Bloo

Nothing about this looks normal to me. I must be missing something. Is there a double flare fitting on the end of the fuel line coming from the tank? Or maybe a threaded sleeve fitting? The left looks like it connects to a double flare. The right looks like threaded sleeve, but that doesn't make any sense unless there is another piece of steel tubing before you get to the fuel pump. I think some Buicks may have had something like that, where they crossed from the frame with the rubber line further back, then went back to steel tubing again to go forward to the fuel pump. You wouldn't normally use a female threaded sleeve fitting (like I believe I see on the right) to go to a brass fitting to connect to a fuel pump. I don't think the brass fitting to do that exists. Maybe a plumbing fitting for single flare copper tubing might do it, but I am skeptical. I think the shape is different, and I have never encountered anything like that on a steel and rubber fuel line setup. You might be able to horsehash it with a real short piece of steel tubing, using either one double flare and one threaded sleeve nut, or just two threaded sleeve nuts, but I have a hard time believing Buick or anyone else did that at the factory. Pontiac did the opposite, with male threaded sleeve hose end connecting to the fuel pump, but in that case the hose end fitting just resembles a piece of straight tubing that you can put a threaded sleeve nut on. It doesn't look anything like the end of your hose. In that setup, a female threaded sleeve to pipe thread adapter screws into the pump. Like @Frank DuVal, I'd like to see another angle. I'd also like to see the end of the fuel line and also the spot where this all fits in the car. For reference, a double flare: And a threaded sleeve:

On US made cars, in most cases, late 1939 for the 1940 model year. There were probably a few exceptions.

Is this the bridge? https://bridgehunter.com/pa/lancaster/bh71281/

The MTFCA forum has a bunch of people who know the smallest details, but they might not all agree with each other. You already have @wayne sheldon in this thread and in my opinion he is one of the most informed. https://www.mtfca.com/phpBB3/ In my layman's opinion, 1915-ish is as close as you will ever get. It is possible to build a model T from parts scavenged here and there. Not all of the parts fit together if the years are too disparate, but most of them do. It was a cheap and common way for a young person getting into the hobby to get a first antique car. Model T's with the brass radiator are more desirable due to the "brass era" look. They are also worth more money, everything else being equal. It was widely believed (disputed today) that "brass" T production made a hard stop at the end of 1915. When I was growing up I read in a Floyd Clymer book, probably published in the 1950s or 60s, that "In 1915, Henry Ford built 3 million Model T's. Only twice that many are still registered". Yes, its a joke, but he was only sort of joking. There were and are many 1915 T's rolling around built with a large number of later parts.

Nice work!

Yes, a piston ring compressor. In theory it could work from the bottom side. Some engines need to be put together that way.

I agree, 1913 SA-25.

That's a rabbit hole. I wish I understood it better than I do. There are a lot of various things called magnetos, but in its simplest form a magneto is not necessarily an ignition. It is an alternator with real magnets (not electromagnets) for the field, and thus no way to control the output. There are probably a million kinds of magneto, but to keep it simple there are about 3 classes of them: Low tension, High tension, and using a magneto as a generator to power some other king of ignition. The Model T ford falls into that last class, as it has buzz coils that can be powered by a battery. That leaves 2 kinds, low tension and high tension. That just means low voltage or high voltage, so the Model T also falls into the low tension class technically. It isn't really the ignition system though, it just generates. The buzz coils and timer handle the ignition part. A low tension magneto typically generates a low voltage that powers an ignition coil that is fired by points. That sounds very similar to a modern points and condenser ignition, and it's close, but might not work on exactly the same principle. The "Kettering" points and condenser ignition we all know and love wasn't even a thing until the late brass era, and even then it was just one of a bunch of competing ignition systems. A lot of the magic in a low tension magneto is timing. It isn't just spark timing, you typically adjust that from the steering wheel. The timing of the generated pulse of electricity that the magneto makes must be timed such that most of the energy goes to the coil at the right time, and then the relationship of the points timing to that pulse must be just right. It's all critical. This is most critical at low RPM or cranking. Some brass era units had a "hot shot" feature where you could add voltage from a battery (usually some dry cells) to help with starting. By the 20s these were replaced by "impulse drive" magnetos that wind up and snap just before each cylinder fires. This extra speed gets extra voltage for starting. Once the engine starts they switch to direct drive for normal running. High tension magnetos are about the same as low tension except the high voltage for the spark plugs is generated directly by the coils in the magneto, there is no coil to step up the voltage.

Hold up a moment. Those instructions are for replacing a 5 terminal regulator, as used on 37 Buicks, 35-36 Pontiacs, and so on. This is going to be a bit confusing. I can't help that. @Oldtech is absolutely right that some cars have a ground wire running from the regulator frame to the generator frame. Your Oldsmobile might have even been one of them, I don't know. It's a good idea that prevents a lot of issues, but... The ground terminal on a Delco 5 terminal regulator is not ground. It is a terminal that is grounded by points inside the regulator when the engine is not running and the generator is not charging. It is used for the Buick Autostart system that was used on all Buicks of the period and some Pontiac Eights. It was also used to run the charging system idiot light on 36 Pontiacs. It might not apply to your Oldsmobile at all. If there was no ground wire under a mounting lug, then yes it grounded through the firewall. The wiring diagram you posted has terminals I,B,F, and G. 5814 or not, that matches what you took off. You can see on the diagram F and G go to the generator. G is "Gen" or "Arm" and is the charging wire. F is the field. These are the 2 wires in your new harness going down to the generator. One is probably bigger. Use the bigger wire to connect the "Gen" terminal on that new regulator to the Armature terminal of the generator. Use the smaller wire to connect the "F" terminal on the new regulator to the field terminal of the generator. Connect the "Bat" terminal on the new regulator to the wire that goes to the ammeter inside the car. This much matches the original wiring. Insulate the end of the wire coming from the ignition and tie it back out of the way. Regulators like the replacement regulator you are using did not use it. GM had you cutting it off on Buicks when updating them, but don't do that. You might want it someday. The ground terminal on the new regulator won't be used. It's for Buick Autostart and Pontiac idiot lights. If you add a ground wire to the generator frame, put it under a mounting lug at the regulator. Finally, polarize the generator using the instructions at the bottom of the page under "Accidental Reversal of Generator Polarity". From what you posted, it's most likely already correct. I'd still double check. How is the body grounded on a 38 Olds? From the diagram it looks like the negative battery cable goes to the engine (not the frame or body). In fact it looks like it goes right to the starter case. That is an ideal spot for good starting, but the rest of the car also needs to get grounded somehow. There's probably a strap from the engine/transmission to the body somewhere. Could it be missing? It's pretty important. Another possibility is there is nothing wrong. How dark was it? Dash lights on these old cars are dim on purpose to keep your eyes from adjusting to the light. The horn could be stuck. Could the battery have just been low?

Offhand, no, but I never dug that deep because mine was and is working. The book is slightly ambiguous, but it appears to be Group 2.375 Part #1859427 . If you wind up rebuilding it yourself, based on past experience with similar Buick switches and other's experiences in old AACA threads, know that the triangular sliding contacts in side that look all alike are not in fact all alike. Pay very close attention to which is which when you take it apart.

I think the un-cut version of the Buick mat will do, and is the closest thing you can theoretically get for a 36 Olds (or Pontiac!) but it is out of stock everywhere as far as I know. I would be skeptical of the cut one. It's a maybe. I know it is all wrong for Pontiac because the chassis is completely different. I don't know exactly how wrong it is but I have had enough measurements in the past to know it is not a direct fit in a 36 Pontiac. Since you have that cast rubber piece around the pedals and steering column in a 36 Oldsmobile, you might be able to fake that part. I would be extremely skeptical about the shifter and dimmer switch holes, and there isn't much you could do if those were wrong. I am 99% sure that the dimmer hole is wrong when comparing Buick to Pontiac. Oldsmobile might match either... or neither. Olds does use the same transmission family in 1936 as Buick 40 (and Pontiac). There is no guarantee that the shifter is in the same position in the chassis (fore/aft) though. That would worry me. You said 36-38, and 37-38 is a whole different ballgame than 36. The new all-steel A-bodies for 1937 are wider. A lot wider, and probably too wide for those 36 mats, punched or not. I think you should be looking at pictures of 37 Buick mats for possible(?) Oldsmobile compatibility. How big is the difference in width? Well, the 37 Buick 40 (and Pontiac and Oldsmobile) is about as wide as a Buick Roadmaster would have been in 36 (or 37). In fact, I think the the reproduction 1937 Buick Roadmaster mat, which is unpunched, is just the same thing as the 1937 Buick 40 mat except for the holes. which are probably different. Check out this picture: This is a 37 Buick Roadmaster unpunched mat in my 36 Pontiac. You might notice that the border on the sides has been completely cut off, due to the much narrower 1936 body. Why did I use this instead of the one in your link? For one thing, it was actually available to buy. For another, that center hump is actually a thing in a 36 Pontiac. The hump fits perfect at the front and tapers to nothing as you go back, unlike a 37 Buick, where the (admittedly small) hump goes all the way back. A 36 Buick has a slight hump, but it is so small you cannot even see it without a measuring stick, and the reproduction mat (in your links above) is completely flat. the obvious mismatch at the back in the pic above does not show with the seat in. I have seen the 37 Buick unpunched mat like the one in my 36 in the wider 37 Pontiac. It fits good, given the opportunity to punch your own holes. One obvious difference is at the dimmer where there is an obvious place cast in the rubber where the dimmer should go, but, true to form, Pontiac put it in a different place than Buick. If the floor contour in a 37 or 38 olds is even close, I think the unpunched 37 Buick mat would be a closer fit than the narrow 36 mats. One little surprise I got: The "Body by Fisher" carriage emblem is in the little rectangle. it says "Buick Eight" around the shifter hole. This would be cut out if you were installing it in the 37 Roadmaster it is allegedly sold for. The mold must be worn out because it is extremely faint, and I don't think you could even see it without getting your eyeball right down on the floor, but it is there. One other thing, the transmission in the Buick 40 and the Pontiac (and almost certainly the Oldsmobile) is mounted dead center in the car, but the shifter is not dead center in the transmission. On the 37 Buick reproduction mat, the shifter location *IS* dead center. I think it's a mistake, and I am not the only one who noticed. This requires a little fudging. It's going to be easier to hide this in the wider 37 or 38 body than it would in a 36. Assume nothing. Measure a lot.

I agree. I've not looked it up to verify just now, but I think a lot of 6 volt cars had 16 gauge for most wiring. If I am trying to get a bulb as bright as it can be I usually default a size bigger than they would have used back then. Overkill? Maybe. Probably. And yes, short lengths don't matter much. 👍

Based on stuff my dad and other people who lived through those times told me. I think the idea goes all the way back to the teens, when many tires had been white or natural rubber. It was discovered that carbon black in rubber made it stronger and longer wearing. Adding a black tread to a white tire is an obvious thing to do, but was just one of a whole bunch of ways a tire might look in those times. It probably wasn't real common. It wasn't long before most tires were made completely from the newer stronger black rubber. In the 30s, the depression was on, and most people would not have had money to spend on fancy tires. Some of those who could afford whitewalls may have been less interested advertising that fact in a time when there was rampant unemployment and there were breadlines. Nevertheless, whitewalls were available for those who wanted to pony up and could afford it. According to my dad whitewalls were just not seen much in those days. He also said when you did see them they were double whitewall. I learned more recently that one company introduced a single whitewall tire in 1941, so single whitewalls were not entirely a postwar creation, just almost. Then the war came. During the war there was rationing. It was difficult to get usable tires of any kind. People "booted" tires by tying the tread of a blown tire on top of a bald tire that would still hold air (yes, really). When the war was over, there was a huge demand for cars, and there were not enough tires of any sort to go around. There were no whitewalls available until at least 1947. I have been told that 1946 Chevrolets came with an empty spare wheel in the trunk. Spare to come later when the tire companies caught up? Or not? When whitewalls did finally become available again, they were a big hit. My take is that the same people who decided they really liked whitewalls right after the war just bought premium tires when they restored an old car later on in the 50s, 60s, or 70s. Premium tires were whitewalls, and its not like whitewalls were incorrect. After all, they were available before the war. I have never seen a factory or period photo of a 1936 Pontiac with whitewall tires. I would have guessed they weren't even available as a factory option on an economy-minded car like a Pontiac, but they were. When I was doing research at the AACA Library and the Pontiac-Oakland museum last year I saw whitewall tires on the lists of options for factory builds that were sent out to the dealers. @chistech restored a 32 Oldsmobile DCR, and I believe he said those cars were always pictured WITH whitewalls in factory literature. There is no wrong. Pick what you like.

At pigtail length, no, it won't make any difference. That is a bit misleading though and is not quite the whole story. Copper wire has a known resistance for a given length at a given AWG (gauge). In the US it is usually specified as ohms per 1000 feet. The larger the wire, the less resistance there is. If you put a piece of wire in a circuit somewhere that is smaller, the shorter it is the less it matters. Light bulbs (and electric motors like fuel pumps) lose efficiency very quickly with a small loss in voltage. On a 12 volt car for instance, a tenth of a volt is a difference you can see in the headlights. It's going to be even more noticeable at 6 volts. If you connect a 12v bulb to 6 volts you wont get half brightness. You will be lucky to get a dim orange glow. Every crimped splice or other non-soldered joint in the wire adds measurable loss, on both the positive and ground sides. It is negligible when everything is new if the crimping is good, but the crimped (and bolted) places will oxidize and become more and more resistive as time rolls on. The effect is worse with stranded wire, and automotive wire is always stranded for obvious reasons. If I were doing it, I would want to run the same piece of relatively large wire all the way to the bulb like @17White wants to do, with as few splices as possible. Less connections are always better, even though you might not be able to tell the difference when everything is brand new. I would also run a nice big ground wire from each one of these lights all the way back to a good ground. The source of current is the generator whenever it is charging, and it is typically bolted to the engine block. On most vehicles the best ground is the engine block for that reason, with the frame being a close second.

With no Olds book to look in I only have a guess. On the slightly newer all-steel bodies, 37-38ish, People have modified repro Chevrolet tanks to fit, with the biggest most important difference being that the filler is on the wrong side. The filler is on the left of that 36 Chevrolet tank in the link. A 36 Pontiac filler is on the right. I believe a 36 Oldsmobile's filler is also on the right, Is that correct? I believe 35 and probably 1936 Chevrolet did not have the fuel pickup on the gauge sender but I believe the flange is the same. I don't know if the orientation is the same. There is some small possibility that you would have to cut the flange off and rotate it, or maybe re-drill and tap the 5 holes and solder up the others. You would probably also have the Chevrolet fuel pickup as a useless appendage you might want to remove. If the Oldsmobile has the fuel pickup in the sender like Pontiac and Buick (I think it does?), that is a superior setup because it is not that terribly hard to add a fuel sock (current production socks need modification to fit). A pickup soldered in the tank makes adding a sock difficult or impossible. A traditional radiator rebuild shop can work on gas tanks. Getting the modifications done would be a problem in most areas (including mine) due to the lack of radiator shops. The last one here closed it's doors about 5 years ago. The tank in the link is 14 gallons. In 1935, Pontiac gave you an 18 gallon tank if you bought the eight, and a 15 gallon tank if you bought the six. It's a bit unclear what Pontiac did in 1936. What did Oldsmobile do in 1936? I'm guessing the eights got a bigger tank. 14 gallons sounds kind of small to me. How bad is the original? If it were me, and tank weren't completely rusted out and collapsed, I would get it boiled out and soldered or welded up at some real radiator shop. Welding in a patch where the rusted out spot is was a common repair in the old days. I don't know where I would sent it exactly, and yes I would have to ship it. Then, I would put a sock on the fuel pickup and hope for the best. There is or was a company somewhere that will make you a whole new tank from scratch. I imagine that costs a lot, but I haven't done it.

I'll be the odd man out here. I'd paint it. My 36 Pontiac bumpers had a matte silver surface chrome on the back side. Methods have improved since the 30s, and unpolished areas on a bumper do not come out of the chrome tank looking like that anymore. I used flat silver paint on the inside to get a similar look. There's a million shades of silver, and I picked one that looked like the inside of the bumper. I question how long it will stay stuck, but it does look like the other bumper for now. For what it's worth, the "aluminum paint on the back side" trick is something Chevrolet was doing at the factory only a few years after that. What color was the inside of the DeSoto bumper originally? If it was black I'd paint it black, if it was silver I'd paint it silver. I would use flat or matte paint to help hide flaws. One of Por-15's main weaknesses is known to be it's UV resistance. Why not shield it from UV? It's easy to do, and it can still be black if you want it to be.

I doubt that would even fit. It's probably too long/wide. I agree with @GARY F. That is a saddle tank that goes outside the frame on a pickup, and a much newer one, though I couldn't guess make and model. My 1936 Pontiac, with an extremely similar body to 1936 Oldsmobile, has an oval tank with flat ends. @37_Roadmaster_C's 37 Buick has a clamshell type tank, illustrating that GM was making both styles of tanks in the mid 30s. I once parted out a poorly constructed 36 Pontiac street rod chassis. It had a pickup tank about like the one in the picture. Someone had cut, shortened, and welded it so it would fit in the space between the frame rails (the available space would be similar or the same as the Oldsmobile). It had lost the shallow end completely. It is possible. It's not a great fit, and probably wouldn't go in the original straps.

Those wheels didn't exist yet in 63, but they look great. They would need to come from an a-body (valiant, dart, duster, demon, etc.) before 1973, because 1973 and later have a larger bolt circle.

To be fair to the bear, the pik-a-nik basket was in there.

99% chance this is for a clutch, and maybe a 1% chance it is for racing (something along the lines of Wilwood). Dual circuit brakes had already been around a while when the plastic tanks became common. My guess is it is Japanese, maybe Mazda. I took a quick look, but couldn't nail down an exact match. It's probably made by one of the common Japanese brands, like Nippondenso. Mazda Miata, early: Mazda B2000: Mazda B1600 / Ford Courier (not sure what years, probably early). This looks real close:

Welcome to the forum!

This^^ Also, you'll need to show us the inside of the fitting. It's not AN. It's either threaded sleeve or double flare. A look inside that fitting will sort out which. My guess is double flare.

Do you mean like a pigtail? That's more of a modern repair method. I'm not sure it ever existed in those days. It probably did but I haven't seen it, other than pieces that looked like they were cut off of other cars. You can get some of the parts to repair sockets like they did in the old days, like terminals, springs, etc. at Rhode Island Wire. https://riwire.com/ . That does require soldering. Their socket terminals are the type that slip over the end of the wire to solder. That's not ideal when the wire is really big but it is manageable. Noticeably absent are the "tack" style terminals GM used which are easier to solder to a larger wire no matter what make you are working on. Brass tacks would work if brass tacks were still a thing, but they are not, at least not in any appropriate size. I have looked. Also noticeably absent are phenolic discs for double contact sockets. If you need any of those you may have to part out some 12v sockets. You may also find some interesting parts at either Restoration Supply (California) https://restorationstuff.com/ or Restoration Specialties & Supply (Pennsylvania) https://www.restorationspecialties.com/ . Both have PDF catalogs you can download and then browse. It's worth a look, but when I was repairing sockets most recently Rhode Island Wire had the best selection of stuff. Good luck.

Bob's Automobilia has strapping that seems to be impregnated with something to keep the water out. I used that on my 36 Pontiac when put the tank back in. Originally I think it had no strapping at all but I am not sure.