Bloo

In my opinion, if you want it, get it shipped and do the "get it running" part yourself. For one thing, I hear nailhead Buicks are prone to stuck valves after a long sit. Someone needs to check it out carefully. Then. proceed as @Rusty_OToole suggests. Some of the videos I have seen would give you pause (and that is putting it nicely). Also, it is usually all about the video, not the car. The culture has changed, and people who were raised into the hobby and know exactly what to do are uncommon now. Not non-existent, but uncommon.

Shops do let them just sit around. One of these days I will rant about battery warranties. They are not what you think. They are not necessarily bad, and can be good, but people misunderstand them terribly. You can just let it sit, but it is not ideal. All lead-acid batteries self discharge, and if they get run down a little and sit that way it is bad for them. Fortunately for you, Optimas of the spiral type discharge slower than other batteries. A tender would be a better idea. Get a really small one. There is no point in paying more money for more amps in a tender. You should be starting with a fully charged battery, and if not, charge it first with a battery charger. Better yet, get the tender and put it on a timer. Let it come on for a half hour a day. Thanks to edinmass for that idea.

Now what you need to do is figure out whether you are going to pull the heads or not. It is possible to do it without, but it is a lot of work. When I had this happen on a Ford 390 (an extremely similar engine design), I did it without removing the heads. I do NOT consider this less work than removing the heads, but if you are interested, here is how it is done. With the rockers shafts off, and the pushrods and spark plugs out and the battery disconnected, hit all the valve spring retainers at the top of the valve spring at somewhat of an angle (on the corner). Do this with a brass or plastic hammer. This dislodges the valve keepers, stuck from decades of use, so you can get them out later. Also look for pieces of perished rubber valve seal laying around trying to plug the drains in the head. You will find some. Get it all out of there. Don't let any go down the drains. With the piston down in #1, feed a bunch of CLEAN stiff twine, string, tactical cord, etc into the spark plug hole with a long enough tail left over you cannot possibly lose it. Rotate the engine by hand bringing the piston up so it stops hard against the pile of twine. Now you may have to make a tool to compress the valve spring from the top. Commercial ones are made (Lisle or KD maybe?), and could be really useful, but probably wont work on quite every valve. I don't remember what I used. It was probably some combination of a piece of Unistrut and an oxygen sensor socket, or something like that. Maybe it was just a stud or bolt and drilled unistrut. You need to be able to compress the valve spring by pushing on the outer ring, and have a way to get in to grab the keepers (2 pieces) from around the stem with a magnet, so whatever you push with needs to have a big hole in the side somewhere. When you let the spring up (slowly) you are in. If there are shims under the springs, do NOT loose track of which valve each one goes on. Remove the remaining chunks of valve seal. The twine makes sure a valve cannot drop in. It also gives you something to push against on ones that aren't stuck that bad. You can now use some combination of solvents (brake kleen, berryman, gumout, etc.) and penetrating oil (liquid wrench, kroil, mopar rust penetrant, etc.) and a lot of tapping with a BRASS hammer to get the stems loose in the guides. Once they are loose, rinse the guides really well with brake or carb cleaner to make sure all the varnish is gone so they cannot restick. You will probably find the guides are loose from wear once you get them washed out. Keep in mind all those chemicals are winding up in the oil, so drain and change it before startup. Put on new valve (umbrella) seals. Viton is better if you can get it (maybe blue ones on ebay?). I believe big block Chevrolet aftermarket umbrella seals will fit if nobody lists your engine. Double check that the valve stem diameter is the same as big block Chevrolet. If the seals are a little taller that is probably fine. Use your homemade tool to re-install the valve springs and keepers. Turn the engine backwards a little bit and pull your string out. Then move on to the next cylinder in the firing order. Repeat the process on all other cylinders in the firing order until done. Or, you could pull the manifold and heads (also a big job). Pushrods are the next possible issue. I suspect this uses selective pushrods to set the lifter preload. That means you will need to check them. None of mine were as tight as Ford suggests in the manual, and according to the guy who reground my cam (who I trust) you probably want the preload on the lifters to be about .060" (.030"-.090") at worst. It appears that my 390 (which had never been apart before that) was setup looser originally than the Ford shop manual procedure by quite a bit. Ford apparently does not believe their own procedure. Anyway, you use different lengths of pushrod to set this, so if you have any straight ones, keep track of what holes they came out of! Make a piece of cardboard with 16 holes, draw a fan on it for "front" and stick the pushrods in the holes when you take them out. If, due to valvetrain wear, you need a length of pushrod that was never made (5 out of 16 in my case), there is a company in Oregon called "Smith Brothers" who will make custom lengths. EDIT: @trimacar posted while I was typing this. I do think it is possible to unstick on the car, but I agree you wont believe how bad they are stuck. I think modern gas (for the last 20 or 25 years) contributes heavily to situations like this. I revived all sorts of long dormant stuff years ago, and even if carbs and fuel pumps gummed up I never encountered anything like this. When it finally happened to me about 5 years ago(?), the car was not long dormant. The gas was maybe 2 or three years old.

I don't believe it is a good idea to use a functional original neck. That Alfa was pressurized originally as was everything else from the era. The pressure raises the boil temperature significantly. A pressure cap and matching modern neck is going to be necessary to make that happen. If there is also an original neck, that will be a second neck. Removing it while under pressure is likely to get you burned. If you were going to do it, a lever release on the modern cap would allow you to release pressure first. Sooner or later though, somebody would just take the cap off on a hot day and probably get burned. Any good tig welder could add a neck to a welded type aluminum radiator. Any old fashioned radiator shop (they are getting really hard to find) could solder a neck on a brass radiator. I think it is a terrible idea, and I doubt anyone would do it because of the liability. A better approach would be to weld or solder an non-functional original type neck to the radiator to hold the original cap.

You would need to post what kind make and model of carb it is in order for anyone to make a good guess. If it is a Carter carb, that should be on a brass tag hanging on one of the bowl screws. Beyond that it is hard to say. Generally speaking, casting numbers don't mean much. They might be enough to determine what series of carb it is, but that on it's own is probably not enough to get a kit. Any meaningful numbers that aren't on a tag will probably be stamped, not cast. Exchange carbs have a long history of poor quality, sometimes with damage that cannot easily be fixed. Anyhow probably no one is stocking an exchange carb for a truck that old. You would be best advised to rebuild (or have rebuilt) the one you have, especially if it might be the one that came with the truck originally. Forum member @carbking makes kits for almost everything. Can you post any pictures of the carb?

Direct replacements for old cars like this generally don't exist. If there are exceptions they are probably Fords. The radiators you are seeing with the cap under moved the hood are probably for street rod use with a pressurized cooling system. A pressurized cooling system requires a modern radiator neck so that the pressure cap can control what is going out (or coming in) the overflow tube. The original cap is just a cap and the original overflow is up high and always open. Most of us wind up getting a recore if we can't salvage the original core. Good luck on your search.

These Chrysler speedometers don't last forever, but try inspecting and lubricating the cable first. Replace it if damaged. If that doesn't help, get the head repaired right away. If the head is at fault, it might suddenly start banging 120MPH and break the needle off.

Out here in Washington State, people have been running radial tires on literally everything since about 1980. The subject never came up back then. I busted a lot of tires when I was still a kid, and if there was a recurring problem with cracked wheels I think I would have seen some. This has come up before, and to be clear I refer ONLY to cars with drop center rims, of the sort that were used from the 30s through the 90s on a lot of steel wheeled cars in the US and elsewhere, and NOT wire wheels with the spokes through the rim, locking ring wheels, split rims, clinchers, or any of the other oddities that arise in the prewar era. Be sure to put enough air in if you go radial! None of this twenty-something pounds from the owners manual (or door sticker on later cars). Those ratings are to maximize ride quality on BIAS PLY tires. 35 pounds or more on a radial, always, within the ratings of the tire of course. Anyone who can't see themselves doing that should stick with bias ply tires. Don't drive around on rusted out wheels no matter what kind of tires you pick. Also heed @Marty Roth's warning about those little tags inside tires if you are going to run with tubes. They will cause tube failure. Peel or grind them off.

Almost no one used first back then except for getting the car rolling. Some guys even started from a dead stop in second if they were on the level or pointed downhill. That is one major reason you still see unsynchronized first gears 30+ years after Synchromesh became common. The other major reason is cost. You need a whole additional synchro hub and sleeve, which could in theory serve two gears. You only get one more synchronized gear though, unless you put in a fourth speed.

Yes, AC's K series (and similar numbers) were made through 1936, and AC-45, AC-46 etc. began in 1937. Doesn't the shop manual specify a spark plug? It would be pretty weird for them not to.

Congratulations!

I've been calling all of mine hoopties, but if that's the definition I might miss on a point or two. Re-examining my life choices now, like the day I sold that fender-flapping Studebaker Wagonaire that people would make room for on the freeway.

Nice!

Imagine someone painting a car without checking that the panels fit.

While you have it out where you can see it, also check that it does not leak vacuum when switched off.

The 3 dots look like spot welds. Is there any sign they could have broken free from one of the other pieces?

Make and model? Is a Humpback a Dodge panel truck? I think so but am a little out of the loop here. I don't have the answer as I have not seen straps like your picture. Also the picture is a little confusing. I see steering linkage. Which end of the vehicle is this gas tank on?

With a non synchronized first gear, when you disengage the clutch to put it in gear at a stoplight, you have to wait for the gears to spin down or it will grind. This can seem like an eternity, and in modern traffic sometimes it just doesn't happen quick enough. There is a faster way. Right after you disengage the clutch to put the car in gear, "touch" a synchronized gear (second or third) before putting the car in first. The synchronizer on second or third will stop all the gears and you can go right to first without waiting. This only works if the car is not moving at all.

I've seen this on other cars. My guess is it was based on weight, with the car loaded to it's absolute maximum capacity, and of course bias ply tires. It was probably as soft and squishy as they thought they could get away with. The roads were awful. 23 pounds would feel flat to me even on bias ply tires. It would be begging for trouble on radials.

That depends on whether your rims leak. It is true that Diamondback radials can be run tubeless if the rims will support it. The tires will run cooler and you are less likely to have a sudden flat. I am running tubeless radials (another brand) on a 36 Pontiac for a little over a year now, no problems. I did check for leaks before putting them on the car, and then watched them like a hawk for the first month or two, to be certain the rivets would not leak. They don't. I have one Diamondback Auburn, but it is my spare, so I can't really say much about it other than it looks and feels like a high quality product.

I am pretty sure that is the Ford-O-Matic, the later 2 speed type that had an aluminum case. I can't think of anything else it could be.

What kind of a transmission is this? On the Borg Warner cast iron transmissions Rambler typically used, I don't recall any adjustment for case distance. Doesn't this just screw in and bottom out? The modulator usually has an adjustment screw that can be reached through the hose connection that adjusts the spring tension. The most obvious effect of adjustment is how early or late it shifts, and there are probably default settings in the shop manual. Shimming the modulator might have a similar effect? Or not? Somehow I don't think it's the right way. You need to suck on one of those to tell if it is any good, not blow. A mityvac or similar pump works well. It should hold vacuum. If you could blow through one, it is definitely bad, but don't use compressed air, that could easily blow the diaphragm out. It is usually obvious when they are bad because the vacuum line is full of transmission fluid. It wouldn't hurt to flush the line out if you see fluid in it when you replace a modulator.

Lots of unprintable things. But seriously if we were talking about 1954, it was a Borg Warner type, possibly built by Ford that had 3 speeds but only used two in normal operation. They called it Ford-O-Matic. A few years later they enabled 3 speed shifting optionally and called it Cruise-O-Matic. Sometime after Cruise-O-Matic was around, they had an unrelated aluminum case 2-speed, probably a Ford design(?) that they called Ford-O-Matic. A little while after that, they were calling the C4 and the C6 Cruise-O-Matic, but only the versions that had the optional 2-speed or 3-speed shifting.

If it's Champion J-11, then we have come full circle and will be talking about whether the bases are plated. In 1933 I'm guessing no, but I am no authority.

OK, wild speculation time because it is hard to troubleshoot through a screen. Feel free to be skeptical if you like, but keep in mind that fixing stuff like this was how I made my living for quite a while. I have compression tested and leakdown tested an awful lot of cars. You are correct that open valves should hiss through the intake or exhaust. RIngs ALWAYS hiss, even in new engines. Worn out ones hiss more. The amount that some of those came up wet DOES suggest shot rings, but you should not default to believing that. Why? Two reasons. First, since the car has been sitting long enough to have bad gas, it might also have stuck rings. That might sort itself out if you were driving the car. Secondly, if you have been trying to start it, the rings are both cold and washed down with fuel. They are at their absolute worst right now. It is easy to miss the forest when you are looking at the trees. A couple of things that stand out to me, I have NEVER seen a compression test come out like yours from just rings. I doubt that 10 and 25 are even physically possible without valve involvement, maybe if there were big holes in the pistons that could do it. A lot of the others readings are highly questionable. That doesn't mean they tested it wrong. It means the rings are not the whole story. The other thing is bad rings wont make the car not run. They might make you buy a lot of motor oil, but at least you can drive to the store to get it, and you do have a big trunk. You were just driving it. Rings are not the answer. I think @trimacar nailed it in post #4, and it has a bunch of stuck valves and bent pushrods. I also think the timing chain is jumped. If it were mine, I would pull the valve covers and look. I would then proceed to verify the valve timing. If it is jumped, you know you have to also do a timing chain. I could be all wet of course, but it is time to pull the valve covers and look.