Bloo

Welcome! I have seen this somewhere, but cannot find it right now. That is pretty far back in years for torque wrenches. You may just have to pick a slightly newer Pontiac to get a good guess for the torque spec. I know I have seen the tightening pattern though. EDIT: 60 FT/LB, diagram 174. https://drivcat.com/livedocs/99999.pdf

I wouldn't be concerned about 105 either, but I'm pretty sure you should not be hearing that. When you get time I suggest you nail down which cylinder does that (might not be the one with 105lb!) and then recheck the valve adjustment on that cylinder, ohm test the plug wire, see if there could be a vacuum leak near the intake port, etc.

Every old car with an electric gas gauge needs that but very few got it from the factory. The GM system is extremely sensitive to this because "Empty" on the gauge results when you have 0 ohms from the gauge wire to earth. If there are screws holding the sender into the tank, that is the best place to connect the earth wire from the chassis. If you disconnect the gauge wire from the sender, the gauge should peg because it needs at least 30 ohms to make "Full" and a disconnected wire is nearly infinity. If you short the sender wire to earth, the gauge should go to "Empty". If it will do both those things, the wiring and the gauge are likely fine. Try a nice clean earthing point on the chassis to make the test, so you don't get fooled. If the gauge and wiring pass the test, and the earthing wire doesn't help. the problem is most likely with the sender in the tank.

As RussJagoau already mentioned, do not get hung up on absolute pressure, particularly if you are just trying to ascertain overall wear of the engine. Evenness between cylinders is what it is all about. That will tell you if the engine can most likely be tuned to run well. No two mechanics will come up with the same absolute numbers. A leakdown test will tell you more about the condition of the engine with regard to miles, ring wear, etc. but even that is probably no good if the car has been sitting around a long time. There will be crud on the valve faces, rings that stick, etc. This all makes the engine look worse than it actually is.

Agreed. 1936 Desoto Airflow.

I gather it mounts from the side? If so I think we can eliminate Pontiac, as they only did it for a year (36) and that is not a match.

Was the entire cable hot? Or just an end? If it heating up right at the post, the outside of the post or the inside of the hole is dirty (scrape). If that doesn't fix it, and it still gets hot at the post the connection where the clamp is crimped or cast to the wire of the cable is bad. If you can isolate a spot that gets hot, the problem lies there. If the whole thing is getting hot, maybe the starter draws too much current and needs attention. That could also be the engine's fault if it drags too much, but that is less likely.

I miss his posts. I noticed this a while ago. I hoped it was temporary.

I doubt that is worth screwing around with. By the time you found all the missing parts, it would probably exceed the cost of a better carb. I assume there's a 4 barrel manifold then? I doubt anything like that ever came stock on a 318 of any year.

I saw one in 1984. It is a rear engine rear drive setup, with the engine behind the axle, and up higher than you might expect.

The 59 Dodge wideblock was 326, and I think it was .040 over. The way I remember it an LA318 will take .060 easy as long as there's not severe core shift or anything. Don't take my word for it though, find someone who knows.

The 3 makes no sense to me. Year should be a letter i think? Letters started over in 1965 with "A". I would have guessed both 1974, but I just don't know. Original engine would have started out "B 318". Definitely LA318 blocks though.

Based on a bunch of assumptions, yes. All LA engines had hydraulic lifters except most (all?) 273s. If I remember correctly wideblocks are drilled for them too, although those all had solids except the ones they used in 59 Dodges. Look on the front of the block (facing the radiator), right below the head for stamped numbers. Maybe we can figure out what kind of block it is.

Where is the pad those numbers are stamped on? Maybe post a picture of the engines from further back? 3.91 is a 318

That's the wrong engine. 1966 318 engines are Wideblocks, not LA series engines. Also stuffing 360 pistons in an LA318 is a non starter. If I remember correctly, the cylinder walls are too thin on the LA318 block for that much overbore. LA 273, 318, and 340 engines all have the same stroke and the same crank journal sizes. So does the Wideblock 318 that would have originally come in the car (assuming an "E" for the fifth digit of the VIN). The cranks are mostly interchangeable except for balancing (piston weight compensation). LA360 has larger crank journals and a longer stroke, so the crank does not fit the others. All 360 cranks are cast cranks, all are externally balanced, and you will notice a huge eccentric weight on the harmonic balancer that the others do not have. There would also be weights on the flex plate at the back of the crank. There may be a number stamped on the front of the block just under the head. It might tell you what the block is. It would have started "B 318" on the original engine, again assuming an "E" in the VIN. A similar view of a 1966 318 would look like this: . .

Easy stuff to check: 1) Accelerator pump. With the car warm, choke open, engine off, look down carb throat and open throttle slowly. You should not be able to open the throttle at all without getting a little squirt from the accelerator pump. If you can move the throttle at all without gas coming out it will hesitate. 2) The Choke should be somewhere between halfway shut and shut with the engine cold and about room temp outside temperature (that's a rough guide, don't set it). If it was fine before, it's probably fine now. When the engine is warmed up it should be all the way open. It will feel floppy, nearly all cars of that era did, but it should be all the way open with the engine warmed up, straight up and down. 3) Check points gap or dwell. If there's too little gap (too much dwell), the points could be closing up when the vacuum advance moves them, taking away the spark. 4) Look at the wires inside the distributor. There is a ground wire from the breaker plate (where the points and condenser mount) to the distributor case. It is a special wire to take constant bending when the vacuum advance moves. It is bare on a Ford so it is easy to ascertain it's condition. If it is broke you could lose spark when the vacuum advance moves. There is also the wire to the points. It is also special bendable wire, but is harder to tell if it is broken because it is insulated. It should not stretch.

I wouldn't write off the Model A idea. You will probably want to budget for an overdrive (they're not cheap). Parts are easy and they are easy cars to keep running. An A with overdrive will cruise at 50. Brakes are not terrible (for the era) when set up properly. You could do worse.

Where do you keep it while you are driving? This is going to be a problem in my car. I have been lugging around a big ABC Dry-Chem extinguisher because I have a few of them. It's far from ideal. Halon would be better, but there is still the issue of where to store it.

That pretty much nails it. When you start changing the design, YOU become the engineer. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, if it gets you what you want and you are willing to put in the development time to get things working right, but from TV and other marketing people are led to believe it is easier to just bolt some random stuff on and it will make the car "better". It just isn't so.

What electronic ignition does is remove the need to make tune up adjustments for long periods of time, because the dwell and timing do not change. I would not do it to the Studebaker or any other 6 volt car. My comments about my Pontiac reflect what I was thinking about during my first week with the car. I was troubleshooting a tough driveability problem and thought maybe I had found it when I saw a bunch of random flashes in the wrong places on the distributor machine. Obviously that was a problem that needed fixing, and I fixed it, but it did not help that much. I was too busy chasing the driveability problem to worry about electronic ignition. Sure, I could have shoved a pertronix in there and it would have immediately solved the ill-fitting points issue, but it still would have run like crap, because the points were not the main issue. After the car was fixed I had time to think about 6 volt ignition modules, and what might go into designing one, and how you might clean up the power supply enough to make it live a long time on an electrically dirty 6 volt system, and have enough voltage left over internally for reliable operation while starting, particularly with a low battery. There just isn't very much voltage to work with. My take is it's not impossible, but close.

Also putting electronic ignition on a car to solve a problem is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Troubleshoot and fix, just as was seen in this thread. "Upgrades" done to bad running cars just add more uncertainty (and more troubleshooting time) to the mix. Fix the car first. "Upgrades", if wanted can be done later.

All kidding aside, it might have. That was early in my ownership of the car, and I was pondering how I might get electronic ignition in it. I got pretty serious about investigating it when I figured out that all the brands I was looking at for points were owned by the same company and were probably supplying the same points. I have since decided that converting it was a bad idea, in part because the car is 6 volts, and in part because it destroyed a digital panel meter (volts) in a three mile drive, and then made my test equipment lock up when I tried to figure out why.

What was the source of the points? My 36 Pontiac came to me several years ago with altogether the wrong points in it, causing problems, so changing them was one of the first things I did. The new ones I bought were a brand that used to be one of the most respected in the business. I saw someone online with a similar Pontiac complaining about these particular points, said he could not get them to work, firing inbeteween cylinders, etc. I noticed when I put them in that the hole that goes around the pivot was the wrong size. I didn't really see how it could work correctly like that, but I went ahead and put them in. They did not work well. I put the distributor on the distributor machine, and found the points bouncing and firing almost at random just like you might expect. I figured out afterwards that several old respected ignition brands are under the same ownership now, including the brand I bought. My solution was to get on Ebay and buy several sets of NORS points in old dusty boxes. They are an off brand but work fine. EDIT: On a second look, on the points in the picture the return spring is entirely missing. It is sometimes provided as a separate piece. Sometimes people fail to put them in. The only return spring present there is the copper strap....

That yardage screams 1980s to me, and in 1984 I might have even been able to tell you what grain and color from those pics. Leather was fairly common in early 50s closed Pontiacs at a time you didn't see it in too many closed cars. It was in more deluxe models, and not completely plain like that. For what it's worth, the seams look fairly straight, and would be easy to live with for a daily driver.

Some 37 have a huge copper washer at the removable bottom of the cylinder. Not sure about 36. Rubber does not sound right to me. Let us know what Bob's had to say about it.