Backyard aluminum casting, vol. 1

This was my first attempt on casting aluminum at home, did this more than year ago in august. After this, I've melted even more aluminum few different times and learned a lot about it. I'll write another post about it later.
Before this, I had done casting patterns and taken them to real foundry to cast. Check my older posts to get more info.
Everything was done with budget of "next to nothing".

Got these bricks from a friend,  they're taken apart from old demolished house. 
Two pipes going under all charcoal, and compressed air with less than one bar pressure turns this brick-pile to a furnace. Bricks were covered with sand to make it airtight, or at least near airtight.

                                                              Check out this hellfire!

Bucket full of scrap aluminum. These were old moped parts, Saab valve cover, compressor parts etc, in their earlier life. Got them from another friend. All this was hacked to small pieces, it makes it faster to melt. I'm using only aluminum that was originally cast, not sheetmetal or tincans.

Box was made of tubing I had laying around. Filled it with casting sand, and poured molten metal in.
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And this is what was found inside casting mold after it was allowed to cool... looks like a fuel block! Not perfect, though, so more practising was needed. More about that later on some other posting.

Most common question is "can I use empty beer cans, I have lots of them". Answer is yes you can, but. You'll still need real cast aluminum material, and when you've melted them, then you can throw few empty beer cans into the molten metal.

That's all for now, next time with better pictures and even more detailed info.
Until then,

take care,
Otto

More photos from thursday

Orange, orange, and orange.

Sheriff.

Yes, these cars actually move!

ESRA Street Rod Nationals in Finland

Finnish Street Rod Association ry arranges European Street Rod- meeting for year 2012, show is being held this weekend. Some of the participants came to Finland yesterday, and today they were being followed by most of the rest of the foreign attendees. I took my camera with me and went to shoot few photos early in the morning when their ferry arrived...

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Convoy stopped at Triangle Motors

Never underestimate power of paint!

Most traditional of this group...

Just where did he find old "Edmunds Custom" heads..?!

One of my favourites...

...and another!

It's a long way to Finland from Belgium.

Dig 'em front  brakes!
('cause my car has similar)

"That's all folks!"

Got my car running!

Not so new news anymore... but I got my car running 'bout month ago. During four months period, engine and trans got new life. All works was made by me, with just minor help from other people.

Original thought was to paint car, but when I was working with engine, I noticed that that idea was born dead... So now I had trans -plus- engine to repair.
New camshaft was needed, so I did not want to use old lifters anymore. New chain and gears were easy to replace at the same time. Chain is same one that big block Ford uses.

Old oil pump wasn't much worn out, but because I was already working on this, and parts were reasonably priced, I thought "whatta heck, I'll buy it"! New oil pump was installed...

Freeze plugs -which I had installed in 2004- were totally rusted out, few of them already spillin' water through them. Well, new freeze plugs were used. Also, I reworked heads. All valvetrain parts were cleaned also inside. Took quite a lot time to clean heads in and outside, waterpassages were cleaned also.
New waterpump was bolted on. Wouldn't need to, but my hot rod has same engine, and '57 had aluminum waterpump on it, so it was replaced with cast iron one, so aluminum one can now be polished for '31. 
New fuelpump was also used, because I had one unused layin' around in my garage. Old one worked, but was spittin' oil out sometimes...

New paint! Parts which are being hidden here, were painted earlier. Colour is not any already mixed colour, it was mixed between two already available colours, plus all metalflakes changed to bigger ones.

Reworked tri-power carbs also. It's simple as one-two-three. Anyone saying something else is wrong.

Put it all together... Looks great!
It is '57 364 cid nailhead with Offenhauser 3x2 intake (cast in 2002) ,vintage carbs, Eelco linkage, Offy fuel block, unknown fuel pressure gauge, vintage Mallory Rev-Pol distributor, valve covers designed by me and cast in Finland, and valley pan by me, cast in Finland. Polished all aluminum myself, including intake and distributor...

 Between them rails again!

First start!

Home at last! Got car running on tuesday, registerated in wednesday, and on thursday we went on a little trip to Sweden! So it was kind of hurry... Drove about 1000 kilometers, most of it in rain without wipers, and got back home also. It seems that engine and trans repairs were succesful!

Photos from Sweden trip coming later...

Repairing Dynaflow

I've had my '57 Buick for ten years now, and finally I had possibility to repair it's Dynaflow transmission. Bought all new gaskets, bands etc from Fatsco, new rubber mounts from OldBuickParts.com and used Gulf oils. Didn't have possibility to start working with this before mid-january, so it meant that I'll be in a hurry during whole spring time. When I found out that engine needs also new camshaft, reworked heads, and some other small things, I decided that car would not be painted during this winter, like I originally had planned.

 

My nailhead engines having a conversation.

Biggest part of this overhauling was cleaning.

Don't you just love installing new parts?!

Cleaned empty cover was painted at my backyard...

Done!

I haven't ever repaired transmission before, luckily I had my friend Joe B. to help me. And this Dynaflow seems to work! I'm surprised myself, too...