Bloo

SIze is measured at the base of the bead, so literally inside the rim or the ID of the tire bead. 25-3/4 does indeed sound odd. I can't explain that. Is this car located in the USA? Straight sided tires have steel in the bead and do not stretch. I expect cramming a tire on that is a whole inch too small would be impossible. I've not been to the new AACA library, but I would be shocked if they don't have that information. It's probably even in a Dyke's manual. In the early days of brass era car restoration, tires for some cars were just plain not available, so it is possible someone has changed the wheels to fit available tires long ago. I wouldn't really expect that though. I also have an early Studebaker, a 1913 Model 25. It is a smaller car, and takes 30x3-1/2 (like most T Fords) so tires are easy for that one. Best of luck with your project.

I have been advertising for some used 34x4 rollers here for several years, and... crickets. It's an odd size. The good news in your case is that if the car has 33x4 now, 34x4 will not fit your rims. A 34x4 tire goes on a 26 inch rim. 34-4-4=26. A 33x4 goes on a 25 inch rim. 33-4-4=25. 25 inch rims are much more common than 26 and easier to get tires for. One size larger tire on a 25 inch rim would be 34x4-1/2. When you figure out exactly what you need, you might try posting it in the general AACA parts wanted section. https://forums.aaca.org/forum/149-parts-wanted/ . AACA is a bigger crowd than CCCA, and AACA includes a lot more cars that might take your size. Welcome to the forum!

European and Japanese cars had the dimmer on the column for decades. We were the odd ones in the USA with that floor button.

Still cork in 59? Wow. I would expect brass. Unless it is a real recent replacement cork, replace it. Back in the day corks were sealed with shellac. Ethanol dissolves it. Re-sealing old corks that have been in gas doesn't work. Bob's has sealed corks with modern sealer. This topic has been debated on this forum and elsewhere. I decided to test it on my 36 Pontiac. I sunk the original corks in gas for a week, and they did not gain weight so I put them back in. One poster on the VCCA forums told me it would work for a few months and then the corks would sink. That is exactly what happened, and they did not feel like corks at all when I took them out. They were obviously heavy. I have new Bob's corks now, and so far they are working fine. For what it's worth, bad corks cause the opposite problem. You'll never get to the full mark with a heavy cork.

It's 0-30, and if the sender really does go to zero, it isn't the sender, unless the float is hitting on something and the sender wont go to zero when it is in the tank. 0 ohms is what gets you the "E". Short the sender wire at the back to ground, or better yet your ground wire, at the tank end of the car. The gauge should go to "E". If it doesn't, there is a problem with your ground, or the wiring, or the gauge itself. Make sure the sender goes to zero in the empty tank. Flip it upside down and make sure you get 30 or a little more. Sometimes aftermarket senders in Chevrolets are not capable of 0 ohms at all, and will never work. I have heard of a lot less trouble with replacement senders in Buick circles, but always verify, because some of that really bad Chevrolet stuff probably almost interchanges. True zero is impossible, but it better be under an ohm. Zero your meter so you aren't including the resistance of the test leads in your measurement. Sometimes aftermarket senders need the arm shortened or lengthened or bent to work as all gas tanks are not the same depth. It should be able to go from 0 ohms right side up to 30+ohms upside down, yet not hit on the top or bottom (it comes close). If you want to get it right the first time you should check it with enough gas to bring the sender up from zero ohms, then suck gas out with a HAND PUMP while wiggling the tank until it hits zero again. Then, move the hose to another gas can and HAND PUMP more gas until you run out. Whatever is in the second gas can is the size of your reserve. This is the only way you can know you have a reserve and how big it is, because usually the fuel pickup is on the sender. It should be as low as possible, with the sock almost touching or touching. If it isn't low enough, you will starve for gas before you get to "E".

But.. They're like that penny in "Somewhere in Time".

I believe that was @PhilAndrews in Louisiana. I hope he is doing well. The Pontiac appeared to only have minor damage, although the Plymouth he was working on probably did not fare well.

To each their own. I am not going to have some synthesized voice squawking in my ear all the time on a road trip. I'll stick with paper maps. Yes, I make a wrong turn now and then. As others mentioned, most if not all US states publish a free paper map. In my opinion they are usually far better than a Delorme or RandMcNallly(ugh) atlas, although I admit the atlas might be handy crossing from one state to another if the route weren't cast in stone ahead of time. As mentioned earlier in the thread, state maps are usually found at welcome stations and rest areas along the Interstate, or you can order them. If you aren't traveling on interstates, you probably wont have official state maps unless you got them ahead of time. These are official state maps. AAA also has good maps.

Nobody actually understands them. It's just learn by doing.

Yes. The last ones were the 53 stickshift cars. I had one. It had squirt nozzles pointed at the rod dippers and poured babbitt bearings. Cast iron pistons, too. I believe the mains had direct oiling, but not at high pressure. Great car but not modern my any stretch. @LI_BENTLEY I stand corrected.

Put a little bit of butyl tape (gooey raw rubber for windshields) on the tip of the screw driver. Stretch it back on the tip of the screwdriver so the driver has a little more surface area on the butyl tape. Stick the screw on and push it into the tape. Start screw in hole. Pull driver off. Butyl should come off with the driver, on the rare occasion it doesn't you can reach in there and rub it off or grab it with a stick or something. I like to tighten the screw without the butyl in the interest of not leaving any butyl behind, but you can leave it on to the bitter end if you like. This works for phillips head too. It's as easy as anything else that has been proposed here.

Buick and Chevrolet started out in the early days of the car with overhead valve engines, never made anything else, and had been advertising for years that it was an engineering advantage. They didn't breathe better or have higher compression, even though both were technically possible. The fuel octane and the RPM limits imposed by the engine lower ends of the time made that irrelevant. Overhead valves also made more noise when "smooth and quiet" and "you can hardly hear it running" were huge selling points. By the mid 30s it was pretty clear that there was no performance benefit to overhead valves in an ordinary car. At that time almost all new engine designs were flatheads. Buick and Chevrolet had the last laugh though when high octane gas came along and the horsepower race took off. Almost overnight the tables turned when overhead valves proved to be the way forward.

To me, the cowl looks the wrong shape for a 1915-ish Hupmobile. 1915 model K and 1915-1916-1917 model N all have the same cowl. I cannot think of any other model Hupmobile, earlier or later, that ticks all the boxes so it must be something else. It is indeed a similar looking car.

I saw that cluster and figured that is who it had to be. He was in Lynnwood or somewhere close when I last talked to him, but that was decades ago. Highly recommended.

In my opinion, get the manifold professionally fixed, and by someone who knows what they are doing. Chrysler eights are notoriously hard to find spares for. You probably don't get another manifold if the repair does not work out. Drilling the end of cracks is not something that usually works. It only stops the crack if you get the hole at the true end of the crack. Usually the crack goes further than you can see, and might split at the end. There is a good chance the crack will continue to propagate despite the drilling. JB Weld is completely inappropriate for this, or for anything else that gets as hot as an exhaust manifold.

I don't know what I would do on a snowblower, I probably wouldn't be too concerned. Years ago we were always taught never to mix grease bases, as @JFranklin says, due to chemical reactions that can occur. You should still heed that warning today. I think the reason we don't hear that anymore is that literally everything in the stores is Lithium (and NGLI-2 for weight) no matter what color it is, what gimmick it is pushing, or what purpose it is sold for. Just try to buy anything else without ordering it online or ordering a box of it from a bulk plant, I dare you. I understand there is a new class of grease made of polyester or something. I don't know if that mixes with lithium or not, I haven't seen any of that yet. On my own stuff, If I have cleaned it all out and rebuilt it I use modern synthetic grease only, and stick to the same one. I like Redline CV-2. It is still Lithium, by the way and NGLI-2. For general lube on older cars I bought up the local bulk plant's last boxes of Texaco Marfak #2. This is discontinued, but is what every greasable car got in Texaco gas station lube jobs back in the day, so it should be fine for that purpose. If that AMOCO grease looks and feels ok, I see no reason not to use it up. I would.

Exhaust manifolds are always a problem to repair. Stitching is preferable to welding but sometimes not possible. The following thread contains a successful exhaust manifold weld repair by forum member @Paul S , and the last I heard it was still holding up. Read the whole thread for ideas. Good luck.

Job 1: Get rid of any looseness. Lift up in the door and see what moves. There is no one single cure for what is shown in your original pics. @pont35cpe 's car needed body sill shims. My car has a crack in the hinge pillar (wood) inside the door, and the hinge can move slightly. It all looks the same if you are only looking at the beltline. If the hinge pins are shot you need to fix them. They are the same as Pontiac and Chevrolet. I believe Bob's has them, CARS might too, as well as TheFillingStation (Chevrolet) and California Pontiac Restoration. I believe pins for much newer GM cars also work, they just need to be cut short. Now that you have eliminated any hinge slop, you need to determine why the door is not fitting in the opening. Stand back and look at it from several angles. I have drawn some square cars here to make it easier to visualize. Exhibit A: Body opening out of square, It has become a parrallelogram, but door is still the correct shape. Shims under the sill will be needed to fix this. Exhibit B: Body opening is square, door is tilted. Hinge shims will be needed to fix this. Example, a flat shim under the lower hinge would bring the door up closer to square, but if the real problem was at the top, then the entire door would be too far back, and probably rub on the door post. Tapered shims can move the hinge pin location forward or backward on the car as needed to square the door in the opening without moving it too far back. As far as I know you are on your own for making the shims. The angles of the tapered shims in the drawing are extremely exaggerated. I would stand back and take a good critical look at the car to see if you can tell what the actual alignment problem is, preferably with the latch and wedge removed. Then go look at the door and body alignment sections in those Fisher manuals again. Then go look at the car some more. It will probably start to gel in your head what the real problem is and what you need to do. Latches need to be out of the way for door alignment. Deal with them later.

I can post pics of it, well.. 36 Pontiac, but it's the same, but not for 2 or 3 days so hopefully somebody else can come up with something sooner. That's not the latch in your pic, it is a wedge thing for alignment or support when the door is closed. If it is the right part, it goes inside the door or pillar somewhere. Your car does have a part that functions like that so maybe. There is a matching wedge that goes in the slot when the door is closed. Your latch should be a casting with a couple of sawtooth shaped notches. What's a bear claw? Latches are completely unrelated to door alignment. You take them off to align doors and put them back on afterward. Same with wedge devices if they are removable.

In theory larger, because alcohol needs to be mixed richer than gasoline to get a balanced mixture, so with a little alcohol in there.... In practice there are real life complications. The specific gravity of the fuel is slightly different. Enough to change the float level enough to alter the mixture? I don't know. The specific gravity of Ethanol is higher than gasoline, so that should shut the float of slightly sooner, leaning things out even more (but remember it's only 10% of the fuel). My best guess it it doesn't matter. Some cars were jetted too rich in the first place, especially before the late 30s. My Pontiac has a "taxicab" metering rod in it, 2 steps leaner than standard, and I think I could get away with a third step leaner if Carter made the parts (they didn't). That is the opposite of what you would probably expect. I'm at 800 feet above sea level, and the mixture richens automatically as you go up in altitude due to less dense air. I wouldn't be in a hurry to change anything unless the mixture was proven to be wrong on a gas analyzer.

That's also a bit of a strawman, but not entirely wrong. Carburetor heat is necessary, and there has never been any even remotely modern carbureted or throttle body injected car sold in the USA without intake manifold heat that I am aware of. Maybe some NASCAR homologation specials. My 91 Geo Metro has a hotspot under the TBI. I always hear heat risers are for "cold climates". No. The reason the hotspot exists is because without a hotspot fuel falls out of the air at the first bend, runs to the end of the manifold, and washes down the rings, causes excessive wear, and winds up in the crankcase oil. The mixture also has to be richer too because of the horrible fuel distribution. Cars made in the 20s when gas was full of kerosene-like fractions because the refineries couldn't keep up may need far less heat riser heat than they originally did, so that is sort of an exception. It doesn't negate the need for heat altogether. The car I just drove through several states (1936 Pontiac) has a working heat riser and runs much better than when it didn't. I use 10% Ethanol fuel. I am constantly hearing that the fuel is different and more volatile, but unless we are talking about cars made before the mid 30s, I think it's usually just an excuse to not look for a problem in a broken car. I know in the 80s fuel was blended to a specific reid vapor pressure for the climate it would be sold in, and the target changed from summer to winter. In those days Ethanol, Methanol, and MTBE were used as octane boosters, in a total blend of 10% or less. Methanol and MTBE boil at lower temperatures than Ethanol. Until I see some actual evidence that the oil companies are blending fuel to a higher reid vapor pressure today than they were in the 80s when carburetors and mechanical fuel pumps still ruled, I am not going to believe it. Electric setups can solve problems... and create new ones, like the one @trimacar brought up. What happens when the fuel line is ruptured in an accident? Any rubber hose in the system should be replaced with SAE 30r9 fuel injection hose because it is ethanol compatible, not prone to pinholes, and most of all because it is difficult to tear. I'll repeat that it will shock you how much fuel an electric pump moves when fully uncorked. I have taken several approaches to mitigating this in the past. One thing I did was copy a Toyota idea where the pump would run when the starter runs, filling the bowl with fuel. Then, the pump would not come on again until the oil pressure came up. If the engine is killed for any reason, the fuel pump goes off. Another approach I have used is an inertia switch, as used by Ford, Alfa Romeo, and Jaguar. They shut the fuel pump off on impact. The best switches are the ones that Ford used from the mid to late 80s. The Jaguar and Alfa Romeo switches are less reliable. Then there is fuel pressure. A lot of old carbs that had mechanical pumps run 2-3psi, and very few electric pumps support that. Most are 4-5psi or 7-8psi. That calls for a regulator, and good ones are expensive. Carbs that ran gravity originally will need a different needle and seat, as @carbking has posted about many times. The idea of having a switch and only using the pump when needed makes a whole lot of problems go out the window. The only caveat is that the electric pump has to not restrict flow when off, so thumpers are fine, but if you want a real vane pump that wont ever fail, you probably need some check valves too.

The trouble with copper is that it work hardens and if you attach it to a vibrating engine eventually it will crack and fail. I realize some automakers used it early on. There were less options available then. Modern CuNiFer brake line looks more or less like copper, bends like copper, wont work harden, and can handle enough pressure for brakes. It would be a good substitute for copper. Stainless Steel is a pain to bend, but it will always look good. Me? If the old line was steel I would just use steel Bundyflex. It bends reasonably easy, but nowhere near as easy as CuNifer. You'll need a bender of some sort to prevent collapse of the tubing no matter what tubing you use.

Yes. In most mechanical fuel pump designs, some of the fuel runs out on the ground when the diaphragm fails, the rest goes to the crankcase. On some designs, all the fuel goes in the crankcase. An unrestricted electric fuel pump will move a lot of fuel. When one gets tired of the unreliability or noise of thumper pumps and moves up to a quality roller or vane pump, those can move even more fuel. It would truly shock you how fast an electric pump with no restriction could empty the gas tank into your crankcase. This is why most of the recommendations you see on this forum include a switch, and suggest using the pump only for priming and recovering from vapor lock. It is the best and safest way to tun an electric pump in conjunction with a mechanical pump. Me? I just run original. No fuel system for a carbureted car is more reliable than a mechanical fuel pump, a metal fuel line, and a sock filter in the tank it *IF* you can make it work for you. There is a reason that setup was used for several decades. I pay extremely close attention to not having any tiny air leaks in the fuel line or fittings, and that the check valves in my fuel pump actually hold vacuum. If your fuel pump needs to be wet to prime itself, you will probably have a bad time with vapor lock. I have toured in 106F weather twice, and I have driven 2/3 of the way across the US without any fuel supply trouble. It does run a little flaky in 100F+, but it never stops running. I realize all cars are different and this may not work for everyone.

So no switch in the circuit now? Good. A switch made of plastic that is capable of melting like that is not good enough, period. Also, the fact that it overheated indicates resistance that would have severely interfered with cranking even if the switch had been made of something that wouldn't melt. Are any other spots in the circuit getting really hot? One more test you could make is to measure the battery voltage while cranking, probes right on the posts, and then measure the voltage at the starter, also while cranking, probes on the case and the center of the positive lug of the starter. See how much difference there is between the two readings. Unfortunately it still wont tell you everything you need to know, but it's a start. It will be interesting to see how the load test on the battery comes out.

Hupp were the ones who acquired the Cord dies, and initially they were advertising a "Junior Six" which is almost a Skylark. The front end is a little different. Definitely not Cord but not quite Skylark. The Graham deal came a bit later. Graham wanted a new look, had production capacity, and Hupp was not able to get production rolling on their new Cord-based car.