Bloo

I bought 28baker's socket, but it is incomplete, and it is also not exactly the right one, it is for single filament. It is a good start, and I will try to make it work (better than what I had before!). I am still looking for a complete (wires could be bad, and thats ok) 2330 prefocus socket if anyone has one for sale.

Hi 28baker. I tried to find yours on ebay, but couldn't. I did find another Standard S-33 from user "spotscarsalvage" and it looks to be a socket for a sealed beam. Are we talking about the same thing? I am looking for one of the sockets used before sealed beams came out in 1940. All the best EDIT: found it and bought it, thank you!

Yes. One should be sure there is grease/oil on the balls and races so they don't rust. Ball bearings are more mechanically stable. Factory setups with ball bearings had trouble due to rust and wear (usually caused by lack of maintenance), and in some designs the damage would be to the housing itself. The factory systems on some makes switched from bearings to a pivot. Pivot systems last a lot longer when neglected, but the dwell changes when the vacuum advance moves. That looks like a very nice high-quality piece in the pictures.

If it works ok I wouldn't worry about it. Also, there are 6 volt coils that use a resistor, but no normal shaped ones that would bolt on a Pontiac and fit right, at least none I know of, and I have looked. That ain't right. Cadillacs were positive ground through the mid 30s or so, unlike most other GM cars. Those Cadillacs had different coils listed for positive ground. Also there were "electrolocks" on some or maybe all GM cars in the 30s. There were multiple types of coil for multiple types of electrolock. Assuming your Pontiac has a normal looking coil with a tower and 2 small terminals next to it (I think so), the NAPA coil should be the right one.

I'm guessing it is seal at the front of the driveshaft? Any markings on it?

1956 Oldsmobile.

Look for a bad ground on one of the rear lights..

Those batteries are in parallel. That just gets you 6 volts with more current capacity. Series is what it takes to get 12v.

Good to see it on the road!

No frame on this car other than a stubby subframe at the front. The body ground does not take any starter load. The strap is a little one that runs from the back of the engine up to the firewall. They hardly ever fail, but it should be checked.

Heat promotes corrosion. It will work on the exhaust, but would be better somewhere else. The block is also slightly better than the head, but now I am splitting hairs.

Found these old pictures of the rubber wiring I found in the right headlight when I brought the car home 2 years ago. It almost looks white doesn't it? Black rubber is what has been found inside Chevrolets (and one Canadian Pontiac) from the same time period by people over on the VCCA forum.

My 36 Pontiac front bumper is out getting rechromed, so it was time to deal with the missing bolt. Unfortunately it was not a normal bumper bolt. There are not square holes in the bumper, so a modern replacement won't fit. To keep the head from turning, there are only a couple of little bumps that catch in a shallow groove in the bumper. Here is an original. So the plan was to drill a hole through the new bolt, and the put it in the lathe and remove the square part. Then, put a pin in the hole. Braze the pin in place. That made the proper "bumps", but they were too tall, so back into the lathe it went. Here it is after turning the bumps down to the correct height, and cleaning things up a bit with a Dremel tool. All that is left is to polish up the stainless skin, which is blued from the heat of brazing.

In a couple other threads I mentioned that I am building an analog "charging system voltmeter" for 6 volt systems. This came about due to my frustration with the astonishingly bad performance of my modern digital equipment when I tried to use it on the 36 Pontiac. I figured there might be a few people in here with an electronics background who would be interested in this. To set a voltage regulator, you need to be able to measure voltage with reasonable accuracy, and quite a bit of precision. Since generators don't charge much at idle, driver habits affect how much the battery gets charged. Small changes in charging voltage make a big difference. 0.2 volts would be a typical change to help a battery that stays too low. Then, recheck after a week of driving. Most generator test sets back in the day had big meters that spread the scale out. A few even had a scale that started above zero to spread it out even more. I had a 1940s Allen 6 volt test set back in the day that was wonderful. I wish I still had it. I decided I wanted a scale of 6 to 9 Volts. The voltage of a charged 6 volt battery is 6.3 volts. Charging voltage is in the neighborhood of 7.5, and there would be headroom to see what a horribly mis-adjusted regulator is set at. New replacement meters don't usually have scales in multiples of three. I found a surplus milliammeter on Ebay with a 0-300 scale on it, a nice big face, and needs 1 milliamp to swing to full scale. Making the scale not start at zero is a technical problem. A friend suggested a TL-431 Integrated Circuit and drew out an idea of how it might be done. In the end, the TL-431 didn't work out, but I used his concept with an LM-4041-ADJ. It is a voltage reference chip like the TL-431, but draws less current. Here is a picture of the meter I bought, during one of my early experiments last year. It is reading 7.95 Volts. More to come....

A buzzer-type horn works by breaking the circuit over and over again. If you put them in series, the results could be really screwy. Try it on the bench before putting any time into insulating one horn.

We have "Rain-X" in the US, and it will do the trick. I had my motor rebuilt by Melissa Klein last year, haven't used it much yet but it seems good so far! Vacuum wipers in general probably aren't what you would expect if you have been using a car with electric wipers, but they work. I like Rain-X even when the wipers DO work.

Congratulations! That EFI, and it's way of measuring air, was ahead of it's time. Glad you saved it.

Never, ever, ever give up. Family friends of mine owned, and still own a 60 Electra with Dynaflow. I am not sure how similar that is to your Dynaflow. The 60 could lose reverse if someone inadvertantly shifted into reverse without having the car absolutely, completely stopped. The strut for the reverse band fell out. It happened 2 or 3 times back in the day. It is fixed by putting the strut back in. It was a easy cheap repair by someone who understands Dynaflows, and did not require taking the transmission out of the car.

Cechaflo on Youtube has some interesting stuff. If your friend wont watch I guess that's that. Others in here might find it useful. I hope you find the books you are looking for.

Having no pattern or old trim at all is just a terrible way to start out, doubly so if the car is too old to use foam. I was just taught by someone who already knew, after I had already made a whole bunch of stuff from existing patterns. I have not seen good comprehensive books on the subject. I'll be watching this thread. Maybe @trimacar knows... In broad general terms, you need a big layout table. A piece of plywood covered with cheap fabric, probably cotton, from the local fabric store, stretched tightly and stapled underneath, Some cheap sawhorses will work for legs. Shim it up to match the sewing machine table height, and it becomes dual-purpose, as an extension of your sewing machine table. You can make patterns from Kraft paper, Butcher paper, or in some cases thin posterboard. Try them where they will be. The trouble is that if the stuffing is new, it is going to be much bigger than when it is installed. You might just have to sew the piece all up out of cheap vinyl or scraps, and see how bad is, and start over. Repeat until usable. Yuck. It is much easier with foam if the car is new enough to use it, especially if it is original foam, as you can lay out your pattern, push it down in the mark from the old seam, and then add for a seam when you lay it out. You can also, if you have the old covering, lay out the disassembled old parts on top of the new (both upside down) and tack it down (with double headed push pins and a tack hammer) on your layout table. Draw around it. This shortcut works pretty good when you are replacing only a panel or two in an old cover. Some guys do whole projects this way.

Yep... http://www.maserati-alfieri.co.uk/OSCA-01.htm

Not compatible. I have at least entertained the thought of combining the two to get more interesting gear ratios. The Chevrolet torque tube acts as a torque arm, holding against engine torque and braking torque. The Buick torque tube does that, but also locates the axle front to rear. The stuff at the back of the transmission where the u-joint lives is completely different, because the Buick must take fore/aft loads. Just looking at pictures of Buick and Chevrolet transmissions online will show you the difference. There have been more that one Chevrolet axle design, and more than one Buick axle design over the years for use with torque tubes. The Buick ones are always different than Chevrolet, and generally bigger. Also, some on some (but not all) Buicks you can remove the torque tube from the differential carrier. On Chevrolet, the torque tube is permanently attached to the carrier.

Yeah, no button. The vacuum switch is what does it and it is screwed into the intake manifold, with a rod to the throttle linkage or carb.

As others have mentioned, it is really on the manifold or carburetor. Buick had this feature way back (1920s?), and kept it through 1960. You'll hear it called "autostart" around here, although I am not sure if Buick ever used that term. It is automatic, and works on vacuum. If the engine isn't running it will try to restart. This was also used on some other makes, Pontiac for sure. On Buick, I am most familiar with 1937, so here's how it works in 1937: The starter has a solenoid to pull the little drive gear and one-way clutch in. It works just like the one on a more modern GM car of the 60s, 70s, or 80s. But, on the autostart Buick, a little relay hangs on the back of the solenoid. The trigger coil on the little relay has 2 terminals, hot and ground. You feed it 6 volts to crank the car. There is a vacuum switch on the intake manifold. It also has a linkage attached to the throttle. If the throttle is open, and there is no vacuum, the switch is on and the starter should crank (as long as the second little terminal on the back of the relay is grounded. More on that in a minute). When the car starts, the engine has vacuum that turns off the switch and stops cranking the starter. If the vacuum goes away, the starter will re-crank, as long as the throttle is open. A possibility exists where the vacuum could go away with the throttle wide open going up a steep hill, fooling the vacuum switch, and trying to crank the engine when it is already running. For this reason, the second terminal of that little relay gets it's ground through the voltage regulator. 1937 Buick voltage regulators have 5 terminals, one of which is marked "GND" for ground. It is not really the regulator ground, it is a contact that is grounded only when the generator is not charging. Since the little relay gets it's ground from the "GND" contact, the starter cannot try to crank if the generator is charging. You might not have the ground-side protection on a 1936 Buick. I am not sure, but I don't believe they had a voltage regulator, only a cutout. There are more 1936 owners in here. Someone will know.

They might surprise you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Red_Bug