Man, don’t tear the soul out of it like that. But it is your car after all and you can do whatever you want with it.
2 things. Good luck and a great buy. First, if you go to carbs; I’m sure you know what a 2 pot Hilborn is worth. Second, from the first photo of the quick change the left side shows a ring gear rub. These were installed on ones for drag racing or other high hp use. They are adjustable usually with bronze or brass material on the end for the rub. If you change rear ends please use a Pontiac/Olds.
I am going to do my best to balance the history of the car while still having a car I enjoy driving. Ultimately I think a 4 speed will more fun to drive, but still period correct. I have no experience with QC rear ends so I was going to do some research today to see if I can a find a local shop to rebuild it. The stance of the car, along with wheels and tires will stay the same. I'm also planning on running the hilborn, but I know it'll be a lot easier to get it running with carbs.
I really dig the car, cool project. If you do decide to change the rear end, and interested in using an Olds/Pontiac rear as a replacement, I have several nice ones, feel free to PM me, I’m in Northern California. Following thread…
This is the nuts! Interesting that the QC has discs, must have different axles, not the key-way early ford stuff usually associated with them. Look at the side of the casting, it should have 201 cast in it
I just stumbled on to this. Welcome and enjoy your time on the hamb. The cool factor of this project is through the roof.
I finally made some progress on this thing. I pulled the front clip, engine and trans. I have everything to rebuild the front suspension. I'm also going to pull the motor apart just to inspect everything. If it all checks out I'll reassemble, if not I'll do a full rebuild. One of my questions is about the motor and trans mounts. Currently it has the mounts on the front of the motor and a solid trans mount. That seems like a lot of stress on the trans. I was thinking about motor plates and a rubber trans mount. What do you think?
If using motor plates or solid mounts on the engine you must use a solid trans mounts also or you will break the trans case. You can’t have one mounted solid and the other in rubber no matter how you do it!
Welcome ! Great Find, Enjoy. I Suggest you don't change it, get it running, drive it as is, make it safe. An old time racer, sorta like an original old rare car, it's only original once, a very kool conversation car/piece you have. For the street, the men I know that run a blower use underdrive pulleys, not sure on what they use for compression for today's crappy pump gas we buy, the last thing you want is a race gas motor if you want to cruise with it, though I do not see this as a cruiser. Your car, your vision. Good Luck ! ENJOY !
Pulled the heads and pan today. It is a small journal 327 with fulie heads and forged crank. The motor generally looks good aside from one cylinder that likely had some moisture in it at one time. All the cylinders feel smooth with no major scoring or pitting. The rods are really interesting to me. They look like i beam rods that were welded for reinforcement. I'm hoping someone on here has seen something like this in the past. The other interesting part is the middle 3 main caps have additional caps on top. What do you guys think?
I'm curious about the secondary caps as well. I'd like to keep it as original as possible, so my plan is to reassemble with new seals and run it.
Those rods were state-of-the-art at one time. Lots of successful racers used them. The rods were selected, magged and chromoly plates welded on the sides. They were then heat treated, straightened and resized/rebushed. I think there was another heat treat in there somewhere. Don Garlits used them for a while. They were tough but heavy by today’s standards. The bars across the main caps are just another early development, a hold-over from the flathead days I think. Although steel (and aluminum) main caps became available, they were expensive and you had to align bore the mains after installing them, adding more expense. I’m not sure how effective they were but it was a common modification.
I've never done it but.... a WAG would be a primitive crank girdle. It should help stabilize things when that 327 reaches the "soprano-zone" !! 6sally6
Ansen sold a kit with the longer studs, washers, and nuts with the main cap straps. I have an NOS kit in the shop for my SBC
This place never disappoints. The plan is to go through the heads and reassemble. The one cylinder is a little funky, but no physical scoring or pitting so I think it will be OK for what I want to do
That front mount would have to go. You could pick up a Hurst front mount and clean that up pretty easily.
The Jalopy Journal
