Work on My F8, No. 11

[Jim Price]

Thnigs have been a bit slow over the past two days but for a couple of big events!

Picked up the engine night before last and hauled it home in my ancient Toyota pickup. Found that my seller had painted it a bright red in hopes of selling it to a hot rod builder. Have ordered the correct Ford engine green paint appropriate to 1940. Engine and it's innards look good. Will see if we can get it started! See the picture.

Began work on the engine by removing all the head bolts so that we can polish the valves. Lots of flaked-off rust in the water jackets and began to blow them out with some air from the compressor. Need to be sure we get that residue out before putting it back together!

Am giving some thought to going to a 12-volt system and having an electronic ignition/distributor installed. Will change to a negative ground system but with all the electric components out the only problem we may have is with the some of the original instruments. Any thoughts or comments out there?

Picked up the frame from the painter yesterday. The color looks good! The picture attached shows the color to be a bit lighter than it actually is.

Picked up the square pipe, 1/2" by 1", (not channel as I thought!) night before last and today we cut it to length and I took it over to a machine shop to have it cut to 1/2" OD by 3/8" ID for the windshield frame. It should be ready by the middle of next week.

No work planned for this weekend. It's hot, hot, and humid. Temp reached 105 F today. The garage is open with only a fan to cool us off! Must stop every hour to drink at least a 20 oz. bottle of water.

That's all for now!

Regards,
Jim