Bloo

On the other hand, that is basically the same thing as gutting the car and putting in a different chassis and drivetrain. Some like it, some don't. AM radio has been a wasteland in my area for years. FM is quickly becoming one. It isn't the way most people play music in cars these days anyway. Even the need for an input jack has all but disappeared with the popularity of bluetooth. Sure you might want to put some sort of sound system in a car, but the need to put it inside the AM radio has all but disappeared. In my opinion these "conversions" are going the way of the 8 track and the cassette if they haven't already. When the "conversion" board fails, I suspect you are stuck with a useless gutted box as most modern electronics are NOT built to be repairable. Even things that are repairable tend to depend on integrated circuits, and many of those go out of production after a fairly short run. A conversion might be a good way to get a radio working if it happens to be some piece of.... err.... fine engineering that never worked correctly in the first place, or fried output transistors once a year. Those do exist, but are exceptions. You sure aren't going to find something like that in a 50 Buick. GM/Delco radios of that period were among the best performing AM car radios of their time, or any time. They also worked for decades.

It is a crapshoot. Decades ago, i was working in a gas station that had on old cabinet where we stocked common ignition parts. The old original card in the door for the brand of parts it originally held gave you the uF ratings for a bunch of common 1950s-1960s condensers. Even though the supplier had changed, it was possible to go a little bigger or smaller based on that chart when you needed to. You never see this information anywhere today. New correct-for-the-application parts varied in quality as well as uF too. The unwritten rule in those days when doing a tune up was if the old points were staying about flat, leave the old condenser in. If the points had mountains, put a new one in. Maybe the new one will be better. For what it's worth though, any *good* condenser out of any points ignition system will make another points ignition system run. For the Maxwell, I would start with one for something with a 6 volt ignition and a fairly slow turning four cylinder engine, and hope I hit it pretty close on the first try. Maybe a 1950s tractor? There seems to be 2 threads and I am not sure where the other one went. Regarding coils, Yes you want a 6 volt coil if you can get one, assuming the Maxwell is a 6 volt car. NAPA should have that, as should most other parts stores. If they insist on make model and year, say 1953 Chevrolet Bel-Air if the Maxwell is negative ground, and 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook if the Maxwell is positive ground. Even the ground detail probably makes no difference in the real world. Hook the (-) terminal to the points on a negative ground car, (+) to the points on a positive ground car. I am not completely convinced there is any difference between a 6v and a 12v coil as used on typical common American cars with points. Many 12 volt American cars use a separate ballast resistor or resistance wire, and run the ignition on about 7 or 8 volts. 6v American cars typically do not run a resistor, and the system voltage with a full battery and the generator charging is about 7.5 volts. That idea comes with a whole bunch of caveats and exceptions. It certainly does *not* necessarily apply to all 12 volt coils, and especially does *not* typically apply to European 12v coils or aftermarket universal 12v coils. If a 12v coil passes the test in my earlier post, it will be close enough to run on 6v.

Measure the primary resistance of the coil, from one small terminal to the other. If it is something close to 1.5 ohms, or a little less, it will likely at least work on 6 volts. If it is closer to 3 ohms, probably not a good idea. Don't forget to subtract the resistance of your test leads from the coil reading. Short the leads together and read ohms to find out what the lead resistance is. Voltage (at least 6 or 12 volts) is not any sort of a rating on a condenser. If it is a good condenser, the ignition will work even if it is the wrong condenser. The rating that matters is microfarads (uF) and they hardly ever tell you what that is in the automotive ones sadly. If it is wrong your points wont last very long, because one point will lose metal and the other will gain it, looking like a mountain on one of the points. If the condenser is too big (in uF) the mountain will build on one point, and if the condenser is too small it will build on the other. Old MOTOR manuals have a picture of this.

This has become a common scam. If you get some email that sounds like this, asking for money or something, that is completely out of character for the person sending it, do not reply. Contact the person the email APPEARS to come from by some other means, such as telephone, text, forum PM, or social media if you do social media. Ask the person if it is real (it won't be). The person who has had their email compromised will probably need to do damage control, and the sooner they find out about it the better. This will not be the last time you see this particular scam.

Well... depending on how deep you wanna go..... Shift shaft seals are often bad but you probably have to take the valve body out. Look for leaking cooler lines, especially where that little bracket ties them to the bellhousing. Sometimes they wear through. They can squirt a bunch of fluid out in a hurry. Be sure to check the band adjustments no matter what though if you are changing fluid. That matters.

People used to do that when they put in a shift kit. If it is shift kitted, and you like abrupt shifting, it helps a little. Type F is a lot closer to just plain oil than any of the others. Spool valves work better in more modern transmission fluids, but 727s are so robust they don't seem to care, and you can do whatever. More important in my opinion is to drain ALL the fluid, torque converter too, and adjust the bands to factory spec, or maybe set them to whatever the shift kit said to set them to if that was different. Fluids have changed in recent years, and now there are a bunch of kinds. I would probably try to find something current in a good brand that is backward compatible to Dexron II. Type F will work though if you want. I have seen it.

It's something quick. I hope it works. Spark is often there but weak.

You have spark all the way to the plugs? For sure? Is it nice and hot? If not, try a new or different condenser.

I believe so. If not, it is very close to that according to the shop manual which I don't have easy access to at the moment. 37 Roadmasters had lower gears than the Century's 3.90 , and higher than the Special's 4.44 . Interestingly, the 37 Roadmaster axle is a different design and the gears do not interchange with the other two models mentioned.

Hoo boy.... Found the guy who has never lived in Washington State. There is a process, but there is no guarantee your situation will qualify for it. Plenty of cars have been stuck in limbo for decades. It is very misleading to say you can just pay the taxes and get road legal paperwork. It is sort of true if you ignore the fact that you might have to pick up and move your home to a different state to do it.

Fixing the radio? Can you solder? If not, now might be a good time to learn. 🙂 For what it's worth, buying tubes because they test weak probably won't help. Nothing lies like a tube tester. Politicians try, but the closest they can manage is a distant second. I don't mean to imply tube testers are completely useless, if they find tubes completely burned out, or if they find shorts, you should probably believe it. Also... the 0z4. That might be bad. Those went bad a lot. But tubes that checked "weak" on a tube tester? Those aren't going to make any difference at all in 99% of all cases. If you don't do anything else, replace the buffer capacitor. If its bad (and yes, it *IS* bad), it will most likely burn up the vibrator. When you bought a new vibrator back in the day, if you didn't change the buffer capacitor it voided the warranty. This is usually a paper/wax capacitor with a very high working voltage rating (maybe 1600 volts or so) located right near the vibrator, usually right underneath it. The value (uF) is critical. The working voltage is not so critical, just be sure to use the same or higher for the working voltage rating. The parts that go bad in radios of this age are paper/wax and electrolytic capacitors, not tubes. Tubes hardly ever fail. They are high reliability parts compared to some of the other components. Paper/wax capacitors are made of paper that has acid in it left over from manufacturing. The acid causes the paper to rot. Few if any paper/wax capacitors are any good. A few squeak by because there is hardly any voltage on them, but they are still rotten. They should all be changed. There aren't that many in a car radio. If the electrolytic capacitors are bad on the other hand, you will have a loud hum in the speaker. Don't confuse this with the normal mechanical hum coming from the vibrator. The good news is the electrolytic capacitors could theoretically still work, as they are not chemically bound to fail. The bad news is they fail by drying out, and the seals may not be very good decades later, and they were a common failure even when they were new. The best policy is to replace them too. Values (uF) are not super critical on the paper/wax and electrolytic capacitors, just get as close as you can on uF, and make the working voltage the same or higher. Replacements for the paper/wax ones are no longer paper/wax. They will be some other technology, probably "film".

That's a DPL. Can any of you guys tell what color it is? Pastel green maybe? Or is that a trick of the camera? There was a pastel green one in my area 40 or so years ago. It was not the original color, the original paint might have been silver. I always wondered what happened to it. It was a 327 4 barrel. This car says it has a 343, and it may, but if so it didn't come with it. That is a second generation engine that wasn't available yet when this car was built. It should have a first generation AMC (Nash/Hudson) 287 or 327. Since this car is top of the line, it is possible they might all be 327s. Every one I have seen had a 327, but most were 2 barrels. I believe these all had vinyl tops. The one in my area had black vinyl. It is missing in the pics (a good thing in my opinion), but it looks like the little "DPL" badges are missing too.

I don't know CS, but I'd say that goes in the back of a headlight.

Swirls in the first pic. That's a new one on me. Rolled pyramid rubber available here: https://restorationstuff.com/ And here: https://www.restorationspecialties.com/ One version in the first link has the pyramids oriented at 45 degrees, making it more like diamonds. All were probably smaller pyramids.

236 I believe.

Quite a few people avoided air conditioning in those days because it was in the way for service, often not working, used extra fuel when it was working, and in many cases would cause the car to boil on the hottest days. It only got worse in the 70s. It would be hard to sell AC to someone for a significant amount of money when they knew they would probably have to shut it off or risk boiling the car when the weather got really hot. I would bet on this Imperial keeping it's cool better than most other luxury cars of the time, but it doesn't change anything. AC had that reputation.

How many u-joints in this driveshaft? Same as original? What sort of angles do they run at?

Reverse flare? Whats that? Is it like this? Or, is it like this? Look closely. Solid answers await but we need to what fitting on the car looks like that you are trying to connect to.

That's why I asked. If he measured clear to the outside, they are probably 25 inch.

Is it 26" at the place where the tire sits, or was that clear to the outer edge?

What does the end of your fuel line look like?

Yes. Don't do that. I bought a Studebaker back in the 80s that I suspect someone had done that to. The stench coming from the cooling system by the time I got it was unbearable. The end result was the car got junked.

If you must use plastic floats, never put old ones back in. They had a habit of sinking at about 80k miles. On some models, GM had you weighing them on a scale to determine if they could be re-used. If the car had already run long enough to need carb work though, what are the chances a used plastic float would hold up? Not good. I agree to check with @carbking . Get brass if you can.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I bought a tube of AlumaSeal last year to get some powdered aluminum for a paint experiment. Much to my surprise it isn't aluminum anymore. It is whatever the competition uses (ginger root or turmeric or some other brown substance) in a silver colored tube.