Quote:
Originally Posted by JM 35 Sedan
Not sure if you are asking about tools made by or for FoMoCo and/or tools that someone has personally made themselves to use while working on their Early Ford V8? The tools I like the most are the ones I have made myself.
Hub/drum puller, steering wheel puller, pinion and pinion bearing removal tool, press on timing gear puller, distributor bearing removal and replacement tools, oil seal installation tool for torque tube and axle housing, tool for removing outer race bearing in axle housing, intake mount engine hoist plates, adjustable angle exhaust mount engine stand adaptor, exhaust mount engine storage stand with wheels, spring spreader, Stromberg carburetor throttle bushing removal and installation tools, bolt on engine block legs for block transport or storage, and probably a few I can't remember at the moment. I guess I enjoy making tools to work on my early V-8's almost as much as I enjoy owning and driving them.
Out of the above list, I like the hub/drum puller and the adjustable angle exhaust mount engine stand adaptor the most because I use those the most.
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I'm with John about the tools we make ourselves. My favorite early V8 tool is the porting fixture I built ten years ago. During the half-dozen years I ported flathead blocks on a steel-top, waist-high workbench in Vern Tardel’s shop I figured out that there had to be a more-comfortable, efficient way to do the work than wrestling a heavy iron casting into nearly okay positions and held there with wood wedges while I stooped and stretched to see what I was doing. The rare occasions I had to port a block on one of the two almost-always busy KR Wilson stands in the shop proved no better. In fact, the stands provided fewer opportunities for advantageous positioning than the workbench and the wedges!
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that it took me so long to think of a two-axis gimbaled fixture and the “nearly infinite” positions available. I had just begun to visualize the fixture when Art Morrison’s chassis-building business began touting their mandrel-bent rectangular-tube hot-rod and racecar frames, and . . . Wham! Big inspiration. A ‘phone call followed with an e-mailed sketch, and I had the foundation for the fixture. Some bits of steel tube and plate, a couple of hole saws and some welding and I had my best-pal flathead tool!
I designed it to fit a universal engine stand because that was my option at the time, and it’s a reasonable scheme for just about anyone. Today it plugs into a socket welded to a steel pole at the end of my porting bay, but it’s as portable as ever. And it’s also very adaptable; I use a trimmed 8BA bell housing to adapt the “late” blocks, and I redrilled the mounting plates to accept V8-60 blocks, taking into account their crank-to-cam centerline differences; blocks are mounted in the fixture along the camshaft centerline to minimize rotational weight bias.
My favorite early V8 tool has also become my favorite Chrysler Hemi head tool and is about to become my favorite for big-block Chevy heads and motorcycle heads as well! It all comes down to a two-axis gimbaled fixture that holds the work in any secure position desired.
Mike