Bloo

You just rebuilt this didn't you? Were there any brass, bronze, copper, or non-steel parts in there? If not, just get the best quality GL-5 hypoid lube you can find. If there were brass, bronze, or copper parts in there, then get something that is "safe for yellow metals", or look in the datasheet (for an oil you are considering) and see how it did on a "copper strip test". I'll leave it to zeke01and others how thick the oil should be. I don't know.

I would start by fixing that, and continue if you still have trouble. I would also be wondering if the coil is drawing too much current, since there has been trouble with 2 different switches now. AFAIK there is no ballast resistor on a 39 Buick.

I think so. IIRC the 232-262-308 engine family were all pressure oiling and the first ones were in 48 models. So, in a stepdown the choice would have been a pressure oiled 6 vs a splasher 8, but in the 46-47 models mentioned in the original post, it would have been the old 3x5 (212ci) splasher 6 vs the splasher 8.

Maybe Crosley?

I can't help but wonder if they were comparing the splasher eight to the pressure-oiled Hornet 6 (and its smaller-displacement relatives).

Don't just cut it all off of if you really aren't gonna replace the wiring harness. The less splices the better if you actually expect tha car to work. Bundle it up and mask it and get it out of your way. Go around it to make it start for now if that is what you want to do. Insulate and repair as necessary later on. it probably isn't as bad as it looks. The block looks nice all cleaned up!

A friend of mine was daily driving a 60 Electra in the early 90s. He had 235-70/15 radials on it. He told me they worked fine, but would hit the frame at full steering lock. The original tires would have had something like an 85% aspect ratio, so unless you buy specialty radials that are really made in the original size (DIamondback and Coker are possible sources for that), the new radial tires are going to be smaller in diameter. This will lower the car a little. It also lowers your gearing a little. The tallest aspect ratio you will find in modern tires is 75%. I think 215-75/15 would probably fit and clear. That is the best I can do until the real 60 Electra owners find their way to this thread. There are several in here, although I imagine most of them are running authentic bias-ply tires. Welcome to the forum!

Can you compare it to the old one? That can be frustrating. 1) In just about any transmission, there is a worm gear around the output shaft, and a "speedometer pinion" in there underneath the fitting. You can pull that out. The piece that holds it in is colloquially called a "bullet". The gear might or might not be able to be removed from the bullet. If you take this apart to inspect the gear, be sure to look inside the hole at the worm gear too. As it's an automatic, there could be a bunch of trans fluid behind the bullet, I don't know. If you have a bad gear, the number of teeth matter, as you might imagine, for calibration. Also, there was very little interchangeability between speedometer gears in those days, so make sure you have the application right, and thirdly look at which way the teeth lean. Getting that wrong and stripping the worm gear inside the transmission is a common mistake. 2) The cable might just not be engaging the square hole in the gear like you thought. Sometimes an old cable gets rounded off and looks fine but does not catch until a new cable is used. Sometimes the cable just needs to be shoved into the gear further. Many cars have more endplay in the cable than you would expect, and it is sometimes possible for everything to hook up and feel good, but the cable is still not far enough into the gear at the transmission end. The square hole in the gear could be stripped, too. Measure the square part of the cable if you think it might be wrong due to faulty manufacturing or something. I don't have much advice about this part. It can drive you crazy. Check it for engagement every way you can think of, and nitpick the little details until it works. 3) Make absolutely sure the speedometer head is not dragging. Pot metal rotting and expanding around the shaft is one possibility. Another thing to be aware of is that there is usually an oil wick for the part that the cable spins, but it is usually inaccessible without disassembling the speedometer. If you suspect it is dry, send it to a speedometer guy and let them go through it. If you are on a tight budget, and can't do that, you might have to get the mechanism out, get your eyeball right up to it, and try to figure out how to get a drop of oil in the wick (which is probably completely enclosed) without getting it out in the mechanism. If you get a wee bit of oil where it shouldn't be there can be big problems. If a tiny bit works its way out and gets on the magnet and drum, the speedometer will peg and maybe bust the needle off.

Mitchell (at least when I last talked to them 2 years ago) do not support these units for installing in torque tubes, except the kits they offer, which are Model A Ford, and early Ford V-8. They would probably sell you parts, but you would be on your own with engineering, machining, welding, etc. to get it into some other torque tube. They DO however sell a universal kit for open drivelines. The Mitchell, is an auxiliary transmission, unlike the other planetary overdrives. It has helical gears and synchromesh. Normally you would have a second lever for it, but a cable would work. The biggest concern for me with an open driveline would be mounting it in such a way to isolate it from the frame (like you would with an engine or transmission). Maybe the kit has something. I was wanting to put one in a torque tube, so I never investigated that issue.

I used to believe like 91 Polo Green that keeping the pictures locally with the content was the way to go. Then, a forum I used to frequent lost the entire picture database in software upgrades THREE TIMES, and they weren't even switching to different brand of forum software. Another forum I was active on lost the picture database twice. I started hosting pictures I post in webspace at my ISP. That lasted longer than posting them on forums, but eventually the ISP was sold, the domain name changed, and it broke all the links. You might as well toss a coin up in the air.

And finally the blades I refilled. I suspect they are too long. I like that they reach high, but they are probably going to hit if they park to the outside like they are supposed to. They are 8 inches long to the end of the metal. Like everything else, they don't match. The one with 2 mounting styles can slide back and forth on it's mounting.

Wiper arms: They don't match, and appear to have a coarser spline that the transmissions they were mounted to.

Here are the wiper transmissions. As you can see, they are a little different. The one pictured to the left is the one that slips.

Here is the wiper motor. Could this be original? I will be checking in the morning about sending it off to CleanSweep or Ficken or something. It would be good to know if this is even the right motor.

I have been trying to get my wipers working on the 1936 Pontiac. Last week, I attempted to buy it some blades, and discovered that apparently I have the wrong style wiper arms. In the interest of getting them working for now, I ordered some wiper blade rubber from ebay and refilled them. Today I tried to get the vacuum motor working. I lubricated it, and put some grease on the little sliding valves. It appeared it was going to work, but now I think it just leaks too badly. A bigger problem was trying to get the linkage to work. Some previous owner had disconnected the linkage on the drivers side. I have a document published some years ago by Bob Shafto and Andy Lee on the restoration of 1936 Pontiacs, and it says the wipers should park to the outside. Working on that assumption, I just couldn't get the linkage to work. I tried it backwards, too. No dice. It turns out someone had put screws in the windshield trim about an inch too long, and at least one of them was in the path of the linkage. I also discovered that on the right wiper transmission, the output shaft was not solidly locked to the gear, and the blade position could drift around a little. What a mess I now have all the parts removed from the car. None of it is the same from side to side. The main thing I want to ask tonight is: Are any of these pieces original from 1936, and if so, which ones?

Wanted: 34x4 tires. They don't need to be very good. Do you have some that are too old to tour on? Bald? If they can be made to hold air and roll, I am interested. I would also be interested in good usable ones. These are for 26 inch straight-sided rims. Other 26 inch sizes could work. I would like to find four of them. What do you have?

That wiring does look a mess from that distance, but if you think its gonna stall the project, don't do it now.

Yeah, what Matt said. I would try to fix it if it were me, but every old car, in daily use, had some things that weren't quite right. Find out how bad it leaks. IMHO fix it anyway. Transmissions are sort of fiddly to check the level in, the car needs to be hot, level, in the correct gear (idling in park on a ford/mercury), its hard to see on the stick. ALWAYS check engine oil when you get gas, BTW. In 1969, someone at the gas station would have done that for you, automatically. Yeah it's possible, but probably not because of that. Some cars just have butchered wiring harnesses, some don't, working properly or not. A radio should take a LONG time to drain the battery, and if it is the stock ford one, it shouldn't do it at all, because it is really OFF when it is off. The 69-70 stock ford radios are useless as radios BTW, definitely a contender for the worst car radio ever built. I wouldn't expect one to work. Call the stock radio a hole plug, and hide the one you intend to use. Use a phone and bluetooth or something. Minor wiring problems can be repaired without changing the harness. A battery drain is more likely a clock or a glovebox light staying on. A bad alternator could also do it. If he let the battery sit for more than a few hours dead, it is hurt, and you can expect to replace it, too. But the right one does? There is only one motor. The linkage fell apart. There are some balls and plastic sockets. West Coast Classic Cougar should have the parts to fix it. I have no idea what the car is worth.

Stainless sounds like a good idea. The thermostat crams up inside the housing, and you need the ring to hold it in. That confused me at first because there was no "shelf" at the flange like you usually see. The thermostat in the pics is almost certainly aftermarket, but I have seen an original Harrison one out of a 37 Buick Roadmaster and it looked nearly identical. It had a bleed hole just like this one does. I doubt it is necessary to have the original type, this one just happens to be. EIther way, make sure the temperature sensing element (the bellows on this, or the copper pellet on a modern stat) is pointed to the hot water.

Early Times Chapter on the subject of engine temperature: More Here: https://web.archive.org/web/20171010103648/http://www.earlytimeschapter.org/coolingsystem.html

This sounds fairly normal to me. Many old cars cannot do this trick very well. My 1936 6cyl runs 180-190 all the time, and doesn't even have a thermostat in it. It should have the 151F unit, and I have bought it one, but I don't expect it to change anything. If the thermostat DIDN'T open, then it is defective, but I suspect you just exceeded the capacity of the cooling system, and so couldn't see when it opened. You could boil it in a pot, or just replace it. My six takes a thermostat that shoves up inside the thermostat housing, and is held in there with a retainer ring about an inch high. I thought all flathead Pontiacs had that setup. Does yours? Everything is a tradeoff. Getting air through the radiator is the most important thing. At speed the fan is unnecessary, and just tends to block the radiator. If you add more blades, it would help at idle, but tend to block the radiator more at speed. More fan capacity also makes a bunch more noise at highway speed and eats horsepower. Pontiacs idle real slow. That doesn't help with slow speed cooling. Fan shrouds help a lot at low speeds, but tend to block part of the radiator. Some guys add an electric fan for stop/go traffic, but I suspect they are making things a lot worse at high speed. Most of the available fans are the photogenic ones with a bunch of tiny blades. Just look through one. It blocks almost the whole area it covers, and the fan wont help you at speed. I took my six on a tour over a mountain in 106F, and got caught behind a couple of really slow(er) cars. It passed the 212 mark on the gauge, and eventually almost pegged. On the way back the same thing happened, and I was near pegged and not even halfway up the hill. I had to leave the group for a bit and go get some air through the radiator, and then come back. I never boiled or spilled any coolant, but it had to be right on the edge! Lots of the other cars in the group did boil that day. Yeah, that sucks. Revving it up while in neutral will make the fan do more. As soon as the water pump stops turning, the coolant flow is drastically reduced. In my area, summers are HOT, and shutting off a hot car was always a no-no, unless you know it is broken and you know it isn't going to come back down. Assuming its still full of coolant, rev it up a little to circulate the coolant around before shutting it off. Even idling is better than shutting off, and would be fine on a car that isn't lacking fan capacity. I seriously doubt you hurt anything. It didn't boil until you shut it off. It probably wasn't THAT hot. That isn't good, but if you didn't get sidelined with vapor-lock/percolation, then that is good. I hear the glass bowl fuel pumps are worse for it. I have not been sidelined yet, at least since returning the fuel system to stock, even in 106F, though one time it did start to run a little flaky for a block or so. Just enough you could tell the fuel system was way too hot. Maybe. I would boil it or just replace it. I think the original has a bleed hole in it, and if the new one doesn't I would consider adding one. The lower temp thermostats were necessary for Alcohol antifreeze.

Do you have a torque tube or an open driveline?

SO which way does it go? And does it matter? Would one direction result in a different compression height? I doubt it, but it is hard to visualize. Also, rod length affects dwell time at TDC, and how quickly the piston falls after leaving TDC. It would be really interesting, I think, to measure piston drop past TDC vs degrees of rotation. Could Humber have made piston height different intentionally trying to compensate for a difference?

Frankly it is hard to tell. This is because most 12v coils use a ballast resistor (sometimes a resistor wire) and are actually running on 7 or 8 volts. What does it measure (+) to (-)? Don't forget to zero your ohmmeter. I would expect something below 1.5 ohms for 6v, possibly as low as 0.75. It has been a long time since I measured one. Perhaps others can answer this better. If it is up around 2 or 3 ohms, I would guess it is a 12V coil for use without a resistor.

I would hesitate until we find out what he has. I suspect he has something that is not covered in the link.