Bloo

2 cylinders in 1922?! Must be steam. Stanley?

Before taking it apart, I would lightly drag a tiny file, like a points file or maybe a nail file through the points lightly if it will fit. Maybe one or 2 drags at first. Less is more. Try pressing down on that thing in the middle to open the points. Avoid anything sandpaper-like because it could leave grit behind, and that causes the points to burn. Afterward, drag paper soaked in brake cleaner or some volatile solvent through the points to be sure you aren't leaving trash in there. Isopropyl would work too. See if it honks. If a tiny file won't fit, I'd try just the paper soaked in brake cleaner. If that doesn't work, you will have to loosen or disassemble, and then readjust from scratch as @1957Birdman advised. The relay clicking is a good sign, but it doesn't necessarily mean it works. The points in it might need the same treatment I described above. I would test these horns by connecting them directly to a car battery. That leaves the relay out of it. I think sandblasting that internally was ill advised, even with such light media. Magnet wire insulation of the era is very fragile. Speaking of insulation, you'd better do something about that bare spot on the white cloth wire. It looks close to ground. Maybe a little "liquid electrical tape" applied with a toothpick? Good luck with it. Let us know how it goes.

Getting back to Mariiboops question, a little more in depth, it *IS* possible to change the range of an ammeter. at least if you need to change it in the upward direction, with a shunt. All accessories need to be on the Generator/Alternator side of the ammeter, except the horn. The horn is an exception probably because if it stuck it is (in effect) a dead short and might burn up the ammeter. The battery has hundreds of amps available. The stock Generator, maybe 40 amps or less. OK, a lot of guessing follows, so no guarantees about what might happen. The stock charging system was probably capable of 30 or 40 amps, and the ammeter was wired as flowmeter as normal, showing current ONLY in and out of the battery. ALL accessories are wired to the Generator/Alternator side, and NOTHING extra to the battery post. A typical alternator from years ago makes about 50-60 amps maximum. That's too much for a typical 50s ammeter, but not that much too much, and it can probably take it, at least for short periods of time. The only thing deciding how much current to draw at a given moment is the battery. On a system with a voltage regulator, which these are, when charging, a battery will draw very little current when completely dead, draw a whole bunch when partly charged, and taper off to almost nothing as it gets fully charged. In normal operation with a charged battery the ammeter would normally never see the 50-60 amps such an alternator can produce. It will see a high spike when the engine is first started, as it replaces some of the energy used by the starter, and then taper off quickly. The only time the ammeter would see a sustained 50-60 amps (in theory) is when the battery is way down in charge but not completely flat. I am *guessing* that the ammeter would be pegged, but could probably take it for a little while without damage as the battery gets charged. Alternators of 160 amps 200 amps or more have become common. I doubt a car exists that needs all that. If used in a conversion, it would still work, and the ammeter would normally not burn up because there would be a spike right after starting, and it would taper off just like normal. What would happen if the battery was partly dead? I don't know. That would depend on the battery, and how much current it decided to draw while partially charged. It would depend on the battery size and a bunch of other factors I cannot estimate. The point is there would be 160+ amps available to possibly burn, literally burn, the ammeter. Also the associated wiring. On a cold morning with a low battery, it is a good possibility. Also there is now 160+ amps for a shorted horn to burn up the ammeter if it happens to be stuck while the engine is running. You can raise the scale on an ammeter with a shunt. Crimp and solder some uninsulated ring terminals on some short pieces of small solid bare copper wire, I think I would start with 20 and 22 gauge or so, in a configuration so it bolts down solid between the posts of the ammeter. The ammeter posts are electrically hot, so make any changes with engine off and battery disconnected. Make all shunts exactly the same length so you can compare. This rasies the full scale value of the ammeter. How much? Well you need a charging system tester for that, like a Snap-On AVR, or a Sun VAT-40, or some cheaper equipment that does the same thing. With the inductive clamp abound the alternator wire, and the battery clamps on the battery posts, engine running at a fast idle or cruise speed, increase the load on the battery while watching the ammeter on the dash. Read amps off of the tester when you get the dash ammeter to full scale. This is your new full scale value. Only do this for a few seconds, long enough to read. The tester is going to get HOT. You'll probably need to make and try a bunch of shunts of the same short length with different gauges of small solid bare wire. Smaller wire raises the full scale value less, bigger wires raise it more. The downside to this is if you make full scale say 160 amps, it becomes almost impossible to see the maybe 2 amp normal charge that you see when going down the road with a fully charged battery. Also you are going to need bigger wiring. These are a couple of reasons why modern cars with huge alternators use voltmeters to monitor the charging system instead of ammeters.

In theory, yes. In practice, no. Half the power produced by the battery and/or alternator would have to be dissipated (wasted) as heat by the resistor. Keep in mind that 6v items use double the current, so when using them on 12 volts the total wattage needed is double what a native 12 volt device needs. In the case of a starter, that number is a bit less than expected, for reasons way to long and drawn out for this post, but would still be a few kilowatts. If one completely separated the starting and charging system, the situation is better, but the answer is still no because there is no resistor that will drop a constant 6 volts. It varies due to how much current is being drawn (see Ohms Law) and would result in completely unpredictable voltage in-between charging voltage (about 14-1/2 volts) and zero. If you are going to convert, the best way is to deal with accessories individually. Some will work OK on individual resistors and some won't. The resistor will have to waste the exact amount of power that the accessory uses. The resistors are going to get hot, so allow airspace so they cant catch anything on fire. For bulbs, It's better to just change them to the correct voltage. On accessories that aren't a constant load, something more sophisticated than a resistor is usually needed. Linear regulators (Runtz, etc.) work but must waste the same amount of power as the accessory, just like a resistor. The difference is they can hold a constant 6 volts. Little DC-DC buck converters could also work, and waste far less power as heat compared to the accessory they are powering. They get around ohms law (sort of) by changing the power to AC, using a transformer, then changing it back to DC. In my opinion they are unlikely to be reliable over the long term in a car. They also generate a bunch of electrical noise that is probably going to get into the radio if you have one. There are plenty of affordable Chinese buck converters all over Amazon for those who want to experiment. In my opinion it is all way too much screwing around, and for otherwise stock cars, no benefit. I'll never do it again. Some people just want to, or have some 12 volt accessory they can't live without that forces them down this path. To each his own.

I don't know what I would do. You'd better at least go look.

Does this have marks "D" and "C" or something like that and a needle that swings both ways? If so, it is an ammeter not a voltmeter, and does not care one whit about voltage. If that is the case, it will work fine, unless the new charging system is capable of way more current (amps) than the old one. If the new system is a lot bigger (in amps) it will still work fine 90+ percent of the time, but there is a good possibility that it might burn up the gauge suddenly on some cold morning if the battery is about exactly half dead.

This point cannot be overstated. The service manual would have you weighing the float on a grams scale to see if it has sunk. Someone unfamiliar with these carburetors and floats might think that is OK because the service manual said so. It isn't OK. When the cars were in daily use, these floats usually lasted about 80K miles and then sunk. NEVER put a used nitrophyl float back in. hursst did send it to a Quadrajet specialist, so it probably got a new float.

The fronts look like normal front wheel bearings, not sure if balls or tapered rollers but it shouldn't matter. Remove the cotter pin, the nut, and the washer and then pull. The bearing should come out. If you don't quite know what to expect, thread the nut back on a few threads to help catch the bearing when it comes out. The wheel should just come off. Watch out for the possibility that the threads could be reverse on one side. The nut should be loose enough to turn a little once you remove the cotter pin, and you should be able to tell if one side is backwards or not. On the back, it is probably a taper and you probably need a special tool that threads onto the hub, and has a central screw that you tighten to pull the wheel. There used to be a guy who custom made tools like this for various cars, though I think he retired or maybe passed away. I've not heard of anyone else doing it. Others may know more about that. You may need to have a machinist make one. In all cases, front and rear, the brakes could impede your ability to get the wheels off. You may need to back off brake adjustments, and on a car that old, you really need to know how the adjustments work ahead of time. If you can get a factory shop manual for it that would be a good place to start. I would also remove the fronts first because they are easy, and you can work out what if anything needs to be done to loosen the brakes before you tackle the much tougher rears. 28x.5.50 is probably the old sizing system, going by outer diameter and a 100% aspect ratio. Simply put, subtract 5.5 from 28 twice. That leaves you with a 17 inch rim. The 17 inches is measured down in the rim where the tire bead seats, not the outer diameter of the rim. In slightly more modern sizes, that would be equivalent to 5.50-17. 5.50-19 sounds more likely to be a common size in 1930, but you can measure the rim to find out which is right. Use only hickory for spokes.

Probably Wood Fiber. Asbestos is not so likely in places where extreme heat resistance is not required. Anything is possible though. The most common color for asbestos is a dirty off-white, not tan, but again, anything is possible. Common tan colored materials under car floors are Jute, Coconut, and Wood Fiber. Of those I wouldn't worry too much unless it is coconut. That is extremely flammable, ridiculously so. All are tan, but Wood Fiber is the most particleboard-like. "Celotex" was a common brand.

Use soft ones if you want to. I wouldn't. Brass might not be a good idea either, but it work hardens fast and gets very hard. It probably isn't as bad as it sounds. I doubt it will compress much. You also don't have the nut digging into it. It's against a flat machined surface. Nuts dig into soft steel washers. The metal of the washer squirts into any available void. It is not confidence inspiring. I don't like them too much even in situations where it doesn't matter.

But you might want to be careful with it and keep speed down for a few miles right after you tighten it up. Standard procedure in the old days.

Really tight. It affects bearing clearance. You might be limited by the quality of the bolts, typical prewar metallurgy (not good). There are default torque tables by size. You might need to assume soft (grade 2) but I would maybe go a bit too tight because it is a rod. Since you have an actual number from @mikewest and @JFranklin i'd use that instead. It's too early for torque wrenches. Specs started appearing about 1941. The manual probably said "tight". In other words not stripped, but tight. That isn't much help, but thats how it was. One method was to tap sideways with a mallet. You should be able to. Quite a few of the 4cyl Chevy guys swear by this, and don't trust plastigage. There shouldn't be different looseness on different rods. Tight is good. They should all have the same tightness on the journals. If you don't have correct thicknesses to make that happen in the 3 sizes you have, make some shims. I might also try plastigage. Bad things happen when connecting rod bolts loosen, and that is exactly what would happen if a soft washer compressed. Soft washers are just begging for trouble. Get the best you can get. Grade 8 or better.

It's facebook, and they are widely known for not having appropriate make model and year options. if the owner knew better he probably still couldn't do anything about it. I am not on facebook, so I have not experienced this myself. I have read enough ads where the seller was complaining about it in the text of the ad, that I am inclined to believe it.

They are not consistent across brands, nor across years of the same brand. Some were the same over a period of time. The "upside down" 14 inch Ford wheels of the late 50s through the very early 60s can all interchange hubcaps with each other. Mopar 14-15 inch from about 1968 through the end of dog dish hubcaps, including the slotted police wheels of the 1980s can interchange hubcaps with each other. I can't think of any other ranges I am sure of. Industry wide, there was a ton of variation back in the 50s-80s period, and cars often had one wheel that had been replaced and did not match. Using hubcaps like this if you had a wrong wheel usually meant going to the junkyard and digging through hundreds of wheels until you got an exact match. They all had hundreds to dig through, too. Not anymore. I hope you get enough responses here to make your job a little easier, but I suspect you will have to keep doing it about like you have been. Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

Do you have... ? 1) A separate signal light wire running to each corner of the car? Originally, for instance, there would have been only one wire running from the driver/dash/hood area to the back of the car for the brake lights. There needs to be two. You can repurpose the brake light wire for one side if you like, or you can just add two new wires from the turn signal switch to the back, and abandon the old brake light wire in place. In the front, you'll most likely need 2 new wires. 2) The brake light switch wire connected to the turn signal switch? It originally went to the back to power the brake lights. It goes to the turn signal switch now instead. If you don't want to modify the wire, you can disconnect it and abandon it in place, and run a new wire from the brake light switch to the turn signal switch.

Jute padding is simply not available easily, and not available at all from US based suppliers as far as I know. "Jute" sold in the US is made from shredded old clothes rather than jute, and is used for carpet padding. It is typically thicker than 1/8 inch. I am not sure how thin you could get it as I have never tried to buy any that thin. The shredded old clothes may actually be better than the real thing, as the shredded material is less absorbent and hangs on to water less once soaked than the real thing. I googled real jute to death several years ago, as deep as the rabbit hole would go, and discovered only one(!) company that claimed to supply it. They were located in the UK. Again, I wasn't looking for something as thin as you are. I suspect you need to substitute something else, maybe Dacron or cotton.

Just put one in it. Seriously. They aren't expensive. When they fail, it is always intermittent. You can play with it if you like. New ones and theoretically good ones lock solid one way, and drag in the opposite direction. It's funny. They almost never stop working in Chrysler gear reduction starters. I've seen them worn so loose you could just spin them in the reverse direction and the crimped outer shell was loose, and still working fine. In Ford sliding pole starters on the other hand, the drive always seems to be the first thing to go, and it wont look or feel like there is anything wrong. If I have one of those apart for any reason it gets a new drive, even if it was working fine. No exceptions. In GM starters, the drives are pretty reliable but they do occasionally fail. You could probably make a good case that in a complete overhaul it should get a new one, but if there are no signs of trouble, I wouldn't call it strictly necessary. In your case though, all signs point to the starter drive. Replace it. You don't even need to tear the starter clear down. Get the solenoid and spring off, take the fork pivot bolt out, take the 2 bolts that hold it all together out. Turn it up on its tail, and take the nose off, while holding everything else down. You might need to hold down on the center of the shaft with a screwdriver or something. The goal is to not slide the armature out of the brushes, which are at the back. Keep track of any washers in front of the drive so you can put them back the same. Slide the new drive, fork, and nose back on and start the bolts. The only annoying part of this teasing the fork around so that it is properly engaged to both the starter drive and the solenoid plunger and you can get the pivot bolt back through the hole in the fork. That might take a few minutes. Merry Christmas!

I think he was probably joking, but "Pro Street" means a car like this: Or maybe this one... Or this:

Well.. looks like it's working.

What @m-mman said. The choke needs to come open as the engine warms. If not, black smoke and poor running.

I remain unconvinced that meter can do positive ground at all. Most 3 wire meters cannot. The manual TerryB posted shows the 2 different "dwell" positions on the switch, but does not say why they exist or which one to use when. Are they the same? The reading in your picture is 16 degrees on an 8 cylinder, and 32 degrees on a 4 cylinder, assuming the dwell meter is doing what it should. As in my earlier post, if the meter can show 0 degrees with the points open and 45(90 4cyl) degrees with the points closed, and not pegged at either end of the meter, you can believe the 16(32 4cyl) degree reading. If it does the exact opposite, and is not pegged at either end of the meter, you can read the scale backwards. That would be 34(68 4cyl) degrees in the picture. If it does not go to one end of the scale with the points open, and the other end with the points closed, without pegging, then the dwell readings are completely meaningless.

I would have a good look at the choke when you get it running again. It's pretty unlikely a coil could be responsible for the smoking. This sounds like a classic choke problem. I suggest checking the coils again. It is often hard to get a good connection with your meter on any terminal that involves spark. I don't know why, it just is. There should be continutiy between all 3 terminals. If you are using a continuity beeper, don't rely on it. Use ohms. I don't know how many ohms offhand, but there should be connection of some sort between all 3 terminals. On a positive ground car, the (+) on the replacement coil goes to the points wire. If you get it backwards, it doesn't harm anything but the spark will be weaker. For now, I would see if you have spark at all. Put the end of the coil wire (high voltage wire) close to ground somewhere, maybe 1/4" or 1/8" away, and crank. See if you have spark. Nice car! Welcome to the forum.

Ouch...

I've not had much luck with that on 6 volt cars. I'm restoring a period 6V tachometer, but it isn't working yet. There are optical tachometers used to set RPM on diesel engines, and the best advice I can give is to try to borrow or rent one. Don't buy the harbor freight one. I did and it is truly worse than useless. Another possibility is an Innova 3568 timing light. It works fine on 6V (unlike most similar lights), just connect polarity correctly at the battery. It uses the inductive clip for RPM, so no coil connection, and no questions about polarity or battery voltage for the RPM sensing part. I've not had much underhood time with mine yet, but RPM *seems* to be accurate. Of course I don't have anything else to compare it to.

Lee H, thanks for that! Still though, I think the points have to be staggered 45 degrees for an even fire V8. The slight offset seen on more modern dual point designs couldn't work because there are only 4 lobes. The staggering magic must be in the cam. Consider this, maybe the first set of points opens to fire, but then doesn't close because of a really long lobe. After all the next opening ramp of a lobe for the first set of points is 90 degrees away. 45 degrees later, a lobe opens the second set of points and fires, because the first set of points is still open. Shortly after the second set fires, the first set of points closes, as it's cam lobe is more than 45 degrees long, but less than 90 degrees. The second set of points is still open, as it's cam lobe is also more than 45 degrees long but less than 90 degrees. Another 45 degrees later, the first set opens and fires again. Shortly after that, the second set closes, and so on. You would be effectively using one set of points to make and the other to break, just like a more modern dual point setup with 8 lobes and the points slightly offset from 45 degrees, except that the make points and the break points would alternate. My head hurts.