I had the old one out in a couple of hours

In with the new, now this was a little bit of a pain. It’s not that the job was tough or anything, but my cherry picker fell over and the engine landed on my toolbox and battery – both destroyed. I pulled the ol’ s10 around and chained the cherry picker to it and finally got the new Flathead in and bolted up.

Besides the engine falling over while trying to put it in, the only other problem I had with this project was getting the drive shaft yoke to slide into the transmission. I like to never got that sucker in there. I actually had to take a board and tap it in with a hammer. I spent overall about 3 hours working with the drive shaft. I spent more time on that drive shaft than I did actually putting the engine in.

After I finally got it in, made sure everything was tight and finally fired the engine up… I put it in gear and NOTHING – transmission is locked up! Turns out the 54 Hydramatic is junk…

So I pulled the 54 transmission back out – had it out in 45 minutes!

I pulled the old transmission off of my old engine and finally got it installed about a week later since I had to order the torus gasket. That transmission is heavy by the way… It was everything I could do to get it slid under the car and raised onto a jack to jack it back up into place. I think I had the transmission back in in about an hour or so. Wasn’t too bad.

In all, I had the engine swap done in about a day, but it took me 9 days to complete the project since I had to order that torus gasket before I could install my old transmission.

I’ve put about 2,000 miles on it since I did the engine swap and so far everything is great. The engine runs smooth and the transmission… well…it shifts haha.

I have everything to convert it to a straight drive car which I do plan to do, hopefully sometime this winter if I get a chance to.

I stitched these myself, it’s not the best job out there, but I did it… It took me a while to do all 4 of these though as I didn’t use a sewing machine. I did it all by hand.

Here are the pics…

This was the first door panel I completed. I have about 3 hours tied up in each of these door panels.

The seat covers were found on ebay and are only temporary. Someone purchased them before me and tore them on the bottom cover for the back seat, not really noticable though. These were NOS covers, but age has an effect on them… I think. They didn’t quite fit like they should have, but they look good for now – better than nothing at least.

Here is the dash also… I finally got around to painting the lower half black. This will get sanded and repainted later also when I get around to repainting the whole car.

In all, I think I have about $110-120 tied up in my door panels, kick panels and rear deck panel. That’s not including the trim I piece I lost and had to find and repurchase… that set me back an additional $47

I still have to do my wind lace, headliner and carpet… and I need to have my seats recovered right. I’m collecting parts to get those things done, but it probably won’t be until spring 2010 before I get around to doing that.

1952 Pontiac "Flame Job"

Well, I got bored and drew out some flames on my car a few weeks prior to painting them. I drove it around for a while with the sketch on it until I finally got the nerve to mask it off and spray them. They’re painted on with Krylon paint (cans) and I think they turned out pretty good.

I basically made me a pattern on some cardboard paper and used that to keep both sides symmetrical… I think they turned out decent for my first time ever trying to paint flames…

It was getting dark out when I finished so these pictures are a little fuzzy.

1952 Pontiac "Flame Job"