Finished up the license plate project today, this was one of those pain in the ass projects that I’m glad to be done with. It’s not perfect, but good enough. I had the plate sandblasted to get rid of the old paint, which wasn’t a great idea as it did cause some warpage from the heat – or shotpeening affect. Not bad enough to be a big deal, but I would recommend using paint stripper or something should you want to restore your own plate.

We painted the plate with Krylon Semi-Gloss Black with several coats, then a couple coats of Krylon Clear, then Pumpkin Orange – it’s not exactly the original 1971 shade of orange, but close enough. The plan was to sand through the orange exposing the black.  1000 grit sand paper takes a long time to get through … Read More »

 While putting together the engine and setting up the Jesel Belt Drive, I needed to check Top Dead Center (TDC) and when I went to look for my tool to screw into the spark plug hole, I couldn’t find it.  So it was time to make a new one.

Last time I took the trouble to modify an old spark plug knocking out the porcelain, and welding a bolt to the end which was frankly a pain in the ass with the time it takes. Porcelain doesn’t knock out of a spark plug real easy.

I quick trip to the local O’Rielly’s didn’t turn up a regular tool for this, but I did find some 14mm spark plug anti-foul adapters. These things are made as a spark plug extension (Wonder if they work?), but for this project they work great to modify for … Read More »