Bloo

Clamp-ons are great if you have one, and it is a model that can do DC! Most clamp-ons only do AC though.

If I remember correctly the 1937 Buick shop manual says to undercut. I can't explain that. I have always assumed it was a mistake, but with your armature as confirmation, GM must have condoned it at one time. I have owned a couple of starters over the years with undercut armatures. You have to take them apart and scrape the copper out now and then because the starter is cranking slow and drawing 400 amps. Not desirable IMHO.

You can, but you should start with a test light to see how bad it is. Here is what i would do. When you shut the car off with a charged battery (that you know is going to get discharged), disconnect a battery cable, "ground" (positive) would be a good choice, and then hook the light between the battery post and the cable you disconnected. A bad draw will make the light pretty bright, and would be too much for the multimeter, so always start with the light. Now that you have a glowing light, indicating a draw, disconnect accessories until the light goes out. I would start by disconnecting the wire at the generator cutout, and I mean the one going from the cutout to the wiring harness. If it makes the light go out, your cutout is stuck. If that is the problem, maybe you can take the cover off and unstick it. An electric clock, if it has one, is another likely area for trouble.

But you must seal them with something. Something that can resist gasoline that has alcohol in it, so the traditional shellac is straight out.

Maybe Gary will show up in this thread and clarify, but I believe his unit had been professionally rebuilt beforehand. The rebuilder must have missed ever so slightly soldering the gear back on. That is really easy to do, and I did it a whole bunch of times before I got it right. Gary ground on the stop to fix it, and it worked. I am bringing it up because I think that grinding the stop is extremely unlikely to help on an old corroded up unit that has not just been restored, and would probably do more harm than good.

There isn't anything about sending units that lends itself to having a "kit" except maybe the gaskets, and the coated cork floats. Note: Harbor Freight has gasket punches for not much money, and Bob's has coated cork floats. If yours comes apart easily, it must be different that the mid 30s type. Those were riveted with 3 brass hollow rivets. When I did it, 37_Roadmaster_C made the tools to make those rivets and put them back in. In either case, there aren't a bunch of parts to replace. You just have to take the unit apart and fix whatever is wrong. They are a brass brush running on a wirewound resistor. The worst thing you could get possibly get stuck with is having to find and buy appropriate resistance wire and rewind the resistor, which is riveted in place. That is certainly a possibility as the brush could wear through the resistance wire, but I don't recall ever having to do that. All they do is run a wiper across the 30+ ohm (on GM cars) resistor. The wiper is grounded, on the mid 1930s units it grounds through a coiled piece of spring wire. All you have to think about is the circuit from the post, through the resistor (or part of it) through the brush, and to ground. Any questionable connections in that loop need to be soldered. You can't solder to the resistance wire itself, but everything else you can. The resistance must go as close to 0 ohms as practicable (extremely close) with the float hanging down. Remember 30 ohms is all the way to full(!) so it doesn't take much resistance at all to prevent the gauge ever getting down to "E". The mid 30s units have a gear at the bottom that solders on. It sets the clock position of the wiper. There is a little cork washer under a spring down there that acts as a brake, preventing the gauge from waving all over the place when the gas sloshes. Getting that gear soldered in the right position is by far the most difficult part of the whole deal, and only necessary if you change the cork brake washer.

Suggest you PM KornKurt here on the forum. He has quite a few parts, and also might know who to ask if he doesn't have it.

I agree, but it could be a loose wire or a bad ground, so in the interest of not dropping the tank try grounding your tank and see if it helps. If not, drop the tank and if you don't find a loose nut or connection at the sender wire, it is probably the sending unit's fault. If/when you drop the tank, I highly recommend adding a ground wire from one of the sending unit mounting screws to the frame.

If someone has replacement 1936 wood parts available now, please post it here!

I have built plenty of harnesses in my life, but if this is a very old car, and stock, and if the harness is available from Rhode Island Wire or Ynz, I would do it. There is something wonderful about parts that just fit. If you want to roll your own, those two companies, as well as Brillman Co., have cloth wire and many of the other supplies you might need. Making a whole harness for a car and making it fit right is a whole bunch of planning and work, more than it seems like, and that makes off-the-shelf whole harnesses look really attractive to me. If it is a car new enough to have plastic wire, I am not sure who to go to for a whole harness, but it would still be my first choice if available. When building a harness with plastic wire, getting decent wire is always the problem. The stuff available at the parts stores feels cheap, the strands are too big for best reliability, and it is really expensive. Stranded house wire (thhn or mtw) is a possibility too, but it is pretty stiff and not at all friendly to work with. Split loom is atrocious crap that takes up way more space than it should and looks bad. I wont use it unless the car is modern and there is a bunch of it already in place that is going to stay. The non-adhesive tape used on older cars can probably be found today, but is really horrible stuff to work with, very difficult to make it look good. I have come up with my own methods using regular electrical tape that don't wind up as a sticky mess and are difficult to distinguish from factory work. It is still a lot of work and I would never do it these days if a nice off-the-shelf replacement harness is available. Then there are kits from Painless Wiring and several others that are a fusebox with a bunch of plastic wires attached. Due to the market they cater to, they have to be usable by your Grandmother, your dog, and anyone else with limited mechanical or electrical experience. You still have to bundle the wires up for a nice fit on your own just like you were making the harness from scratch. Since they are universal, you also wind up with splices in places that i would NEVER put them if I were making a harness. They expect you to crimp the splices. Crimping will degrade over time, and the splices will probably be buried in the harness. I am not going to rule these harnesses out completely and say I will never use one again, but I probably won't. For most cars there will be some better way. Also, they are only useful if you are building a 12 volt system.

You can design the equipment for any voltage you want. Double the voltage for half the current to do the same amount of work. Why not 24v? Why not 48v? Since using twice the voltage cuts the current in half. (at the same power level or wattage), you can use wire half as big. The engineer has to decide how fast he wants to turn a starter, and how much power that will take. The voltages are multiples of 2 volts because a lead acid cell is approximately 2 volts. 3 cells is about 6 (6.3) volts. 6 cells is about 12 (12.6) volts. Additionally early ignition systems before starting motors sometimes used dry cells. Those are 1-1/2v. You can arrive at the same place pretty easily 4 cells = 6v, 8 cells = 12v, etc. At the same power level (wattage) you need twice as many cells for a 12 volt battery, but they can be half as big, so there's not much difference in the amount of lead or any other materials. It is possible that the commonly available lead plates at the time (used in storage batteries for radio, farm power, etc.) were sized better to match up to the cranking needs of an engine when using 3 cells rather than 6. Still, in the teens and twenties there was no definite 6 volt standard. Studebaker and Hupmobile used 12 volt systems on a model or two in the teens, and Dodge Brothers used 12 volts for many years. Today people seem to think that a starter has to spin really fast to start a car, that it has to go "CHE CHE CHE CHE CHE" like a gear reduction starter on a 60s or 70s Chrysler product, or something with a Japanese starter a little bit newer. 1910s and 1920s engineers had no 1960s Chryslers to listen to, so they just picked the speed they felt was needed to crank the engine they had designed. Then an electric motor would be designed or selected with enough power to do the job, and a gear ratio selected to match the RPM to whatever was needed at the crankshaft. The horsepower needed from the electric motor is directly convertible to watts. After allowing for mechanical and electrical losses, the rest is just picking a voltage for the electric motor design, and supplying sufficient current (amps) at that voltage to arrive at the necessary wattage. Contrary to popular belief, it does not matter what that voltage is. Engines of that time had a much slower maximum RPM and a much lower idle speed. The camshafts of the day were designed to make good dynamic compression in this lower RPM range, and so it is only logical that the cranking speed needed to start them would be slower than a modern car. It had not been long since they were starting them with hand cranks, and a removable hand crank for emergencies was usually provided until the mid 1930s at least. Any system, no matter the voltage, needs maintenance to keep working right. In the mid 80s I was driving a 51 Nash for a winter car, and it was a terrific one. I never had any trouble starting it. Some of my friends with their modern (at the time) 12 volt cars could not be bothered to maintain them and were not doing so well. For at least 2 winters I was carrying around a 12 volt battery in the trunk to give other people jump starts. It is always the first thing that pops into my mind when I see threads like this. The only real, tangible advantage to a 12 volt system I am aware of (other than cheaper wire) is the "starting bypass". When a car with a charging system is running, the system runs at a voltage appropriate for charging a battery. That is about 7.4-7.6v on a 6 volt car, and about 14.2-14.7v on a 12 volt car. The ignition system has to be designed to run at that voltage. Cranking voltage on the other hand will be well below the normal 6 or 12 volt battery voltage, so the voltage seen by the ignition system will be several volts below what it is designed to run on. It might not even fire if the engine is chugging over on a battery that is almost dead. What some 12 volt cars have is an ignition designed to run on about 8 volts, and a resistor to drop the voltage. Then, while cranking, they short out the resistor and send full battery voltage to the ignition. In this way the ignition always gets full voltage or a little more while cranking, and the spark will not be weak. I have never seen this feature implemented in a 12 volt conversion yet, and I have seen a lot of them. Recently there have been at least 2 threads where people want to remove this feature from factory 12 volt cars so they can run some fancy aftermarket coil. Modification of a cars electrical system, if wanted, should begin with an understanding of basic electricity, not marketing hype, advertising copy, or old wives tales.

I hate to be a downer but nobody makes kits. Nobody has patterns. There are people who can create the wood if you can get the car to them. I am out in Washington State and am not near any of them. I am having to learn to do it myself. What area are you located in? Welcome to the forum from another Pontiac owner. Mine is a 1936 sedan.

That really sucks. I would vote for the pipe plug, with some sealer on it, either shellac or maybe Loctite. Shellac is extremely effective on coolant, but everything needs to be really clean. I would believe the shop manual more than the plug for the transmission oil. On many cars of that period you did not fill all the way to the plug. You stuck your pinky finger in there, bent it down 90 degrees and if you could touch the oil it was full. It might very well be overfull.

Most likely either your clutch is dragging or your 3rd gear synchro is shot. I have used that oil and I don't like it much, however if I remember correctly several Buick owners in here have posted that it works well for them so I am leaning towards it not being the oil. If it was me I would adjust the clutch according to the manual and then drain the transmission and put some real synchromesh oil in there, like Redline 75W140NS (note the NS) or Redline MT-90 (and there are others). I am using the 75W140NS in my 36 Pontiac transmission, which is VERY closely related to the Buick Special transmission and it works great. These oils are kind of light, and may not slow down first very fast for you at stoplights, so touch second before going into first if you are in a hurry at a light. Do I think it is going to help? Not really, but I'd try it before tearing the transmission down to put a synchro in. If you do have to take the transmission out, pull the clutch and have a good look at it at the same time. Maybe it's saturated with oil, or the disc is hanging up on the splines. Check the pilot bearing too.

Fabrikoid (USA) and Rexine (UK) are pyroxylin/nitrocellulose based and the most likely suspects. There were others such as oilcloth as it existed in those days made from linseed oil, and at least one artificial leather, the name escapes me, that was supposedly non-flammable. They kept the formula to that one a trade secret. Leatherette was also a trademark for some sort of artificial leather in the pre-vinyl days. I'm not sure what that one was made of. There were others. Most if not all of these are thin, fairly stiff, and hold lines along edges pretty well. The pattern of the backing cloth telegraphs through the front a little in addition to whatever grain they pressed in. When Fabrikoid types start to fail, they craze like lacquer, because that is basically what they are. Eventually the covering starts coming off revealing the fabric behind. They don't get shiny spots and hard spots out in the middle, and everything pulling out of line along the edges like PVC/Vinyl does when it ages. You can tell the difference from 20 feet away.

The trouble with Vinyl is, it in no way resembles the artificial leather products used before and just after the war. Those products were not made of Vinyl (PVC), and are not available anywhere in the world as near as I can tell. In my opinion real leather is the only practical substitute. Vinyl makes it very difficult to get the right look in the first place, and as it starts to age, cannot hold up the prewar illusion for long. Within a couple of years it will look more like Grandma's 1970s recliner than prewar Leatherette.

And unlike a generator the armature shouldn't be undercut in a starter. The grooves will fill with copper from the brushes if you do that.

Not just you. In my opinion Teflon tape should not be allowed within 500 yards of any location where auto repair is taking place. First Buick: I don't think you should need Teflon for that at all, but if you want it, Teflon pipe dope is a much better choice. Don't overdo it, just a smidge on the threads. You don't want foreign material of any sort making it's way into the brake system.

Since the topic of a spring loaded carbon brush has been brought up. the thing to know and to look for is that the brush must make contact, and so something must be spring loaded in some way. If the carbon brush is spring loaded, the brass it contacts on the rotor can be cast in and immovable. If the carbon brush is crimped solid into the cap, then something on the rotor must take up the slack. Usually it is a flexible strip of metal that reaches up from the rotor to contact the brush. It is possible on some cars to mix the two systems and come up with a combination that will not work correctly. I am not sure if that applies here, but it is worth looking at.

Dual master cylinders are wildly overrated.

I don't want to discourage you but my 36 Six gets hot if it is going too slow for long periods (parades, stuck in traffic, etc.), and old articles that were once posted on the Early Times Chapter website suggest that is normal. You could try @edinmass 's evaporust-as-coolant method along with @Grimy 's stocking trick to catch the crud before it gets into your radiator. Pontiac flatheads as built have a water distribution tube inside the block that can rust out, and that causes overheating. Supposedly there will be hot spots particularly at the back of the engine. @Rusty_OToole suggested in some other thread that you can find those hot spots with an infrared thermometer gun. Mine passes that test with flying colors. I am not running a thermostat either. That wasn't intentional and I did not realize it was missing until I opened the housing, and as you probably know these cars do not take a standard thermostat, so that had to wait. I have one now but I don't really expect it to help. I wish you success, and will keep watching this thread for ideas. I have not heard of using an ultrasonic bath for radiators until today. On one hand, maybe it would work harden the brass, but on the other hand if you can get the crud out without taking it apart, that would be amazing. What state is this radiator guy located in?

It must have varied by state or province. In Washington State, cutouts were not legal for street licensed vehicles period, never mind whether they were open or not.

Don't follow any links they leave behind. Other than that, just report it and move on. This sort of spam is rampant today, and on our forum the moderators do a very good job of getting rid of it quickly.

Gas can seep up through the threads and you will smell it. I have not seen plastic washers on one, but in my opinion the sender should have a dedicated ground wire no matter what, so it shouldn't matter. Copper washers are a more likely period fix for potential leakage. I suspect (but can't prove) GM's method was to make the holes in the cork gasket really tight around the threads and hope for the best. I do that when I make a gasket, and I also use purple Loctite on the screws (blue is probably ok). The loctite seals up the threads and also allows you to choose how tight to make them, and how hard to squish the gasket, with no worries about screws backing out. Just make sure the terminal on the ground wire is contacting the sender housing directly.

I have to disagree, Worm type clamps, as I learned in tech school, do not have a round clamping surface. This leads to uneven pressure and leaks. you can see it if you just tighten it to about how tight it will be and then hold it up in the air and look at it. Or, you could just look at a used one that was recently removed from a car. There are 2 corners at the end of the worm housing. They also extrude rubber through the worm slots and damage the hose. OK for a radiator hose I guess, if you feel lucky, but pretty scary on fuel. In the 1990s, the quality of them got so bad that they would release the worm with a snap, unwind, and fall off, sometimes days after being tightened. Admittedly they are a little better now. I don't use them at all if I can avoid it. Every clamp pictured so far is better than a worm clamp, although all of them are harder to use, I'll give you that. As for the spring clamps, they are about the roundest of the bunch. About 4 or 5 years ago, as preventative maintenance I replaced all the original coolant hoses on my 1990 300,000+ mile Mazda Miata. Three or four of the spring clamps were weak or damaged. I just got replacements for the marginal ones when I ordered the new hoses. No leaks ever. If GM cant make those clamps work, maybe they need lessons.