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JV Puleo

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Everything posted by JV Puleo

  1. It's very simple. American car collecting is all about appearance...paint, upholstery, sexy body styles etc. There is little or no emphasis on mechanical condition and, as long as cars are being toted about on trailers to "show" them, about 90% of the collectors out there don't care how they run or drive. Matt did not buy a "fixer upper"...he bought a restored car, supposedly "tour ready." In fact, you'd probably be safer with an unrestored car that has never been mucked with than with a large percentage of the restorations out there.
  2. Right...and the fact that it's legal doesn't make it ethical. Given a choice, I'd come down on the ethical side. Lots of things are legal that aren't either ethical or moral. I find the popular fascination with pouncing on other people's travails to be both unethical and immoral. Some sort of reliable report on what happened here may, eventually, be useful to others but you aren't going to get that from a lot of mindless internet chatter that will likely do more to cloud the issue than clarify it.
  3. I had the same car years ago and could lock up the rear wheels. It's a very simple system so I'll start by addressing the linings...what are they? They have to be the soft woven linings with little brass wires in them. No modern, hard lining will work properly. The brake rods must have absolutely minimal clearance around the clevis pins and the brake balancing shaft that runs across the chassis has to move freely so that as near equal pressure as possible is exerted on both wheels. The foot brake slows the car down...the hand brake stops it. Check the seals on the axle as well...they cannot leak oil onto the shoes. Also, what do the drums look like? The external surfaces on my car were badly wallowed. I had them spray welded and I turned them back to flat. The internal surfaces were ok which suggests that most of the time it had been driven on the hand brake. I'll add that this car had a lot of miles on it, many more than is customary with a brass car since both clutch and brake pedals were worn almost smooth.
  4. Because the owner purposely brought it to a place where he knew it would be photographed. Simply participating in such an even is giving tacit approval to others taking pictures. I don't see how that applies to this situation.
  5. Hook is quite right...there are no specs. I've always been amused by the RR instructions for tightening the head bolts on a PI. "A strong man with a wrench no longer than 3"'
  6. I agree. If the owner wants to publish a photo that is his choice. For others, it's just morbid curiosity.
  7. It would have been statically balanced, which is the best that could have been done at the time. I would have it dynamically balanced which is much better but the machines that do it weren't invented until the 30s. Anyone that dynamically balances flywheels should be able to do it but you may have to make a fixture of some sort to hold it. Expensive cars often had a clutch that was machined all over. That came very close to dynamic balancing as long as the metal was of a consistent density.
  8. I think a lot of the bad reputation cone clutches have comes from them being out of balance and/or the clearance where the spin is too great so they don't go in straight. I'd check that very carefully and perhaps bush the center of the clutch so you have a running clearance of .002 to .003. Some very good cars had cones clutches, including the Silver Ghost RR but they were very well made with a lot of attention to getting them to run perfectly straight.
  9. Good. I'm relieved for your sake. I'm a long way from having to do that but I do remember that one way made the clutch grab too much. This is what comes from reading engineering books late at night. Nice job too! That modified c-clamp was a really good idea. I'm going to make one!
  10. You should double check this but I seem to remember reading that the leather goes on with the smooth side out.
  11. Babbitt was the bearing metal of choice in the past at least partly because it was so easy to work with. In the early 20th century virtually every mechanic, even if he wasn't an auto mechanic, could pour a Babbitt bearing...in fact, they were far more used in industry than in automobiles. The skill has largely disappeared today so that now it's considered something of a specialty but the principal is very simple...the part is set up in a fixture to hold it...a core is inserted for the hole and the Babbitt metal is poured around it. It is then finished by boring, reaming, honing etc...whatever is necessary to get the fit and finish desired. There are dozen's of different Babbitt alloys so choosing the right one may be a problem if you don't know what was used but generally, the less lead there is in it, the harder it is. The late Malcolm Parrot relates how, when crossing the country in a 1910 Mitchell with Frank Zirbies, they lost a connecting rod at night in the Rocky mountains. The limped to an abandoned miner's shack where they found an old pump...so they built a fire and melted the Babbitt out of one of the pump bearings. A dam and core were improvised for the rod and the melted Babbitt poured in. Then the rod was scraped with a pocket knife and fitted back in the engine. This got them to the West Coast where they were able to get a new rod sent to them.
  12. Only with a ball turning fixture. They aren't common. Drilling and tapping a mild steel ball would be much easier.
  13. You may be able to buy the balls and replace them in the ring. I don't know the construction of that ring but not long ago I sold a friend two or three of the original bearings from my car. He'd made new races and centers but needed the rings with the balls. The balls were readily available but he needed my old rings to mount them.
  14. I did the same and found both the bearing and the race pretty easily.
  15. A friend of mine has used the place in Maine several times, always with excellent results. I'll probably send the mag for my Mitchell there.
  16. An unrestored 1911 REO I bought years ago had stickers on the windshield that said "National Air Races/1939". Some time later there was a picture published in Old Cars Weekly captioned "Joe xxxx and his brother on their way back from the 1939 National Air Races in their 1911 REO". I didn't find it but I once bought a Napoleonic Austrian saber at Bills Auto Parts that had been found in one of the cars.
  17. Those look like pretty big holes. I doubt any sealer would close them. I'd strip the tank and perhaps hot tank it to make sure there was no trace of gas in it, rough up the surface and solder them closed, perhaps putting a small piece of brass shim stock with lots of past flux on it on the inside to give the solder something to adhere to. Then, if you're worried about the fix, there are commercial products intended to seal cracks that could be painted on over the solder. Since it's the bottom of the tank it wouldn't show is you then painted over it.
  18. I feel Terry is quite right. The OP asked for advice and then, as far as we know, completely ignored it, not even bothering to come back and thank those the members that took the time to answer. That said, it has been an interesting discussion but I don't think its limited to restorers. This is the inherent risk in dealing with specialized businesses that rely on one or two key men (or women) to keep things running. I don't see how we can escape that risk since virtually all antique car work is long out of the mainstream. It's also one of the benefits of doing practically everything yourself but I realize this isn't an option for most enthusiasts. I'm much more put off by the flippers that come here looking for us to price something so they can put it on ebay and try to sell it to one of us. I've collected 18th century arms most of my life and I have a rule with dealers...if they put a price on an item, that's the price. I may make an offer but if they make a mistake and misidentify something (and many do) that's their problem. If a widow or other heir comes to me with the same question I'll go out of my way to help.
  19. That is about what I had in mind. I have a bending tool but I also have some to make that will require a smaller bend than the tool makes. I'll have to bend 1/4" and 1/8".
  20. Demco, What is your technique for bending copper tubing?
  21. I agree with Ed on this...or they are like my car, resurrected from a pile of parts that would have been unrealistic, if not impossible to restore if you had to pay someone for the work. The real issue is how well they are put together. I'd guess that 90% of the time they are slapped together with a wish and a prayer but we have to remember that a lot of the so-called "restored" cars are worn out wrecks with a flashy paint job and new upholstery. One need only follow a couple of the threads here, like Matt Harwood's Lincoln and the Olds DCR in Belgium to get an appreciation how little value some collectors place on mechanical condition. Of course, that's what keeps Ed in business!
  22. That is a truly amazing identification...my first thought was "there isn't enough showing' but clearly I was wrong. Well done!
  23. A good friend of mine and fellow 18th century historian would discover some amazing new item and rush to tell his wife. She's look perplexe4d and say "why don't you tell Joe, at least he'll know what you're talking about." This is a great addition to our collective knowledge and I'd guess that if Carbking hadn't done it it would never have been done.
  24. I very much doubt it. I've seen one such conversion on a Ghost chassis and it was a cobbled up mess made from truck parts and, to my mind, absolutely unsafe to take out of the garage let alone down the street. A PII would be infinitely more difficult. The transmissions were all built by RR...the 3-speeds were used simply because that was what American customers expected. Henry Royce actually favored 3-speed transmissions and used one on the early 20HP cars. It was a center shift as well. Customer reaction was so adverse to this "cheap American" innovation that they were forced to go to back to a 4-speed with RH shifting.
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