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Beautiful work, Larry. You're getting to the point in your project where you can be reasonably sure that the light you see at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train.

Lee,

"Painted the manifolds with the correct heat-proof POR paint. The wife was not too impressed with me baking these on the stove for a few hours! (I had to take her out for dinner as the house smelt very toxic from the paint)."

Been there, done that! It's funny that women just don't understand the necessity of doing those sorts of thing.

If you require a hand moving the engine from around back to the garage and into the car please let me know and, if I'm available, I'll be there!

Thanks for your kind comments Howard. Your project is going great guns I think . . . much progress since April and lots of attention to detail. I like the 47's very much. If it turns out as well as your 56 did that will be very satisfying.

Regarding the starter - I've looked at the 55th/56th series starter diagram and it has a ring or circlip as you suggested, which looks like it secures the bendix. I still can't find any way to get the bendix off the shaft on mine. Maybe there's a circlip but blowed if I can figure out where it is, and how to access it. The 24th Series diagram doesn't show it like the 55th diagram does.

So I've done a workaround and will use the whole armature and bendix with the good pinion, and it tests ok. Windings look a bit worse (condition-wise) than my other armature but it's acceptable, so will use it. Other one will be a spare, and maybe I can get a new pinion for it sometime.

Quite a strenuous time was had, wheeling the engine over the sloping yard, to get it from workshop to the garage. The crane had a mind of its own. A crow-bar was applied on a constant basis to lever the misbehaving monster back onto the boards. It's likely that if it had left the boards and sunk into the soft ground we would have had a 'capsize' of the whole contraption.

My good neighbour assists with the move



Hooked up the crane to the car and towed it up the slope to allow for moving it all across and in line with its temporary resting place. Crow-bar was applied constantly in order to move things.



Engine eventually laid to rest where it is close-by to the car

Thanks Jim, and thanks Mal for the kind offer of assistance. I reckon an extra person would have been very helpful, but we managed. The move was more difficult that I thought it would be, as you just cannot wheel that crane by pushing, with those small steel wheels on it.

'Late Final Extra' is that I've just fitted the engine and Ultramatic into the car!!! Hallelujah.



It's late so will post the account tomorrow.

It was a great Fathers Day present I must say.

Congrats Larry, that looked to be a tough one. I didn't mean my "light at end of tunnel a train" joke to be a curse, glad it turned out not to be.

Lee, great to hear that the engine is in the car, another significant step!

A great occasion (for me and the '51) when the engine and gearbox got installed!

Just before that happened I felt like having one last ride on the 288 while it was still out of the car . . . . .



Enough of being silly! It does make me wonder if anyone has ever built a motorcycle powered by an inline eight -?? (Where's Guscha - he'd know).

I used to follow the drag-bike scene years ago when the likes of E.J. Potter aka 'The Michigan Madman' rode V8-powered bikes in demonstration quarter-mile drags. The Widowmaker

I can imagine what a crowd-pleaser it would be to build a Packard-powered bike.

Anyway - back to reality.

It's just the best feeling to have that 1000-pound plus engine and Ultramatic in the car, where it should be! For me it ranks about the same buzz as getting the body finally painted.

Here are a few pics of engine and Ultramatic being inslalled.

Ben, Goodneighbour Geoff and me, still smiling, because this was going to be easy, wasn't it!!!!




Once again the sloping driveway made it more difficult because we had to crow-bar the rig all the while. It was a four-person job, with the wife 'driving', and three of us maneuvering the rig into place. Even though I did a dry run the day before, by pushing the crane only into position to check reach / obstructions / any other problems, yours truly did manage to mis-judge the reach aspect.

It took a lot of shoving and still the mounts didn't line up



With the crane hard up against the frame cross-piece the engine mounts were about 3" short of the pilot stud, so an awful lot of grunting and some special incantations were offered up, and eventually us and the crow-bar pushed the engine back far enough to line up OK. Something unforeseen was the oil pump is in the way so engine has to be lifted a bit higher than expected and that in turn leads to other minor problems if you still have the bonnet on the car (- and you can't raise the bonnet any higher because the garage door is in the way . . . . etc etc).

Eventually by getting the height exactly right the engine could be pushed far enough back



We used an arrangement of slings and ropes to take some strain off the head studs. You have to wonder how much weight the two studs can hold. Maybe they could take much more than 1000+ lbs but I wasn't taking any chances, especially with son Ben under the car sliding the trans output housing into place.

- oooOooo -

We all celebrated very considerably afterwards (- it was Fathers Day here in Oz so a double reason to do so. Hence the very considerable hangover the next day).


'Happy Club' meeting went on and on . . . .

Lee,

Speaking of EJ Potter, back in the 60's when he was touring Oz, EJ and The Widowmaker were at Warwick Farm circuit for promotional purposes and had difficulty getting started. So were towed by my brother in his XR V8 Falcon to get The Widowmaker started!