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At the shop again as of yesterday afternoon which was spent getting the shop powered up and ready to work.

This morning was a trip into town to get some Diamond Backs mounted to the freshly powder coated wheels on my 1965 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special which are now done for pick up up tomorrow morning. These were custom tires with the proper three-band whitewall although the car is so rough it’s like putting lipstick on a pig (I love that expression!). It is, however, registered and insured.

All that done, I managed to get the ambulance’s transmission installed which was easier and quicker than I expected! It’s not connected to the shift linkages yet (I need to figure out where the little springs connect that one lever has) but at least it’s attached to the bell housing.

Getting the transmission onto the transmission jack was more difficult than installing it as the jack’s base would not fit between the base of the lift!. I finally managed to get it positioned and chained down but the angle of the chains above it show the difficulty.

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I’ve been working on a few non-Henney things since I got here but one thing I did today was to press out the u-joints. However, after I did so, I realized that the driveshaft didn’t look that great with rust pits and, as I had another, I went to fetch it.

Confusion bounded as all I could find were two that were shorter which turned out to be the ones for a Henney! The one from which I pressed the u-joints has far smaller and lighter-duty trunions while the other two are very heavy indeed. They also better match the u-joints that I already have! I think the one from which I pressed out the u-joints was from a 1940 110 that I parted out in the ‘60s and I apparently got them mixed up, thinking that the longer one had to be Henney. The clue should have been that Henney doesn’t use the outside retainers and is far heavier.

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A little more headway today with my brother’s help in getting the tailpipe fixed and made round again. The old muffler was rusted on so tightly that I had to air-chisel it off a couple years ago which distorted it. My brother was a machinist too but worked on larger parts (in my machining days, it was on tiny things mostly for hard drive read-write head manufacturer) so he’s good at this sort of thing and got it round in short order!

Then I got back to the driveshaft, pressing out the u-joints from the better of the two shafts that I have for it. These fought me a little but in the end I got them out but then had a surprise that the back most one was smaller than the other! The Parts List shows all three the same so it made no sense and the other spare drive shaft has the proper ones on both ends. Then I remembered, this driveshaft came from my other 1951 into which someone had put a Dana rear axel and was the reason I bought this ambulance to get it for a transplant. The Dana axle is tiny so whoever did the swap likely also changed the driveshaft yoke! Back to the drawing board tomorrow.

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Today I wasn’t out at the shop for long but got the u-joints pressed out of the rusty driveshaft. They were sure stuck but my little cheapie press got the job done with the aid of lots of PBlaster.

The plan was to have it sandblasted tomorrow, then put in the new u-joints but it is so bad that even as rough as the car is, I don’t want to install it that way. So the alternate plan is to take the proper yoke from it and put in on the other better shaft on which someone has replaced the yoke with a smaller one.

To that end, I am taking it to Napa in Redmond in the morning where it will be shuttled by them to their Bend machine shop about 30 miles south where the work will be done.

In the photos, the upper photo is the proper yoke while the lower one has a replacement. The replacement was apparently put on by adding a sleeve over the shaft’s end so I hope the tube itself wasn’t cut.

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The driveshafts are at the Napa machine shop in Bend and I got a call this morning that they can clean up and fix the rustier shaft and that it would be fine. I trust them so will take their word on it!

That said, it’s time to fess-up. After putting in the transmission I discovered that the driveshaft wouldn’t reach it so I had to take it back out so that I could replace the rear housing with the longer one I have. I should have listened but this one came from a 1951 Henney and this one’s transmission went into another 1951 Henney so it stood to reason that it was correct.

That said, the rear yoke on the longer casing is for a junior Henney or standard passenger car so not usable on a senior Henney but I’ve sourced an NOS one from Max Merritt. Finding it was difficult as I really didn’t know what I was looking for, especially as the Parts List shows the yoke including an adapter. However, apparently replacement front u-joints don’t need the adapter so the parts book sends mixed messages when it shows three u-joints the same, then lists a different one for the front only!

The proper yoke is shown below and the u-joint shown is what it should have. The second u-joint is the replacement type that eliminates the adapter which probably looks something like this modern one in the last photo.

Since the transmission with the longer tail was in such abysmal condition, it has taken a while to get the tail housing and rear shaft all cleaned up and find the parts it needs, specially the rear bearing the original of which felt like had rocks for bearings. Napa has ordered the proper one which I hope will arrive before I leave so that I can get the transmission buttoned up again.

This one also has a lockout switch which the other does not so I’ve ordered that too from Gerry. There are also modern replacements as it was used on many cars through the years but this one is NOS. I’m not sure if it comes with a gasket but just in case it does not, I supplied a pattern to Olson’s Gaskets and ordered one along with one for the snap ring access hole at the top of the housing.

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The driveshaft is ready so once it’s shuttled back to Redmond from Bend tomorrow, I’ll go pick it up.

So while in a waiting mode for parts, I decided to finish the fuel pump which I had taken out and apart several years ago. Since it had a very worn arm, I also took apart a second one which had other defects such as some broken pieces and with a different type of inner levers but didn’t do a good job of keeping the parts segregated. Typically my mechanical aptitude is such that years between disassembly and reassembly do not matter but in this case I was trying accidentally to combine parts for the arm from two different designs and couldn’t see at first why they weren’t fitting. Once I realized it, it came together quickly!

I just started to install the seals and valves when I realized how late it was so closed up and went back to the house for dinner. This little bit of work wasn’t all I did out there but little else was related to this car other than spending about an hour off and on looking for a pump piece that I thought I had lost when I hadn't!

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I believe I posted a photo of it long ago when working on the pump but here's another of the really worn arm that came from the car so it's a wonder it pumped at all!

This arm used a different connector type to one of the diaphragms and is not easy to disassemble or reassemble but fortunately, the pump should have had the one shown above which is easier so it must have gotten changed somewhere over the years.

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Out and on the road all day running errands including getting my cellphone’s battery replaced as it had turned into a pillow ready to explode but I did manage to pick up the driveshafts! I would have preferred fewer pits but maybe at some point those can be filled but probably not by me.

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Before, during and after a major hail storm with thunder and lighting this afternoon, I got the fuel pump back together finally other than the preload and frightening of the pump diaphragm. I should have done that one first as the vacuum section’s spring is too strong to easily overcome without a third had so my brother will help tomorrow.

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Got a few little things done today so there is some feeling of accomplishment finally. I need my brother’s help to finish the fuel pump and he wasn’t available today but I did take this art shot of it.

With the car so high up, I’ve been putting off tightening and locking the front wheel bearings but I finally did that which had the added advantage of getting the wheelcovers off the ramps and onto the car. As I recall, the passenger cars of this era used a castellated nut and cotter pin but the Henneys used the two-nut with locking gear that I prefer. These and the hubs quite are large too with the lug bolts on a much larger bolt circle than passenger cars. Before I could do that, though, I had to take the front tires off to connect the brake hoses at the chassis as they were just hanging down. Nothing is connected yet at the master as I misplaced the photo I took of the brass piece’s orientation although I can probably figure it out easily enough.

I then gave the top of the gas tank a coat of Hirsch’s Miracle Paint and will do the other side once this dries but I’ll need to get more brushes first. Once it’s all cured and probably the next time I’m here, I will give it a spray of black chassis paint.

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