Bloo

Wow.

Exhaust every possibility for just finding a manifold that is not cracked. If that is not possible, look into stitching. If that won't work because it is too thin to stitch, look into welding. Welding is the "classic" method. There's a catch though, it almost never works for very long if it works at all. No cast iron welds easily, but exhaust manifolds have been exposed to extreme heat, and the metal changes somehow. I don't know how to explain it, but it is different and far worse than ordinary cast iron. Also an exhaust manifold is a highly stressed part. You can't take it to just anyone for welding and expect it to hold. You need someone with a bunch of previous experience and a success record. There *is* someone here on the forum with talent like that, but offhand I can't remember who. There is a thread where a manifold was welded, looked good, and was still holding a year later. That's amazing for a welded exhaust manifold. I'll post back if I can remember whose manifold that was. Important note: the manifold needs to be able to move or slide on the head or block. Sometimes there's special washers or other hardware. The manifold expands and contracts and gets longer and shorter much more than the head or block. The longer the engine is, the more of a problem it is. The head or block is usually full of water or coolant and doesn't expand much. If the manifold is tied down so solidly that it can't slide, it is going to break.

Here is an example of the way to sort out Statesman/600 cars from Ambassadors quickly. So many of them are misidentified online. One of these is allegedly a 49 and the other a 50, but ignore that for now. Look between the back of the front wheel and the front edge of the door. Statesman (or 600): Ambassador:

On a 2 u-joint driveshaft the angles should be equal and opposite for vibration free operation. Equal and additive might also work, but I wouldn't expect to see that in a prewar car. In some cars the angle is fudged a little bit to deal with spring windup or load, but if that torque arm on your Packard ties things together in such a way that the angles never change, the two angles should probably be exactly the same. What should the angles be then? If the u-joints are greased with roller bearings or something similar in them, around 2 degrees at both ends would be good. Joints with plain bearings and a constant oil supply are sometimes run dead straight. Knowing this, I think you can figure out how it was before it broke. My suspicion is that the remaining section bent after the first section broke, explaining the gap.

The differences between 49 and 50 are few and subtle, but I believe what gives this away as 50 with the pictures provided is the gas filler door. I think a 49 would have had an exposed gas filler neck. i blew the picture up and it looks like the script says Ambassador, but there is not enough detail to tell for sure. The most obvious external difference between an Ambassador and a Statesman is the length of the nose. A Statesman Six engine is absurdly short, shorter than a lot of 4 cylinders. An Ambassador nose is about 9 inches longer than a Statesman nose to accommodate the more normal sized Ambassador engine. When one is used to looking at these cars regularly, the length between the back of the front fender opening and the front edge of the door gives away which is which. It's been too long ago for me. It is also worth noting the shorter Statesman was known as a "600" in 49.

It's a 1950. All are 6 cylinder. If it really is an Ambassador, and I think it is, it had a fairly large (250-ish ci) overhead valve six with full pressure oiling, lots of main bearings, etc., a better engine than many sixes of it's time. The downside is internal engine parts have become tough to get.

There is no frame. It's a unibody. It is shaped like a truss bridge, and more or less that is how it's built. If you look under the hood you will see the members that send the load up into the roof. The "frame" members under the floor are mostly sheet metal and are loaded in tension. Don't jack this car up by anything except the axles or wheels. The bumpers should be OK too, and the normal way to change a tire or whatever, but as rusty as that looks I would want to inspect first before trying that. Even when the car isn't rusty there is a risk if tweaking the unibody if you try to jack on the "frame". Don't do that. It also goes for torque tube Ramblers. Don't try to put it on a modern hoist that lifts on the "frame". That will go badly even without the rust. If it were less rusty, the main place I would be telling you to look is under the mats/carpet in the front floorboards. Windshield leaks pool water there and rust through the "frame rails". You might find the top and bottom missing and the vertical "sides" still there. The "sides" consist of sheet metal walls and one piece of metal that is thicker but with big round holes in it. This is bad, but not nearly as bad as it sounds because those "frame rails" are loaded in tension. Lots of them drove around like that, no big deal. Inconvenient to fix? Yes, but that's mainly because you couldn't jack the car up normally, and you couldn't do that anyway. That much visible rust is concerning. It might be ready to collapse.

It absolutely should. That's pretty much how a voltage regulator works. Apparently not all of them buzz, most do. I don't know why some don't, maybe Delco had a patent? I've never seen any evidence of that, but in the mid 30s Autolite had something called "two charge" that apparently(?) ran on a longer hysteresis loop. It probably wasn't very long. In any event a year or two later Autolite was making regulators that buzz like most of the others. The idea was the same though, cut way back when the voltage gets to 7.5 (or so) and let the system cycle, and let the battery do the rest. Believe the manual about the voltage though. Most 6 volt cars are 7.4-7.6 volts depending on what system, but if uses something weird like a long hysteresis loop, I guess it could be different. Probably not too different. I'm not sure about that. Some regulators add an additional level of sophistication with a second contact point that shorts out the field entirely if the voltage drifts high after the regulator has been on low a while. This contact also buzzes if the voltage gets high enough in most systems I have seen. The mechanical regulators for Chrysler "roundback" alternators did this. There were a few others with the extra contact, but a majority of regulators just have high and low, and most buzz when they are at system voltage. Those got good reviews from just about everybody who ever had one. I have seen a technical description somewhere but I still don't understand how they work. it can't really be a traditional voltage regulator controlling the field based on system voltage, because if so it would still need the third brush to protect the generator, and I am pretty sure the third brush gets disabled with the Peterson system. I wouldn't go down that path with a newer car if it is like the "fun projects" regulator, and I suspect it is. If I understand how those work, it is shunt regulation. Also they just cut back and you run on the battery for a while. That would mean no stable system voltage, and the headlight brightness would vary a lot depending on what mode the regulator was running in and how much charge was in the battery. I don't think this is directly comparable to anything else we have been discussing. It's great for the T because it fits in a T cutout housing and does not require adding a field control lead (second wire) coming out of the generator. any "better" method would require a second connection. There's the rub. Adding a voltage regulator can work well, but since they removed the third brush there was no current regulation. Probably it was fine for a while and then one day the battery was down and the generator stayed at 20 amps for a while and melted trying to bring it back up. If they had not removed the third brush, it probably would have been fine. Another way would be to use a three-unit regulator. That is better yet, but the current regulator (third relay) would have needed to be set to 8 amps if that is what you cannot exceed. Most off the shelf three unit regulators come out of the box set to something more on the order of 40 amps.

Good question. I have been wondering how that later engine works at all since it doesn't have the side engine mount bosses at the back that 36 and earlier Pontiacs used to control torque reaction. Regarding the fan though, to the best of my knowledge a 36 fan won't even bolt to anything newer than an early 37 half-year water pump. It's probably better that way, as the 36 fan is a bit questionable. I just had mine magnafluxed and it passed. Whew! Finding another could be tough. You must have had something later, because the 36 fan probably wouldn't have worked with your engine. In the 35-36 engine, the top of the water pump is level with the top of the head. In 37 the engine was redesigned, and the water pump redesigned to fit, and they went to a conventional radiator, no more crossflow. The top of the water pump sits about 2 inches higher than the head. It stayed like this on eights and sixes through 48. In 1949, they redesigned the engine again, and designed a new water pump to match. The top of the water pump became LOWER than the head by about 2 inches. How does that leave room for a fan without hitting the balancer? It probably doesn't, and they must have moved the fan forward. There would have been plenty of room to move it forward in a 49-54 Pontiac. There is no room to move the fan forward in a 36. It is already almost touching the radiator. My best guess is they used some kind of 37-48 pump, there are 2 pump shaft lengths in that era, it would have to be the shorter one that fits all the eights and all except about 3 years of sixes from 37-48. The 37-48 water pump body does not natively bolt to a 49-54 block, but I hear you can drill and tap an extra mounting hole in the block and make that work. People have done that to get a 49-54 engine in a 37-48 car. If you did that in a 36, the water pump shaft would be about two inches too high, instead of about 2 inches too low. The fan would clear the balancer without being moved forward, but I suspect it would hit something up high, and would probably need to be a smaller diameter than the 36 fan. It's tough to guess what they would have used for a fan. Got any pictures of this fan and water pump? I doubt I have the answer but maybe someone would.

Up here in Washington the only thing it affects is who pays who. 🤪

Soldering on floats can drive you crazy. That little pinhole @ABear mentioned? Notice closely what that paragraph says because he just gave you the secret. The little pinhole under the solder dot must be open while you are working on the float. Don't skip opening it. Any soldering you do on a closed float will create pressure inside from expanding air (or maybe gas), and if the pinhole is not open you will get leaks in your work, every time. Repair the seam or damage, and THEN close the little pinhole. It may be fiddly to close, but at least it isn't a whole seam. You might have to cool the back side of the float (ice water or something?) as you pull the soldering iron away when re-closing the little pinhole. You must make the air inside the float stand still long enough for the dot of solder over the pinhole to cool without blowing out.

This has a voltage regulator, right? It sounds like the points might be stuck. I don't see why the third brush is having that much effect. In a system with a voltage regulator, the current regulation (third brush) mostly exists to protect the generator. Sure it should be set right, but on a car with a voltage regulator that is driven and doesn't have a half dead battery, I wouldn't expect it to matter much. When you have third brush WITHOUT a voltage regulator, the generator tries to do its maximum CURRENT (Amps) setting all the time, as much as it can. It can't at idle obviously because it is a generator. As you go faster current rises until it reaches some magic point, and then as you go even faster the current goes down. This is just a characteristic of a third brush generator. It is not ideal, but it's OK until the battery gets full. After the battery gets full, the third brush generator keeps charging at whatever it current it was charging at before. The battery cannot do anything useful with this because it is full, so it has to dissipate all that power as heat. The battery might boil. In a third brush system WITH a voltage regulator, the third brush current (Amps) is set to a safe maximum for the generator. It is mainly for generator protection. In some systems the third brush is even riveted in place. Why? Because with a voltage regulator, the voltage is held to some pre-set maximum. As long as the generator is keeping up it tops off the battery and continues with only a trickle charge just exactly like a modern alternator would. As long as the voltage regulator is working and set properly, it can't really overcharge because when the system voltage gets to the level the voltage regulator is set to, the VOLTAGE regulator cuts back the charge rate to a trickle. CURRENT (Amps) should be super low at that point no matter what. If you charge a dead battery with a voltage regulated source like an alternator, or a generator with a voltage regulator, the voltage remains constant. It will be about 7.5 volts on a 6 volt car (at room temperature) for best results. The dead battery will draw almost no current at first. When it gets charged partway it draws a bunch of current for a while, and then as it gets close to full it draws less current. In a normal situation, with the battery fully charged, when you start the car you should see it charge pretty hard at first as it replaces the energy used starting the car, but right away it should taper done to almost nothing. It is exactly what you would see on a more modern car. Current regulation (third brush) enters into this little if at all. When current regulation matters is when the battery is half dead. The generator will charge as hard as it can trying to get to the system up to the voltage regulator set voltage (7.5 volts or so). It will give the battery all it asks for. If the battery asks for more than the generator can safely do, the generator will do its best, even if it means burning itself up. Something must hold the generator back to protect it. That is why systems like this (third brush plus a voltage regulator) still have a third brush for current regulation. A current regulator would also work for protection, and on two brush generators that is typically how it is done. In that case the maximum current available is unrelated to vehicle speed, and that is an improvement. In a regularly driven car with a two brush generator and a good battery, the current regulator never does anything at all, sometimes for years.

Not really. The large Buick transmission may be sort of a related design, I think, but the cover is on top with the shifter in it.

Amber lights in the high beam slots of US cars were never common, but i did see it occasionally decades ago. I suspect people just wanted to look different. State regulations varied wildly, I doubt it was legal everywhere in the US, but I'm not sure. France used yellow or "selective yellow" headlights for decades. Why? Because blue light is fuzzy and when other light is present, you can see clearer without the blue. White light with the blue removed appears yellow. If you can block the blue without blocking too much else and causing the light to be dim, it's a win. It works for the same reason skiers wear yellow goggles, and some fog lights are yellow. France had the best headlights around for decades. They weren't legally stuck on sealed beam, and continued improving non-sealed headlights all through the sealed beam period, with predictable results. This was true for Europe in general, but the French stuff was typically the best by a noticeable margin, even when equipped with clear lenses for export to other countries. France eventually had to drop yellow because of EU standardization rules. I doubt amber high beams are the best use of "yellow" light. High beams are used to see way down the road in clear weather, and it is debatable whether blocking any light would be a good thing. Maybe. I would expect yellow to do a lot more good on low beam, and on fog lights.

Water expands a lot with heat. A huge airspace to absorb the extra volume of water was designed into all cars in the days before overflow tanks, usually in the top of the radiator. I don't know what the exact proper level is for a 17 Maxwell, but if the radiator tubes are completely covered you are not losing cooling area. Of course I can't tell if there's a problem or not from here, I'm thousands of miles away from Pennsylvania. There could be a real problem, but if it settles down at some level that leaves the tubes covered, and it does not boil, it is probably fine. Way back in the teens cork floats were common, sealed with shellac. If that is what you have, it won't work reliably with modern fuel because of the alcohol. You'll need a new one, and sealed with something impervious to alcohol. The carb may need other work too. The needle and seat could be worn out and not sealing. Needles and seats from that era had no elastometric tip, and just barely worked in the first place. It takes hardly any wear to make them stop working. Is this a gravity feed system? I would guess yes. I have a 13 Studebaker with an original cork float. The carburetor has a drain on it, and I drain it whenever I am not driving, thereby not giving the float time to saturate with fuel. If the carburetor did not have a drain, there is no way I would get away with still using this float. I don't know if a 17 Maxwell has a drain. A brass replacement float would be one of the better possible solutions. That isn't practical on some carburetors. Some people use Nitrophyl. I don't like it, but even that is better than 100+ year old cork with the shellac washed off.