I just bought a Henry J!

[MarkH]

Work on the HJ slowed down a bit recently, but this week I started placing the Buick motor int he car. I have it placed correctly right now with a hoist and a jack under the transmission. I had to cut some holes in the firewall and the trans tunnel to get it in there, but it's in! I have a friend who is pretty decent with sheetmetal who can make patch panels for the holes I cut. My hope is that it will end up looking fairly factory when done. Next I get to work on making some motor mounts and a transmission cross member.

Looking good! You going with headers or cast manifolds?

[whatwouldjessedo]

Looking good! You going with headers or cast manifolds?

The motor sits too close to the firewall for the stock manifolds to work so I'll definitely have to make (or have someone make) some custom headers. There is space for them to run down inside the frame rails but the right side collector will be pretty close to the steering arm. The other option is to run them into the wheels well and down outside of the frame.

[Mike Richards]

Thanks, it's OK, let me know when you get there, Mike

[r1lark]

Jesse, you are doing a great job with this car. Well thought out modifications that should make this a great driver. I've always liked those aluminum 215 engines (as well as the similar design Buick V6 engines).

[whatwouldjessedo]

I haven't posted much in a while, but progress on the HJ has been happening. I did take some time off from the project to go to Detroit and NYC, and more recently to Iceland, which was a blast. When I was in Detroit I actually stayed in Ypsilanti with friend s for a couple days and drove past the old Willow Run plant a couple times which was really cool. I also went to the Ypsilant Auto Museum in teh old Hudson Dealership building. They have a great collection of orphan cars and memorabilia.

Anyway, so what have I been up to with the Henry J? While most guys were watching the Superbowl today, I was in the garage doing the final welds on motor mounts and the transmission cross-member, then actually mounted the motor & trans in the car for the first time. I'm pretty stoked about that!

I spent a lot of time working on the mount mounts and perches, and the cross-member. My welding is a lot better these days, I'm pretty happy with most of the beads, or at least I'm not embarrassed by any of them. I'm also very happy with my decision to get a membership with my local Techshop (http://www.techshop.ws/), which has been very valuable. I have an awesome metal shop available to me now. The bandsaw, drill press, chop saws, metal brakes and other metal forming tools at techshop really made it possible for me to make some pretty precisely formed pieces.

For motor mounts, I bought biscuit style rubber mounts from Chassis Engineering. I then made the motor mounts and perches at Techsop and welded them all up at home.

Here are the perches welded to the frame:







Here are the engine-side mounts:





I used 1.5" OD .120" wall steel tubing to make the cross-member. It took a long time to figure out the correct angles for the end plates to match the angle of the frame rails, while making sure I had the width exactly right to fit tight between the rails. I ended up with apretty good piece though.





I made plates with welded-on captive nuts on the back to weld to the frame rails. Once I figured out their placement, I used a 3/4" hole saw to drill holes in the frame for the captive nuts to sit in. I made the captive nuts by grinding the flats off of Grade5 9/16" nuts, then wleded them tot he back of the plates. The attached them to the frame rails.

[img width="900"]https://www.dropbox.com/s/95ow60f7kckow45/crossmember3.jpg?raw=1[/img]

Here it is all bolted up with the T5:



Here's a look inside the car. This is the shifter that came with the T5. I'll have to find something shorter with less of an angle.




Back to the motor now. Here it is, solidly mounted:





Clearance between the head and the steering gear is less than a 1/4" which isn't great. These mounts are pretty rigid and I don't think the motor will rock very much, but we'll see. I might be okay as it is, but I can add some spacers at the motor mount to list the motor up and away in I need to. I planned for that when designing the mounts.



Next up is figuring out the brake and clutch master cylinders. I have a plan to use the original brake and clutch pedals, but modify the linkage to use modern hydraulics. I'm using all Chevy S10 brakes, but I'm going with manual, not power brakes. A 7/8" master cylinder is the perfect size, and I found that a Dorman M39736 is just right for this application.



It's a 7/8" bore cylinder, and has a deep pushrod bore for manual brakes. It's also aluminum which is nice. I am going to mount it in basically the same location as the stock MC, so I will have to convert the fluid reservoir to allow for a remote location. I hear that you can use fittings from a Nissan Quest master cylinder to use a remote reservoir instead of the attached reservoir.

As for the clutch, I'm using a Ram Clutches hydraulic throw-out bearing so I bought a Wilwood compact 3/4" bore master cylinder.



My plan for it is to use the stock pedal and make a pivot rod similar to the stock one, but shorter so that it will lever against the master cylinder mounted next to the brake master. I'll have to fab up some brackets, and I'll use the lathe at Techshop to make the pivot rod.

[r1lark]

Very sanitary and we thought out work Jesse.

[MarkH]

That's nice looking work!
Thanks for posting the Techshop link.

[whatwouldjessedo]

Very sanitary and we thought out work Jesse.

Thanks! This is probably the most involved car build I've done so far. I'm trying to keep as much of the original Henry J as possible, while still making a car that will be very drivable on modern highways. I can't wait for the day that it finally moves under it's own power!

[whatwouldjessedo]

That's nice looking work!
Thanks for posting the Techshop link.

Techshop is really cool. I'm going there today to take a plastic thermo-forming class, and later this week I have a sandblasting & powder coating class. The normal membership price is kind of steep, but they had a Black Friday sale that deply discounted the membership so I pulled the trigger. It has definitely paid off. I live about the same distance from the San Francisco and Redwood city locations, so I go to either one. So far everyone has been really helpful and I've never had a problem getting time on any of the machines.

[whatwouldjessedo]

It turns out that a 1965 Mustang V* radiator fits very well in the HJ radiator support. I had to cut a notch on each side for the top of the support in order to slide the radiator down into the hole, but it also fits like its supposed to be there. I'm going to mount it as far forward as possible to make space for an electric puller fan to mount to the back side. Here's a link to the radiator I bought at Napa: https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/NRS2301. It was perfect for my application because the inlet and outlet are both on the right side.



For hoses, I bought some black silicon hoses from Pegasus Racing. The sell them in generic basic shapes: straight, 90* elbows, 45* bends, etc. For the lower hose I used one 1.75" to 1.5" reducing 90-degree elbow, and one 1.5" 90-degree elbow, then spliced them together with an aluminum joiner. For the top I used one 45-degree 12" hose plus some of the 1.5" hose trimmed off of the lower hose.

[Henry's HenryJs]

You have done a lot of good work there. Keep up with the updates.

[whatwouldjessedo]

Well, it's funny... I still haven't fired up this newly rebuilt motor, and at the rate I'm going, I'll have the car otherwise street-worthy by the time I try staring it up for the first time. First it was because I needed to mount the motor on something to fire it up, so I decided it might as well be in the car, rather than spending time making a engine stand/cradle to hold it. Then I found the radiator and it fit in the car. I also needed to have the clutch operable so that's done, and I needed the driveshaft in the trans to keep the oil from coming out, so I got the driveshaft made. Now the only thing I really need to do before starting it up is getting an exhaust on it. I found headers that work, but they need a little bit of modification, and the secondart pipes and mufflers need to be made and installed.

So here's what I have been up to lately:

Like I said, I got the driveshaft made. It's the leftover stock driveshaft from my Chevy S10 endurance racer you sometimes see in the background of these pictures. I took it to Driveline Services of San Leandro to have it shortened about 6" down to 45.5". They also installed new greaseless u-joints and a new yoke. It fits perfect with 1" play at the transmission.



Here's the carb I'm going to use. It's a 4 barrel Edelbrock that's modified to flow about 490cfm... which is less than it's original 600cfm rating. 490cfm is just right for the Buick 215.



Here are the headers I'm going to rework a bit to fit. They are aftermarket pieces made swap a Buick 215 into an MGB. They aren't an ideal design, they are basically 4 unequal length pipes that dump into a manifold collector with a 1 5/8" outlet tube. I fantasize about making a custom set of 4-into-1 headers someday, but for now these will work to get the car on the road. I just have to cut off the outlet tube and redirect it in a different angle on each side.

I lifted the engine up about 1/4" off the motor mounts by adding is some more washers so now the headers clear the upper control arms by about 3/8"... definitely cozy, I think it's enough space that things won't touch.

[whatwouldjessedo]

I also have a fully functioning clutch now!

I bought a brake/clutch pedal assembly from Speedway Motors. I really wanted to keep the original floor mounted pedals, and I thought that I have a whole plan on how to make that happen, but it left no space for the driver side exhaust pipe. It was also going to be a lot of work, and it would make maintenance a little more difficult, so I scrapped the idea and went with firewall-mounted pedals. Oh well...

The good news is that the Speedway pedals are perfect. For only about $125, it's a pretty well made assembly. The pivots ride on brass bushings, the fabrication is very good and they fit right it! I need to find some pedal pads. And you can see the original brake pedal hanging out down there still, but his time is running out!



Here's the business side... I had to cut some more holes in the firewall, but eventually the majority of the firewall is going to be replaced with a custom one anyway. It's pretty swiss-cheesy right now with all of the holes I had to cut to make space for the engine and trans.

Here are the master cylinders. The brake master is an OEM unit for a 1984 Dodge Spirit. That seems pretty random, right? Why did I use this M/C? Because it's a 7/8" dual-bore aluminum master cylinder that fits the mount holes for the pedal assembly and is the perfect bore for manual S10 brakes. It also costs about $35, wich is much better than a $250 Wilwood version. I have it plumbed into an OEM-style combination proportioning valve. Then lot's of time went into bending and flaring 3/16" steel brakelines.

Speaking of Wilwood, I did use a Wilwood 3/4" compact M/C to drive the hydraulic clutch. It's reasonable at about $77. It uses an AN fittings, and the banjo AN fitting at the end of it fits well and allows the outlet tube to run at a comfortable angle.



Here's another shot of the master cylinders and hydraulic lines. It's important to have a few coils in that hard line that runs from the body-mounted prop valve down tot he chassis. The body and chassis move independently quite a bit, so the coils allow the hard line to flex and not break. I need to find some new body bushings, the ones on this car are trashed.



Here's a detail shot of the hard line to rubber line union. The rubber lines are just OEM Chevy S10 pieces. Yeah yeah, a lot of people would like to see steel braided lines here, but for a street car they serve no benefit except looks. And they are not part of the look I'm going for with this car. I cut the rivet off that secured the mounting tabs to the chassis, then flipped them upside down and welded them back on. I still have to run a hard line from the tee to the passender side, and I have to run the hard line to rear axle. I'll probably do that next weekend.



A couple other things... Here's the alternator mounting brackets I bought from D&D Fabrications. simple, but effective to mount a basic Delco alternator.

I also installed a new mechanical fuel pump and bent up an outlet hard line up to the carb. I'll make new hardlines to run from the tank tot he pump this weekend too.

[MarkH]

Looking good as usual!
Been running gas & brake lines on the Aero and even with the old ones for patterns I must've gotten up & down from under the car about 50 times.
You're right about the body flex, floor mounted uni-body Aero MC is only about a foot from the union on the side frame and there's a loop in that pipe, mid production change added due to original design cracking.
Tuning that carb to your engine's flow demands is going to give you great low end response, a lot of guys don't consider that.

Stroke of luck on those Buick to MG headers, very nice!

[Barnum]

Great work! I have no doubt that this is going to be a blast to drive!