My stay at home project.

[marlinman93]

Well it's taken more than just the last few weeks to get to this point, but I did reach a milestone this week. My first engine start up on my current project car. The '39 Chev coupe has a 350 Chev full roller motor I built for it, and this was it's first run last Wednesday.
Hoping I can complete the brake bleeding this week, and be able to back it out of the shop so I can leave all the sanding dust outside instead of all over the shop!
There's almost a year's work into this build so far, and hoping it will be driving by June.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNH7CP9xd-M

[Pitchy]

Sounds almost as good as a Harley, just kidding sounds great Marlinman.

[Blaine]

Why are you staying at home?

[Grizz]

good sounds, sounds good

[jeepnik]

Is that an electric exhaust cut out. Back when I ran my '68 Nova they were manual.

[Shasta]

Looking very good! Please keep us posted as the build progresses.

Shasta

[M. M. Wright]

Lookin' good! Keep posting as you get it farther along.

[marlinman93]

Is that an electric exhaust cut out. Back when I ran my '68 Nova they were manual.

Yes, those are electric one touch cutouts. Tap the switch and they open, tap again and they close.

No glass in the car yet, so staying home is not an option, it's all I can do on it right now. But I have the full set of new glass here, so it could be driven soon.
Pushed it outside the other day to get my quad out of the backyard. My shop is drive through. So I got a few pictures outside that day.

[Bill in Oregon]

Beauty Vall! Very nice note.

[marlinman93]

Beauty Vall! Very nice note.

Thanks Bill! It's been a arduous journey with the amount of rust and rot this car had when I bought it. In hindsight I'd never take on a body as bad as this one was again! But I also am glad that once in my lifetime of building cars I did so, just so I learned what it took, and wont make the same choice again! I really was tempted by this car because it was so close to the '40 Chevy coupe I had just out of high school in 1968. And the price was so cheap it seemed silly to not buy it. Add to that the excess parts that were inside it, and could offset the initial price to nearly nothing, and the scales were tipped too much to pass.
But even if somebody gave me one as bad as this one was, I'd part it out, or sell it, and find something far more solid to begin with than do this again.

This was what I started with a year ago. The rot was so bad if you slammed the doors both sides swung in and out like a garden gate! The front suspension was barely there and had to individually steer each tire to point it while pushing. Toss any part inside the car and if it was smaller than 6" it fell on the ground. Some areas a 12' part fell through too! No engine, trans, and electrical. Just a rusty shell that actually was very straight and solid above 6". And surprisingly what appeared to be a frame from another car, or somehow a frame with zero rust. That was the saving grace to the whole car.

[Marvin S]

At least you didn’t have to break in a flat tappet cam and lifters.

[Pitchy]

Super cool beans, she`s a beauty.

[marlinman93]

At least you didn’t have to break in a flat tappet cam and lifters.

Bingo! That was something I really looked forward to Marvin! This is my first engine build using a roller cam, so not having that 20-25 minute 2500 rpm blast on initial startup was a real joy! I fired it up, and just let it lope at idle while I set timing, and carb adjustments. Sat there running for probably the same 20 minutes, but idling instead of blazing along at breakin speed.
Pretty sure if I ever build another engine it will definitely be a roller camshaft.

[marlinman93]

Super cool beans, she`s a beauty.

Thanks Pitchy! Long way yet to go to get to the finish line, but I do love the 30's coupes a lot.

[M. M. Wright]

Looks great Marlinman! I've got a 41 Mercury coupe project that I need to move on 'cause at my age I'll never get it done. Yours is coming along fine man. Know what you mean about the roller cam. I've gone to rollers the last 10 years or so because of the lack of oil for them. Keep us in the loop.

[Booger Bill]

You guys would have liked the chance I had when I was a kid in the late 1940`s through the 1960`s. I had a bachelor uncle
and I was his favorite (and only nephew). He came home from the war and owned this junk yard. The photograph was taken from a airplane about the mid 1950`s. He would have gave me anything I wanted in his junk yard. The average junked cars he had were from the 30,s through the 40`s. I went with him buying a few and towing them home. The average price was about twenty dollars! Uncle Eldon was "moody". I think he had PTSD from the war. He was a glider guy with the 82nd AB. He was in a bad landing and only he and one other guy out of 13 on his glider lived. He was hiding and watched the Germans finish off everyone.
About 1973 he had a heart attack and open heart surgery. He had a stroke on the operation table and it mentally affected him. After that he threatened suicide. One day he and I were sitting in his garage. He said, your dad took all my guns, here`s one he didn't get. He reached in a tire and fished out a Luger in its holster wrapped in a shop rag and said, she`s yours!
He then said soon you are going to inherit some money. I want you to blow it on something you always wanted to do, I wish I would have! About a month later he gassed himself in the garage! I had started flying lessons several years prior but had quit due to the cost. I bought a piper tri pacer and got my license.
https://i.postimg.cc/5y3sW-pPc/Uncle-El ... -1950s.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/RZsYtC4K/Eldon-Bruhn.jpg

[marlinman93]

Well my project to keep me occupied went on hold yesterday. Been having some stomach pain the last month or more, and doctors couldn't figure the cause out. Then yesterday it gradually got worse and worse, until told my wife I had to go to emergency room. Well that's an experience in today's environment that is scary as heck! We drive into the hospital and the parking lots are nearly empty. Tents set up outside, and two people in hazmat suits interviewing each person to determine what they're there for. If it's flu like symptoms you don't get in the hospital, and are directed to a tent.
So I passed the interview and was rushed into ER. They put me on an IV and tried some high level ibuprofen injected to kill the pain, but it did nothing. They finally went to morphine and it took the pain from a 10 to a tolerable 3 level. After blood, urine tests, and a CT scan the doctor tells me I have a huge gall stone, and "if things were normal we'd have you in surgery tomorrow to remove your gall bladder." But things aren't normal. So instead of surgery they give me a prescription for oxycodone and sent me home to bed rest.
So now I wait for this whole virus thing to end, or as the doctor said, "Wait for another attack that damages your liver or pancreas, and then it will be bad enough they'll let us operate." But the kicker is they've tested hundreds of people who came in thinking they might have the corona virus, and so far none tested positive. And the hospital has an over abundance of empty beds, and excess personnel because they're turning away so many patients. It's a ghost town inside with a handful of patients, and hundreds of personnel waiting to do something.

[marlinman93]

With my surgeries on hold, great weather, and my stomach settling back down; I decided it was time to do some social distancing! So having gotten my brakes bled yesterday, I took my '39 Chev coupe for a drive around the neighborhood streets. Got some odd looks as I drove past walkers, and likely since there aren't any windows in the old coupe yet.
This was the first time it's been on the road since I bought the hulk of a rusty wreck one year ago. So I was mostly trying to listen and look for any issues. But it drove great, and gauges told me all was well, and no problems.
I made numerous short stops to adjust the transmission kickdown because it's got an overdrive automatic, and needed the TVR cable pressure to be enough to make the 1st-2nd shift right at 20 mph. I ran out of adjustment, so I'll need to shorten the cable and start over again later.
Was low 70's today, and with no windows it felt good driving around!

[Grizz]

Very Very Nice. what engine?

[marlinman93]

Very Very Nice. what engine?

It's a SBC 350 bored .030" over. A 1990 roller camshaft motor, with LT1 heads, 4 bolt mains, and a Howards hydraulic roller cam. Quick Fuel 650 double pumper carb on an Edelbrock Performer RPM intake.

[Grizz]

thanks! some fotos of that would be nice.. I've rebuilt engines and exchanged engines and repowered boats, but never got into performance builds... I was just glad they fired with J.C. Whitney parts in 'em !!

[marlinman93]

I've almost exclusively done performance builds, except for my daily driver, a 1969 Chevy Suburban. It's a pretty stock 350 SBC.
Here's a picture not long before it was first started up.



Guessing it's around 400 hp, so nothing really radical. And I kept compression down to around 9:1 c.r. so it will run well on pump gas, and could even get by on regular grade in a pinch.
This was a start up video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNH7CP9xd-M

[claybob86]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!!!!!!!

[Grizz]

Very Very Nice. It's a treat to listen to engines, thanks for posting that. 400 HP sounds like a lot to me. My 8V-71 boat engine was set up at 240 HP at 1800 RPM. It effortlessly pushed an 85,000 pound boat around.. . a little different profile, eh?

[marlinman93]

Very Very Nice. It's a treat to listen to engines, thanks for posting that. 400 HP sounds like a lot to me. My 8V-71 boat engine was set up at 240 HP at 1800 RPM. It effortlessly pushed an 85,000 pound boat around.. . a little different profile, eh?

Yeah, this one develops HP at a little higher rpm. HP peaks at around 5800 rpm, so not too peaky.