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Wrench Scramble 2015: Witty Title about a Battery Box
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For those of us with good-but-not-great fabrication skills, 1/8″ X 1.5″ Ell channel steel is wonderful stuff. Thick enough to weld without blowing out, thin enough to weld with even the most mediocre of welders. With a halfway decent intuition of solid mechanics, you can sturdy built boxes, frames, etc. Case-in-point: LeMons grade battery box…
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Wrench Scramble 2015: Two out of Four Ain't Bad
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Have you ever met someone with extensive knowledge of the minor engineering changes made within a model or brand? Someone who can say “oh, this is an early ’82 car, so you need the EA44517 starter, not the -524″ or “don’t get the Moog part for that bushing, their book is wrong”? You know how…
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Wrench Scramble 2015: Don't Do Cage Me In
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LeMons is all about cutting corners, be it in build quality or literally in driving technique. I’ll admit that the cage I put in The Uberbird was very much My First Rollcage® grade fabrication, likely to help in the event of a big crash, but not something you really really trust. Which, of course, defeats the…
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Wrench Scramble 2015: You Know it's LeMons When…
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When you score a good deal on a heavy-duty transmission with the rare bellhousing and clutch configuration you need, you put up with it’s non-matching stubby tailshaft. When you have a transmission with a non-matching stubby tailshaft, you find yourself having to add about 9″ of length compensation between the existing transmission mount and the…
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This Axle Shaft is a Metaphor for the Ranchero Build
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Things were going so well this weekend. I borrowed a tow rig, brought the car home from being caged and we got the engine in relatively quickly. Given that gas tank crude is the #1 hobbler of old LeMons cars, we pulled the gas tank. Thankfully, it doesn’t look too bad in there, just minor particulate…
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Wrench Scramble 2015: Project Axle Hell
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I love drop-out 3rd member axles for how much they ease parts swapping and fabrication. Most famously Ford’s eight and nine-inch diffs, as well as most solid axles from Japanese truck manufacturers allow the differential to be removed and swapped with simple hand tools. Find a lower-geared, limited slip example in a junkyard or on eBay?…
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Wrench Scramble 2015: Playing Musical Engine Stands
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I have three engines, three transmissions and a spare head in my garage right now, none of which are bolted up in the right combination. We’ve got a kinda/sorta “built” 200ci six, the original 170ci that came with the car and a donor 170ci I bought only for the transmission attached to it. Our original…
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Wrench Scramble 2015 is Underway!
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Five years (to the exact day) ago I wrote about learning to avoid getting stretched so thin that project cars are more stressful than fun. Apparently I unlearned that lesson because as of tonight, all four of my cars are in need of services ranging from routine maintenance to a complete drivetrain swap. I’ve gotta get cranking,…
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24 Hours of LeMons: Justice Comes on Tiny Wheels
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Get too many black flags behind the wheel of your LeMons steed and this could be your fate: lapping the Thunderhill paddock on a hilariously undersized bike apologizing to the other teams for your lousy driving. The cruelty’s amplified by the nearly triple-digit temps and terrible air quality courtesy of a massive brush fire elsewhere…
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Easter Sunday Ranchero Resurrection
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All it needed was points and a condenser. Of course, I came to that conclusion after throwing a bunch of other parts at it first (and leaving the points on the counter as I walked out the door the first time). That raucous exhaust note comes courtesy of a massive crack in the exhaust manifold…
