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Thanks guys for the photos. I have the later 55/56 style. While there is a bolt on the bottom of the housing, it there not as a mounting point for a bracket, but to keep the lower portion of the motor centered in the housing. Never remove this bolt! Or you may have to take the damn thing apart to recenter the motor in the house.

This antenna for sure used a clamp mounting to the fender trim bolt. Since the moulding is higher on the '54's, this will not work. So I will have to fab up a new bracket to the original location in the base of the fender. I think a piece of angle iron should work nicely.

If anyone has a power antenna on their 55/56, can you tell me which orientation the coil is supposed to be at, or what the orientation of the antenna cable is. Here is what it looks like now. But I think I need to rotate the under fender mount.

Also I need to track down a cable. The manual antenna cable fitting is too small, and my old cable was cut.

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Well I finished up the rear lines. Went pretty quickly. One thing I discovered is that it is almost impossible to get a tubing wrench on the rear line where they meet the distribution block/axle breather. So you have to loosen the breather bolt to raise the block enough to get a wrench on the line nuts.

So with the lines removed from the distribution block. I just have to remove both rear lines. The passenger side line is held to the rear axle with two clips. One of the pumpkin, and the other mid-way on the axle tube. The other end of the lines were already loose as I never reconnected them when I replaced the wheel cylinders.

So with the lines out I bent up new ones. I also scrapped all the grease and muck off of the distribution block and breather bolt, sprayed them both with brake cleaner, and ran them through the media blaster. Then loosely reassembled everything on the floor.

Now that everything fit together, it was back under the car to put it all back together. So I snake both line back in to approx where they are supposed to go, and then loosely screwed the breather bolt back in to hold the distribution block in place. Then I screwed the line ends in the their respective wheel cylinders. This is where is discovered one of the line fittings had a bad starting thread. So some careful die work and I was able to recover that fitting. After that I tighten all the fittings, and the rubber line. Then I attached the rubber line to the hardline coming from the front. Then reinstalled the brakeline clip.

I was glad I had pulled the breather as it looked pretty well clogged, and I didn't want any issues later with the new axle seals I put in. Just need to go get some brake fluid and then check for leaks. While I was under the car I sprayed all the gas tank bolts and fuel line retainers with PB Blaster to let them soak a bit before I remove them.

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I don't think the antenna orientation is terribly critical as long as it isn't rattling against something and the lead isn't twisted or pulled tight at the connector.

Interestingly, the service manual goes to detail in mounting the manual to place it at 40 degrees at the connector but nary a word on the power other than to make sure it is straight.

Here is a pict I stole from Hank's blog showing his still in place but maybe pushed forward.

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Yeah is the same antenna I have. Orientation looks to be the same also. There is no way that side brace would work on a '54 unless you welded the brace to the back side of the fender. I will just fab-up a longer brace to reach the clamp and mount it to the bottom of the fender similar to how the manual antenna was mounted. The different design of the antenna compared to the '54 fender is not going to yield an off the self solution.

Brian pointed out I am missing the base gasket. I guess I need to find a supplier for that.

Thats for the photos. I appreciate it.

Brakes are done, I filled the Master Cylinder and then bled all the lines twice to make sure. Checked everything for leaked. None found. 1 pint filled the entire system with a little bit left over.

Then I tried to do the minor adjustment on the brakes. But all four wheels required the major adjustment. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I replaced all the shoes earlier. I then crawled back under the car to adjust the parking brake cable at there was significant slack in cables.

Everything looks pretty good so far, nice firm pedal. So now the car stops. Just need to make her go now!

Fuel tank and fuel lines are next on the agenda. But perhaps not tomorrow as I think I am going to be too tired after tonights festivities.

Happy New Years everybody!

Kev, you're to be congratulated on doing a first-class, thorough and workmanlike job.

Thanks Dave, I appreciate that.

Well as expected last nights activities have left me with less than a clear mind. So nothing really got done on the Clipper today. I did however take this down day to cleanup a bit in the garage and put all the tools away where they are supposed to go. Amazing how quickly you can scatter tools while working on thinks for several days.

I also threw out all the old brake lines so I would stop tripping over them.

On the agenda for the next couple of days:

1) Drop the fuel tank.
2) Replace the fuel line
3) Drop the transmission pan and clean out the filter
4) Reinstall the kick-down linkage (slipped off when replacing the transmission lines)
5) Refill the transmission
6) Replace the Diff Fluid

Basically anything that requires me to crawl under the car. I want to get it all taken care of at once.

Well after a little poking around I finally located the 54 Gear Start Throttle Linkage adjustment procedure. As the Gear-Start (used very late 1954) has more in common with the Twin-Ultramatic then it does the Standard (1954 and prior), the adjustment procedure is actually in the '55-'56 Service Manual. Sometimes they call it a Gear Start in some documents, other times they call it the '54 Twin-Ultramatic.

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Well I decided to get some late night tinkering done. Since I was planning on putting the transmission throttle linkage back on tomorrow, I figured I would media blast the linkage rod and paint it tonight so it was ready to go tomorrow.

While it was coated in a thick layer of grime and grease, there was no rust on it. After stripping it I found out why. The rod looks to be copper plated with soldered seam.

Anyway, I hit it with some cadmium paint and tomorrow it should be ready to go for the reinstall.

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