Bloo

You can check synchros on the bench when you have them out. Clean the synchro and the taper on the gear up real good. Put a little oil on the synchro. Push the two together while twisting. It should drag pretty hard or stop. If not, something is wrong.

First check the fluid level. That is correct, but I would re-test it anyway. Car idling not moving, put in first. Never let clutch up. Pull out of first. Wait about 2-3 seconds. Clutch pedal is still down. Try to shift back into first. Should not grind. Also adjust the clutch linkage to factory spec just to be sure it is OK. These are symptoms of bad synchronizers on both second and third. What kind of oil is in it? I would try some synchromesh oil in it. It probably won't fix it but it might. Were the synchronizers new? 39 Buick transmissions have a bunch of one year only parts. As I understand it, one of the things they changed in 1939 was the taper of the synchro cones. I don't know for sure what year parts would physically fit in there, but it sure seems to me that you could get a taper mismatch by using a wrong year synchro or gear. If it's not the oil or the clutch, I think you are tearing it down.

It won't help you for authenticity on a Chrysler, but My 36 Pontiac looks exactly like that. It has clips on those visible nuts that go forward, holding the harness down just forward of the bolts (toward the grille). My harness is smaller, but I suspect yours was too when it was made. The clips look about like these, especially the top one. No problem keeping it out of the fan.

Cannonball's car, or at least the car he made the record that stood for decades in, was a supercharged Blue Streak Eight. Most Blue Streaks were sixes. I suspect you would be able to identify what series the car is even with the engine gone. Cannonball's car was probably well described at the time, and I think I have seen it in print somewhere. I doubt it was a coupe. That would be an odd choice for a cross country trip. Hey @Graham Man , are you reading this?

This is extremely problematic. You can calculate the revolutions easily based on the tire circumference, gear ratio, and miles. You don't need a time factor for that. A car is not acquiring miles while idling. There are several problems even ignoring the idling. One is that vehicle odometers are notoriously inaccurate. I had one car I ran close to 400k miles. I don't know the exact number without digging in my files, but it was a calculation because the car wore out several odometers in that time. If we assume there could be a +- 10% odometer error, which was common at the time due to a stackup of sloppy factory calibration and variations in tires, and if we assume 380,000 miles on the odometer, the car had something between 342,000 and 418,000 miles on it. Once the mileage gets really high, the odometer becomes meaningless. 60mph would be more useful, because the number comes out the same as revs/mile. Revs/mile could also be calculated from wheel rpm x final drive ratio x overdrive ratio. 3500 / 75 x 60 = 2800 revolutions per mile. 2800 x 250,000 = 700,000.000 revolutions. But the car would have been running in lower gears part of the time. There is no data. How much will this raise the number? If this were a prewar car I would be willing to ignore low gear, as the periods used are so short. Second gear is oh... 3.42 or so. How long are we in second gear? Not much. I'd say 5%. Of course this wont work for the Honda, the numbers will be significantly higher, but what the hell. 700,000,000 x 0.95 = 665,000,000 700,000,000 x 0.05 = 35,000,000 35,000,000 x 3.42 = 119,700,000 665,000,000 + 119,700,000 = 784,700,000 revolutions. And if you want to include idling, you would have to know how long you idled. This varies wildly. How long do you idle? 60% of the time in stop and go city traffic? Maybe 1% on road trips? We have to choose something so maybe 20%. How fast does a Honda idle? I am going to guess 850 RPM. RPM = revs/mile at 60 MPH (1 mile = minute). But you only achieved an average of 38MPH. So using the average speed (it could introduce horrendous errors, but it is all we have) and your 2800RPM figure: 700,000,000 revolutions / 2800 RPM = 250,000 minutes. 250,000 minutes / 60 = 4166.7 hours. But that is if it was driven at 60mph, so at 38mph: 60 / 38 = 1.58 4166.7 x 1.58 = 6583.4 hours 6583.4 x 60 = 395,004 minutes Take 20% of that time: 395,004 x 0.2 = 79000.8 minutes And at 850RPM idle speed: 79000.8 x 850 = 67,150,680 revolutions 784,700,000 + 67,150,680 = 851,850,680 revolutions And that is likely low because I assumed 3 speeds and prewar driving habits that definitely do not apply to a modern Honda. No doubt it spent more time in lower gears, adding to the revolutions but not the miles. Also you could take +- 5% of the miles used to calculate, as that is probably fair. Odometers are better than they used to be. As you can see, this is impossible to quantify. Yes. Me too. And the more wear the engine has, the more it matters. Want an even bigger shock? Calculate how much air an engine uses for one gallon of gas. Gas and air are mixed at a 14.7:1 under most driving conditions. It can be leaner on light loads, and is definitely richer at full throttle, but 14.7 is a good number. But, that is by weight. Gallons are volume. Calculate how many GALLONS of air would be needed to burn one gallon of gas. You probably need to take your altitude into account. Multiply that by how many gallons of gas you burned last year. Then, go clean out your air filter.

Yes, sort of, but I can't quote it offhand. It has to do with peak piston speed. There was a rule of thumb. Also, longer stroke engines reach the limit faster. Treating the engine as a black box, there was another rule of thumb, the RPM of the peak horsepower rating for short bursts, and 80% of the RPM of the peak horsepower rating indefinitely. Although this rule of thumb comes from the days when most engines did not have pressure fed bearings, one might tend to be more careful with an engine that lacks pressure feed. Also this assumes the engine is in good shape. If it is tired or unknown, more caution is advised. I believe at least one manufacturer (Chrysler) ran the snot out of some of their pressure fed engines during factory break in, exceeding this rule of thumb by a lot.

Looks like an American LaFrance from the early postwar period. The top has been chopped. Colville, WA is about 65 miles northwest of Spokane. In the 80s, the City of Spokane had several trucks about like this still in service, some with open cab, some closed like this one. The ones Spokane owned were a beautiful deep dark red, and I have never seen the color on anything else. It was dark enough that it should have been burgundy or maroon or something, but it wasn't. It was pure red. That's about all I know. I suspect others will be along soon with better answers.

While I agree you might not want to leave a wide open hole in a headlight bucket where a connector was, some little drain hole to let water get out is more important than sealing. All those old buckets get water inside. The ones that hold it in end up with a big hole in the bottom.

I had one with a 230 and an automatic. I had intentions of restoring it, but it was really far gone. In the end I believe it was cut up by the next owner to fix a 66 Daytona that looked nice but was full of rust. I'd like another someday. This time I'll hold out for a Commander with 283 and Overdrive in some kind of a good color. I doubt that exists. Studebaker did build a very few. I saw one on Craigs a few years ago that had been 283 and overdrive. It had a 350 and an automatic in it. I have also seen a 66 Commander "Gasser". WTF? Out of all the lark bodies floating around out there why these? They look about like the others but hardly any still exist.

For a radio of this period, I would NOT recommend replacing ceramics and micas (capacitors), especially not micas, in most cases. This isn't written in stone. Of course there can be exceptions. There are a few types of early ceramics that had a high failure rate, but that is a special case and ceramics were not in common use in 1940 if they even existed. Micas were once considered failure-proof, except for some very specific brands and types. Some micas are failing today. There are 2 issues. Micas and ceramics tend to have small values of capacitance and were generally used in tuned circuits. If you replace capacitors in tuned circuits, the whole radio needs to be put on the bench and aligned from scratch. This is done with a signal generator and a VTVM, or a signal generator and an oscilloscope. Otherwise, performance will suffer. There is about a 99.5% chance that this would be unnecessary if the old micas (or ceramics) were left undisturbed. The other issue is temperature compensation. Mica caps in the 40s-50s, and ceramic caps in the 50s were available in a wide range of temperature compensation (tempco) ratings. In the tuned circuits, components would have been chosen to cancel frequency drift as much as possible. If they picked a different tempco than what is available today, then the radio might drift off station worse as it warms, and might perform a little worse in general. Or maybe not, depending on which parts the engineers picked back in 1940. In my opinion, in this radio, replace the paper and electrolytic caps and leave the micas (and ceramics) alone unless one is proven to be bad. Then replace that one. One caveat for 1940: There were some paper capacitors made by a company called "Micamold" that look like mica caps. The company also made mica caps. A good rule of thumb is if the value is a smaller than 0.01uf (1000pf), it is probably really mica. Another caveat: Do not twist micas on their leads to read them. It accelerates failure by unsealing the wires. If you need to know the ratings, get it from the service info. This is general advice. Of course there will be some rare cases where everything should be replaced. Your mileage may vary.

One more thing I thought of. Your cranks and door release handles probably(?) use a c-clip like a modern GM. 1936 did anyhow. There is a difference in these old ones, and the modern slider tool everybody has to remove GM c-clips does not work. Out of the currently available tools, you need the tool that looks like pliers and grabs the clip from the sides, not the tool that slides under the handle.

You have to remove the door panel, that much I am sure of. I don't recall exactly what you do, but I believe the piece that is pressed on the glass will have to come out with the glass. If you have not already seen it, The 1926-1931 Fisher Body manual is a very useful reference to anyone working on a wooden Fisher body, no matter what year. You can find it here: http://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/ 1934 and 1935 are also posted. The 1935 book tends to be useless, but does cover door glass. 1935 Buick bodies are more like 1934 models from most other GM divisions, so 1934 is the obvious place to look. Unfortunately the 1934 book didn't cover the door glass, only the wing window

Just curious, but which setup is original? Given a choice, I would much rather have a mechanical switch. Pressure switches typically respond rather slow. The latest versions switch with less pressure, improving the situation a little. The switches are all about the same, with 3 different terminal styles available. I suspect screws for terminals in 1936, but cant say for sure. They were never a high reliability part. There have also been a rash of them failing early when used with silicone brake fluid, or so I'm told. Still, a mechanical switch can trigger in the pedal freeplay region before the pressure even starts to rise, so they win for early warning.

It's an Ambassador.

That seems to happen to me when the item being advertised has a much higher value than what is actually being sold.

I like that setup too. I'll probably do it at some point, but at the moment I have 2 good 6v conventional batteries laying around. It would be really nice to never open my floorboard again..... One thing to keep in mind is that those batteries are much "bigger" electrically than the original. All that extra reserve is wonderful. If you ever have some bad day (broken charging system, extreme vapor lock, flooded, etc.) and you actually use a bunch of that extra capacity, it will probably get you home. However, be sure to put a charger on when you get home! Don't expect the car to just take care of it like a more modern car might. It all boils down to amps and hours. If it takes 3 times as long to run it noticeably low as it did in 1936, it also takes 3 times as long to bring it back up with the charging system. These old tiny generator systems weren't particularly good at bringing up the original battery unless you drove for hours so it's probably good advice even with a stock battery. EDIT: VW4X4 posted while I was typing. I agree you should tie them down. It looks like it would be easy to do from your picture.

I do it privately if possible.

I was about to ask if this edition still had the picture of the Plymouth with 2 steering wheels.

As built, it should have been 6 volt positive ground.

Be very careful when polishing reflectors. The period method is lampblack and alcohol. Go in a straight motion center to outside. If it has enough tarnish that lampblack wont work try some wadding polish, same thing, straight lines inside to outside (no swirls). Use the least aggressive method you can. If neither of these work, you could try stronger polish, but there's not much silver there and if you go through the silver to the brass, its all over for good light output until you get them resilvered. Making brass shiny wont help much. Good luck with it.

I didn't take driver's ed with that book, but I had an old copy of it, or something with a very similar cover. I believe my copy was from the early 50s.

No idea. Bench bleeding saves time. It is not technically a necessity.

That's true to make the system work exactly as before, but to actually take advantage of the dual cylinder in the event of a failure of one circuit, there usually needs to be more stroke than before. This is because the stroke needed to operate the brakes is exactly the same, but the total available stroke length of the dual master cylinder is often longer. In the event of a failure more motion is needed to reach the the remaining circuit when the first circuit fails. Many of the conversions I have seen can't reach. The pedal hits the floor first. A few factory jobs I have seen from the late 1960s probably can't reach either. Since the brakes work normally when both circuits work, the owner who more often than not has deemed it "safer" never knows the difference. @callbald, If you are set on doing it, get a good book on brakes and start reading. Back in the 80s when I was screwing around with disc brake conversions, I got a copy of "Brake Handbook" by Fred Puhn, and learned a lot from it. I imagine there are plenty of other good books by now. A side-bolting cylinder mounted to the frame was an obsolete design by 1963(?) when dual cylinders appeared and certainly by 1967 when the US government mandated them. Nothing remotely interchangeable will exist, and In my opinion you will be fabricating a mount. Be sure to build it heavy and reinforce it from bending or you will have a spongy pedal. If this is under the floor you may have to cut a big hole to open the reservoir if you use a typical US type cylinder. In that case I suggest looking into aftermarket ones (maybe Wilwood has something?) so that you can mount a remote reservoir. Maybe something salvaged from a European or Japanese car with a remote reservoir would work if you can get the right bore size. Divide MM by 25.4 to get inches.

It's sole purpose might not be to raise octane, but it does raise octane. Circa 1980s, it was one of three things commonly used for that purpose. I can buy 3 different octane grades of gasoline (87. 89, 92) here in central Washington State. I can buy all three with or without 10% ethanol, depending on the vendor, making a total of 6 different types. Non-ethanol is harder to find, but it is here. The fact that ethanol raises octane, yet the octane number on the pump can be the same speaks loudly about how crappy the petroleum components must be that they use in the ethanol mixes.

No, you wouldn't unless you were trying to still regulate with the old regulator. Then you might. Trying to use the old regulator is rarely done, so that probably isn't the case. Typically the regulator that was intended to be used with the alternator is used. Sometimes that regulator is internal to the alternator, sometimes it's external. The effective "output terminal" on a generator system is the "BAT" terminal on the regulator. The large power lug on the back of an alternator is the equivalent "output terminal". It's true whether the alternator is internally regulated or externally regulated. Unlike a generator system, an alternator does not need a cutout or a current regulator, only a voltage regulator. The charging current does not need to flow through the "regulator box" like it would with a generator. That's true even when the alternator's voltage regulator is external. I think @61polara is on to the problem here and the start relay is probably not grounded.