Well, I haven't posted any of my progress in awhile, but a lot has happened in the last couple months, and today I actually drove the Henry j around the block for the first time!
Here's a couple of video of it running in my back yard:
https://youtu.be/m4GO1w698oghttps://youtu.be/06taROYShYQAnd here are some pics of the work I've done.
Here's one shot of the rear brake lines on the GM 7.625" 10 bolt S-10 rear end. This axle came with the car, and fits great. The last owner replaced the original spring pads on the axle with some poorly made custom pads, and he placed them so that the axle was positioned with zero degrees of pinion angle. I cut those off and bought a pair of 1.75" wide pads from Ruff Stuff Specialties and welded them on so that the axle no sits with 4 degrees of pinion angle to match the angle of the engine/trans. It has 4.10 gears on an open diff which will work well with the 5-speed I think. I replaced the wheel cylinders but the rest of the drum brakes looked good. I did have to make all new hard lines and used a S-10 rear brake hose along with a new welded-on bracket at the axle tube.
Here's the exhaust work. I did it all myself, and I don't think I'll ever choose to make my own exhaust ever again. It's pretty difficult work. I bought a bunch of random tube bends from Speedway motors and bought a couple of Thrush glasspacks so all in it cost me about $160, but man, I'd gladly pay someone 5 times that to do it for me next time...
Here are the finalized pedals. The gas pedal is an Offenhauser aluminum pedal. I had to make the firewall panel that it's mounted to, since I had to cut away some portions of the firewall to fit the Buick engine. The clutch and brake pedals are a unit I bought from Speedway Motors, and the pedal pads are obviously from Mooneyes. They are pretty nice, but I think I'm going to modify them a bit to get the pedals to sit at a different angle.
I added a bracket and tab for a button-type brake light switch, which I still need to wire up. No brake lights yet!
Here are a few shots of the engine in the car. It fits, but it didn't exactly "drop right in". If the engine bay was about 1.5" longer from radiator support to firewall it would have been a lot easier. Other clearance issues are at the steering box and the upper control arms. The steering box is about 1/2" away from the left cylinder head, and the a-arms at the inner pivot point are less than 1/2" from the exhaust headers. I moved the radiator forward in the radiator support, so that the front face of the radiator is flush with the front face of the support. This gave me a couple of extra inches, but I still had to cut into the firewall to make it all fit.
And there she is, just back from her maiden voyage around the block!
I still need to wire up all of the lights. The front tires are too big with the deep offset wheels so they run the fenders even if I turn just a little bit. I need to install the rear shocks and front sway bar. The fenders, inner fenders, and hood are all barely bolted together so I need to get a bunch of hardware and fasten it all together for real and install the grill. There are still massive clearance holes cut in the firewall and trans tunnel so those need to be patched. So there is a lot to do still, but it runs, and I drove it after 2 years and two weeks of purchasing the car. And now there is one more Henry J back on the road!
