Dec 05, 2021 A.D.: GERTRUDE LIVES!!!! SHE LIVES!!! The transplant succeeded as well as I hoped for. I hoped it would run with the same strength it had in Mathilda, and thus far today, it seems to be so.
Let's renew the thread with where I left off: with Gertrude freshly relieved of her dead weight motor. Having extracted Mathilda's engine earlier, I made good on the promise to myself to replace all the expansion plugs with brass ones if I ever got that engine out of its compartment:
See the bottle of Indianhead shellac on the cinderblock? This ONE BOTTLE has provided enough shellac to seal over 5 years worth of "freeze plugs" and coolant pump gaskets. thermostat housing gaskets and a few odd jobs. The ONE copper plug I left in this block behind the rubber biscuit bracket showed NO corrosion, so I just coated the whole plug with another layer of shellac, making sure it bonded onto the iron block surfaces around it. I expect it will outlast the iron in the block, if left in a state of Nature,so that several billion years from now, some archeologist might find the plug with some ferric oxide clinging to it, and ponder its use.
All the brass is U.S.A. made too, from Melling and 440source.com. One can savor the view of the very same brass from the next pic, taken as I began the descent of the engine and transmission into the compartment. Here let me repent of my earlier disparaging comments about the
Torin leveler I purchased a few years ago against days such as I've suffered through the past few weeks. This device proved IMMENSELY USEFUL and saved me HOURS of toil! Be this as 'twas, I still plan to make new L brackets for it from good 3 inch angle iron....
Here I cleared the core support with room to spare! My secret? 1.) I cinched up the leveler chains be 3 links, eliminating the play in those, and increasing the motor altitude and 2.) I had the car ON THE GROUND, permitting it to roll when needful, and 3.) I used a couple sheets of 3/4" OSB I had got from a now departed neighbor. I refrained from using this at first from fear of the hoist wheels destroying the stuff, as indeed happened when handling a 400 with TF 727 attached 4 yrs ago. BUT, the caliche beneath the OSB was DRY for this exercise, assuring a firm bed which supported the glued woodchip board well enough to allow it to roll with little damage.
I even cleared the transmission mount in the crossmember with as much room as the tunnel would allow! Unfortunately, I jacked the tailpiece enthusiastically, lifting the main crankshaft bolt into the core support I cleared so nicely! GRRRR! So I'll have to use some oak boards
and C clamps to straighten up the top a bit. Oh WELL!
Despite that little accident, I got it dropped right onto the mounting pads on the K frame AND the crossmember mount too! Absurdly EASY, All Things Considered....
Of course, I didn't accomplish this solo, but had EXPERT Assistance....
Little Engineers take their tasks SERIOUSLY! But there's room for Levity also:
She's doing well with her Pre-School Differential Equations and Quantum Mechanics courses too, though she doesn't deign to SPEAK to lesser folk than her Dear Old Daddy! Dr. Asperger's children can tell Who's Who right away!
More later. I'm DEAD tired.... Good Night.
