I just bought a Henry J!

[whatwouldjessedo]

Well, I took the Henry J to it's first car show last weekend, here in Alameda:

https://www.facebook.com/ParkStreetClassicCarShow/

Then I drove it over to have drinks and dinner, so we officially have another Henry J registered, insured and running on the streets! So far its running decent. It still needs a few things to really be road-worthy: rear shocks need to be installed, the steering needs to be tightened up, headlights need to be wired up, and the holes I punched in the firewall to clear the engine need to be patched. I got a lot of attention and questions from people, which was fun. Since Kaiser Permanente has a huge headquarters in Oakland, and we have the Henry J Kaiser Convention Center here is Oakland, everyone knows the Henry J name, but most had no idea that there was a car by the same name.



Here I am posing with the three cars i brought to the car show: The HJ, my endurance race Chevy S10 and my 1961 Mini.

[whatwouldjessedo]

I haven't really driven the Henry j at all since taking it to the car show in October. The two main factors preventing me from driving it was that I didn;t have the headlights wired up and I didn't have provisions for mounting shocks on the rear axle. If you have ever tried driving a a car without shocks, it's at best, pretty silly with all of the bouncing.

So last weekend I had a friend weld on these shock mounts to the rear axle. They are nice pieces from Speedway motors that were really cheap, something like $15 each, and were made to fit a 3" diameter axle. Once I decided on placement, we welded them on and I reinstalled the axle along with some KYB Gas-a-just shocks. I sloppily sprayed a little bit of black Rustoluem on the welds to prevent rust. This isn't a "real" show car so I'm not bothering with spending time on making the details visually perfect, I just want the thing to be functional.







I also finally got around to wiring up the headlights, which wasn't really that big of a deal. What took me so long to do it was that I had to finally convince myself to buy some expensive wire crimpers to make the headlight connectors correctly. My old $20 crimpers just were not going to do a good job on the terminals used for the connectors, so I bought the $140 crimping pliers from American Autowire. I will say, the first I used them, I was instantly happy with the purchase. The results look factory:



Let there be light!



The last thing I did this weekend was install these Speedway adjustable coil spring spacers. I had cut  1.5 coils off of the front springs to lower it some, but that ended up being too much. The car looked great with the nose in the weeds, but the suspension wasn't working right and there were tire clearance issues, so I neeed to lift the front back up about 1-1.5 inches. These Speedway spacers are about $25 each so they are a great deal, and are very well made. Thh idea is to place them above the spring in the spring pocket to jack the car up. They aren't adjustable once they are installed, so you have to figure out your adjustment, then put them in and hope you got it right. I didn't. The car is currently sitting about as high as it can in front, so I gave it way to much spacing. I'll have to take it all apart and try again.



They are designed to fit with the flat face up against the pocket and the threaded area sitting inside the coil spring (they one is upsidedown in the picture)  but that didn't work with the locating flange that in the pocket so i flipped them upside down and the threaded cylinder fit perfectly up in the pocket. However, that meant that I had to weld on some locating tabs to make sure the coil spring doesn't walk around at all. It's unlikely that it would move much, nut it's better to be safe than sorry.








So, next weekend I'll pull the spacers out and spin them down to about 1/2" of spacing, and hopefully that will be the sweet spot.

There's still plenty to do. I have an oil leak at the oil pan to fix. The brakes are pulsing a bit, so I think one of the rear drums is out of round. The steering is pretty loose with a lot of play, so I need to see what I can do to tighten it up. And I need to patch up the holes in the firewall and trans tunnel, it currently very loud and hot in the car with the big holes I cut to clear the motor and trans...

[r1lark]

Good work!  And those adjustable spacers are a neat deal.

[MarkH]

Thank for posting. I always enjoy looking at your fab work.

[whatwouldjessedo]

Hi all,
My Henry J project was on the backburner for awhile, but recently I have been busy and have done a lot of work to it. I'll start posting some updates.

The biggest project was modifying the firewall and trans tunnel to make room for the Buick 215 and T5 5-speed. I cut out big holes to make space for the engine and trans a long  time ago and drove it around a bit with those holes. I could see both valve covers from the drivers seat. It was loud, and hot, and breezy so I finally decided to fix that.

I cut out a big section of the firewall and the existing trans tunnel:




Then with the help of a lot of cardboard for making templates, I formed a new larger trans tunnel and firewall panels. The trans tunnel had to be taller and wider to clear the 5-speed, and I included a kickout box on the driver side of the trans tunnel to place a hand brake. The firewall had to be recessed back two inches to make space for the v8 engine. I also had to make a panel to mount the brake and clutch pedal assembly and the master cylinders.





I used 18 gauge cold rolled sheet steel and bought a bead roller so I could put some beads in the panels to add some rigidity.



After a lot of sanding and some body filler to fill in some dents, I painted the firewall and trans tunnel inside and out using an epoxy primer and single stage satin black urethane paint, followed with plenty of black urethane seam sealer to prevent any leaks or corrosion.

I'm using brake and clutch pedals hung from the firewall behind the dash, so I also closed up the open area where the floor mounted clutch and brake pedals were. You can also see the round tube pocket that the new Ididit steering column will fit into at the kick panel. I'll talk about steering in the next post.





And finally I decide to give Boom Mat a try. It's a multi-layer product that insulates from heat and noise. It's not very easy to work with since it has a layer of fairly thick aluminum foil, then a layer of synthetic matting, and a layer of adhesive. I could never figure out what th best tool for cutting it was, but I used scissors, a box cutter, and tin snips, each with varied success. I covered the trans tunnel and kickboard areas. It's pretty sticky stuff, but we'll see how it holds up.

[r1lark]

Nice work on the firewall, looks great. Looking foreward to updates, especially on the engine install. I've always had a soft spot for those 215 engines (both the Buick and the Olds versions) but even back in the late '70s good ones were almost non-existant in my area.

[Brent in MO]

I just read through all of your updates for the first time, and really enjoyed it.  You have done some great work on your HJ.  I might try to utilize some of your updates on my '51 HJ

[whatwouldjessedo]

Hi all, I just wanted to give a little update. I moved to Honolulu last year, in June, actually. I went on a mad sprint to get teh Henry J as finished as possible, and managed to get it very road-worthy and running well just in time to put it in storage while I settle in here on the island. I was in a rush so I didn't have time to take many pictures or post about it, but soon I think I will be able to share some of what I got done. I'm also currently trying to get it prepared to ship over from California. One thing I need to do is get the fuel gauge working because teh shipping company needs to see that it has no more than 1/4 tank of gas in it. I'm pretty sure the fuel sender was operational, but I can't remember what the ohm range is. Does anybody know what they used for the range? I seem to remember something like 70 full, 10 empty. Does that sound right?

[joefrazer]

It's 70 empty and 10 full, although a few folks have mentioned they tested theirs and saw numbers of 72 and 14.

[whatwouldjessedo]

Thanks for confirming. I can see how the resistance might increase form age resulting readings of 72 and 14.

I'm going to buy a cheap fuel gauge from O'Reilly that works for that range and install that just to get the car shipped. I've been pretty impressed actually by the Equus line of gauges available at O'Reilly. They are cheap but work really well. I used them for years in my race car and never had a problem, they even outlasted an Auto Meter and a Classic Instruments gauge (I'm not impressed by Classic Instruments).

I'll work on getting the original gauge cluster restored soon. Redline Gauge Works in Santa Clarita does a really good job of restoring old gauges and updating the mechanicals to use and work with modern components.

[joefrazer]

There are a couple of Kaisers on Oahu - the remains of a Darrin up by the Dole plantation near the center of the island and another that was parked in an apartment building garage near the Ala Moana center. Not sure if they're still there but you may run into them in your travels. I will be on island in September and the plan is to track them down.

[whatwouldjessedo]

Really... wow. I'll have to go look for the Darrin near Ala Moana just to see it. I have no interest in trying to obtain anything else. There are some cool old cars in car ports and side yards. Most of the time people don't seem to be interested in selling though, and the cars will just sit there and rot.

[dtwbcs]

Anyone get the Caliber brackets ?