Home Made Tools

[wittsend]

Here is my homemade case spreader. I built it for my Sunbeam Tiger which coincidentally also has a Dana 44 (actually a Salisbury, but, yea, a Dana none the less).

The spreader is just three pieces of steel I had lying around that are bolted together in two corners. The "spreader" is an inverted spring compressor from Harbor Freight. The tube in the center keeps both the bolts in contact. Notches were cut in the steel to keep the pieces from walking. What you can't see on the back side are two bolts I turned the heads down in a drill press to to fit into the round holes on the case. I ever so slightly tapered them so the didn't slide out of the holes. It worked very well.

[Jerry Forrester]

My home made belt sander. Takes a 6" X 48" belt. This belt is worn out and is coming apart. Time for a new one.

[Jerry Forrester]

My home made glass bead cabinet. 4' long.

[JDP]

I put this together to reach the heads of the bolts holding the front motor mounts on my 62 GT. The bolts heads are way up inside the hollow cross member that goes from one side to the other and I didn't have anything that was long enough to reach up in there. Also, every time I started to loosen the nuts on the other side the wrench would fall off the bolt head so I had to epoxy a strong magnet to one side of the box end wrench to hold on. It ain't pretty but it did the job.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48945[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]48946[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]48947[/ATTACH]

Your tool reminded me of one I made as a teen to get to the motor mounts on a 56 Golden. I showed it off to the old mechanic that mentored me. He praised me for the effort but asked me to turn the front wheel to full lock and lift the rubber flap so I could get to the mount with regular wrench, lesson learned.

[1954khardtop]

Here are a couple of home made tools. The first 2 pictures are of an oil system priming tool I made from an old Studebaker V8 distributor. I originally modified the wrench to reach the transmission plate mounting bolts on a flathead Harley. I found it works great on my Studebaker distributor timing lockdown bolt.

[wlfrench]

Your tool reminded me of one I made as a teen to get to the motor mounts on a 56 Golden. I showed it off to the old mechanic that mentored me. He praised me for the effort but asked me to turn the front wheel to full lock and lift the rubber flap so I could get to the mount with regular wrench, lesson learned.

I tried every way I could think of to get to those bolts including that. I was trying to take off the motor mount support bracket not just the motor mount.

[rodnutrandy]

Didn't make it, but use it for a axle puller!

[Mike Van Veghten]

Forgot, I made an adapter for my pusher/puller tool to be able to push the damper onto the Stude crankshaft. The tool I have as well as many others, don't have the correct adapter to go into the Stude crank.

Mike

[Skybolt]

This is the simplest tool I have put together as I used a kit and added my own parts. Anyone should be able to make this work from stuff you have or the extra parts should be no more than a few dollars. I was looking for some 3/8-24 all thread and could only find it online. B7 was the easiest grade to acquire that would be strong enough to do the job. If this tool fails that is my next step, although it was my first choice. I had the harbor Freight set on the shelf and on the off chance it could have some parts I could use I was surprised to find it just about everything I needed.


First a Harbor Freight tool #40749, or equivalent, Pulley Remover & Installer Set needs to be used. Right now they are $18.99.

Next an exhaust stud 3/8 x 2" overall length 3/8-24 x 1-1/16" 3/8-16 x11/16" or something similar. I had a couple because they are used on Studebakers as exhaust flange studs.

Next I ground the castellations off a 3/8-24 nut to thin it down. This goes on the 24 thread side that goes into the end of the camshaft. I put it on that side as it will back out to the unthreaded part of the stud and remove the stud from the camshaft if it gets a little hard to remove with the tool or with my fingers.

Now a spacer is needed that will slip over the threaded part of the tool, similar to what came with the set, but will keep the sets bearing dragging and scoring on the nice new cam gear.

That is it. Now it's just a matter of using the installer set like any other except it is now suitable for installing Studebaker camshaft gears. I will use this setup in the next week and will report on it's effectiveness. The only problem that I foresee is that the set could be of low grade material and the threads of the installer gall.



Len