Cowl drain tubes

[sprink88]

I love the idea of moving it to the fenderwell

[Tom S]

Adding to this 5 year old thread since it seemed to have the most or best info about the cowl drains . 
The cowl drain rubbers were comply gone from the very pretty 'finished' Ranchero I bought from the classic car dealer in Portland without seeing it in person.  I did pull out a couple pieces of what was left of the rubber.  It was very thin & brittle & almost felt like a piece of thick paper. What I did is not as fancy or complicated as some have done but it will keep water away from rust prone body panels. Easy enough to change later if desired.
FoMoCo didn't do us any favors when they routed those drains.
I tried but could not get the flanges off of the cowl with the fenders on & wasn't about to take the fenders off for this.  Don't see that it will matter at all.
Maybe the hardest part of this was getting the thick 1.25" plastic tubing lined up with the cowl drains with so little room to work.  Also wasn't quite enough room to put the new hose clamps on that tubing before getting it on to the cowl drain. Had to open them up & put 'em on afterwards. Hard to realign the ends back into the screw slot with no room to even see them. The rusty straight slot screws on the original clamps weren't much of a joy either. : )

[RICH MUISE]

That's a great fix for those who don't want to spend days disassembling their car to get at that mentioned flange. Thanks for posting that, Tom.

[Tom S]

Thanks, Rich.  It might help out a n00b here.  Without yours & many others posts here there are many details about our '57s that could be missed & overlooked that could result in problems.
Since I mentioned that blue wire covering here is an engine pic that I got from that  dealer in Portland. Man that stuff sucks.
Wonder if this Photobucket pic link will work after they sold to Fox & Fox shafted all the P-bucket users by jacking subscription prices over the top.


Well, surprise! It worked! (Does for me anyway, do you see it?)

[RICH MUISE]

I see I see. What you need is some blue spark plug wires.
I'm totally baffled by the cars I see at car shows that don't have any wires, or tubes you can see. I've asked guys if their car actually ran.

[Tom S]

What you need is some blue spark plug wires.

No way, man! All that blue stuff distracts from what else there is to look at that should be the main focus. It seems to draw the eye at first sight. It's overdone & it's gotta go!
I've seen and felt some of this stuff in person & it looks real good.  Looks kinda like the cloth covering that was once used & I think it's way more flexible than that plastic stuff. I may be able to get some locally, which I prefer to do, if not I'll order some. And as it should be, in black!
https://www.google.com/search?q=braided+wire+covering&client=firefox-b-1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi8x8jx5ejdAhWCMXwKHbpYD3YQsAR6BAgBEAE&biw=870&bih=502     

[hiball3985]

I agree, the blue has to go. Hope you don't find any surprises like I did, ended up doing a lot of rewiring and just wrapped it in black electrical type similar to the original.

[Tom S]

I agree, the blue has to go.

Thank you!

Hope you don't find any surprises like I did ...

I'd be surprised to find anything that resembles or follows the original wiring under the hood or the dash.  It's all a big bundled up mystery.
None of the stock gauges work & the gauge panel doesn't even light up. Yet.
Horn didn't work for 2 reasons.
One was that this little part was missing from the @#$% Flamin' River steering column. It does come with the column but whoever installed the column didn't bother to put it in.



$21.47 for that?!   Made my own part quite easily.
Number two was that they had the horn wire from the column plugged into the wrong wire. Never found out what that wire was or where the wire from the horn relay came thru the firewall. Ran a new wire from the relay & added a second horn. Now it sounds good like a '57 should. 

[hiball3985]

That looks like a standard Ford yellow top coil?  but I don't see a ballast resistor, or is there a resistor wire inline?

[Marc]

Yeah those blue wire covers are a bit much. This is a great discussion though. Now I can add "modify the drain tubes" to my growing list of things to do while putting the car back together!

[Tom S]

... I don't see a ballast resistor, or is there a resistor wire inline?

Nope. That's another part that somebody didn't think was needed. No ballast resistor or inline resistor wire. After finding that the worn points had only about a 0.005" gap & the timing set to several degrees after TDC I began to wonder how the engine even ran.  Had a Pertrionix ignition that I'd never used & put that in along with some new plugs.  Keepin' the points in the glove box. 
I was told that this 390 was rebuilt & had very low miles. The guy I dealt with said that the prior owner lived down the road from him, had several collector cars, & seldom drove this one. He said he doubted that it had over 3000 miles on it. From the looks of the oil so far I do believe that the engine was apparently rebuilt.  Oil's very clean.

[hiball3985]

LOL, I had many of the same issues and wondered how I even made it home, and that was only one mile away 

[djfordmanjack]

cowl drain is a great improvement over the og design!

It's a shame how many classic car owners make stupid and careless mistakes. Actually I could write a book with things done totally wrong by the PO or even pro shops.
Just last weekend I attempted to replace the valve shaft seals in my German '64 Ford only to find there were none used with the last rebuild. no wonder it smoked badly and ran awfully. sometimes we really want to kick the previous owners .......,  .... football....

[Tom S]

LOL, I had many of the same issues and wondered how I even made it home, and that was only one mile away 

I kinda wonder if I'd have bought this Ranchero if I'd seen it in person & could have given a test drive.
But besides the nice paint it had many things that I liked & wasn't too overpriced.
390
Disk Brakes
Electric wipers
Nice & mostly stock appearing interior
*Borgesson power steering
*(I could easily live without power steering & would rather have a stock ('58) steering column, box & steering wheel)
And it wasn't as far away as others I'd seen so shipping costs, even expensive enough as they were, wouldn't be a total deal breaker.

Too bad it did not come with a 4 barrel carb and at least a stick shift of any kind.  Hate the auto & the lame Lokar shifter & its big cover box.
Bought an Edelbrock Performer RPM and the Summit 4 barrel 600cfm.
Carb came from Amazon with the very rare free shipping to Alaska. Manifold cost another $72 to ship.
The Summit carb seems to be much improved Autolite 4100.  I am very familiar with the Autolite 4100 & the 2100.  I like 'em a lot better than Holleys. 4100s are so much easer to work on & I've read nothing but praise for that Summit carb.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-m08600vs
Thought I had everything lined out to install a 4 speed. Part of that deal fell thru except the for trade I made.  Traded an old Y block 3 deuce manifold for a top loader 4 speed with a 4th gear overdrive.
Looks like I've found a bell housing & the engine plate.  Bought an overpriced clutch/brake pedal off fleabay but it looks like I'll have to fabricate most of the linage. Flywheel? Ain't found a used one.

Plan is to do the manifold & 4 speed swap after the snow flies later this month or sometime this winter. Gonna be a pain to do in my tight garage space.
At the rate I've been going I'm not even sure I'll get the 4 speed in before next spring.

[Tom S]

It's a shame how many classic car owners make stupid and careless mistakes.

I'm reasonably sure the the PO did little or nothing on building this car.  I think he is even a bit older than me & farmed out everything to various shops. Wonder if he sold it off because he was dissatisfied with some of the lame crap that some idiots had done.

No valve seals?!