Bloo

As you may have seen in the Pontiac thread, the (Pontiac) original was not as long as the engine in 1935-36, or 1939 for that matter. It was long enough to reach to the last hole they wanted to squirt water from and that was all. The 1937-54 Dorman replacement I modified had extra length, and reached to or almost to the back of the engine. Probably so did the later genuine Pontiac tubes, but I have not had one in my hand for comparison. It made absolutely no difference in the flow, so when I modified the Dorman tube I kept the extra length. As for the number of holes, what Pontiac did was squirt on exhaust seats more or less. Making sense of the pattern is tougher (and it is different from Olds because of the valve order). In 1936 they added some tiny holes on the other side to squirt between the cylinders. That pattern isn't symmetrical so even tougher yet to figure what they were thinking. If I had to reverse engineer it I would start by laying the tube on top of a head gasket and see what lines up. I'm not sure it would help, but I cant think of anything better.

I was wondering about that too. It wouldn't surprise me. I seem to recall the 1950s Ambassador Six used some sort of oil wicks in the rocker arm system.

You should not re-use them. That said, I would do everything in my power not to damage them just in case there is no reasonable alternative for replacement rings.

Oh wow. That is a lot less holes than I would have expected. I also wonder if it is homemade, or if they actually made it that way? I see the two locking tabs on front like the one on the picture of the GMC. It sure looks like that back hole dumps between two exhaust valves, which would make sense. The front hole too, I guess. The tube ends right about where a hole should be. Wrong way huh? Weird. I also wonder if that second port on your water pump (not the bypass) might be shooting water under pressure at the first exhaust valve? Interesting. Maybe it's upside down. It looks from your pics like it would be shooting at the valves if the holes were up.

Also you need to warm the engine up by driving it. Warming it up in the driveway will give different results.

An old thermal flasher should fix it. You might be able to get an electronic one for positive ground.

I would start by looking for clobbered sockets in the trunk (can you tell I own a 70 Mercury? LOL). Then check grounds for the signal bulbs, especially on the side that is screwing up, front and back. Also look at the signal bulbs on the bad side, front and back for a filament sagging and touching the other filament. If all that fails, look at the headlight ground wire on the bad side. I would expect it to not run very far from the sockets before it pops back out of the harness and screws to the body. Welcome to the forum!

Hastings rings (famous for their 3 piece oil rings) would be a huge improvement over the 1920s design, there is one potential issue. There is one version of the split head six that cannot use them because the oil ring partially exits the cylinder at the bottom of the stroke. I believe that is one of the later larger displacement split head sixes, but I am not sure. It would be easy before you tear it completely down to watch a good piston as as it passes bottom dead center and make sure you don't see a ring peeking out.

I would be most interested in that shield m-mman mentioned.

I've done this. Exactly this, but on a Ford FE engine. Buick and Chrysler used filters like that originally on some cars. It isn't what you think though. It was a long time ago and I thought that orifice was going to bleed vapor and keep the system full of liquid, but it isn't really true. The filter goes between the pump and the carb. The smallest nipple has the orifice in it, and that connects to the return line to the tank. It does help cool the pump a little because there is fuel circulating, but it isn't a big difference. It did raise what the ambient temperature could be before the car failed to run. It didn't raise it much though, and didn't solve the problem well enough to make the car reliable in hot weather. The REAL reason for that filter might surprise you. If I remember correctly @carbking has a page about it on his website where he explains in detail. I can never seem to find the link, so here's the short version. When fuel boils in the pump the pressure in the pump rises dramatically, it can force liquid fuel that is sitting in the fuel line past the float valve in the carburetor. This makes the carburetor bowl run over, and the fuel goes anywhere it can. In practice, it goes through the main discharge tubes and floods the engine. If the orifice and return line are there, the fuel gets pushed back to the tank instead of into the carburetor. As I recall from an earlier posting, your engine, carb, accelerator pump, etc. were dry. So were mine. It's a solution to the wrong problem. Maybe it would help a tiny bit by circulating fuel. You might as well try it I guess, but I'm not expecting much improvement.

Don't give up. You already did the hard part (wood). Take a step back and plan. It might not be as bad as you think. In the old days, when an engine just needed rings, often an "inframe" overhaul was done if the bores were ok. meaning the pistons were pulled, bores measured, and if OK you would hone the cylinders (being careful to shield the crank) and stuff new pistons in. The pistons sometimes needed a little work too, but that wont matter because you clearly need new ones. You might be able to get away with some form of that. My guess is it will need to be out of the car and completely disassembled for cleaning because of the broken metal, but I wouldn't get in a hurry about that either. Study the oiling system and see what all would need to be cleaned out. Maybe there's a diagram of it in the manual. If you are knocking plugs out of the crank and so on, it's time just to pull the engine, but I would have a good understanding of how the oil flows first. Well, if it needs the whole banana, there are a LOT of good reasons to use new custom pistons, but if it's not in the budget, that's that. That is definitely the direction I would be looking if the block doesn't need boring. I feel confident you can get NORS standard size pistons. Measure your bores first! It may have been bored in the past. As already mentioned, you can check with Craig. and also the advertisers in the Early Times Chapter newsletter. Kurt Kelsey passed away recently, so those parts are not accessible, for now anyway. He may have been the best known, but there are others in the club who have a bunch of stuff listed. They probably don't list everything they have. Kurt didn't. There's also California Pontiac and Ebay. Whole engines sometimes turn up. If yours turns out to need everything, it might be worth watching for one.

What do you mean by "primary wire"? If you mean inside the distributor, the terminals are the least of your worries. Assuming the car has vacuum advance and a moving breaker plate, that is special wire made to deal with all the bending, and probably needs to be bought as a whole wire with terminals. The ground wire is similar. Is this for 36 Olds? I'd be surprised if they used those terminals outside the distributor, but I don't know for sure. As for the flag terminals, Rhode Island Wiring, Brillman, and Y&Z have some flag terminals that would physically interchange, but are not exactly the ones you are looking for.

The change wasn't like flipping a switch. It varied by make and model. I recall about a year of variation, but I could easily believe two years. Geo Metro changeover was 1993(r12) - 1994(r134a).

65-66 Chevy truck are different at the center around the horn button, with the 66 being smaller and more streamlined. Hard to tell without the button, but probably 1965 if it is really one of those two.

Nice Plodge!

Probably mainly 1920s I think. They were aftermarket for lots of cars. A useful thing to try and figure out is whether it is for a Model T with 30x3-1/2" clincher tires (23" rims and relatively narrow), or if it is for some larger car.

Can we see the next page?

Hey @ramair and @Echofivelima, there is a thread going about the 36 Olds Six engine going on in the Oldsmobile section right now. Did either of you have to replace the water distribution tube? If so, where did you get it? The thread is here: https://forums.aaca.org/topic/395056-1936-oldsmobile-f36-water-pump/

I'm flying by the seat of my pants now because I can't find this in a book. It is looking like there may have been a change around 1963-65, and also the old 6v stuff apparently swung the gauge backward so no help there. Echlin ts6464 looks likely correct. Napa's info is terrible, but it looks like it fits a bunch of late 50s Fords and AMCs so there's a real good chance it is electrically right. 13.5 ohms at 220F allegedly with 9% tolerance. They tried to specify at 100F too, but they dropped the ball. I scraped from a forum (and can't prove) the following. It's mid or late 60s info, so may not be the same? Anyway, 10 ohms = hot, 23 ohms = half, 73 ohms = cold on the gauge. It looks like that would put 220F up at almost the top of the gauge, so that's believeable. Unfortunately NAPA didn't give enough info to figure out what would be happening at the other end of the gauge. These numbers do look promising. That doesn't sound right at all. Did the factory shop manual really say that? I would have expected something more like half scale. Any chance they could they have said half scale? The way I remember, the little flasher can runs at a 50% duty cycle. Hmm.. Maybe that's wrong. But, if we assume a 50% duty cycle (switched ON half of the time), that works out to about 7 volts RMS on a charging system running at 14 volts. 7 volts RMS produces equal heat to 7 volts DC, and these are thermal gauges. There's 7 whole RMS volts to run the gauge, and that would really peg it if the sender wire was grounded. It's true they do peg when you test them, but the difference between 3 volts and 7 volts (4 volts!) would be dropped in the sender. It's more than the gauge is running on, at least when the temp reaches the high mark, and would drop even more at low temperatures. I don't quite buy it, and I still suspect the gauge. P.S. If you can't get a hot ohms reading in the car, maybe boil one of those senders on the stove? 212F isn't quite 220F, but it might give you a good idea if the sender is way off. P.P.S. Just in case you don't already know, when measuring low ohms like 10 ohms (which you might see), zero your meter. If it's digital, the function is called "delta". Short the leads together and hit the delta button. Alternatively, if you don't have delta, short the leads together and write the number down. It's the resistance of your test leads. Then, when you measure ohms, subtract that number from the reading you took.

The "stacked" intake ports are, as far as I know, a unique feature of the Ford Y-Block. Those ports were the reason I knew immediately what I was looking at. I know of no other engine family that has stacked intake ports like that. Even the nearly identical-looking but physically larger Lincoln Y-Block does not have ports like that. In USA market Ford-Mercury-Edsel cars and Ford trucks there were always other engine options, like 6 cylinders, and starting in 1958 there were new and unrelated "FE" series and "MEL" series v8s. The Ford Y-block was used optionally in cars from 1954-1962, and optionally in trucks from 1954-1964. All these have the stacked inlets. I have heard that there was a version of this engine that did not have the stacked ports, but it was much later than 1964, and never made or sold in the US. We do not ever see those here.

There isn't much to these. All you need: 1) The diaphragm to go up and down 2) The check valves to seal 3) No leaks If there is any doubt about whether the engine can actually move the diaphragm, bolt on the piece on that has the mounting flange and the diaphragm (shown in the lower hand below), crank the engine, and watch it flop up and down. That leaves the check valves. As i mentioned in my earlier post one of the two is fiddly to test, but if the diaphragm flops up and down while cranking, the check valves are the only thing left. They work in opposite directions relative to the diaphragm, so you could in theory blow through the pump forwards but not backwards. The diaphragm moves down (well.. or up if you have one of those pumps that mounts upside down) and it creates a low pressure (vacuum) inside the pump. This opens the inlet valve and puts the low pressure on the fuel line from the tank. It attempts to pull fuel from the tank. It would pull fuel out of the carburetor line too if it could, but it can't because the check valve on the outlet (toward the carb) works in the opposite direction. If anything the low pressure (vacuum) just makes the outlet valve seal tighter. When the diaphragm is pulled up as far as it goes, it gets released, and the big coil spring pushes the diaphragm down, creating a few pounds pressure in the fuel pump body. This pressure blows the check valve on the outlet (toward the carb) open. Fuel flows to the carb. It would try to push fuel back toward the tank too, but it can't because the inlet valve is in the wrong direction for that. If anything, the pressure just makes the inlet valve seal better. If a valve doesn't seal the pump could be just moving a little air or fuel back and forth without ever pushing it on up the line.

Yes. Everyone complains, so I assume it is widespread. I am in the US and have never heard it called blooming until now, but I don't know what to call it. Browning? Maybe it's just a terminology difference. Nah, we definitely have it in the US, some tires are still made here too. I asked someone in the tire industry several years ago why there are no white letter versions of modern high performance tires. He told me the more modern formulations of rubber used to get better performance turn the white rubber brown, and that an older formulation of rubber is needed for white letter and whitewall tires. I can't prove that, but it is in interesting take. Tire factories are typically not associated with one brand anymore, at least not in the US, and are hired out to the various manufacturers. A code on the sidewall can tell you what factory any US market tire came from, whether it was made domestic or overseas. Occams razor would suggest they just aren't changing the rubber type out to make runs of whitewalls, because the runs of whitewalls are probably small. Yes and Yes. Diamondback adds the whitewall using a machine related in concept to the old recapping machines. They do this to preexisting modern tires, as well as their own "Auburn" tires. The Auburn tires tend to be obsolete sizes that have no modern equivalent. I suspect that might apply to a first generation Riviera if using the original size, but I know not everyone does that, so either type of tire might apply. They have addressed the browning issue, and claim to have a proprietary layer they put in that isolates the white to prevent browning. I have a Diamondback Auburn whitewall tire sitting here for a little over a year and it hasn't turned brown, so maybe it's true. Your mileage may vary.

Sediment bowls are rarely if ever full.

Is there just one blinking light inside that blinks for both right and left? I ask because that is often the case on conversions, and it matters. If there is one blinking light inside the car, not separate ones for right and left, then the third flasher pin powers the one light. If the bulb is verified good, you should be able to follow the wire from the flasher third pin to the bulb. The bulb grounds to the case of the switch, and the switch usually grounds to the steering column. If the switch is well grounded to the steering column, and the bulb is well grounded to the switch, then the flasher is the only thing left that could be bad. I don't believe the positive or negative ground matters on the old thermal flashers that old cars typically use. If the flasher is electronic, or an LED flasher or something like that, then it probably matters. Welcome to the forum!

"Y Block" Ford, 272-292-312, etc.