Bloo

If the shift timing is that different, you probably have heavier oil in the transmission than you did then.

That whooshed right over my head. I saw brass and nothing else LOL. I completely missed that they are electric. I have a car with acetylene too, and I know better. Good catch ID-ing the lights as Cadillac. I see what appears to be an impulse mag under the hood, and no other electrical stuff. I feel sure the lights should be acetylene just like you remember seeing.

I can't imagine with the pin being grooved like that what would keep the oil in. There must be more to the story.

It is news to me that they went bankrupt. Do you know when that happened? As I recall they went through an endless string of corporate mergers and acquisitions after shutting down the last auto production line (in Hamilton, Ontario) during the 1966 model year. I do recall reading in the newspaper when they ceased to exist altogether around 1996 (that's not a typo).

Keep driving. The more the better.

Are they Cadillac headlights? What did it have before? I was a bit surprised by the fancy lenses, but there is nothing unusual about acetylene headlights on trucks as late as 1918, or maybe even 1920, even though they were gone from passenger cars by 1913 or so. Trucks often still had a crank, a magneto, and no electrical system.

Both! It just depends when. The column of colored fluid running from the tank to a sight on the dash was one of their creations. The thermal bimetal gauges used in Fords and Mopars from the 50s(?) through the 80s (or maybe beyond) are another. Those can be recognized by the presence of a little thermal relay that turns the power on and off constantly to limit current. In-between those 2 systems was yet another thermal bimetal system that had the little off-on-off-on relay integrated into the fuel sender somehow.

There are a bunch of interchangeable versions of the oil filter used on that car. The traditional Fram number is PH8A, NAPA/WIX is 1515, and many other brands just have some letters and a "1" I think Purolator is V-1A? A lot of store brands are some number involving a "1" because it was the first really common spin-on full-flow oil filter. There are a bunch of different versions that interchange, too. I think a shorter one is Fram PH-17? That may be a shorter length version meant to miss the fan belts on B-engine Chryslers with air conditioning. It is DIRECTLY interchangeable, as are several others. Fix your heads. Exchange heads are almost always a bad idea. When in doubt just say no. I don't know whether you will need valves. That will become clear after the heads are off and you can see if any are bent, and how much "margin" is left. There is no reason you would necessarily need any new valves. That depends on pre-existing wear, and whether any of them were stuck open and hit the pistons and bent. If you will have the heads off, you will probably be having the valves ground though, and possibly some valve guide work. The machine shop will give you all the sordid details.

Is it threaded? I believe the pin that holds the reverse idler shaft goes there. I suggest not driving that until you find out for sure. Here is s similar but not quite the same transmission from a 36 Pontiac. If I remember correctly the "bolt" threaded into the case, but had a "pin" section that stuck out further than the threads locking the reverse idler shaft in place. See the hole in this shaft at the upper right of the pic? The part that stuck past the threads engaged that hole.

Just paint that stripe on the side black and get started with your Professor Cosmo FIshhawk schtick. http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=42311 I like it.

On any used antique you buy, there will be a bunch of little things to fix. You start taking them on longer and longer jaunts and fix what you find wrong. On the forum we call this "sorting". depending on the quality of the restoration work this can take a little time or a long time, but unfortunately the quality of work you find on most antiques for sale is really bad. The reality is you will probably have a lot to do. Nothing from 1950 will be as reliable as a modern car. If there was a problem period for reliability, it's more like 1973-1988, and that is a rash generalization that does not apply to everything. So yeah, probably there is work to be done on the 1950 Studebaker. Another thing to consider is that it is a Champion, and that is an economy car of the period. If your daily drive includes any freeways, it may not be a good choice. An economy car in those days was geared toward gas economy, and tend to have a less powerful smaller displacement engine than you would expect in a full size car. Studebaker Champions and Nash 600s and Statesmans come to mind. Does it have Overdrive? You definitely want overdrive, and it was optional. You definitely do NOT want an automatic. I don't know if they offered one. If they did, it would be ridiculously slow in that car. In the late 80s, I daily drove a 51 Nash Statesman. Overdrive made the tiny engine good enough in the modern traffic of the time. The speed limit was still 55MPH nationally then. Looking back, I don't think it would do on today's freeways, at all. If it snows where you live, you will need a different winter car. The Studebaker's body will degrade unacceptably fast. I daily drove the Nash in winter, but there were no corrosive materials on the roads where I lived, that being an eastern and midwestern problem at the time. You cannot depend on that anywhere now.

Welp.... Try to save the battery. Put it in the car and turn the headlights on for a few hours. Get it really dead and then try to charge it the RIGHT way. You will need it to be REALLY DEAD for that charger to start charging, and it probably still won't start charging. Maybe you get lucky and it will start charging. If and only if the charger wont start charging you need another 6v battery and jumper cables in PARALLEL with your battery as a temporary measure to fool the charger. That means (-) > (-) and (+) > (+) so the charger will see something sort of close to 6 volts with the CORRECT POLARITY and start charging. You might also be able to tape 4 D cells in series - (-)(+) > (-)(+) > (-)(+) > (-)(+) + like Frank suggested because 4 d cells in series makes about 6 volts, and then hook your homemade series string in PARALLEL to the 6v battery (-) > (-) and (+) > (+) like you would with another 6v battery and jumper cables. The only reason to do any of this is to fool a smart charger into starting up. Then unhook whatever you used to jump and let the charger finish charging the battery. Or, you could get a real (old, dumb) battery charger like I posted pictures above. If you are going to have an old car you need one anyway. It will start trying to charge no matter what without any shenanigans. The only trouble is you might not just find one right away. My little battery maintainer (the one that looks exactly like your charger except the color of the plastic) is a 1.5 amp charger. If your battery is an 80 amp/hour battery (a good guess), in a perfect world under perfect conditions, it will take that charger a little over 53 hours to charge the battery. In reality, thanks to natural laws, batteries do not always take what a charger is trying to give them. Also the battery will have to be far more dead than it could ever be run under normal conditions in order to get it to charge reversed. I would expect it to take 2 or 3 times that long with that charger, or about 107-160 hours. That is another good reason to have a real battery charger around. EDIT: Before you do any of this, take the 3 caps off of the battery and look down the holes at the acid/water mixture. Are the plates of the battery sticking up out of the acid/water? If so, add distilled water until the plates are just covered, then proceed as above.

^^This. I have tested it by soaking in gasoline. Gasoline softens it.

I don't think that is the reason. The aftermarket timing chain sets with multiple settings, offset keys, and offset pins are all to get the cam perfectly timed, or "degreed" with a degree wheel. not account for wear. Some people will intentionally move the cam 2-4 degrees fore or aft to alter the torque curve a little bit. I have considered trying to account for wear like that, but slop is slop and once it's loose it is still going to whip around at idle, or maybe all the time, so I have never done that. These days I usually spring for a "true roller" chain set If I can get it, and hope it lasts better. It has been my experience that cheaper "double roller" sets that do not have the rollers in the chain free to turn wear out just as fast as the stock silent chain. Does it matter? Probably not on anything less than a race engine. Millions of old V8s hauled millions of people millions of miles and to this day most people are unaware and almost no one talks about it. It only matters in this thread because Bob is likely to see some missing degrees when he checks valve timing even though the engine is new.

Several years ago I saw one of these for sale in Puyallup, WA. It looked pretty solid. I went over for a closer look and it had a 1970s smogger 6 cylinder in it and an automatic transmission. Bleh. If you had that car and this one, you might have something.

Bob, I don't know where I put that info, it may be buried pretty deep and might not apply to your car anyway. Is it a 1966 390 then? Two barrel or four? Is your new engine the same year as the original one? My engine is a 1970 390 two barrel, and if I remember correctly the original cam I found in it was marked AU with the A upside down, so it was probably C6AZ-6250-A. Using this confusing chart (use the first line where there are 2 lines for the valve events): http://www.mercurystuff.com/fe-camshaft-specs.html We expect the overlap period to be more or less centered around TDC OVERLAP, in other words when #1 is coming up on the compression stroke (only happens every other revolution), then #6 is coming up on overlap. From the chart, using my cam as an example, the intake valve opens at 13 degrees before top dead center and the exhaust valve closes at 21 degrees after top dead center. It also says this particular cam has 37 degrees of overlap. That adds up. So far so good. So, as we rotate the crankshaft clockwise through top dead center on the compression stroke on #1 (you'll want to have the plugs out and do this slowly with a wrench), the intake valve on #6 should open at 13 degrees before top dead center, and the #6 exhaust valve should close 21 degrees after. At least that is what SHOULD happen. You may even have marks on the balancer out to 10 or 15 degrees from the factory on an FE so you can see about where 13 degrees is. That won't happen though. Every old American V8 has a shot timing chain if anyone has been driving it around. It doesn't really matter if it was new a short time ago. It is shocking how fast they wear out, and if it is a stock timing chain, or a "double roller" chain, one that is not also a "true roller" chain, it will have enough slop in it that the Ford shop manual will say it is worn out. This is normal and does not matter. People have no idea because they never take new rebuilt engines back apart unless there is a big problem. By the time the engine comes back apart for another overhaul it has 100,000 miles on it or more and nobody is surprised the timing chain is shot. They have no idea it has been that way since 10,000 miles. You need to know it because when you test like this you will probably SEE it. It will be significant, but will not be close to a whole tooth. Lifters that bled down from sitting affect these valve opening and closing events too. Also manufacturing tolerances of the cam and so on. You can still tell if there is a problem though. I looked up a stock-type timing chain on Summit Racing and it has 18 teeth on the crank sprocket. If you have double roller or true roller or something else you might need to find a picture of it and see how many crank teeth you have. Anyhow for this stocker we have 18 teeth. 360/18=20 degrees per tooth. So, if the timing was a tooth late and there was no slop, the #6 intake valve would be opening -13+20=7 degrees after(!) top dead center, and the #6 exhaust valve would be closing 21+20=41 degrees after! In the real world it is going to be even worse than that due to timing chain slop, lifters bled down, and so on. If the timing was a tooth early, the intake would open at 13+20=33 degrees before top dead center, and the exhaust valve would close 21-20=1 degree after top dead center. In reality these would be a bit later due to the chain slop and lifter bleed, but intake opening wont be close to the 13 degrees (minus the chain slop) from the chart. In either case, the overlap period is no longer even close to centered around TDC. That should stick out like a sore thumb if it is the problem.

What year did AACA move to Hershey?

Cranking speeds were just slower, and based on what the engineer thought would start a low RPM engine reliably. Of course if the speed is chugging down to almost nothing every time a piston comes around, that is not normal and has a detrimental effect on starting, especially by dragging the voltage low right when the spark is about to occur if the car has battery ignition. If it has an impulse magneto, even that might not matter so much. If it is chugging down and having trouble starting, look at the things @Larry Schramm and @Oldtech suggested. If it still won't crank well, the starter/generator may need work. Remember in the 20s a new engine was a tight draggy engine until it broke in. That starter/generator had to work harder to start the engine (and sell the new car) than it ever will on a car that has been recently running and driven. Listen to @Terry Wiegand's 1916 start up, and this is a fresh rebuilt engine!

Wait what? That is not the mod I have seen before. Buick's bulletin involved removing a spring loaded valve, and replacing it with a core plug with a hole drilled in the middle. Do you have no bypass at all now? I see you have a heater. Is that acting as the bypass?

Regarding the noise, could your fuel pump be missing a spring? The spring under the diaphragm is what sets the fuel pressure. When the float valve in the carb is closed, the diaphragm is all the way up (or down). It is full of fuel that has nowhere to go until the float valve opens again. A lot of mechanical pumps have a second spring on the arm to keep the arm following the cam lobe when the pump is not pumping.

You could probably do it if you want. The GMC engine is a lot longer though. In the later AD trucks, the radiator had to mount ahead of the core support in the GMC versions just to get the GMC engine in. I like 216s and I am not knocking them but.... they are an old quirky design. The GMC engine, despite it's 216-like looks, is a completely different design with full pressure oiling and a sensible combustion chamber shape. It is so much more advanced it isn't even really comparable. I would try to get the GMC engine running.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Never hook the battery charger up backwards. There is no situation ever where that is a good idea. If you want to run it dead, put it in the car and leave the headlights on. I don't know how it happened. Maybe from hooking the charger up backwards? Don't do that.

Generators don't keep up at idle. That's normal. There are only 2 poles in most of them (unless you are driving a bus), and you can only spin them so fast before they fly apart from centrifugal force, so that limits what you can do with just pulleys. It's generally fine. Check the charging voltage against the voltages (and temperature) in the shop manual and see if it is set normal. For most people what is in the book (probably 7.4 or 7.5 volts at room temperature) will be fine. If the battery is perpetually low after a week of driving, try turning up the voltage about a tenth of a volt.

To get charged backwards the battery would have to be completely dead. Charged backwards is an unusual problem to have. A regular battery charger could do it IF THE BATTERY WERE COMPLETELY FLAT DEAD. I don't think the smart charger would, it would probably refuse to try. The car might(?) be able do it if it got polarized backwards. Maybe if it got jump started and then the system got polarized backwards while the battery was completely dead. This is the sort of thing that shows up in textbooks, but is hardly ever seen. Always make sure the battery is hooked to the car the right way (see my post above). Always hook up a battery charger the right way (see my post above). Always polarize the generator anytime after removing or reinstalling a generator, or a voltage regulator, or a battery. Technically in SOME of those situations you might not HAVE to polarize, but it's easy, and it's what all the old books say to do. I'll bet most of us in here have never seen a backwards charged battery. Nuff said. Probably your battery is shot. There is a certain voltage per cell if the battery it taken below, there is permanent damage. I don't remember what voltage that is, but charged backwards is WAY beyond it. A battery should never be left with a low charge in it either. That leads to a condition called "sulphation" where the battery is weak, but if charged on a charger might work pretty well but only for a few days. The car can no longer charge it as much as it needs. If your battery is ever low, put a charger on it right away. Either that or drive the car, and put it on a charger when you get home. Leaving it partly discharged is bad, and if it ever goes completely flat dead, your chances of saving the battery good enough to still use get worse the longer you wait. This is a timeline of minutes and hours, not days. Two days dead and it probably will never start a difficult car reliably again. Three days and it probably wont be good enough to use at all. This is why you need a real (old-fashioned "dumb" type) battery charger. If the battery is completely dead, a smart charger is going to refuse to work, and leave you fumbling around for another 6 volt battery and some jumper cables, or lantern batteries, or D cells and duct tape, or whatever, just to get the charger to start charging. Meanwhile, minutes and hours count if you want to save the battery. As for the charger you pictured, I think it is a maintainer. Find a manual for yours and look it up. I have three maintainers and two of mine look exactly like yours except for the color and brand (red, Vector). I'll bet they came from the same factory. I leave them hooked up all winter. If your charger is what I think it is, you can leave it hooked up all the time if you need to let the car sit around for a few days (or months over winter). It will keep your battery fully charged automatically when you are not using the car. Maintainers are super useful, but should not be your only battery charger. I wouldn't go out and buy a battery just yet. Sort this problem out. Maybe you get extremely lucky and the old battery still works good enough to use. If not then you need a battery but at least you will already have the car charging the right way.

Yes. Unfortunately it was just a gag voiced by Mel Blanc and was not ever real. Too bad, because that makes it impossible to nail down the model and year. There are at least 2 scenes on film where Jack was filmed with a Maxwell, and if I remember correctly both of those cars were late 1920s "Good Maxwell" model 25 touring cars. I have read that someone gave Jack a brass-era Maxwell, but that was later in his career. Since it is impossible to determine, I vote for the "Good Maxwell".