Time to get to work

As I indicated back in early October, the crossmember kit is on order with Chassis Engineering.  I spoke with them last week and everything is boxed and ready to ship after Nov 25th as I requested.  That should put parts here about Dec 1.  Now that my fall house projects are completed it's time to get to work on the '41 to make ready for the frame work.  This past Friday I picked up `15 - 1/2" flat washers from the local hardware to make removal of the hood springs possible.  I only worked on the car for a couple hours and had the springs off and the front bumper removed.

My friend Dan came over on Sat morning and helped remove the hood.  Next was getting the front end ready for removal.  Last year I removed and reinstalled the engine with the fenders and grille in place but this time all that sheet metal needed to be removed in order to access the frame.  This was the result at the end of Sat.  The lights are removed since they will be replaced with 12 volt bulbs.  It's possible to remove the front end with the radiator in place but I opted to remove the radiator due to the close proximity of the cooling fan and to enable access to the front of the engine to remove other parts.

Sunday afternoon, Dan came back and we simply lifted the front end off as one piece and placed it aside.  Next came removal of the driveshaft, transmission crossmember, transmission and engine. 

The engine was then placed in the cradle I built to enable access to the clutch and bell housing so they could be removed.  The engine can then be placed on the engine stand.  I'll need to replace the rear main seal to properly fix the leak.

Here's the view with the engine bay empty.

Amazingly, the bolts holding the front suspension/crossmember all came loose without any trouble.  Pretty cool since they've probably been there for 70 years!  We had to loosen the three large nuts on top of the shocks and pry up on the shocks a bit to allow access to the 4 bolts between the shocks and the outside of the frame rails.  The pitman arm was quite tight on the steering box so we opted to remove the two steering arms instead.  The steering box will be coming out with the steering column so it really doesn't matter which parts stay attached.  None will be reinstalled.  Here's the frame after the suspension/crossmember was removed.  And a shot of the pieces setting aside.

I had mentioned previously how badly deteriorated the wiring is and how the plan is to replace all the wiring with a fused wiring kit from Kwik Wire.  Worth another look at how bad the wires look.

The brake lines on the front had to be disconnected prior to removing the crossmember and I discovered another area that needed replacing.  Someone had spliced in a piece of brake line along the frame on the passenger side in the engine compartment.  Instead of using a properly flared piece of steel brake tubing or ss tubing, the splice was made using COPPER tubing  and a compression fitting!  That might be fine for low a pressure oiling system but surely NOT for a brake system.  I should be able to remove the steering column/box tomorrow as well as the radio and the under dash wiring.  Got some holiday traveling to do the end of this week so I should be back to work and back to posting more pics by the weekend.  Have a great Thanksgiving everyone - Go Lions!