Oh yeah buddy.
And guess who's job it is to try and salvage this cast iron mess
Getting some stuff rigged up on the Bridgeport was an exercise is craftiness and a dash of "Rube Goldberg" tossed in to make it taste good.
The previous owner as Thumper mentioned, ahhhh yeah buddy.
The exhaust manifold is so badly cracked and then the P O brazed it up and OMG what a mess.
Got the thing SORT of leveled up on the mill table and then tied it down with the flange against the table.
Took a light clean up cut on the two end ears to give us a place to set it up from.
Flipped it over and set it on two machined chunks of pipe to make the thing as close to level as it was gonna be.
Then we started cutting on it with the 4 inch carbide cutter.
Finally got it FAIR.
The intake is fine, but the exhaust is a total train wreck.
BUTTT, it will gitterdone until we can scare up a good one.
Go to clean up the head while Thumper is off getting the two young ones and discover that the steel locating rings that locate the intake were left in the battery tray by the P O
ALL BENT UP I might add.
So tomorrows job is to make new locator rings and then indicate and bore the intake ports down to make up for what we cut off during the "Freshening"
We did get a factory gasket set though, and that helps.
So gonna replace a couple studs and make two large washers that clamp the manifold on at the second stud from each end, as they seem to have gone missing.
The poor condition of this entire manifold assembly is sad, as had it been helped some years ago it would be far better today.
From what I hear the jets in the carb need to be swapped for slightly larger ones to help cool the exhaust temps down.
Another issue I'm told is that it's common that the ignition advance gets stuck, or the vacuum line plugs up.
Will worry about that once we can keep it running smoothly.
Was a real workout today for sure.
Glad to have the mill and the lathe in our shop, would have been a no go without it.
More from either Thumper or me as soon as we gitterdone and running again.
Keep the faith troops