Ford Y-block engine WIP - finished 4/29/15 (busted photo links fixed, 3/7/16)

[blunc]

nice work "pumping it up".

[Modelcarjedi]

Nice !! I love y-blocks

[Russell C]

Block paint & test fitting. Color shows a bit too orange in this photo, it is Testors Bright Red, which is close enough for jazz in my book when it comes to the factory Ford color. For more visual interest, I drilled in freeze plugs and gouged out notches in the heads for where the head bolts are. I added a better looking mount for the oil filter and removed the excess plastic behind the water pump outlet tube. The fuel pump, crankcase vent canister, vent tube and oil filter are out on their wire pegs in a sort of 'exploded view' for this pic. The giant holes are for the AMT Crown Vic custom headers, and the two holes in the block in front of the oil filter (one is a mistake) are where the engine mount will go. The other holes are for the spark plugs.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[Russell C]

Plug wiring. I made that metal 'hoop' for the plug wires to go through out of some super thin soft aluminum sheet warning label material that I'd scrounged from when I used to work at a nameplate manufacturer. Basically, I cut a strip of it with a scissors, formed it into that shape, drilled a hole through the tab and the block, and attempted to secure it to the back corner of the block with a bit of black heat-stretched sprue - but that wasn't strong enough to hold it in place when I attempted to run a second full length formed wire through it, so I re-secured it with CA glue. The secondary lesson from that was my blackened soft steel wire was just a bit too springy to use full plug-to-distributor length. So, all the remaining wires after the first one go from the plug to that loops on each side, and the second half of the wires go from the distributor cap to the loops. Sure made life easier after figuring out that it wasn't necessary to have uncut wires. Hovering temporarily in space above the engine on a copper wire peg is the coil.

The plug boots were made from insulation cut and stripped from the wire next to the engine. If I may be harsh on my own work, those boots look a bit too thick, but too late to fix that now.

I'll have to clean up the worn off orange paint, a result of excess handling. I tried my best to hold the engine from only the bottom of the block and the top of the intake, but the lesson here is that I should have made some kind of temporary fixture to stuff into the back, so that I wouldn't have to touch any part of the block.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[Russell C]

Coil. First, I'm glad I could find the center hole in the distributor cap in that spaghetti maze of plug wires, and second, I'm pleased that this was one more little part I didn't lose in the carpet. When first viewing this photo, I realized that I'd forgotten to make a boot for the back of the coil, so I solved that problem by half-slitting a very short length of the same insulation material that I'd used on the plugs, and slipped it over the end of the wire going into the coil.

Valve covers now permanently installed. At the front, you see the beginnings of the T-bracket and front mounting plate for the alternator. There'll be no "floating alternator" controversy with this engine.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[Sledsel]

Nice to see the plug wires installed correctly. Engine is looking great.

Love the Y-Block in the truck... they have a sound all their own, kinda like a Harley

[afx]

Nice work Russell.

[Russell C]

Thanks for the kind words, gents.

Alternator. Generator [see posts 38 &39 below] The fan belt is heat-stretched black plastic sprue, bent to shape. I machined the alternator body and little pulley on my mini-lathe (blessed to receive that as a gift years back from my now-departed father, a pro machinist), since those were not something I could easily 'turn' on my motor tool. The fin wheel was a ratchet gear of a squashed wrist watch I found in a parking lot. The black brackets are the same dead soft black anodized aluminum as seen on the reject aerospace photo etched tags to the right, which were another item I snagged from the recycle bin at my former nameplate manufacturer job. That material cuts easily with a scissors, files like hard plastic, and is easily drilled through, all the while maintaining that nice even black surface. Touch up is as easy as hitting the silver-exposed surfaces with a black permanent marker.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[wayne swayze]

Beautiful work! Your Y-block rocks!

[Russell C]

Dual quad carbs. As described in my #1 post, these are old Monogram ones, turned sideways (5/6/14 edit: senility caused me to attribute these to the Quicksilver kit in my first post, but that is obviously not right from http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/gallery_12144_1240_16372.jpg I just snagged. They must have instead come from the Monogram Cobra kit). Molded in red plastic, which is why that shows through the gold dusting of paint, where I scraped off the surface for the air cleaners. Throttle linkage is a bit blurry up at the top, and two fuel lines from a junction thingy mimics (sorta) this guy's 1:1 setup. The pleats in the 'filter paper' is nothing more than pencil lines in white primer paint. The one air cleaner is just on temporarily, I'll clean it up a bit more.

The oil pan is chrome, it just looks white from too much reflection of the oven top in this lousy light in my kitchen.

Temp fitting of the header - the back hole makes it too low at that end, I'll fix that. These are the custom headers from the AMT Crown Vic, modified so the outlet goes straight horizontal toward the rear. The reason for that will be obvious in my next post, as will the reason for the driver's side throttle linkage bellcrank facing toward the front of the engine. Of course, the wire out the back of the headers will be cut to short lengths to fit into the rest of the pipes.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[microwheel]

You level of engine detail is outstanding Russell

[blunc]

You level of engine detail is outstanding Russell

I second that.

[MeatMan]

Great work Russell. I love the fuel pump! I'm not a rivet counter but what you called an "alternator" is actually a generator. Either way I like the work you did on it.

[YBlock292]

Russell,

great work to show such a beautifully detailed Yblock in the 1:25 scale! Dennis is right with his remark on the generator. Last year the generator - a predecessor of the alternator - which refers to the technical standards of the 1950s, when Yblocks were developed - in my 62 Ford Galaxie, which features a 292 ci Yblock, needed a rebuild kit.

Ludwig

[Russell C]

Generator. I stand corrected, and a person learns something every day. I've been using both words interchangeably ever since I was a kid, never got around to learning the difference.

[blunc]

from what I recall about generators/alternators...

generators and alternators have similar requirements;

they both require a voltage supplied to them before they will produce a charging voltage/current (unless they were built with permanent magnets...I've never seen one like that).

they both require a circuit that limits max voltage, generators usually had an external regulator, most modern alternators have an internal solid-state regulator.

the main reason an alternator is called that is because the raw output is alternating current (like house electric) and is rectified with diode packs to produce direct current.

generators produce direct current without the need for rectifiers but are not as efficient as alternators.

Edited April 27, 2015 by blunc

[Russell C]

Transaxle/gearbox. Needed to permanently install the engine in order to work out the exhaust pipe/muffler setup on top of the transaxle area. Removed some of the bulky looking plastic of the AMT '56 Crown Vic suspension with better looking metal pieces. The transaxle/gearbox is a much reworked truck transmission, I think leftover from the MPC Super Semi Zinger kit. I'll have to detail in another thread how I used heat stretched sprue to create the reinforcement ridges on it.

curiousmodeler sez:
What?? Transaxle/gearbox?! I thought this engine was going in a Crown Victoria.

It actually is, just not in the end you expect to see it in. Or I should say, it is in the proper end, kind of, but the end is not where it usually is.

curiousmodeler sez:
Lunatic.

Hey. I resemble that remark.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[blunc]

and are ya gonna have the driver sitting out in front of the car on a swivel seat (and wearing a beanie) too?

just kidding, I'll be watching to see how this build runs out.

[Russell C]

... are ya gonna have the driver sitting out in front of the car...?

Well... driver will be in front, no room for passengers, though .....

Exhaust. Had some aluminum (?) clad copper rod in the right diameter which was somewhat cooperative to bend. Oval shaped scrap plastic bits look like small mufflers to me, and I had just enough aluminum tube to use for the end lengths. This setup demands whitewall slicks, of course.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[Russell C]

Engine/cradle install. Cramped quarters in there, somewhat dark and hard to see, thus the need for a WIP set of photos. This one shows the boot on the end of the coil which I'd forgotten to install when I took the photo for post #30, but now it reminds me I forgot to install the wire from the coil to the firewall location. I'll put it in right after I post this.

Off to GSL with this thing early tomorrow morning, photos to follow of the completed model when I get back.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[Russell C]

Couldn't resist the tease on up to the surprise of the mid-engine transaxle, I'm just weird that way. Full model below courtesy of the GSL awards slide show, and others can be seen at their official entry photo collection by hitting the "Next" button at this page for 4 more views of what the model looks like. I'll have to put together a different thread later of my full collection of yellow 3-wheeled models that were a running gag at GSL for its "Group" category going all the way back to 1992. I've done one thread on my "Group 5" (2005) Studebaker, here.

I managed to snag the Ed Roth private award this time (where my name will be added to that one trophy), and I tied for 3rd place in the people's choice vote "Group 15" category. Quite an honor on both counts, and loads of fun to mess with peoples' minds. Couldn't resist the temptation to combine Roth's "Road Agent" and his "Mysterion", especially because the '56 Victoria had the transparent roof option, which technically would end up looking like a bubble top in this application. Since the back end of this thing is somewhat open, I thought it would be fun to do up the engine with good detail and have a WIP thread on it, and it was.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Russell C

[MeatMan]

Truly radical!! Nice work all around Russell.

[RAMBENNA]

looks great

[blunc]

it's a shame that most of the great engine work stays hidden.

congrats on the well deserved awards.

[Russell C]

... shame that most of the great engine work stays hidden....

Yep, I figured that would likely happen, and since the engine itself looked like more of a fun project than usual for me, it by itself begged for a WIP thread. The nice outgrowth from it is the 1:1 Y-block engine photo ref thread that Bill Engwer created, one that can be continually added to for others' benefit.

Thanks for all the kind words, friends.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Russell C