car day one

backstory:

for the last 6 months or so i haven't driven. i've been biking around orange county, or taking the bus. not the best solution in southern california. when faced with the option of getting a new car, or rebuilding my old car, i decided to rebuild the old car.

benefits -
cheaper car insurance (don't have to have full coverage)
cheaper registration
no car payment
car parts and fixing everything is cheaper, as i can do all the work myself

cons -
gas prices suck, and a 61 comet is invariably going to get worse mileage than a mid 90's acura, or the ilk
lack of some more modern luxuries

so today i took the first major step in rebuilding the car, meaning i suckered my dad into giving me a ride, and we went a bought a motor for the car.





more backstory:

i've had this car since i was 17. it originally had a ford 170 cid inline six cylinder in it. through some misfortune, that motor blew up (fan belt came loose while driving, motor toasted to death, hole in the piston, not a great memory). the motor that we purchased is a ford 289 cid v eight cylinder. not original to the car, and ford did not even put v8's into the 1961 comet or falcon, so no stock parts that can be found for cheap, etc...

reasoning:

i've always wanted to do a v8 into my old car, i mean if not just solely for the fact that i have a tim allen complex and like things that make loud noises. performance parts and also other parts are much easier to obtain for these motors as well, being that ford manufactured this block from 1962 till around 1990 something, so there's an abundance of interchangeable parts.

we also got a transmission which is a ford c4 three speed transmission. i don't know if it's running but for the price we paid for the motor and transmission, if it's not, it's worth at least the core price.



to anyone who cares, we also got the flywheel/flexplate with it, and the torque converter/starter. pretty swell deal.

when we finally got back home from picking up the motor, i took some pictures of the car in it's current state





















after taking the pictures, we mounted a new tire on one of the rims, and put it on the car so we could move it, as well as hooked up some of the steering linkage that i had taken apart some odd years ago.

we got the car moved onto concrete for better working/etc... and i did some clean up work on the interior







hard to tell but i scrubbed a good amount of the dirt off the front seat, and a few other areas. i need to go over it all with some vinyl cleaner next time i'm out there. the back seat i still need to clean but it had gotten too late to work and dinner was on the table.

i'll keep updating this as i go, and i hope someone enjoys this, because i'm having the time of my life doing this.