This other pictures is of the two-piece bonnet (which I don't remember seeing on Jim Moody's website, but I am sure that he has a photo of it somewhere) that fits on the teapot very well. I guess that it's in two pieces so that you can leave your boost lines alone (there are holes for the boost lines on the bottom piece) when you take off the bonnet when you need to work on the carb. I do need to close up some extra holes that somebody just had to add years ago I guess. But it has been freshly blasted and looks pretty good. It does have some battle scars but it is very functional. I will have to get some good neoprene to refit the pressure release gasket that fits where those four holes are located on top. I have the original washer and hardware, but the rubber looks pretty rough.

And here is the coup de gras - the venerable teapot! Unfortunately Charlie Burns had a few very good cores so I had to bite at the chance to get this build up on the test stand looking and appearing close to what an original VS57 build would look like if someone were to install a paxton mcculloch on their 55 or 56 Ford passenger car. One of the cores had a very nice base and the throttle shaft and bushings were almost new. That will save me some time....and dough!! A few friends recommended to me that I have a carb shop do all of the work and just bolt it on. Well, seems my oldest daughter just came back from the orthodontist for her first "braces" visit. Not whining, but $8300 total over 2 and a half years is quite a bit for braces and teeth straightening! My daughter's worth it though, and a whole lot more I'd say. Suffice to say, I don't have all the extras in the budget to get the carb done by a professional (may be changing my tune when it comes time to fire it up) so I'll just have to do it myself. What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys? You guessed it, Holley's teapot! It's straight out of Alice in Wonderland!

The fuel bowl portion will be heavily modified with drilling out a few passageways for more flow, and drilling out the jets too. I plan to follow the VS57 passenger car manual on this one, trying to replicate "Harry Homeowners" attempt to install one of these beauties if he had the chance way back when. It was difficult to find the right drill bit sizes. No place in town had any. Eventually ordered them online....and they arrived yesterday. Another difficulty was in removing those pesky nozzles in the fuel bowl. ARGHHHHHHH...but they finally came out with little to no damage. For all those that believe I am insane or just plain crazy  == guilty as charged. Yeh, yeh, yeh, I know. I attempted this 4 barrel teapot thing this past summer and on a scale of 1 to 10 I would have given myself a negative 2! But this is a new day and I have taken apart EVERYTHING I could get my hands on and have CLEANED out everything I could. Now, I don't like spending a small fortune on gasket kits, parts, elbow grease, etc to mess around with these "hot to trot" teapots, but I learn new things each time I give it a go. Can't wait to get this show on the road. I would like to have it ready for the Ford show at Carlisle in June this year.

New info and pictures to come as time with the teapot and the VS57 marches on...

It sure does look nice... leave it to the Eastwood Carb Renew spray can. That stuff is like magic.

 She looks good, but will she run? The jets were drilled and so were a few of the passages (per the paxton vintage instructions). Probably nothing more unnerving that taking teapot parts and doing what you want to with them. I also boost referenced the secondaries. You can see the nipple that I added to the cover plate and you can see the light red piece of rubber used to seal off that chamber in the photo that shows the bottom of the carb.

Definitely not concours work, but it will do for aesthetics. Next up is to the tinker with the bonnet just a bit. It needs to be sealed off. I have already made a new flapper (pressure release) gasket for it, but some of the holes need to be taken care of, and it needs to be prepped for the kind of plumbing I am going to do.

Thanks Charlie!!!

Do you know if Craig Connley (Paradise Wheels) has any more of the McCulloch Y-Block Brackets? I have the tensioner arm and pulley.

Thanks,

Rono

the last time I spoke with him (about 4-5 months ago) he did have one used passenger car bracket left. He did not have any more idler pulleys or tensioner arms/springs around.

For some reason, he likes to talk quite a bit about how hard it is to get all of the original parts, all of the kits that paxton used to sell, etc...I just wish he would be more affable to putting his parts online, in a catalog, or what have you. How interested he is in doing something in that kind of market, I don't know...I am sure that some guys just bug him to no end, but he did buy up all the rights to the paxton/mcculloch stuff. Once people find that out, he is looked at as a source for parts, information, and the like. Most of the time, he steers guys away from keeping the original style setup with the 2 speed hi/lo blower idea and encourages them to get a different pulley arrangement...I guess much like the SN60. All in all, a very knowledgeable fella to deal with, very honest, trustworthy, and a real follow-through kind of guy...and he does/did have some nice equipment. I think he plans to sell what he has and then be done with it...who knows?

Could be me, but I think he leans more towards the early 60's equipment. For the original vs57's, I wonder if he has the blueprints, original spec manuals, part number identification (which most believe that he picked up when he bought them out) and all of the good technical paperwork.. Now that I would like to get my hands on.

Thanks for the info on Paradise Wheels. I haven't done any business with him before, but I'll see what he wants for the McCulloch bracket. As far as the original drawings and blueprints go, John Erb has them. I saw them when I was at his place in Carson City, NV. He got them from Joe Granatelli. He told me that he gets lots of inquiries about Y-Block supercharger set-ups and that he my try to put a kit together. He is also developing a new piston company and in general, is a very busy guy.

Rono

FWIW, John Erb seems to be a guy that wants to keep the end of the 50s appearing and performing supercharger equipment going. (Along with the Keith Black piston designs) Craig tends to be a guy who is  into much more late model equipment (maybe a little bit younger than John?). Still worth a shot in giving him a call. He does seem to be knowledgable and I have had no issues at all in business dealings.

the bonnet was sandblasted and painted with alumablast, and I finished cleaning and painting the "A" 4 barrel intake today. Anybody got a spare phenolic spacer? Think I can make one out of wood?

Daniel, you, are right about craig, i,ve allways got the parts from him, very helpfull, the parts are $$$ but he had them!! i,m sure he wouldnt have enough to go on line due to lack of constant supply and probabilty is that the serious guys modify the VS to better internals etc. I havent dealt with john Erb but is recogonised as the guru of these mcculloch blowers and i,m sure we are all thankfull he is there for us. Glad to see your progress with this. regards bill.

Going to pick up that belt tomorrow and give that modified teapot a run too. Should be interesting. I will post a video or two once its running.?!.?!

I chuckled tonight when I looked at everything and thought to myself..."What am I doing? I know zero about blowers!" Gotta love this "hobby"!

Here are a couple shots of the new Y block Ministries hangout and the ECZ 292 without the blower/teapot, but with the bracketry.

Still in the setup mode. The shop doesn't even have electric run to it yet, but I cannot resist the sultry temptation of the Y sitting in the corner!!!

EDITED Update: Had to modify my existing water pump pulley tonight. Glad I checked ALL specs and clearances before doing anything really dumb! Hate to grind a 1/8" lip off of the pulley, but what's a man to do? There is NO way that the 7" pulley and the original 56 292 pulley can work together. All of my other pulleys "in stock" were too large in overall diameter. Never ends...always something. Need more parts... Fits now, but pretty close clearance.

I have found a belt that worked for width and thickness, but now need to get down the right length. Think I've got it nailed. Hopefully I can get this thing fired off (at least) by sometime next week. Still wanting to find out whether or not to just take apart my fuel pump and boost reference it, buy an electric fuel pump and regulator, or buy a marine fuel pump for an FE...the "Y Block Chronicles" continue!!!

After much trial and error, having to "order" one belt I tried, etc. This one fits the pulleys with the idler pulley/spring pack about 1/2-3/4" of travel to being full depressed. This will give plenty of expansion room when the pulley flanges separate and goes into Hi boost. That's the plan anyway.

Would like to fire this off soon, just lacking a couple of ticky-tack odds and ends. Promise to post video no matter how embaressing!

I had to make some of my daughter's favorite home made Auntie Anne's pretzels tonight (per my secret recipe) for her 10th Birthday party tomorrow. She is having an American Girl Mystery party. How we dads get drug into these things, I will never know! Got home around 9:30 pm and went to town setting up for tomorrow afternoon after work when the shindig begins...long story short, not much time for Y blocks this weekend

A few photos before the cleanup and installation of the new O rings...

mctim64 (5/24/2010)

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I'm sure you will be back on trac now, any of those pretzels left?

No pretzels left - those kids eat them all up every time...this recipe is not like the Philadelphia style soft pretzels that most people eat. These are the Amish type of pretzels from the Pennsylvania Dutch side of the state. Secret ingredient??? a whole cup of confectioners sugar in the dough!!

Today...I finally bolted the works together, from blower to carb hat to teapot (yep, if you have been following my earlier posts, the teapot having trouble idling was a butterfly issue, now apparently solved)....she purred like a kitten at idle. I will have to get some photos and videos going on Monday when I'm tinkering next. One item, it did look like my nuisance leak on the blower is still there. About a half teaspoon a day type of drip. I replaced the two large o ring seals and could feel a definite difference in the "snug" fit that the new seals gave. The old ones were definitely loose. Seepage originates at the seam where the two halves meet together. What else could feed that area (with a leak) besides fluid getting past those O ring seals...Chuck, anybody?

Got to mount my air cleaner next. It is a paxton chrome cannister, and I am planning to run a bracket off of the exhaust manifold bolt(s) and then bolt the cannister to the bracket. I guess the original units were bolted to the fenderwell. Since I am doing a "stand alone" job, I need it to be suspended quite a bit.

what y'all think? I've got to say, this thing is real beauty no matter how you slice it. The plan is to get everything tuned, operating correctly, etc, and then disassemble, clean and paint. Then reinstall. Good thing is I also have one new isky blower cam, and I did pick up one of the Mummert's blower cams that has very little wear (thank you Jerry Henry!). Also got a rebuilt set of 471's to go on this engine (or another). I would really like to get a 312 crank though, and bore out one of my other blocks to get this entire setup the way I want it. Now, how would this look in a 55 Ford Sunliner, mild custom???

Video of the engine running under boost now posted in the This and That section. I am officially stoked!

My wife heard it running this afternoon and came out to the garage. She quipped, "I heard your Y Block Beauty running and just had to come out to see it..."

Daniel Jessup (7/31/2010)

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Yeh Charlie, I do too. The old Ford red with the Daytona Speed yellow is a good combo. Add a little bit of chrome and black, and ouialla!!!!!!..... Big Mac!

My wife heard it running this afternoon and came out to the garage. She quipped, "I heard your Y Block Beauty running and just had to come out to see it..."

Dan, with a remark like that! she,s a keeper!!

yyy

Just kidding - I wouldn't trade my wife for anything this world has to offer - no amount of Y block power and bling could replace her!

Just teasing, it's not mine but Bigredtodd and I went to look at some cool stuff a friend has and he had this NOS in the box.  thought you might like it.

Hey, by the way, I have been meaning to speak with you, err, contact you. Last summer I bought some parts from Charlie, and at the time, you only had one set of ECG rockers that you had gone through and given the once over with a rebuild and prep. I now have another set. Give me a pm and let me know whether or not you can do that for me. Not really pressed on time, still looking for a few more hard parts, but since I've got what I need, might as well pull the trigger.

On another note, what kind of stock tubing did you use to put new by pass tubes in the thermostat housings you and Charlie sold?

And I guess one more item,,,, is anything left from that stash of Y block parts you two got your hands on?

Daniel Jessup (1/16/2011)

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NOS?!? That's a good looking SN series blower!

On another note, what kind of stock tubing did you use to put new by pass tubes in the thermostat housings you and Charlie sold?

 

Dan, over here i use 5/8" gal coated pipe from local hardware, strong and easy to press in. Love that blower!!! Tim, ELWOOD & JAKE! Thats just so great! and fitting. Ha, ha, with my sick sense of humour, how about Larry, Moe and Curley ??

Didn't you see Elwood's carb covers?

bla bla bla