Spare Parts
One of the areas that concerns me is the availability of spare parts. If I drive this car any significant distance (which I intend to), a mechanical breakdown could be a serious deal without a few spare items. On this page you will find those parts that I acquire and recondition as spares to be carried on any long-distance trips.
Early in the process of building this car I discovered the "Jalopy Journal" (www.jalopyjournal.com). This is an on-line community of nearly 100,000 hot rod building enthusiasts who exchange information, ideas, advice, and questions about building and driving their cars. Part of the site is the H.A.M.B. - the Hokey-Ass Message Board. It's quite an entertaining site but also a terrific source of information. I will refer to the H.A.M.B. often in these entries.
Water Pump
In the 55+ years since they were built, the water pumps for the 241 Hemi have become quite hard to find. Several manufacturers have developed conversion kits to allow the use of other water pumps on the engine. But these conversions present their own issues. The original front motor mount attached to the water pump, so a conversion requires some different motor mount solution. Also, the newer pumps simply look newer. They don't have the vintage "cast iron" look of the rest of the engine. And the old water pump is a perfectly fine design -- it should hold up well.
I corresponded with a few H.A.M.B. members and learned enough to know that I might get lucky and find a rebuildable 241 water pump. I started the search in July 2009 and within a couple of weeks I found one on Craigslist in Milwaukee. I acquired it for $50 plus shipping. That's a good deal. One of the H.A.M.B. contacts, "rr73," AKA Gary, has a machine shop in Oregon. He did a great job of rebuilding the water pump for me.
When I took the rebuilt water pump and housing to show Deron Shady, he noted that the casting was different than the one on the engine. It was "flatter" on top and that solved a problem. When I had acquired the multi-carb intake manifold, the front carburetor float bowl rested against the top of the water pump casting that had come on the engine. Remember that this engine had come out of a Dodge fire truck; it was a truck engine. As far as we could tell, the truck engines must have used a slightly taller casting for the water pump. We replaced the pump with the newly-acquired and rebuilt pump and the interference problem disappeared.
Update; 29 January, 2010: I found another spare 241 hemi automobile water pump (newly rebuilt) on eBay and acquired it as a spare. I was also able to get the fan, and upper and lower pulleys from that donor engine. We needed the fan and lower pulley. Now I plan to sell the original water pump that came on my engine to someone who is rebuilding a '50's-era Dodge Powerwagon truck. I hope to make enough to pay for my water pumps.
