Bloo

Call them. Last I heard they had only 600:16. That was a while ago.

No The crank is out 180 degrees EVERY OTHER rotation, because it turns twice as fast as the cam. It's completely normal. It IS, however, possible for the distributor to be out 180 degrees with relation to the cam, because it turns the same speed as the cam. This is NOT your problem. If it were simply 180 degrees out, it could not run at all. Its impossible. I would double check the ignition timing again, and the firing order. Could the wires be put on the distributor incorrectly? See which way the distributor turns, put on #1, then follow the firing order around the distributor in the direction the rotor turns. To be clear, when you put the #1 wire on, the engine should be on top dead center of the COMPRESSION STROKE for cylinder #1. Remember this only happens EVERY OTHER turn of the crank. Put #1 on the post the rotor is pointing at. You may need to advance the timing a little bit to get it to start. To advance, turn the distributor SLIGHTLY in the OPPOSITE direction the rotor turns. If its kicking back while trying to start use less advance. If that doesn't help go back to the basics, and do a compression test and a leakdown test. Good luck!

That looks like a Delco solenoid to me. Is it? On a Chrysler? ALMOST everything on that solenoid is rebuildable. The adjustment on the front just sets the pinion depth. There should be a spec in the manual for that. The copper disc has a little spring so that it can bottom out on the copper bolts a little before the solenoid bottoms out. Copper discs if not available can often be taken off and turned upside down. Copper bolts often have half of the heads burned off. They can be replaced. If not available sometimes they can be turned around backwards to get the full height back around the side that contacts the disc. The only thing that cant be fixed is a bad winding. There are 2 windings, check continuity on each of the two windings. I would really need to see the manual to tell you more. Is there a relay inside the cover? If so, look for one winding to be from one of the relay contacts to one of the copper bolts on the solenoid. The other one should be from the same relay contact but to ground. If the windings are good, you can rebuild it. If not, its gonna be expensive. Good luck.

The first thing to do is to check if the gearing is ok. Gearing is a separate issue from speedometer calibration. Take it out and drive it 10 miles, while paying close attention odometer and to the mile makers. If you gained a tenth, the speedometer is geared 1% fast. If it gains a mile, thats 10% fast, etc. Gearing is fixed with the little set of speedometer drive gears in the transmission. The steps (for different gears) are usually around 5%. A different tire size can also make a correction. If the speeedometer still reads wrong, then it needs calibration. You could drive 60mph (one mile a minute) by the speedometer for 10 miles, and have a passenger time you with a stopwatch. It should be exactly 10 minutes. You can caluclate how much change you need to make from there. I don't know about the magnet. I usually get the gearing right and let a speedometer shop calibrate the head if it needs it (it usually doesnt).

For crankcase ventilation to work you need 2 things, 1) a way for air to get in and 2) a way for air to get out. The air coming in must be filtered or dirt will be sucked into your crankcase. On a draft tube system the way in is usually a breather cap and the filter is in it. The draft tube creates a suction when the car is moving, and air flows in the breather cap and out the draft tube, hopefully taking the crankcase vapors out with the air. Draft tube systems left to their own devices would suck oil out. There has to be a way to separate the oil from the air. I don't know how the nailhead accomplished this, but for example on a Chevrolet 283, there is a can shaped thing with a series of baffles that seperates the oil and drains it back into the lifter valley. On a Ford 352, there was a steel or copper mesh like the one used in the kitchen to scrub pots. It can cake up with carbon and plug. You need to get that draft tube unplugged, and the oil separator, if there is one, also unplugged. Just connecting a PCV valve isn't going to accomplish what you want. If the draft tube is unplugged, the pcv will try to suck dirt up the tube. If it's plugged, its gonna create a vacuum in the crankcase and probably interfere with ring sealing. If the engine has a lot of blowby, draft tube systems tend to smoke out the tube at stoplights. It might just be a little. On the other hand, if you have a lot of blowby it can look like the car is on fire. I had a Ford like that. Pcv can help. You still need a way for the air to get in, and a way for it to get out. The breather cap is the way for filtered air to come in, and the PCV valve is the way out. On older engines, this usually means putting the valve in the hole designed for the draft tube. More modern systems put the breather cap on one valve cover and the pcv on the other. Any leftover breather tube hole would need to be plugged. This ventilates the rocker areas better but tends to leak more oil on the outside of the valve covers. Now, about that oil scum around your breather cap. If your engine is not basically brand new, with perfectly sealing rings, its normal. Every old car I have owned with a breather cap did this. No pcv system EVER keeps up all the time. The manifold vacuum cannot support enough flow for that without making the engine run like crap. When it doesn't keep up, oil vapors will come out the breather cap. In the 80s, they plumbed the breather cap vent up to the air cleaner. That just got the oil all over the air cleaner. On systems that have the PCV valve in the opposite-side valve cover, there has to be a baffle under the hole to keep the oil from the rockers from getting sucked up the pcv valve. Some aftermarket valve covers omit the baffle. Without the baffle the oil consumption will be astonishingly high. I wouldn't get too concerned about the flow rating of the valve. If you have a smooth idling cam, Dynaflow, high rearend gears, etc. then one from any similar displacement smooth idling automatic will be fine. Probably even a Chevy 350 one will be fine. The spring isn't supposed to be strong enough to hold the valve shut. They basically rattle. They are open at idle. Its normal. Some early systems didn't have a valve at all, just an orofice to restrict flow. The downside is if the engine backfires, it can cause a crankcase explosion. The valve is supposed to slam shut and prevent the fire from getting to the crankcase vapors. Supplying vacuum to a PCV valve is the tricky part. It is a huge vacuum leak. The trick is not making the car run like it has a huge vacuum leak. First, you are limited by the engine itself in how much air you can let in (the flow rating of the valve determines how much actually gets in). Then you must mix the air in such a way that it does not screw up the fuel distribution. This is toughest at idle. Just hooking it to a power brake nipple or whatever will not work well, you will have a horribly lean cylinder or two. Almost all factory PCV systems mix the air with the fuel/air mixture coming out of the idle jets. The PCV port will split and come out right under them. Sometimes its built in to the throttle body of the carburetor, sometimes its a plate under, but in 99.9 percent of all cases, this is how its done. The other 0.1 percent don't work very well. If you cant mix the air in under the jets, you would be way better off with a draft tube. Good luck with the project!

Sounds good, but what route in a prewar car like the ones Brass Is Best posted? Who has done it and which way did you go? Assuming your prewar car is not a Buick Century or a supercharged Graham or something, are there slow enough roads today?

I have an excellent one that is branded "Pacific Power Batteries", but I suspect that is a regional brand. I'm in Washington State. I wouldn't convert it to 12v. Most 12v conversions I have seen are about 75%-90% working. There is always something that doesn't work right with the conversion, some gauge, or the radio, or a heater motor, etc, and then you open the hood and theres an alternator. I'm sure there are some bad designs out there, but generally speaking, the engineers designed these things to work on 6 volts and they did. They do crank slower, but this is by design. It just sounds odd today. At 6v, current is twice as high as it would be at 12v to do the same work, so clean connections a must, as is larger wire in the battery cables. Generally speaking, the ones sold at parts stores for 12v cars are not big enough. Why do you need it to crank for a few minutes? Most 12v cars cant do that.

No documentation would be needed in the US. In 1975 the only common wheel diameters for cars were 13" , 14" , and 15". Anything larger in diameter would have been for a very old car or a truck. Wider 15" (and 14" and 13") tires and wheels were readily available. You just bought them and put them on. No one had to approve a different size. It is still like this, but today the common sizes are 16" and larger.