Bloo

Congratulations!

Clean the spiderwebs out and un-stick the contact points. Cleaning the points wouldn't hurt. Don't use sandpaper or anything that might leave grit behind. For a light cleaning, drag brake cleaner soaked paper between them. If they are cruddier than that drag a tiny file between them, like a nail file or better yet a point file or a miniature single cut file from the hobby store. One pass oughta do it. Don't try to make the points new, it does more harm than good. Ideally just scrape the oxidation off the high spots.

He has not been active in this forum for quite a while. He is still around, still in BC, Canada and participates in the west coast early Pontiac zoom group. Shoot @32Pontiac6 a PM and see if he might know how to get in touch.

Use new oil. The foamy oil is probably contaminated with something. Maybe water. If I had synchronizers not working I would change the oil anyway, and see if it helps. Otherwise you would be tearing the transmission down to replace the synchronizers. Use some synchronizer friendly oil, NOT hypoid oil for a rear axle. I don't know what might be available to you in NZ. I am using Redline synthetic 75W140*NS* in my 1936 Pontiac transmission, works good. In a synchronized transmission something closer to plain oil is preferable to the super-slippery type used in a rear axle. If cheaper and more common is what you want, maybe GL-1 gear oil or some tractor oil would be good. Before putting too much thought into the oil as a cause of the grinding, make sure your clutch isn't dragging.

It should be fine for now, but I think eventually you will have to bend the pipe. In the longer term, oil will damage a coolant hose and make it soft, weak, and quite a bit larger. I once had a Ford with a missing draft tube. I substituted heater hose just to get it on the road. The hose needed changing every now and then until I found it a proper draft tube. Keep us posted on whether it solves the leak. I'll bet it will.

How stable is it in a straight line? Tire friction will load the suspension members and tend to increase the toe with speed. The goal is to never have toe out at speed. There is no advantage to having too much toe, it just causes more rolling resistance and tire wear. Are your tires radial? Typically you can get away with less toe with radials because they have less rolling resistance. Radials drive fine at the stock setting too, but less toe is better if you can get away with it. If the tires are Bias, I would expect you to need the stock setting. On the other hand if it is stable in a straight line on the highway, and it has less than stock toe in, I would be tempted to leave it alone.

It has been my experience that clubs that have judging seem to get more of the details written down for posterity. Of course there is some ambiguity, and possible variation at a some given factory on some given day. Sometimes this devolves into restorers shooting for a target of "what the judges will like". That isn't very useful from a historical perspective, but still overall more real history seems to get written down when restorers and judges want to see it. I tend to gravitate to clubs that prioritize driving over judged shows, but also notice that simple questions like "what color was the engine" are unanswerable for some marques, never mind more complicated "screw police" questions. I am grateful to those who preserve the history.

It makes a difference, but not much. Mostly it adds water capacity. The air is already pretty warm by the time it gets to the fourth row.

As far as I know it's alkaline, not acid, but the rest is spot on. It is quite a lot like baking soda. I'm not sure ABC vs BC is going to tell you what you need to know if you care about this. A, B, and C are types of fires an extinguisher is rated for, not the chemical inside. The short version of this is that almost all modern low cost fire extinguishers are full of an alkaline substance called "dry chemical" which is caustic and abrasive. It does a LOT of damage. It is preferable to not putting out the fire, I'll give it that. Historically, Halon was what you wanted. It puts out most types of car fires without causing additional damage from the fire extinguisher. It is a CFC, and new production is banned. You can still buy new Halon extinguishers made from recycled Halon. You can of course buy used ones. Halon has always been expensive, and the ban on new production makes it more so. It is effectively a refrigerant, and I won't go into why, but don't believe the gauge. Weigh the bottle and compare to the label. These are still used in airplanes. There is also a modern replacement for Halon called Halotron. As I understand it, these can work just as well but need the bottles need to be sized larger for the same firefighting effect. I am carrying a Halon extinguisher and an Element. I have no idea what AACA's current requirement is.

Is there seriously some possibility of that? I can't imagine how you would begin to eradicate them, or even stop the spread. I looked my car over real good as I drove west from PA hoping not to bring any back with me.

... But the wheels are nice and tight. All you need now is a set of Boyco cans and some black and white film.

Do you have a multimeter? The 7 dollar one that Harbor Freight used to give away should work fine for this. Put it on ohms, turn on the "continuity beep" if it has one, check from each cable to ground. The battery box should work for a ground if you poke through the rust. See which cable is grounded. That will be the positive, since it is a positive ground car.

I kind of had the opposite experience, at least on the roll-arounds. Are these harbor freight things as good as Snap-On/Matco/Mac etc? No. My mid 1990s Matco box is so overbuilt it is ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is pretty shocking how good some of the Harbor Freight boxes are these days. Some I have seen in recent times are definitely good enough for commercial duty. It used to be your main choices were the big three or Craftsman. Craftsman was made of thinner metal and might or might not have held up under commercial use. Often it didn't. Over the years I saw a lot of drawers sagging in the middle. My 80s Snap-on box is made of thinner metal than some current Harbor Freight offerings, and does not have ball bearing slides. It held up fine in commercial use, after all that's what it was made for. Compared to some of the low-cost offerings now though it looks pretty weak. I've even seen boxes in Home Depot in recent years that look like they would probably hold up fine in commercial use. Your mileage may vary.

Is that the door handle she's hanging on to? I vote 1935.

A 6 cylinder crank should have been balanced to itself. There should be no such issues as the "external balance" found on some American V8s. I realize the later cars have the timing marks on front, in fact I added that feature to my 36, but are the flywheel marks still present on the 53? If so that might be a way to align it the way the factory probably did. In theory it should make no difference though. As for the clutch, I suspect Pontiac may have balanced the pressure plate and flywheel together. That is insanity if true, but on the 36 there were obvious factory paint marks aligning the pressure plate to the flywheel. Hmmm..... The marks were not lined up when I took it apart, but they are now. It's not bad, but I still am not convinced the flywheel and pressure plate are balanced as good as they could be. Make sure the flywheel gets balanced separately first, and then that they only take metal from the pressure plate when balancing the pressure plate. Otherwise you won't be able to replace pressure plates without upsetting the balance. I wish I had balanced my flywheel and pressure plate when I had the transmission out. Make sure your pilot bearing (or bushing) is good.

Any info about the car?

Yes. I believe people have been taping and plugging ports with set screws. I'm not too hot on the idea of epoxy around gas, but its just a vacuum port so it might be ok.

Yes. Ported vacuum *only* (or manifold vacuum) for any normal car including the Buick. 1949-56-ish Fords with the original Loadomatic distributor are one of a very few rare exceptions. There is also something odd about the pre-1949 Ford V8s. The details have slipped my mind. Those did have a centrifugal advance mechanism, but used something called a "vacuum break" instead of a normal vacuum advance to compensate for load.

Excellent. That's what you want. It sounds like you have the setup Bruce Lancaster was referring to. If the venturi port is also connected to the factory port, you need to plug the venturi port somehow.

They are necessary on some engines, and help by keeping things sort of aligned. Just make sure the ferrules don't obstruct motion too much. If the exhaust manifold cannot slide on the gasket (front to rear) as it expands and contracts with heat, it will probably break. The same goes for whatever fasteners hold the manifolds to the block. They have to allow a little front to rear sliding.

Pictures would help, but if you did what I think you did, the rubber tip goes toward the fuel line. It's the float valve. The seat is down inside the brass fitting.

If they're not cast iron, they may need to be ground.

As near as I can tell that really is the bottom. I'll try to vacuum in there a little but I don't think I'll get much. There are wires that held the sand core still in here, and unlike the scraps that fall out of most blocks they appear to be right where they were when it was cast. They don't even look pitted. It is the same in the head, but I don't have pictures of that. Between a couple of cylinders where there is a lot of space, probably due to the location of a main bearing. And between a couple where it is tighter. More wire. And over on the other side where you can only look down on the top of intake and exhaust ports. More Ports. So, no real sludge buildup or leftover sand that I can see. The color is deceiving. It isn't rust colored. In person it is bright yellow in there, even the parts that look blue in the pics. I wonder what it is, but suspect it might be yellow dye from the yellow antifreeze. Maybe calcium deposits? I am going to take some of it that I caught with the sock and see if it reacts with an acid, but antifreeze is quite alkaline, so I doubt it will tell me much. I imagine it will react anyway.