Prince Valiant

Everyone know Hal Fosters stories about Prince Valiant. Would he have used our new purchase as workhorse nowadays? Of course, nice red interior with fancy mopar mats, airconditioning, auto trans and v8.


1966 Plymouth Valiant V100


1966 interior

1969 Shelby GT500

The first warm days of 2008 I did some tuneup work on a friend's 1969 Shelby GT500. The car was fired up after 20 years of storage and 2 years of restoration. The untouched 428 Super Cobra Jet did run well but had no idle. After some fiddling the problenm was localized, a wrong gasket did hinder the fuel flow to the idleslots. So far I remember this Shelby was in Austria from the beginning. It has a unique steel oilpan with cooling tubes and fins this style was also used on some other 428CJ cars delivered in Europe.


Austrian GT500 4speed


'69 Shelby 428CJ oilpan


'70 Mach1 428CJ oilpan

Jensens in the V8garage

2002 was the year of Jensens. Beside my yellow '73 MkIII I already owned several years I bought a metallic blue '75 MkIII S4 and a silver '74 MkIII Convertible.

The blue Saloon was the original Frankfurt Motorshow Car of 1975, first LHD wooden dash. Originaly white color it was in very good mechanical condition but had some former accident and rust repair. It did go back to Germany in 2003.


'75 MkIII Saloon

The silver '74 MkIII Convertible was one of 83 RHD cars and came to Austria in the late 80's. It was the converted to LHD and partly restored but completely disassemled. It did go back to homeland UK in 2003.


'74 MkIII RHD Convertible

On the following pic you see a '72 MkII FF owned by my friend Martin T. whilst a visit in Vienna. Helping him out with a throttle cable to go back to Leipzig.


'72 MkII FF fourwheeldrive

Josephs silver '70 MkII awaiting service work beside my yellow MkIII. This one was originally delivered to Austria and is now completely restored.


'73 MkIII, '70 MkII Saloon

New resident ...

...in the V8 Garage. Couldnt resist to buy an old Suzuki T500 Titan. Its a '72 model with Pearl Orange and White paint scheme on the tank. These are really rare here in Austria beside the Triple RamAir Suzis. These T500 were big two-strokes that worked more reliable than many four-strokes of the time, required less maintenance and featured oil-injection direct into the crankcases along with massive and durable main roller bearings. Quite fast for its capacity it put many contemporary 500cc and 650cc four-stroke twins to shame.


Need some TLC


Titan ad 1970


Titan ad 1972

Balancing Rig

To build a crankshaft balancing rig is more difficult than you will think. We were aware of problems but as usual further ones expose during the building process.

Currently fighting these problems

-weight of the table and base
-rigidity of the table and base
-induced noise of roller bearings
-design, rigidity of crank holders
-usability of drilling fixture
...

The next weeks....

...I will not get bored. Fact is, I am running out of engine stands. In the waiting queue 350 SBC, 403 Olds, 383 and 440 Mopar. Further we built a balancing rig for V8 cranks, the necessary Schenk Ind. measuring equipment is already there and used by Jakadofsky Jet Engines to balance their turbines which turn up to 120k rpms. The rig has provisions to run shafts and cranks on either roller bearings or teflon prism.


Balancing rig


Vibration control

Hot Rod Hangar

Knud Tiroch and his son Dominic will run a Reality Soap called "Hot Rod Hangar" from on 7th of January 2008 on SAT1 channel. Main content will be driving not wrenching. No easy task with old cars :-) BTW " Hey dude, yes Knud I mean you, there is still a new 440engine waiting in my garage to burn rubber of your Challengers rims off. Pick it up"



Teaser

727TF transmission

Overhaulin the 70' Cuda Torqueflite transmission was an easy task. It takes some hours to inspect all the parts and change clutches, seals and some bearings. Due to low milage all of the hard parts were in pretty good shape.


Insideview


valuable scrap