Bloo

It's an aftermarket part called a "passing eye". Demand exceeds supply by a lot. Expensive, and usually full of pits. Watch ebay...

I am the one who suggested it might be upside down, and after digging for pictures, I agree with @MCHinson. The gear is in the correct orientation.

Keep trying, you'll get there.

Gauges, heater blowers, electric wipers, radios, basically everything else. The starter doesn't like it either but it usually lasts quite a while, and isn't a big deal as long as it is one you can still buy new parts for.

And a reason it shouldn't be popular, except in street rods, etc. where all the electrical equipment is newer and meant for 12 volts. Running things on double their intended voltage has always been problematic because you have to waste half the power any of the 6 volt equipment uses. That is even worse than it sounds because the current drawn by a 6 volt device is double what it would have been for a native 12 volt device, and you have to get rid of the heat somewhere. And then if the current drawn by the devices you are powering is not constant, you need something more sophisticated than resistors or the supply voltage swings all over the place (gauges come to mind). Then there is the additional complication that probably 50% or more of those 6 volt systems were positive ground originally. Some devices can work with the positive and negative reversed. Others just burn up. Ohms Law and Kirchoff's law aren't going away. If a majority of people in the hobby understood electricity, 12 volt conversions would be rare.

They weren't there in 1950.

Approximately 1937. The story of Pontiac heaters in that period is going to be real tough to figure out. This might also be the late half-year 1936 heater, but I really doubt it. I think this is new for 1937 models. Mid year changes were rampant at that time. For heaters and radios, Pontiac often provided instructions and sometimes extra parts for installing this years accessory in last years car and vice versa. This in addition to any mid year changes in the heater or radio itself which also happened. You would definitely not be wrong putting that one in the picture in a 1937 Pontiac, no matter which car model. I believe it is number 983523, though I'm not sure what is up with the mounting. Note that there is also a 1937 "deluxe" heater that looks almost exactly the same but is larger. Master (lower cost) and Deluxe (higher cost) were model names of both the cars and accessories in that period, in 1936 that was true for sure. However, there was no expectation whatever that Master accessories necessarily go in Master cars or that Deluxe accessories go in Deluxe cars. These are dealer installed, and it boiled down to which accessory (Master or Deluxe) the customer picked. I think they had dropped the Master model name from the car line for 1937 anyway, but had new Master and Deluxe radios and heaters available.

Maybe a little of both? It appears to me that it is in 2 gears, or at least a gear and a half. Look at the notches for the detent balls and how they line up to the detent ball holes. If it were in neutral, the center notch would be under the detent ball hole in both cases. The lower rail looks far enough forward to be lined up with the rear notch. That would be in gear. The upper rail is also has it's center notch forward of the hole. It is at least halfway in gear, if not all the way in gear. Both rails need to be back with the center notch aligned under the detent ball hole. Is the gear marked in red blocking motion? If so, something might be assembled wrong back there. The rail needs to go to the back from it's current position for sure. Could the gear be on upside down? I think that may be it.

To the point of absurdity, unfortunately. To do the same work at 6 volts that you were doing at 12 volts takes double the current. So, pulling some numbers out of the air, if it took 200 amps to jump a 12v car, you could expect to need 400 amps out of your pack. The battery would need to be twice as big to supply that current. Then you would need to waste half it's power as heat in the resistor. 400 amps x 6 volts = 2400 watts you would need to waste. That is going to get HOT. For comparison, a 120 volt electric portable space heater someone might use in a house typically dissipates 1500 watts as heat.

Happy to help....

Well it has to have one whether it has one or not. In the 60s it was still pretty common to just rely on whatever metal was nearby to be a good ground. It often wasn't good, and today it almost never is. If there is a question, test by attaching a wire to some solid ground like the negative battery post or the block or something and touching the other end to the shell of the bulb socket. Are you sure there is not a connector somewhere in that wire harness that runs from the front to the back of the car? I don't know if Buick did that on the 67 Electra, but it was common practice in the 60s, and it would kind of surprise me if they didn't. If the connector is there and has been wet, you might find it's blades reduced to a bunch of blue powder.

Anybody got one with an E-Stick?

I have never been able to figure that out. I have seen so many variations on interior in these 64s and 65s I can't make any sense out of it.

Run it up off idle to check, maybe 1500RPM or a little more.

Pretty much. The top of the tubes should be completely covered up, but not much more than that. It's true of most old cars prior to the 70s. Water expands with heat. It has to go somewhere. Some cars have a surge tank, a small tank under cooling system pressure to act as the airspace so the radiator can stay completely full. Others have an overflow tank (not under pressure) that takes the extra coolant from expansion and returns it later by siphoning when the engine cools. To the best of my knowledge a Buick Eight has neither and is going to require a bunch of airspace in the top tank of the radiator.

If you do have a cylinder not firing that will stink to high heaven. If that is the case, 1/6 of the fuel/air mixture that the car uses is getting dumped in the exhaust. Some of that will burn in the exhaust but a lot will not. Rich or lean doesn't really matter when you have that going on, other than to help troubleshoot the cause. Either way, rich or lean, If you had an exhaust analyzer it would be pegged on the HC scale. HC represents raw gas more or less. The compression test is a good place to start. Let us know how that goes.

"Carb bowl" goes to that white fitting. Tank goes to the gas tank vent (look for a steel vent line coming forward from the tank). "Purge" is a vacuum line, but controlled. There should be an electrical or vacuum controlled valve, most likely vacuum controlled, that turns the vacuum on to purge the canister. This happens when the car is cold and running on choke. Assuming that the purge valve is vacuum controlled, there are 2 kinds of vacuum on it, purge vacuum and control vacuum. There could (probably) be a thermal vacuum valve screwed in the water jacket somewhere to control the purge valve's control vacuum. I don't recall if the control vacuum for the purge valve is ported vacuum or not. I'm thinking not. Whatever it is, it will be controlled by temperature and it will go to the smallest hose connection on the purge valve. There will be 2 large connections on the purge valve (it's just a valve). One will connect to the "purge" port on the charcoal canister. The other connects to vacuum, and a is a fairly big hose. It needs for the gas vapor that leaks in through a purge cycle to mix fairly well with the air/fuel in the manifold. It might be teed into the PCV, and it might be some dedicated port in a special place on the manifold or carburetor just for it. In most cases it will not be some random vacuum port on the manifold. If you find a vacuum controlled purge valve, hook a mityvac to the small port and make sure that port holds vacuum. If it doesn't, the diaphragm is bad and you need to replace the valve. You can also check the valve part (the other 2 ports). The valve should be closed with no vacuum on the small port. A typical vacuum-type purge control valve and a typical thermal vacuum valve shown below:

White fitting is the bowl vent, hose is larger, fits over fitting, goes to charcoal canister. The hose below, right next to the red tag might be the one? Is it already connected to something? The mystery hose has a piece of metal in it that looks like a hose connection. See if it might have fallen out of a hole in the carburetor casting. Ports on those carburetors were mostly on the throttle body, or on the back of the carburetor about halfway up. What is at the other end of the hose? You need a vacuum diagram. I second @TAKerry's idea the it might be on the smog sticker under the hood. If not, it needs to come from a manual, and those diagrams are notoriously hard to find.

Well, you are going to need a stout battery. Something like a 6v Optima would do nicely and it is even about the right shape. I just priced them on Amazon. $249. https://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteries-8010-044-Starting-Battery/dp/B00099HVN6/ Then some really stout cables and clamps. That toy stuff that comes on 12v jumper packs isn't going to get the job done. Here are some clamps from Polar Wire that might do, $19.55 each, so almost $40 for a pair: https://store.polarwire.com/1000-amp-black-replacement-jumper-cable-clamp-with-copper-strap/ . You'll need some 2/0 welding cable. If you want to set it on the ground, these 2 5 foot pieces from Amazon for $57.68 should do (shipping included): https://www.amazon.com/Gauge-Flexible-Welding-Battery-Copper/dp/B07KBBRYR , or if you want short leads like a typical pack that you have to sit up on something under the hood, maybe about 6 feet of cable from wireandcableyourway for $27.24 would do (shipping not included): https://www.wireandcableyourway.com/2-0-welding-cable-class-k . Now you need to keep the battery charged, so you need a small battery charger to go in this beast. You might get by with a 1.5 amp maintainer like this for $19.99, and maybe even shipping included if you buy more stuff at the same time: https://www.amazon.com/Yishen-Intelligent-Automatic-Maintainer-Motorcycle/dp/B074KK8RCW/ I have one about like this that works great, but a 6v Optima is a fairly powerful battery (and it needs to be for this). I think its about 50 amp hours. If you ran that way down trying to start a stubborn car, it would take an unreasonable amount of time to recharge, probably about a day and a half. That wouldn't do for a commercial product. The charger would need to have a maintainer function though, even though it would need to be a considerably bigger charger. It can't need babysitting. This Noco Genius 5 amp version would probably do (barely) for $69.95: https://www.amazon.com/NOCO-GENIUS5-Fully-Automatic-Temperature-Compensation/dp/B07W8KJH44/ . And you haven't even had a plastic box made in China yet. Maybe that won't cost much. Sure, a manufacturer could get all the materials cheaper than Amazon discounted retail, but I still think there is going to be $400-450 in materials in this thing easy. What would it sell for? $500? $600? I do think the $800 unit in France was pretty steep, and that was several years ago too, but this still isn't going to be cheap. I think the number of people in the hobby who can both 1) afford this, and 2) who will buy it rather than bellyaching that it should be $29.95 like a 12v one down at Harbor Freight is rather small. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

I just realized it's a 50 with a 51 grille. There is a 56 Desoto station wagon in Seattle in a place you would never expect to see it.

1937 Plymouth. Is that Spokane?

If the alternator is a GM one with an internal or electronic regulator, there is a very tiny draw. It is normal. Any draw will eventually run the battery dead, but so will the self-discharge of the battery. Only generators and old alternator systems with an electromechanical regulator shut themselves off 100% and have no draw. If the car is going to sit a lot, get a battery maintainer. Also, that is not how ammeters work. They measure flow only. They have no draw of their own. For the rest of this post I am going to assume this is an aftermarket ammeter. If it is a stock 1966 GM ammeter, please post back because those are an odd setup and it changes everything. The ammeter is to measure flow in and out of the battery. The electrical current flows THROUGH the ammeter on it's way to the battery. Another not-so-obvious thing to keep in mind is that the source of current for all the accessories is the alternator, not the battery, when the engine is running. Simple example #1, no ammeter: A large wire, probably #10 or larger, runs directly from the large post on the back of the alternator to the battery. On GM cars, this usually runs from the alternator to the starter post instead, and the positive battery cable completes the circuit back to the positive battery post. They may not have done it exactly like that on a Corvair because the engine is in the back, I don't remember, but the idea is the same. There is a big wire of some sort running from the large alternator post to the battery, maybe using the positive battery cable as the last section of wire, maybe not. Simple example #2, aftermarket ammeter: Same as #1, except the big wire flows THROUGH the ammeter. That is, a big wire runs from the big alternator post to one ammeter terminal, and another big wire runs from the second ammeter post to the positive battery post. If GM used the starter post instead like they often did, you could run it there instead. The ammeter only measures flow and does not need or use any kind of a ground. One important detail: ALL the accessories get powered from the alternator side, not the battery side. The big wire could also land on an ignition switch or a light switch first and the on to the ammeter post. It often does on some cars with traditional ammeters, but the important part is that all the accessories are connected on the alternator side, not the battery side. It is desirable to keep as few splices or connectors as possible in this big wire as it goes on it's way to the battery. Any accessory connected to the "wrong" (battery) side will have any current it uses registered as a charge on the ammeter, making the ammeter horribly inaccurate. Don't do that. One exception: Back when GM cars had traditional ammeters, they hooked the horn to the battery side of the ammeter. Make high quality connections on the big wire. Solder them if you can. Any bad connection is going to get HOT. Make sure the big wire cannot get cut or pinched on it's way to the dash and back. Use grommets or whatever good cable management is necessary to keep this wire from harm. If the big wire gets grounded somehow, it will catch fire with all the energy of the battery behind it. A factory setup using a traditional ammeter would have probably had 2 fusible links, one at the back of the alternator, and another at the positive battery post (or starter lug). It would be a VERY good idea to do this. For the reasons in the above paragraph, you usually see voltmeters today instead of ammeters on any factory jobs, and most aftermarket setups too. With a voltmeter, all you need to do is hook up a little wire and a ground. It's easy, and that's why the previous posters are suggesting it. P.S. If an ammeter reads backwards, reverse the leads (it's just a flow meter!).

Maybe an Optima. Nobody wants to haul around a spillable battery everywhere.

Good question. I went to the bottom of that rabbit hole several years ago, it might have been 2012. There was ONE company that made them, worldwide. They were available in France for about the equivalent of $800 USD. Of course that was just the unit. That didn't include shipping it here, nor was anyone suggesting the option. At that time, if you spoke a little French, you might have been able to arrange it. Later on I think I heard they had stopped making them.