Putting things together

Here's the Weiand manifold installed and ready for a carb.

Then a whole bunch of stuff got installed...like heater hoses, distributor, carb and so on.

We had to "adjust" the firewall a little to allow the HEI distributor sufficient room for adjustment. And the Crane FireWires are being installed.
If you look closely, you'll see that the carb in this picture and the one above are a little different. We tested the 1405 on the El Camino and found that it was in need of a rebuild. So I decided to put a 750 cfm Edelbrock on the Elky and Steve bought my old 1406.

They look kinda pretty with the looms and all. And the fuel line, filter and fan are installed, too.

Then it was time to install the radiator support and inner fenders (these got a coat of truck bedliner spray. It gave them a nice, rugged semi-gloss black finish.)

While Steve was doing this, I was installing the tach and gauge cluster. Beats the hell out of idiot lights.

Radiator, tranny cooling lines and radiator hoses are installed.

Then the left inner fender and the headlight harness went in. The right outer fender is already in place.

There. Both fenders and the grille are installed. And after replacing both turn signal lamps and both marker lamps...and fighting with the headlight harness for a bit, all the lights even work.

Here's the engine compartment with the battery, alternator and other electrical stuff installed.

He was going to keep the column shifter until he found that the linkage rod had a bolt that was broken off flush with the threads. This was a very good reason to go get a Hurst ProMatic II. Here it's being fit for installation.

And after some creative efforts to get the shifter cable through the tunnel, it's all bolted in and functional.

Ok! It's fired up and ready for a maiden voyage. I'm givin the thumbs up and ready to go.
We found a few things that had to be done... like moving the distributor by one tooth on the cam gear so that we could get enough advance to make it run right. And a few adjustments on the carburetor. And the brand-new, 3 year-old power brake booster was causing a major vacuum leak...so that's on order. But it's running very, very well. It also has 15 inch rally wheels and BF Goodrich T/As up front now.

This is about where progress ended. A couple of babies, career change and life in general got in the way.

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