jamming nine snakes in a bean can.

Sod Buster

Sod Buster

Senior Member
Holy crap, I hope I never have to do this again, it was a wrestling match.

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I thought I had it whipped at this point, yeah right.

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It looked like it could explode at any minute.

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It was a relief to get the distributor bail thrown over it before someone lost an eye.

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If you de burr the inside of the outer cap and radius the path the wires take, the wires will slide in there easily. The plastic casting has square corners that makes getting the wires past difficult. There is plenty of material in there to do this. A little silicone spay helps too.
 
Great job, Sod!!! See you are doing it as "original" with the correct brown wires and the rabbit ear distributor. I'm think about this because I'm currently using the crab with earlier wires.....the brown ones weren't available at the time I redid the ignition.


Also, really like the way you've dressed up your block and engine compartment....very nice!!:)
 
deuce_roadster said:
If you de burr the inside of the outer cap and radius the path the wires take, the wires will slide in there easily. The plastic casting has square corners that makes getting the wires past difficult. There is plenty of material in there to do this. A little silicone spay helps too.
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I did take a Drimel to it, the silicone sounds like it would of helped.

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Some folks like the cotton braid covered 7mm ignition leads better and some prefer the Packard 440 GM type 7mm ignition leads but I don't know if any of them fit any better in the rabbit ear cap. I like the crab style too. There were a number of years where the crab type cap was all the parts stores had.
 
If it's your last Flathead you won't have to do it again. I didn't think it was all that hard.


Looks great! Interesting theme you got's going.
 
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When I did my '46, I found that getting all those wires in the correct orientation to get the outer cap on is a challenge for sure. It lookes by your pictures, that you had the conduits mounted on the engine, then fed the wires through. I put mine together on the bench, then mounted on the engine. It made fishing the wire through fairly easy. I also took my multimeter and double checked to make sure I had the wires going to the correct plugs before I installed the parts. Didn't want to take it apart again!
 

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Kind of a pain, but it is the cleanest plug wire routing of any vehicle I have ever owned, they sure aren't going anywhere.
 
51woodie said:
When I did my '46, I found that getting all those wires in the correct orientation to get the outer cap on is a challenge for sure. It lookes by your pictures, that you had the conduits mounted on the engine, then fed the wires through. I put mine together on the bench, then mounted on the engine. It made fishing the wire through fairly easy. I also took my multimeter and double checked to make sure I had the wires going to the correct plugs before I installed the parts. Didn't want to take it apart again!
Click to expand...

Yes The conduits were on, that part really wasn't that bad, I stuck a cotter pin threw each one as I fished them out so they would not pull back through.

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I recently went through this as well. Learned each time i have done a set, not to let anger prevail ; as each time that happens I break the outer cap and have to start back over. It’s indeed a quite attractive setup when done.

One of those tasks that makes you wonder how they did such on a assembly line. Those poor guys had to have had some very sore fingers every night.


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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Tinker said:
If it's your last Flathead you won't have to do it again. I didn't think it was all that hard.


Looks great! Interesting theme you got's going.
Click to expand...

The car itself is some what interesting, different for sure, the interior was customized in 1968, the car sat for years tarped in a garage, the quirkiness of the car is what made me pull the trigger. I am not sure if the car is great fit for this site, but here are a few pics of it. Hide your eyes if your faint of heart.:)

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[QUOTE=35fordtn;1750102

One of those tasks that makes you wonder how they did such on a assembly line. Those poor guys had to have had some very sore fingers every night.


I have also wondered the same thing whenever I perform this task.

My guess is that in another part of the plant, they had people at stations, or tables, assembling the wires, conduits and caps into units. They could have as many of these people as was necessary to be able to have the assembled units arrive at the assembly line when it was time to put them on the car. Don't know for sure, but it seems to me to be reasonable. Speed up the line? Add more people putting the units together.
 
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