

The guy who rebuilt the engine left the thermostat out on purpose, but I will likely put it back in. I prefer to have the cooling system operating as designed (as much as possible given that I will have to use an electric fan).

Does anyone have a picture of the bracket for the air cleaner? I think I'm going to have to fabricate one up, but I'm not sure what it looks like or how it attaches to the air cleaner.

-Kevin

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