One of the greatest sources of frustration when working on other cars is the previous owners. If you are lucky and had good PO's then ther's rarely a problem. If the PO was a bodger, or hired a bodgr mchanic, well, then, it makes later repairs and restorations an royal pain in the butt.
So, if you're a bodger.... Quit it!
Now, you may be asking yourself where this ir is coming from. So, I managed to get all the parts finished up yesterday, the Carburetor, the exhaust/intake manifold and the oil bath air filter. Yesterday evening I happily went out to the Champion to reinstall everything, thinking to myself that there's only 15-ish nuts to tighten and everything will be back together again.
I trid to fit the manifold to the exhaust pipe and noticed that it just didn't want to go together. Further investigation showed that the flange on the exhaust pipe wasn't quite the right size. Confused by this, as the old manifold fit just fine, I took a closer look at the old manifold. Someone, in an attempt to force things to work together in the past had bent outward at 30-40 degrees the studs that protrude from the bottom of the manifold. So, the new manifold, with straight and correct bolts just wouldn't fit.
A sailor-string of commntary later I left the exhaust pipe unattached, mounted the manifold to the engine, and took a break to go help a fellow JH owner with his distributor.
I got up this morning early, finished attaching the carb and air cleaner, and tidied up the job. So, the project is "done" excepting for the fact that I'll be replacing the exhaust a little earlier than I planned. So, now it's off to go find an exhaust for the car.
So, I finish my post with this.....Use the RIGHT parts for repairs... don't just force stuff to work. Yes it might work for today, but it'll cause much grief down the road!
Jody
