Norton Calendars

The Triumph and Norton calendars are off the press and ready to ship. Both calendars show awesome detail, and though I’d like to take all the credit, I have to say that once again it’s a team effort. Good photos, careful processing by Jacki, and very nice printing by our new printer located just north of Minneapolis.

Calendars – both Triumph and Norton – are in stock and ready to ship.

Hot Rods
Good friends are the ones who will gladly give up a Saturday morning to come over and help with a project. In my particular instance it was Rick Thompson, salesman extraordinaire, and also a very skilled welder, who came to my aid with the Henry J.

Rather than clean up and use the old mounts again, I bought new ones during the recent Back to the 50s show.

I will skip the why, and simply say that after lots of looking and pondering and cursing I finally decided that the rack-and-pinion steering gear was just too damned close to the oil pan. Cutting off and re-locating the mounts seemed the only answer, so last week I cut off the mounts, and on Saturday Rick and I moved the mounts down about a quarter inch.

Along the way he taught me a new trick. The wire-feed welder I have in the garage didn’t have quite enough horsepower to do a good weld and Rick was afraid we wouldn’t get good penetration. So after tack-welding the mounts to the cross-member in their new location, we used a small propane torch to pre-heat both the mount and the cross-member. The pre-heating made all the difference in the world, and Rick was able to get really good penetration. I can only say that if the J goes over a cliff, the only parts that won’t break will be the steering gear mounts.

Rick Thompson at work. Ever heard the phrase: “he’s so good he can weld water”….. yup, that’s Rick.

Of course the exhaust pipe coming off the manifold will have to do a fancy S curve to miss both the steering shaft and the starter motor, which sounds to me like more work for a certain friend of mine who just happens to be a kick-ass welder.

Be sure and check our Events Page - http://www.wolfpub.com/picture-page

The next task, reinstall the steering gear, and then install the intermediate shaft. Shown is the mock up of the intermediate shaft created using wooden dowel material from the lumber yard.