sak335

OK, so we found a ratty but complete carb on eBay for pretty short money and it came in yesterday. It was worse than the photos showed (of course) but had the parts I needed. It cleaned up better than I expected (that is, the top portion, the bottom was junk.) I got the carb mounted, and got the linkage and fuel lines hooked up without issue. The linkage needed some lubrication and and the mounting screws for the accelerator pedal were loose but that was a quick fix. The last items that need to be addressed before we attempt startup are the oil lines. The oil pump was frozen and I cleaned it up and have it moving again and it seems to be pumping nicely in bench testing. The oil lines to the strainer and to the block were pretty easy, but the Y to the oil pressure gauge was a bit tricky given the angles. It would be much easier with braided stainless than copper tubing. Anyway, this is the current roadblock: the soft line to the firewall that leads to the gauge is broken off at the end, so again we'll need to go digging for parts. Getting close.

OK, found a photo that shows how the throttle plate is mounted. I'll look through the box of parts that came with the car and maybe a miracle will happen and the parts will be in there.

OK, if that's the case then I'm missing more pieces than I thought. That 'bulb' is totally empty. There is a hole in the top where perhaps a mounting rod goes, so looks like I need to grab one off eBay or elsewhere for parts. Thanks, this is really helpful.

Thanks, it does look like there are a few on eBay that 'appear complete' so that may be a good route. I had no idea this thing was bronze. No wonder it cracked when some force was put on it.

OK, it definitely looks like a butterfly valve but I couldn't find it on this diagram.

One last thing. When disassembling the carb, I found a small plate with two holes in it inside the float chamber. It clearly doesn't belong in there. But I started wondering, where did this thing come from? Anybody recognize this:

So reviving this thread...my neighbor had a daughter get married, grandkids, etc., etc. so he's been distracted. I rewired the car entirely and re-built the vacuum canister (fuel pump) which was rusty inside. I'm now working on the carb which is a Detroit Lubricator (Stewart.) The carb seems problematic to me. There is a crack in the body near the gas line fitting at the bottom of the float. I used JB Weld to seal it up. I imagine this was caused by the fact that the fitting and the Strainer Plug seem frozen on there. My guess is somebody tried to remove the fuel fitting and the metal fatigued. I am now wondering if there is a blockage in there that needs to be attended to. The other issue is that the Valve Cap for the float assembly is missing so I need to source something for that. We've replaced the fuel line and cleaned the fuel tank, so next I need to go through the clutch and see what needs to be done there. Hopefully we're not far from an attempt at starting. I attached a couple photos including one of my kids 'helping' my neighbor with the car.

OK, so I finally dug into the car for the first time this morning. We had soaked the cylinders with Kroil over the winter and my neighbor ground down an old socket to replicate the crank. Good new is that the engine turns over easily. I pulled the pan this morning, and aside from 90 years of crud caked over it, it came off without a fight. He cranked the engine while I looked underneath and everything is working like it should. The cams look brand new, no wear at all, and no discernible play in the bearings. He has a book called '1914-1933 Dodge Brothers Passenger Car Master Parts List" and it looks like the parts are keyed by engine number. Of course, there are three numbers on the engine... The head has a casting number A-18147 The block has stamping 981-294 The L-part on the front is cast with A-3583 (with a 6 above the 3 and 5) and also with 17422. I'm very happy that the engine turns over. Looks like it will just be sorting all the accessories and most of them are in decent shape, and he has spares for many. The wiring all needs to be replaced as the cloth-wrapped originals have disintegrated. It appears that the clutch has rusted to the pressure plate as the rear wheels are turning even when it's not in gear. No big deal, easy to deal with.

Thanks, I did spray the cylinders via the spark plug holes with Kroil about a month ago to help loosen everything up, knowing that things were probably not helped by age and the fact that it's been sitting so long. Hopefully it will work some magic. Any "best" source for picking up a crank or just keep searching eBay, etc.?

My next door neighbor just got a 1923 Dodge Brothers business sedan that has been sitting in his parents garage for about 40 years. Apparently his father was either the original or an early owner and drove it until it was put in the garage for some reason. His father died a few years ago, but always spoke of getting the car running and driving again. His mother was moving to an assisted living community so the car had to go somewhere, so it went to hin. He is a carpenter by trade and has no issue with completing the body work and the interior. The body has some rust - nothing terrible, and some dings and dents. The interior is pretty ugly but the guts are there and he can recreate all the wood parts. He has a pile of parts and some spares, apparently. Now, the mechanics he doesn't want to mess with as he has no experience. That's where I come in. We're pretty good friends and I'm a car guy, been fixing and racing cars my entire adult life, but modern stuff, mostly German. We've worked out an arrangement (non-monetary) and I'm tasked with getting the mechanicals sorted. He's got a manual of some sort for the car, but nothing beyond that. Given that I don't know much about these cars, but know about cars in general, I'm wondering what you'd do approaching a car with a story like this. On a modern car I'd just pull the engine and sort through it on the bench if it was really suspect, but my understanding is that pulling the engine on this car is not trivial (I can remove and install an engine on a BMW in less than 10 hours by myself, and have done so many times.) I have a hard time believing that the car was put away running perfectly (the story is the classis "ran when parked") but perhaps it was cosmetics, who knows. Anyway, the thing is currently in pieces, but apparently they are all there. My thought was to clean up all the various parts (carb, fuel pump, etc) and see what each looks like while I'm doing that and assess perhaps what went wrong. I also have no illusions about what the gas tank looks like, and that will likely need to be dealt with as well. I'm assuming that I can pull the spark plugs and try to turn over the engine using the crank on the front, but don't have the crank. I'm also probably going to need to pick up some more standard tools, my set is pretty weak compared to metric. Any and all thoughts encouraged. This is going to be a slow/steady project and I'd like to most of the cleanup stuff over the winter on the bench before I get to the big stuff.