While working on the front suspension we noticed the motor mount had partially sunk so we got into motor mounts. It turns out there are two styles of mounts in 1957 as shown below; the early style has an open top, the later style is enclosed. This car had the early style. In spares, I had new rubber insulators and a set of later style mounts. I am not sure how the early style is disassembled and I expect the new style rubber insulators wouldn't fit the early style housing. We installed the later style and the engine sits where it should. New style rubber insulators are available on Ebay for about $60/each.
These "round" style motor mounts were used in 1957, 58, and 59. The 59 block is the RB and has different mounting ears on the block as compared to the hemi. That means the motor mount housing has unique brackets in 1959. The rubber insulators are the same 57, 58, 59. We have a short video on motor mounts here.
I was tidying up a few things on the tail lights and happen to check the brake lights. They had been working fine but now the driver side would not light. Parking lights would light. I checked the bulb. The filaments looked fine, I swapped bulbs right and left, the driver side still would not light. The socket was fine. I was stumped. Perhaps there was a break in the wiring harness and it just now showed up. I was reluctant to unwrap the harness and mess with 65 year old wires. I decided to sleep on it. The next morning I woke with a pretty good idea what caused the problem. The turn signal was on. The car was not running. If it had been running, the tail light would have blinked but with the key off and the turn signal on, the lamp just goes out. I never realized this before. I tried it on the 64 parked next to the C. Same thing. If you are checking your brake lights with the key off and one is out, check your turn signal switch position. There is a rundown of this in the motor mount video.
