Questions about holes in my firewall

I was detailing parts on my car after transporting if to my house from my folks. I did somehow during the trip lose my map light cover. As I was looking I noticed some holes in the firewall. My guess is that it came equipped with a heater, but I thought I would post some pictures and get some others opinions. Are the heaters Peerless specific? You know when I bought this I thought it is going to be so cool having a car that nobody else has, and it is, until you need parts then it is very uncool. Thanks for looking and any help you may be able to provide.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Exterior

Interior passenger side

Hi Jeremy,

I think your hot-water-powered heater theory is right. Please go to an older thread called "Re: what is this car worth, any idea"; Post# 10; 12/27/10 [updated 9/5/12]. Has a good picture of what may be one of these installations in a 1929/30 Peerless 6-81 -- same line of car as your 1927 6-80.

I don't think Peerless ever had their own brand of heater, or even one included in a factory-equipped car. There were probably 5 or 10 outfits making aftermarket heaters for U.S. cars then, both "hot-air-off-the-exhaust-manifold" and "hot-water-powered". The Peerless in the picture was restored in the 1950s, but the connections look new, so a reproduction one might have been put on in the last 10 years. Model A Ford parts catalogs like "Mike's A-Ford-Able Parts" sell complete heaters just like this that bolt-in under your dash, if you live up near the Canadian border or something. I've seen photos of unrestored Peerlesses with old-looking water-type heaters like this. The Peerless 6-80s and 6-81s have massive forward & down exhaust manifolds that would not lend themselves very well to the more common exhaust-type heaters that were tons more common on Fords.

Hope this helps a little.

Jeff

Great to see the photos and glad you got the car moved successfully.

I see you have one of the "Pure Oil Later" early oil filters still on the firewall. Mine was missing, but someone got me a NOS unit at Hershey two years ago. Totally interchangeable with a Buick in this case. My 6-80 owner's manual -- printed about Jan., 1926 -- says the pur-o-lator should have a glass sight feed to check if it's still functioning. I was curious if that's the set-up on yours.

Neat to see what looks like a heat-gauge sensor come out of the top of the head and lead to the instrument panel in an armored cable.

FYI. Did you know Continental has been making aircraft engines since before 1910 up until the present?

It does go with the territory that rare cars have rare parts, but the other side is you'll never go to a car show and be 1 of 100 Peerlesses or see yourself coming around the corner everytime you go for a drive. Looks like you can buy a new repro water-type heater any time you want. I notice someone in Hemmings Motor News has ads in the Packard parts section selling an arrangement using new screw-on oil filter cartridges fitting in the old Pur-O-Lator -style housings (maybe that will work in your Peerless if the old filter is, uh, past it's shelf-life).

A thought for 1 or 2 years down the road. I know you are not made of money and the Peerless isn't ready to take to any shows (mine isn't either), but if you had brought that car to the First Annual Peerless Meet in Michigan 4 weeks ago, you would have had the only Peerless six-cylinder car there. If just you guys with 1927 Peerlesses showed up, you would have out-numbered the Pierce-Arrows 2-to-1:cool:! Next year the Meet will be in Wisconsin and in 2016* it will be in Cleveland. At the 2013 Peerless Meet, there was 1 totally-unrestored barnfind car and 5 pretty sharp-looking ones. The barnfind was the one on the 2013 Peerless Meet Poster, if you'd like to purchase one!

----Your Fellow 6-80 owner, Jeff

* NOTE: The date for the Cleveland Meet was moved from 2015 to 2016 and will be a joint affair involving all the makes of cars coming out of Cleveland, Ohio(Baker, Chandler, Jordan, Rollin, Royal Tourist, Stearns-Knight, White and Winton, for example). Location of the 2015 Meet not set yet.