Bloo

If you look at that schematic it is not difficult to imagine how flipping either plug might cause his exact symptoms, but that isn't it. They are connected correctly in the pictures. I'm close to stumped, and think it has to be wiring. Not sure about the field resistance. If I remember correctly most 12 volt alternator field coils draw about 2.2-2.5 amps. I guess about 6.7 ohms. If he can unplug the regulator and at make it stop charging, it just about has to have 12V coming from the field wire.

That all looks right to me, except the white wire turned yellow somehow before it got to the alternator. That looks a little weird but I see nothing crossed up. OK then, check the following, Regulator unplugged, engine off: 1) Red wire should be 12V hot, no other wires hot. (if you find anything else hot, stop here) 2) Turn ignition on. Brown wire should be hot now also. No other wires hot. 3) Ground the brown wire. GEN light on dash should come on. Unground it. Regulator is still unplugged. Unplug the alternator plug. 4) Check wires at alternator plug for voltage (to ground). Neither should be hot. (if you find a hot one, stop here) Turn the ignition back off. 5) Check continuity of blue wire from regulator plug to alternator plug. It should have continuity. 6) Check continuity from blue wire (either end) to ground. Should not have continuity to ground. 7) Check continuity from white wire at regulator plug to yellow(!) at alternator plug. Should have continuity 8 ) Check continuity from white wire to ground. Should not have continuity to ground.

Maybe, but not necessarily. For whatever reason, I think it is the alternator field that is drawing the current. It should be off. The regulator should turn it off. This theory also explains the overcharging, because the field would be on all the time, leaving no way for the regulator to control the field. This screams of crossed wires. It it turns out there are no crossed wires, we will probably have to get both plugs off, and check every wire for continuity and shorts. There aren't many wires. The circuit diagram for the Delcotron is online. I'll go find it if it turns out we need it.

Well, in THEORY there is nothing wrong with an ohmmeter. In practice, on cars, you will chase your tail. The test with the test light will prevent burning anything up. If the light burns brightly when in series with a battery cable/post, something is wrong and you need to go after that first. A dim light or no light means it's ok to proceed with the ammeter.

That's true, but unless I have missed something in this thread, unplugging the regulator makes this alternator stop charging. Given that little piece of information, I keep trying to come up with a scenario where it could be the alternator's fault, but I can't. If the field was being energized from a fault inside the alternator, unplugging the regulator should make no difference.

The idea of a 505 as a taxi literally made me laugh out loud. I worked on them professionally for a little while. They have their place, but I don't think taxi service is it. They are in the shop a lot. They are wonderful little sport sedans, great road cars for twisty roads, and have probably the smoothest, most relaxed, most user friendly manual transmission in the history of the world. That said, they need tinkering, a lot of tinkering. I would say if you borrowed a 505 Turbo Gas for a week long road trip up the California 1 or some other wonderful road, and nothing went wrong or broke, you would be hooked for life. Not just the turbo gas come to think of it. Any of them except the diesel. Those were so slow they were dangerous. After Peugeot pulled out of the US, 505 owners would go to lengths to keep them alive you probably wouldn't see with most other cars. The driving experience is a cut above. A new ordinary car would have been a let down, and they all knew it.

It looks like you have a defrost connection. That's a win if you can figure out a way to use it. I don't think many cars had defrost yet in 1936. One more thing about these old heaters, most have water flowing all the time. A positive shutoff valve for summer can be a good thing. It was usually a manual valve at one of the engine connections. Not all installations had one, but if I had a heater I would want one.

That switch looks great to me. @Piaras mentioned a lit switch. Quite a few of them were. Look at how fat the one you bought is at the threads. There's probably a bulb in there.

It sounds to me like it's good. I don't think you could change anything by testing it. I'm not sure an ohmmeter test is useful in this case. When it is back together you can check at the battery by disconnecting a battery cable and connecting an old incandescent test light between the post and the cable you disconnected from it (in series). If it glows bright there could be a problem. After checking and verifying that the light does not glow bright, you can take a multimeter set to amps and connect it in series like the test light was. That probably involves plugging at least one multimeter lead into a different hole as well as setting the dial. Don't forget to put the multimeter lead back in the other "normal" hole afterward! Ammeters are a dead short, and you wouldn't want to get surprised by that trying to test voltage on something later. Things would melt. I wouldn't get too upset at 0.050 Amps (50 mA). Most modern cars draw more than that, but I would expect a LOT less here if it is only the generator and cutout responsible and nothing else. If you have 0.500 Amps (500 mA) that is definitely a problem. Nothing draws that much normally except emergency vehicles, and they have a lot of dead batteries. If you have an electric clock disconnect it before doing any of these tests. It will fool you, and do so intermittently.

I cant speak to authenticity for the C-8, however in those days heaters were largely not standard equipment. They were either installed at the dealer, or maybe at some aftermarket outfit like Sears or Firestone. Switches that hang under the dash like that were by far the most common type of switch, both on factory approved and on aftermarket heaters. Ark-Less was a common brand. It sure looks period correct to me. Similar switches were available at NAPA as recently as the 90s, and maybe even now(?). Those last ones were red and cream in color and looked more like they hailed from the late 40s or 50s.

White on the right with the plug at 12:00, rotate the whole mess to the left half a turn (in your head), white will be on the left, and blue on the right with the plug at 6:00. This is YOUR right, with you standing in front of the car facing the pulley. I realize you can't actually see it from that angle. If you were looking at the back of the alternator it would reverse again.....

What I meant by that is not so much the clocking, but if you were looking at the alternator if it were off of the car. If the pulley were toward you and the plug were at the top, white would be on the right. Let us know what you find out. Verifying this even if it is unlikely to be wrong is a good start. I gather it charges at the correct voltage now but drains the battery overnight? is that right?

I'll say up front I don't like these, but others rave about how good they are. Your mileage may vary. The diode should connect from one post to the other, and nothing to ground. It does matter which post is which, and if the cutout were intended for a positive ground car, the posts might be marked backwards for a negative ground Chevrolet. To test the diode, use the diode check function on your mutlimeter if it has one. It probably does. Look for the diode symbol. Connect each multimeter lead to each cutout terminal and read the meter (it reads in volts). Then reverse the leads and read again. It should read about 0.6V or 0.7V one way, and OL or open circuit (no connection) the other way. There should be no continuity from either post to the case (ground). Another method: Take a car battery and an old incandescent test light. Connect the test light lead to the first battery post. Touch one cutout terminal to the second battery post. Then touch the test light tip to the remaining cutout terminal. Then reverse the cutout terminals and try again. The light should light brightly one way and not at all the other. Similarly to check for shorts to ground, connect the test light lead to the first battery post. Connect the cutout case to the second battery post. Touch the tip of the test light to each cutout terminal. It should not light on either one. These tests are ONLY for cutouts that have been gutted and have an alternator diode soldered inside. They will not work for electromechanical cutouts. Have fun!

I just went outside and looked at my truck, which has the same first generation "Delcotron" system as an early Riviera. 1) If you were holding a regulator in your hand, with the cover can toward you and the pins pointing down toward the ground, going from left to right the pins are F, 2, 3, 4. The wires connected to them are BLUE (F), WHITE (2), RED (3), and BROWN(or maybe black) (4). 2) Imagine you were standing in front of the the alternator, with the pulley toward you and the plug on the back at 12 o clock. You cannot see the plug directly because it is pointing away from you, but it is at the top of the case. The big binding post for the charge wire is to the right of the plug from your view.. When the wiring harness connects, BLUE goes to your LEFT and WHITE to your RIGHT. Please double check.

I don't have a good answer to your question. If you happen to live in the US, 87 octane is the lowest octane you can buy nationally, with 85.5 available in a very few areas. The calculation is done differently than it was in the 30s, so the numbers aren't directly comparable. Some guys mix diesel in. My gut feeling is it just makes crappy fuel, never mind the octane. It might not be too far off from 1920's fuel when the refineries couldn't keep up, gas was full of "heavier portions" (kerosene), and quite a few new cars in the 20s had extreme amounts of carburetor heat just to get that fuel to sort of work right. By the late 30s that was all ancient history. You could even get leaded gas if you could afford to pay more. While @Str8-8-Dave is not wrong, I don't think you will run into the issue he did on any flathead or other normal passenger car engine of the 1930s. Hey @edinmass are you reading this? Flatheads in particular have a lot of turbulence in the cylinder and tend to have a shorter burn time. Sorry for the non-answer. I don't know where to get anything less than 87 octane. I use 87 octane 10% ethanol. I has not yet caused any burned valves in my 36 Pontiac, even when I crested the continental divide recently unaware that the timing had become retarded.

Some people seem to think so. I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon. I think you'll do more damage with octane too low. High octane fuel isn't more energy-packed or hotter or anything like that, it just burns slower. It's kind of like having the timing a little retarded. The exhaust valves and exhaust may run hotter than they need to. To that end, it is probably advantageous to advance your timing a little. Just don't advance it so much that you get preignition or detonation or an apparent random misfire that wasn't there before you advanced the timing. Also not so much that it chugs or tries to kick back while cranking. If any of these things happen, back it off a little. Your mileage may vary.

I don't happen to have any extras but I did have to source some a year or so ago, and I can tell you the variations are almost endless. Do these rivet directly to the felloe or are they demountable? If demountable, what brand are they? This is a good place to ask, but you might need to be more specific about exactly what you want. The MTFCA forums also might be a good place to ask, one of the rims I bought was found over there. Universal or Coker may have brand new ones. Good luck on your search.

I don't think anything exists for 39 Pontiac. Pontiac typically had 3 gear ratios available, the tallest of which was about 4:11 or 4.22. Assuming US made Pontiacs, the driveline is open. Look at the 3rd member itself. If the driveshaft enters it dead center in the up/down direction it uses sprial bevel gears, and the factory ones are likely the only ones available. I believe this applies 1937-39 in Pontiac, but I would crawl under and look. Some Oldsmobile gears *might* fit this but they will be rarer than Pontiac. If the driveshaft goes in below the center of the third member (up/down) then it has hypoid gears, and the possibility of finding something to fit is better, but I don't know what it would be. If it's Canadian, maybe you have a torque tube. In that case, maybe some Chevrolet gears would fit. It's kind of a long shot, but there's a chance.

Pontiac had a police option charging system in 1936 consisting of a larger 2-brush generator and a 3-unit regulator, very similar to the systems widely adopted by the industry in 1940.

Typical in those days would have been to run the dash lights so dim you can barely see them, in the interest of getting the best performance out of your eyes at night. If there is no dimmer, I would expect "on" to be extremely dim. Did it have the 3 position switch you describe originally? Could the bulbs be wrong? The color difference is odd. I like the speedometer better.

I have seen one of those batteries with the Orpin switch on top that was marketed for a car. A 12 volt battery is just 6 cells where a 6 volt battery would have 3 cells. In the days of tar top batteries with exposed lead cross bars between the cells, it was no problem to configure a 12v battery as two 6v batteries in a 12v case and that is what they did. Then they just put the Orpin switch on top and sold it as an assembly I guess. It would be nearly impossible to build a battery like that that now that all the connections are internal, so you would just have to use 2 batteries.

I'd love to see a wiring diagram showing that.

There is a problem with some of those oldies, or maybe not depending on how you look at it. There are 2 basic types of switch, 4 wire and 7 wire. Those aren't always the exact number of wires, but those are the 2 classes, and it is usually the number of wires too. If the switch is a 4-wire you cannot share the signal light with the existing brake light bulbs in the back. You have to add another bulb (and usually another lamp housing) to each side for the signal. Unfortunately a lot of the really cool looking ones are 4 wire, and people usually want to share the brake lights, and can't. One unit that might be useful is the "Guide 6004". It probably originated in the late 40s or early 50s, but it is small, unobtrusive, and looks like it could be prewar even though it isn't. There are a whole bunch of versions, clamp styles vary, indicator color, paint color etc. varies. They were made in both 4 wire and 7 wire versions, but the cool thing is that they all have the 7 wire switch inside. The missing wires can be soldered in after the fact. They also have cancel, if you can get the cancel tire to contact the back of your steering wheel.

Sorry, not off hand. In APF bulbs like the original poster's car takes, my experience says current Chinese production is 50/32 no matter what bulb number the resellers happen to be calling them. There are several varieties, not the all same but pretty close. I think 50/50 is probably going to be an NORS Ebay item if you are lucky enough to get them. If they are not APF, just a regular bayonet base, some new ones might be available(?). I would check with the early Ford vendors.