The Resurrection of Foam Car - 63 T6B

[Phil Planck]

No pics. Got drivers side horn working and adjusted for best sound. Installed park/turnlight and they work. Undercoated passenger h/l bucket and surrounding area.

[roy mawbey]

Well done Phil, that headlamp sure looks very bright! Mine look like candles in comparison. For sure mine work as they should but... I never drive it in the dark!!

Roy

[Phil Planck]

Thanks Roy. I probably wont do much night driving either. The H4 bulbs are 12v. Ordered 6v version so should be a little brighter. Got both h/l working along with horns.

[Phil Planck]

One thing you pre T6 guys dont get to do is remove paint from fuel filler pocket

[JTR70]

I don't mind not having one of those little holes to clean out. LOL

[Phil Planck]

I want amber turn signals in back and red tail/ brake lights so had to remove single contact sockets from housings Have ordered dual filament contacts to install. Will have to run extra brake light wire to rear which I was doing anyway for chiml.

[JTR70]

That will be a slick little conversion. Are you running LED bulbs?

[Phil Planck]

Justin
Sorry for the slow response. Didnt see you question until today. Im going to run brightest 6v I can fit in first. If not happy wull try led.

Finally finished up refurb of fresh air control boxes. Thourogh cleaning and new foam seals. Git both installed today. Hard to remove and hard to install.


Next I removed control panel and cables for these vents so I can strip and paint dash. Put hot wire to black ign sw wire going to starter solenoid to try to crank engine. No luck. Just sparked. Need to check continuity of black wire to solenoid and starter ground. Also will install Jor Leoni(RIP) starter relay

[Phil Planck]

Installed Joe Leoni's(RIP) starter relay and cranked engine over a few times. This was difficult to do with starter installed. Should have done it on the bench before I installed it. A quality kit with great instructions. One long thru bolt must be removed to attach ground terminal and the other loosened to attach relay.

[JTR70]

This kit is supposed to increase cranking strength on 6 volts?

[roy mawbey]

Phil,

You have been busy. I converted my original back amber indicator and red stop lights the same as you 40 years ago when the factory original ones had amber stop lights . Bought a couple of 1955 Ford Consul dual filliment bulb holders from a scrap yard and put those in place of the single filliment red lights. Then ran a wire from the front master cylinder through the central tunnel to the back red lights to give me the brake lights. So.. above you put RIP before Joe? . He was a nice clever guy Phil.

I had dreadful starter cranking speed problems on my A version for years. He told me to replace the bronze bushing in the Bell housing as the starter shaft can drop over time and upset the arrangement. Did that and saw a little improvement. Then totally improved every single earth connection and connection from the solinoid. This worked to a degree until in the end I still was not happy. The cranking when cold was not too bad but again still so slow when hot

I took the starter off and established from books the solinoid has a number of copper contacts inside. But... my original solinoid was totaly sealed on, the end cap soldered maybe. Could not inspect the contacts. Not sure if my armature field windings were possibly in poor condition as still origunal factory, I sent the motor to a guy who rebuilds old 356 ones . He removed the end cap and the points were terrible, Cleaned them, and did a full check on the armature etc which were good. He then replaced the end cap of the solinoid using nuts and bolts.
I re-fitted the motor and the smile has never left my face ever since when starting my car!!! Its as fast as a 12 volt its perfect when hot or cold. I was amazed the best £200 I hav ever spent on the car. Is your solinoid end cap original and soldered on?? Have you cleaned those contacts??

I thought about relays from Joe but the starting side with all the other points like earthing , good battery etc does not make it necessary . My lights though are still of course 6volt and against modern cars hopeless really. I fitted 50 years ago some halogen 6v spot lamps but removed them as my car never goes out in the dark now or the rain !!!!

I think Justin the relay from Joe was to help slow crank, but if those cintacts are dirty in the solinoid cleaning them is the first step.

Roy

[Phil Planck]

I think all the relay does is take the high current load away from the ignition switch. Should not affecr cranking speed. I went through the starter but not the solenoid. New custom bushing to match starter shaft diameter. The engine has not been run in 5 years and cranked pretty slow. Im hoping thats from sitting so long. I did not want to crank too much yet. Next step will be to remove plugs, squirt some oil in cylinders, open throttles and see how it cranks. If still slow will wait untill I fire it up and let run a while. If then still slow will have to work on solenoid.

I cleaned fuel tank with Por15 cleaner yesterday. Reafy to add derusting chemicals.

[Jbrooks]

If it is still slow with no plugs, its probably dirty brushes on the starter. Not to hard to clean with an typewriter eraser. The relay has nothing to do with the current to the starter motor. That is done by a contact in the solenoid. you can also apply power directly to the output of the solenoid to get it to spin, but its a HIGH Current load

On the tank most of the rust on the two I had were on the top surface, there is very little clearance between the baffle and this upper inner surface. When you seal it I would let it sit, top down at a 45-60 degree angle for a few minutes to allow the POR15 to seep into the lower half of the tank. The baffle is spot riveted across the bottom, with a very small 20mm wide x 2mm passage in the center for the fuel to pass. But the top and the sides have about 0.5-1mm space all the way across the top. this is a much larger volume to get the POR15 to pass from the filler side into the lower half. Its pretty thick and does not flow easy with gravity. You can also do the upper half through the gauge transmitter hole. and the lower half through the fuel exit. Just mind the threads where the fuel cock goes in, POR15 is pretty hard when dry.

[Phil Planck]

Thanks for the tank tips John.

[Phil Planck]

Hoped to get rust treatment in tank today but after John's tip on tank top I did some more inspection with bore scope. Top of tank is definitely worst surface. So poured cleaner solution back in and leveled rear section of tank top(upside down) so solution soaks there for 2 hrs. Then will level front portion of tank top and let solution sit there for 2 hrs and drain it out a flush again.

This is tank top:
This is bottom:


This is baffle:

[Jbrooks]

Phil

where is the follow up..??

[Phil Planck]

John
Its been very cold and lots of snow. Running snowblower it seems daily and shoveling poop trails in backyard for dogs. Over 2 feet on roof. May have to get out my roof snow rake if we dont get some melting. Hauling firewood to house to keep warm as furnace undersized for this temp. Have not been in shop for 2 weeks. Both thumbs screwed up. Painful to button shirt. Oral steroids no help. Wrist and thumb braces on both hands. Sob sob sob.

Hope to get out to shop soon to get pics of tank coating. Eyeball inspection looks good.
.

[Phil Planck]

Looks like tank pretty well coated except for vent tube: