racketball fix for engine/air cleaner grill tamborine noise

Ron,
My '72 has closed cell foam strips that run the lenght of the sides of the end sheet metal corner fillers. The strips are the same material as house window sealing foam. Those strips isolate metal to metal contact. I have very little clearance between the air cleaner and engine cover but never contacts even under torque.

Thanks. I was getting concerned the racketball would squish out and lodge between the header tubes, creating a blue blob on my silver ceramic coated headers. Got some of the white weatherstrip from last winter, until I can get to the hardware store for black.

Ron,

I wouldn't worry too much about a melted blue blob on those coated headers. I did a little tidy-up work on the engine bay wiring and unknowingly left a cut-off piece of black tie wrap on a HPC-coated header tube. Funny smell, wisp of smoke and a melted glob of plastic. Scraped off what I could and the rest has just burned itself off - can't even tell where it was anymore. YMMV.

Larry

Ron, I decided it was just best (for me) to eliminate the engine screen altogether. I went to an auto body supply store and found a length of black bodyside moulding that is the exact width of the recessed channel in each side piece. I like to be able to turn around (at stop lights not, when I'm driving!!) and see what is going on in the engine compartment. It also shows off the polished and detailed top end of my motor at the car shows. You can see these strips in POCA Profiles 2002 No. 4 page 5 and a better shot on the top of page 23. I haven't used the engine screen in 15 years or more.

Gary #06984

Progress Report

I took the engine screen off to put the weatherstripping on. My blue racketball decided to take a bounce into the water pump area: Great, good thing the engine was cold...

The weatherstripping made the vibrating sound not begin occurring until 3,200 RPMs. Progress. So more weatherstripping under the screen where it almost touches the air cleaner. No noticable difference.

So, Gary's logic appealed to me, and I took off the engine screen altogether, and a good reason for a test drive. It gave an 80% improvement, but still vibrating. The only concern I have with the engine screen off is people's belt buckles on my paint as they may want to lean over and get a better peek at the engine...

Further analysis: the passenger side "wing" that the engine screen was fastened too was loose and tightening it did not keep it from vibrating. So, I loosened the easiest 2 philips screws and removed them, arched it up and out some and installed a 7" piece if fuel hose that was slit up the side, and replaced the assembly. Did the same thing on the fuel tank side, but it already had some nifty kind of upholstry like stuff around most of it, so I concentrated on the corner, Way Down There, & more fuel hose went on. Didn't some one say these were hand built. My guy must've run out of the upholstry stuff half way thru and decided to see if anyone would notice (30 yrs later).

Test Drive: this is the part I like: 98% improvement, but there is still a little vibration noise, only now when it's under pretty hard acceleration, and much quieter.

Conclusion 1: probably have to do 10X more work to get that last 2% improvement, so guess what I'm gonna do! Nada

Conclusion 2: 1st time I see a belt buckle scratch on my paint from some one with one of those pie-pan sized cowboy belt buckles, well, the party's over for everyone and the screen goes back on. Besides that I like chrome parts like fuel pumps that no one can see anyway, like my other snazzy chromed or polished parts....