Bloo

Don't dump any additive in there, period. What is DOT? Brake fluid? No. Just no. No transmission additives from the parts store either. The green dot shifts 1-2-3. The white dot shifts 2-3. If you changed the modulator, you will need to adjust it. Why was it changed? Was it for this same problem or was it sucking oil? Be sure the vacuum line to the modulator has vacuum and does not leak. If there is no vacuum or low vacuum at the modulator, the transmission will assume the throttle is wide open and will not shift to third until a very high speed. Are you sure the fluid level is correct? Check the fluid with the car on a level surface and the engine running in "Park". It used Type-F fluid originally. After a rebuild, if you are sure the linings were all changed during the rebuild, a Dexron-II-III-Mercon equivalent fluid should be OK, Otherwise stick with Type-F. Upshift speeds are controlled by the governor and the vacuum modulator, The governor is a centrifugal spool valve located on the tailshaft.

I believe if you send a member a PM, then that person will be notified via email by the forum software, so long as that person still has the same email address and has not disabled the feature. It's worth a try.

Those are completely normal for the time. They are probably only on the back of the car, and may or may not have crushed walnut shells mixed with the rubber. It is likely they are recaps.

No wonder I've never heard of it. This is a kitten....

You might have better luck at the casino. It is a very cool car in my opinion. I would love to own something like that, but don't have room. The advice in this thread so far is very good. It might be a good entry point to the hobby if you are not scared of spending some money. Seriously though, old cars have not been profit makers any time in recent history, and more recently the bottom is falling out. It is also a Nickel Era car, and historically Nickel era cars cost less than their earlier or later peers and are difficult to sell. If you don't want it for yourself it is probably a bad idea.

Isn't anyone going to identify the Buick? That should be duck soup for you guys. 1951 Super?

I don't know. What is in a windlace kit? I imagine just windlace? Why not buy bulk windlace? The Chevrolet body is a little smaller I think, and I would wonder if you would get enough. Best of luck whatever you do.

For the engine dipstick look on the driver's side of the engine, way down low, to the right of the distributor.

On my 36 Pontiac, over a period of a couple of weeks I sprayed Mopar Rust Penetrant (a new name for heat riser solvent) on it and occasionally tapped lightly front/rear. Meanwhile I was driving the car. Mopar heat riser solvent is at least as good as Kroil cold, and really turns to magic if you can heat cycle the parts repeatedly and keep reapplying it. Exhaust nuts for instance just come off with no drama it they are on a running car and you can plan ahead 2 or 3 days and spray them repeatedly in-between the heat soaks from driving. Anyhow, it worked on my Pontiac heat riser. I don't know if a 1951 Pontiac has bushings or not, but on any heat riser with bushings, there is going to be trouble if the bushings break loose from the manifold instead of the shaft. It will stick repeatedly, and the shaft and bushings will have to be removed completely order to fix it. If it has bushings be VERY careful about forcing anything.

My head hurts.

Do you have a mechanical fuel pump as original? If so it is probably bad and leaking gas into the oil. On the other hand If the carburetor is running way too rich, gas could just be washing past the rings and getting in that way. Is the choke opening all the way with the engine warm? Don't keep driving until you fix it. My guess is its the fuel pump.

The alternator that burned up most likely shorted internally. There is a good possibility nothing else is wrong. An alternator has no current regulator because it self regulates. The design of the stator winding limits the maximum current. I don't know exactly what would happen if there were a dead short to ground in the charging circuit wiring. My guess is the alternator would charge happily at it's maximum rating and not really even get that hot. It might overheat and melt the car's wiring harness, or open a fusible link if there is one. I don't think the alternator would smoke. Sparking at the points in the regulator is normal. Slowing the engine down when you plug the regulator in is normal too. It is charging. It takes horsepower to charge a battery with an alternator. Squealing is probably the belt, and happening because the alternator is charging really hard, and maybe the belt is a little glazed or a little loose. What I would do next is fully charge the battery with a battery charger, and then try again. If the battery is low the alternator will charge harder than normal. A fully charged battery should make it calm down. If with a fully charged battery it still charges like crazy when you plug the regulator in, some test equipment is going to be necessary. Do you have a multimeter?

I did, but might still be interested if you have any that are rustfree. I notice you are in Canada. I am pretty sure the Canadian ones are different, and I wonder if they came from a Canadian Pontiac. The wheels I have encountered in the US so far are all the same, but I saw a sedan like mine advertised for sale Montreal several years ago, and the wheel construction, hubcabs, and hubcap attachment method were all different. If you happen to find any, I'd like to see them.

I doubt that can be rebuilt. That switch is the sort of thing used in some older big trucks, usually fire trucks, to start on 12v and run on 6v. It appears that they opened up a battery and modified it to use only one 12 volt battery as 2 6 volt batteries. That was possible because it was a tar top battery, and those can be taken apart and rebuilt. I doubt you could find anyone to do that today. It is academic because your battery case is broken. It probably sat out in the cold while discharged and froze. It doesn't belong on a 1932 Chevrolet anyway. I suggest getting some 00 battery cables and a 6 volt battery and hook it all up like Chevrolet did.

1972

Gas shouldn't be getting to that hole. The diaphragm is bad. The diaphragm on one I took apart was just a bunch of layers of cloth. No doubt it was originally doped with something, probably shellac based. The solvent for shellac is..... ethanol. With the shellac gone the gas was just pouring through the cloth. Check out Then N Now automotive for new ethanol-resistant internal parts. https://www.then-now-auto.com/

Perhaps they would, although if I have read this thread correctly those are not the numbers on the title so I fail to see why you would do that. I wouldn't do that unless forced. Nobody wants that car when it comes time to sell.

But the rope wrap trick for clincher rims is the opposite of what ak posted about. With a clincher rim, and grooves full of rope, and a straight sided tire, you should be fine because the straight sided tire has the bead reinforcement needed to stay on the rim. The biggest problem would be stretching the straight sided tire over the rim to get it on because it is designed not to stretch. Still, it was done occasionally back in the day.

My feeling on the power brakes is I wouldn't bother. Power brakes of that era, like Chrysler's famed "one finger" power steering, are a bit of a learned skill. There is a lot of power and not much feedback and most brakes of the era are self-energizing drums, so they are not very linear. I have driven a couple hundred thousand miles at least on old power brake setups like that. It is kind of like riding a bike, you never forget, although it has been long enough for me that my first couple of stops might be a bit abrupt. It is kind of novel being able to operate the brakes with your big toe, but honestly what I miss from that era is the high, solid pedal and ease of control you get with manual brakes. I have radial tires on the 36 now, and I intended to make a direct comparison of steering effort, but I forgot. Now that I am thinking about it I can't tell any difference. Of course like with the bias tires you want a bit of movement when you steer but it doesn't take much. Do you have enough air in them? They will want more pressure than the original bias tires did. That is a really nice looking Pontiac.

I think we may be talking about 2 different things in this thread. 1) being blocked from going in gear because the gears are stopped but not lined up, as in edinmass's post quoted below... and 2) an unsynchronized first or reverse gear grinding because it is not stopped, either due to a dragging clutch, or due to the gears not having time to come to a stop after the clutch is disengaged. The second gear trick is for gears that have not had time to stop moving after you disengage the clutch. It cant really compensate for a dragging clutch. I don't know who says that but they missed the mark. The second gear trick is for anything with a combination of unsynchronized and synchronized gears in the same transmission. A synchronizer is just a brake, a friction device. It stops one gear in relation to the other gear it wants to engage. There are 3 things to consider. 1) the engine and flywheel, spinning at idle speed at a stoplight, 2) the output shaft of the transmission, stopped at a stoplight, and 3) the clutch disc, input gear, countergears, etc. At a stoplight the clutch disc is spinning at idle speed, and the gears in the transmission are also spinning, first included. The other half of first gear and the output shaft and driveline are not spinning. When you disengage the clutch, the clutch disc and gears slow down and will eventually stop, but probably not as quick as you would like at a stoplight. If you try to engage your unsynchronized first too early, the gears will still be spinning, but the other half of first (connected to the output shaft and driveline) will not. There is no synchronizer to stop the rotating gears (remember, it is just a friction brake between the two halves of a gear!), so it grinds. If you touch (or engage) second enough to get the braking action of the synchronizer, it will stop second in relation to the output shaft. Since the output shaft is at 0 rpm, and the gears are all connected, this brings the whole mess, including the clutch disc to 0 rpm. With both halves of first at 0 rpm, nothing will grind. You can touch ANY synchronized gear to do this, it does not have to be second. Third (or fourth or fifth if you have it) will work too. The trick does not work if the car is moving, even a tiny bit. That is because the synchronizer (brake) only stops second in relation to the output shaft. If the output shaft is turning, second will match the output shaft, but first gear, having a different gear ratio, will be spinning at a different speed than the other half it wants to engage with. All that applies to an unsynchronized reverse too, except that you probably wouldn't be engaging it at a stoplight.

Clincher tires don't have a steel reinforcement inside the bead to keep them on the wheel. This is because they have to stretch at the bead to go on the clincher rim. Once they are on, the hooked rim is what keeps them on. On a straight sided rim, I would expect the tire to come off, and violently.

Absolutely not. That's asking for failure of the tires, never mind the rims. In the 80s when 3/4 (or more) of the cars on the road out here WA were cars that originally came with bias and were now shod with radials, standard practice was to run them at sidewall maximum. That was typically 32 or 35 PSI. Below 30 PSI pressures are only for bias, and only for owners who like a like a lot of mush.

Thank you. I will check into it. I have seen the 1926-1931 Fisher Body manual, and it is by far the most detailed thing I have seen so far. Most of their construction methods didn't change. I have the 1935-36 FIsher body manual also, but it is basically useless. It seems the end was near and they just didn't bother to document anything. Thank you, though I have read all of those. There were some interesting tidbits, including some flavor of 1936 Chevrolet that has almost no wood in the sills or floor when compared to a Pontiac. I have never seen that mentioned anywhere else. Maybe it was the late 36 Standard, as those have all steel doors. I started to make the dog leg. I figured I would make those first because they look the most complicated. I bought some ash and laminated it together. The next step was to make the finger joint. I only have a general Idea what it was like. I have not been able to get the hinge pins out yet, and I need to get the lower hinges off to see whether there is a tenon left where the dog leg attaches or whether the repairs will have to go up even higher. There is still wood around the top. and the board with the window regulator is ok. The board on the outside is gone on both doors. There weren't even shards in the left door. Apparently someone vacuumed it out. I am in Washington State. I gather you are in Canada? Which province?

Modern tires aren't cheap for those wheels in this part of the world (USA). Narrow 16s were always expensive here, but no longer produced by anyone except the antique suppliers. That wheel swap was popular in the USA during WW2, as tires were almost impossible to get but 600-16 tires for those wheels were easier to get than Model A tires. I have heard the rumors of narrow 16s showing up cheaply on Craigslist or similar sites in NZ and AUS, having been used on Toyota Hilux(?) or something similar in those countries. Color me green, with envy.

My guess is aftermarket buckets for a sealed beam conversion on some 20s or maybe early 30s car.