[Liberty Garage]

We've drug the doodlebug into the shop and the lack of front tires and locked up right rear made that a challenge. My little kubota wasn't quite strong enough to lift it from the front, so we drug it out of the carport and then hooked up from the rear so we could lift and push.

Once in the shop and up on jack stands, the first order of business was to make it easier to move, as we will have to reverse it and put it in the shop backwards when we go to pull the old engine and set in the "new" one.

Used lots of penetrant and a bottle jack and hammer to get the RH drum off, it was a battle but after reading some of the other stories here on how difficult they can be, feel lucky it came off at all. The drums do not seem to match the brakes, as it seems like this is a mix of narrow non emergency brake drums onto a emergency brake equipped backing plate set up, in turn this is on a worm drive rear which probably did not have e-brakes to begin with? Thinking the drums may match the axle, but someone used a later set of backing plates? The ebrakes are missing but the large lug for them is still there and would have prevented the drum from going all the way on, I'm not so sure the drum hub was seated on the taper? Considering removing the ebrake lug and assembling without that protrusion, then the drums may fully cover the brake shoes?

Went to remove the left side wheel and was having no luck, but was reading this morning that they used LH threads? Will take a closer look at the threads today and maybe try again.

When the brakes had me stumped, went ahead and got the old rotted cowl off, and just did some general cleanup and tinkering.

As soon as the rear main oil drain tube arrives will get back to assembling the motor. Also had a concern on the oil pump, the housing has a protrusion that has a hole covered internally by the lower bushing, but tested the pump in a can of oil using a drill and it seems to pump fine. Please have a look at the oil pump picks and see if this protrusion with covered hole is any concern? Was not able to find any pics on the interweb that looked exactly like this one. Also pulled one rod cap just to check condition and plastigage, looked beautiful and came in at .002. Have cleaned and thoroughty flushed with penetrant and air pressure all oil passages and when feeding penetrant through main passages get a decent flow. Will oil these up before firing the first time.

Some other "small" jobs to accomplish this week are; cleaning and rubber coating the old Mallory rotor and cleaning and prepping the distributor, soldering up the crusty old radiator I bought off ebay, trying to get the generator freed up, if nothing else to use as an idler for the fan belt, otherwise i'm thinking of maybe using a piece of inner tube as a temporary fan belt for the first fire up. Also found a pair of usable 7.50 16's for the fronts and will get those mounted up.

Still hoping to set the motor in next weekend when my brother is here and trying to fire it, wish us luck!