JV Puleo
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Posts posted by JV Puleo
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Short answer, No.
When I was about 14 I bought an English book, "Veteran & Vintage Cars". In British terms this means up to the mid-20s although the bulk of the cars in the book were brass and many were "veterans"...i.e. pre-1905. That book captured my imagination. I still prefer brass cars before 1910 although a long association with RR cars has left me with an appreciation for the Ghost (introduced in 1908) and the PI which is essentially a Ghost with a OHV engine. To this day I don't aspire to own anything newer than about 1928/29. I have never even seen an automobile race or had any interest in muscle cars, many of which were new when I was in high school. All this belies the notion that collecting is driven by what the collector's remember from their youth. I don't think there is anyone left who remembers brass cars on the road and precious few that remember 20s cars in regular use.
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One aspect of this that seems to be ignored is that vast majority of car buyers have never been particularly interested in the mechanical aspects of their cars or overly concerned with horsepower. Long-term reliability was far more important and the flat head was a fully developed, mature technology that satisfied them. I'm thinking here of my own father, who wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a flat head and an OHV engine...it was just an engine and if the car got him to work in the morning and home at night and didn't require lots of expensive maintenance he wouldn't have cared what engine it had. I suspect his attitude was far more common in the general population than it would be with car enthusiasts.
In the 70s my everyday car was a '54 Plymouth Cranbrook. It got me to work just fine and I only scrapped it when the rear springs broke. Still, I took the engine out, overhauled it, and put it in a ? (I forget now but it may have been a '49 Dodge) and as far as I know it may still be on the road.
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Very nice Jeff. How did you do the convex end? And, did you make the diameter a few thousandth under .750?
Back in the early 60s two British authors, Morgan & Wheatly did a book on antique car restoration. They described these and one of the things I remember was that they mentioned drilling a small hole in each plug...exactly why I don't remember but I'll look it up and add it here.
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On 12/9/2023 at 10:54 AM, prewarnut said:
AJ, is the AJS/AMS PII a more superior platform? Or just more desirable given the slightly more modernized look, interior wood/textiles and rarety?
- Dan.
That depends on what you think of as superior. The PII was a completely redesigned car. Where the PI was essentially a Ghost chassis with a new OHV engine, the PII was completely redesigned. Among many things it abandoned the cantelivered rear springs of the earlier cars. It was was more powerful, faster and a much more modern design. It was also more complicated and, like many new designs, had some teething problems. Very few RR buyers knew anything about engineering and RR was losing sales to cars that characterized their product as "old fashioned". Given the roads of the time, especially in America, there was likely not much of a difference but if you wanted to drive from the Channel to the Rivieria on the Route Nationale in 6 or 8 hours a PII would get you there faster. PIIs have later coachwork so, of course they appeal to collectors who favor the mid-30s styling over the mid-20s. They are also much more rare as only those two series were built.
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On 12/18/2023 at 4:46 PM, edinmass said:
My daily drivers......
87 Chevy S-10 pick up
I drive an 89 S10...
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I've had this happen once. Years ago I sold an unrestored 1911 REO Model R (the 4-cylinder car). Many years later, perhaps 15 or even 20, I was contacted by the son of the man I'd sold it to. His dad had given him the car and somehow he tracked me down to send an email. He also sent a photo and it looked exactly as I sold it...still unrestored. He wanted to know what I could tell him about it and asked if the paint was original (it looked it). I was able to share the amazing fact that I had found the man who owned it before WWII and that no, the paint wasn't original because he'd had it painted in 1936. This is a good example of how easy it is to take a very old repaint as original. The car was only 25 years old when it was painted but that was nearly 90 years ago.
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8 hours ago, edinmass said:
I think I’ll stop by for Christmas dinner Joe. I’d like one of those Kobe beef tomahawk steaks that cost 300 bucks. Don’t forget the cognac reduction cream sauce. All the regular fixings are fine. What time should I arrive Christmas morning? No need to shop for a gift, cash is always fine. 😎
I don't think I've had any kind of steak for ten years....not that I don't like it but it's way too expensive, and that's the cheap stuff.
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1 hour ago, dibarlaw said:
Joe:
Was you home ever included in "The White Pine Monographs". A series of publications documenting existing 17th and early 18th century homes published around 1900-1910.
Not to my knowledge. When I bought it it was very near falling down. In fact, the seller reduced the price by $5000 because he didn't have to tear it down. It's officially the Joseph Olney house. Olney may have been the father or uncle of Capt. Stephen Olney, one of RIs two Revolutionary War heroes. Stephen Olney's house is still standing further down the same road.
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Slowly...like a car restoration. I'd post progress reports if I didn't think I'd get banned for it but I'll sneak this one in...the sink area as of tonight. What doesn't show (because I've made a big effort to hide them) are the big beams that hold up the second floor. This end of the kitchen is located where the 1703 house was joined to the 1757 addition so it has double ceiling beams, all of which were salvaged from some older building because they still have the notches and holes for treenails from the previous building. The beams were never intended to show...that's a 1970s "rustic" thing. They recognized crude work in the 18th century and made every effort to hide it. The beams are simply tree trunks squared off with an adze. Beams that were intended to show were planed and often had a decorative chamfer on the edges. I have to admit that this is taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated.
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Personally, I don't care for the natural wood look on wheels...mostly because practically no wheels were finished that way in period. When I paint the Mitchell wheels I plan to prep the spokes as if they were metal. From all I've read, Rustoleum sanding primer in a rattle can sticks to wood just fine. I'll brush paint them with the same ivory One Shot sign paint I did the rear end, and will do the chassis, with. I suspect it is very close in consistency to the brush paint that was used in period. In any case, it is very slow drying (like two to three weeks) and if applied with a camel hair brush leaves virtually no brush marks. It can be thinned and sprayed as well. I haven't explored that because I've no place, or the equipment, to spray paint but I'd bet that would leave you with a smooth hard finish that would avoid the polyurethane look.
You're right about the camera too...that's why I always urge my authors to take pictures for publication on a gray or light pastel background. I also think the heavy emphasis in the old car world on "perfect" paint is every bit as unrealistic as brushed on house paint. I took a lot of pictures of my wheels before I started to strip them because the original black pinstripes on them were nowhere near as perfect as we''d expect to see today.
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The wheels on my Mitchell were painted an ivory/yellow color with black pin striping and there was enough original paint remaining to be certain of that. the chassis was the same color. I don't feel it's bad but it's a tough, and very subjective call. To me, your wheels look a little too white but computer screens and digital photos are terrible reproducers of color in anything but a general sense. Did you have any original paint or are you going by a period description? If the latter, I think you have some flexibility. I am not convinced they reproduced exact colors every time with anything like the accuracy of post-war mass production. To give you a weird example...my grandmother worked in t he paint laboratory of the Barrelled Sunlight paint company. She was a master at mixing paint to match existing colors. All of this pre-dated those mixing machines on the paint counter at the big-box stores. Matching colors was an art, even in the 1950s.
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That's really a very curious ad...
Sheffield and Castle are both English although the Castle Motor Company made only 3-wheelers much like the early Morgan's. Hotchkiss is French and a very high quality car. Looking in GN Georgiano I find no reference at all to Beach or Schwartz. Mitchell, of course, was American. I'm wondering if some of those names aren't the make of the chassis but names assigned to the body style much like RR of America was doing at the time with their bodies, all of which had English names. The "flyer" is Mitchell but that was a mid-price car built in Racine, Wisconsin and it seems unlikely that it would have attracted much the carriage trade.
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The Hotchkiss was a French car even though the founder of the company, B.B. Hotchkiss, was an American. They were primarily makers of Ordnance and the company logo is, in fact, a pair of "crossed cannon".
From the look of the designs this appears to be about 1920. Mitchell went out of business around 1924 so it clearly has to pre-date that. It would be interesting to hear what Walt Godsen has to add since I think he is the doyen of pre-war coachbuilding firms.
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1 hour ago, mobileparts said:
... Remember, most of the people wanting a 1930... this or a
1940...that is older than 70 years of age, for the most part....
Really? Those "70 year olds" (like me) were born in the 1950s and have no more personal involvement with the 30s and 40s than they do with brass cars. The problem is price...they would all sell if the prices reflected the market but car collectors seem to be oblivious to the fact that prices have fallen...that, effectively, we've priced ourselves out of the market. It will take time for reality to set in but it eventually will. If those cars appeal to an older age group it probably has more to do with how much time and disposable income they have. I suspect there would be a lot more people in their 30s and 40s in the market if the prices reflected the current reality.
I was helping my cousin clean up his parents property last summer. Geoff is a long-time Model A enthusiast and had piles of parts. One of the neighbors came by to look at a tractor we were selling and his son, probably in his 20s, asked Geoff if he knew anything about Model A's...because he'd just bought one. I've no idea what he paid and this is a wealthy neighborhood but there is no question that "20-something" was interested enough to actually buy one.
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Further to the above...when making the wrist pins. I'd drill about .010 under the finished dimension going in about half way from one end, flipping the piece around and going in from the other end to finish the hole, then reaming to the finished size. If you'd going for a 1/8 wall thickness on a .750 pin that would be a 1/2" hole. I think the late Harold Sharon said that the wall thickness doesn't have to be any thicker than 1/8. I don't know what he based that on but it sounds right.
Drill rod in it's annealed state is plenty hard enough for a wrist pin. I would not harden them.A twist drill will wander when drilling a deep hole (which is why they aren't used for deep hole drilling). The further it goes, the more it goes off center. That's why you drill from both ends. The wrist pins are short so it won't wander much, certainly much less than the amount left to be reamed.
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I borrowed a picture from ebay...this shows the sleeves that fit over the pilot and center the reamer in the hole.
A one-off sleeve wouldn't be hard to make. You just need to ream it to fit the pilot (which will be smaller than the hole) and then turn a taper on it holding it on a mandrel. I'd get a pilot that fits your reamer and make the sleeve.
EDIT: I just checked the "product detail" in the McMaster catalog for the reamer that covers those dimensions. To my surprise, the extension comes with the tapered sleeve. Those parts are all ground to very fine tolerances. Given the choice, I'd bite the bullet and just buy the extension you need...that eliminates a good deal of worry about how accurate the tool is.
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Jeff...the pilots worked with a sleeve that fitted over the extension and had tapered ends. The tapered end is pushed into the hole opposite the one you are reaming. I can take a picture tomorrow...I may even have a new expansion reamer that is right that I can send. I have two sets, one with extensions and one without and I'm not sure if the extensions are interchangeable. Actually, I've been meaning to check that. I may even have a spare tapered sleeve. I'll look tomorrow.
You ought to be able to drill the drill rod with HSS. I've done it. There is too much carbon in it to thread well but it does drill and turn albeit with very sharp tools. I'm not sure what you should use for a collet...3/4 is .010 big although the ER's may hold it, 18mm is about 3/4of a mm too small.
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I'd press the bushings out. Actually, a cheap way if you don't have a press would be to make two sleeves...one with about a 1/2" hole in it and the other slightly larger than the OD and longer than the bushing. Then you put a bolt through the center, with thick washers on each side, and screw it down. It should press the bushing out. Failing that...I have a fixture for holding a connecting rod flush on a mill table. It's heavy and will be expensive to ship but you're welcome to borrow it. Or...I could take a picture and you could make one. It isn't complicated.
If you bore it you can get it down to the point where the bearing wall is paper thin and then just peel it out. That way you don't risk hitting the inside bore on the pin end.
On second thought...maybe it would be better to ream the piston. You could take it out to about .748 with an expanding reamer and then hone it for a perfect fit. It would be tedious but certain. Are the Metz pins really good...you could make the pins from 3/4" drill rod with the center bored out. That way you could make them any length you want. And yes...this stuff is NEVER easy and always demands imagination.
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21 minutes ago, Captain Harley said:
...Socket head screws were first patented around 1912 I believe.
Allen's patent was in 1910 but he didn't invent the socket head screw. They had been around since the mid-19th century. Allen invented a method of "cold heading" to manufacture them. The earlier ones had been very expensive to make...Allen's patent made using them practical.
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Metal stitching is the only way to fix that. I would not even consider welding it. This has been discussed many times on this forum. Do a search. I recommend Frank Casey in Mass. He was resting a head when I was there a few months ago.
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I have a 14 inch 4-jaw that weighs close to 100 lbs. and is a real bear to mount. I've gotten to the point where I only use it when I have to and then only first thing in the morning. When I'm tired I'm afraid I'll drop it. I have a 6" 4-jaw that was given to me by a friend who was the shop teacher at a local HS. When they eliminated the shop classes they sold the lathe and threw all the tooling in a dumpster...most of it never having been used. He also gave me a 3-jaw and I bought two big slugs of cast iron to make backing plates. The plate I sent you was one I'd bought for that project but it turned out to be the wrong size. I've never made the backing plate for the 3-jaw but on the rare occasion that I want to use it (almost always to hold big hex stock) I put it in the 4-jaw. That allows me to center the work piece perfectly.
I would go for bronze on the brake shoes...it's very tough and not prone to cracking. What were the originals made of?
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This seems to be an endless question, one that only the future will answer. There are a couple of fundamental issues here though. For the most part these laws are being pushed by a political class that is pandering to what they perceive to be their "base"...a group that has virtually no conception of the problems involved and is looking only at the "appearance" of doing something. This is not new. Politicians have been doing this since time began. Really, what is the likelihood that a gaggle of lawyers understands anything about the electrical grid, the needs of the general public or even what it's like to simply not be able to afford the "advanced technology" they are so devoted to. The mere fact that no EV would be affordable to the average user were it not for subsidies, which I highly resent when taxpayers are footing the bill, should tell us a great deal. Although I think it farfetched I sometimes think the goal here is to make personal transportation unavailable to any but the well off.
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3 hours ago, John Lynn said:
Hello. Looking for some more advice.
My 1911 EMF is right hand drive. I have attached some photos of the batteries bank , wiring loom etc as well as other photos of the restortation project.
On the drivers side door there is a small on/off button that appears to be looped back to the main wiring loom. I cannot find reference to it in the parts handbook. Maybe an aftermarket addition but would like any feedback on what it could be.
I think that is an old-fashioned door bell button. Of course it would work for a horn but I wonder if it isn't just something added by a previous owner....a long time ago.
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I can see the price on the Franklin...the colors are appalling and I think it would have been difficult to get that price here. The '27 Hudson was a good buy but not exceptionally cheap. Prices for '20s sedans have always been soft.
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Here’s a fun one — Who bought a car for under $ 100 ???
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by JV Puleo (see edit history)
1956 Plymouth Cranbrook $25
I should add that I drove that car for about 3 years. It suffered from piston slap so I had the pistons knurled...which increased the compression and the bearings went...but it was so easy to work on that I replaced the rod and main bearings after work in one of the bays where I worked on traded-in cars at a Volvo dealership. I think the entire job took about 2 hours. It was so quiet that more than once I hit the starter while it was running. To my mind, it was about as good an "everyday driver" as I've ever had. This was in the 1970s too.