Bloo

That gear is definitely a bit worse than I would like, but the wear of the tips of the teeth catch my eye more than the 2 damaged teeth. The worst it could probably do is "block" and make you have a second try to go into gear at a stoplight. I don't think it's that bad yet. Those tips take punishment every time someone grinds a little getting the car in gear. They never look good. I'm with @VW4X4, I'd flush it out good and put it in, then concentrate on the rebuild of your original. And yes, I'd say that throw out bearing is toast.

Floor mounted dimmer switches can and often do get corrosion from water damage. They bleed current to ground, because the switch is generally mounted on a grounded steel floor. It kicks out the circuit breaker. That is the first place I would look before replacing headlight switches.

There is a temperature at which it stops working entirely. 60F I think, but don't hold me to it. It literally does nothing. When I was derusting wheels I had to heat the vat due to cool weather.

If you are getting rusty looking stuff like that out, I'm thinking you aren't even close to done. The only byproducts of the process are black. That brown rust in the bucket wouldn't last an afternoon in warm evaporust in a warm room.

Add to that the fact that the fuel hose everyone used on carbureted cars up through the 90s or so was utter crap, and was commonly known to come in for service squirting gas out through pinholes in the hose. It is really a wonder there weren't more fires. I'll only use 30R9 fuel injection hose these days, regardless of how low the pressure is. Yes it's expensive and a little hard to work with, but it it in stock almost everywhere today. It is lined, and is rated for a whole bunch of different fuels, including alcohol.

Yeah, that won't hurt anything on first and reverse. I'd want to clean that gear up completely of oil and then dunk it in evaporust, just so no tiny bits of abrasive rust can separate and get in the oil in the future. Make sure to oil it up afterwards, and maybe put something more like assembly lube or vaseline on the gears if the transmission is not going back in the car for a while. Oil is good but will run off after a period of sitting.

At one time I knew the tire size, but can't remember. Sorry about that. The wheels are ridiculously large in diameter. They have to be to make that design work. The tires probably don't fit anything else, unless maybe some other sort of underslung car. I imagine replacement tires would be a huge problem today.

I would also lean toward factory NOS gears, although after seeing the pictures in this thread, I wonder if the gear that broke was a factory gear. The curved lines show how the crack progressed. The vertical lines here are a bit mysterious to me, although if we go back to the very beginning most cracks start with a stress riser of some kind. It could be a flaw in the metal, or just the shape of a cut. But in this picture, look at the area that was at the root of the tooth! Why is it like this? Stress risers everywhere! This is just begging for the failure @Professor had. Look at the gear in this picture. It's hard to see, but it looks a lot smoother down in the root to me. I am wondering if the broken gear is an aftermarket gear. After having a failure like this, if it were me, I would really want to see a close up pic of any gear I was buying. I would be looking for smoother machining and more gradual fillets in the root of the teeth. I would expect a factory gear to be the best, but I would pick whichever was smoother. This is an odd reason to be changing a second gear. Normally the only reason a second gear would need to be changed is because the engagement teeth, the little pointy ones just above the broken teeth in the picture below, are too beat up to shift anymore. Those little teeth are the ones that take all the punishment.

Wow! that's quite a difference! Good to know, although I don't think it is quite that simple. This stuff, well Evaporust anyway, eventually dies. The chemical is spent. There is a finite amount of rust a gallon of it will remove before it stops working. You would get more liquid that way, and that would be good for dunking stuff. However if you are treating something really rusty that will need to be hit more than once because it keeps using the solution up, I think you are just dragging out the time needed to get finished. My own experience backs that up. I have had to add water to it when using it in open top containers due to evaporation. It gets thicker when it loses water and doesn't work as well. Your mileage may vary. I'll have to try that now. I have been wondering about it. I have definitely noticed that when you get to the spot your left bolt is at, or a little further, Evaporust slows way down to get clear to the bottom of those pits. That's still better than phosphoric acid, which will skin over and never get there. Maybe your thinner solution soaks through the rust faster. That would be a good thing.

You should be able to move it all the way until it stops with the vacuum pump. It should stay there until you release the vacuum. Then it should go back without sticking when you release the vacuum.

Well, it's most likely a Hyatt bearing like a Pontiac. I doubt the bearing is holding it, but if it is, put a breaker bar on the crank pulley, put some kind of bar on the transmission output, prop the clutch fork to a disengaged position somehow, put it in high gear, and twist. There isn't much surface area on the contact points of the rollers.

Be careful to move that line around. With Evaporust, the line where it meets the air causes severe rust. You can do serious damage. This might be similar.

Be careful to pull straight back. I believe the bellhousing doubles as the bearing retainer on this one. That means the input gear will try to come forward. It can't come out because it is too big, but the teeth will be hitting against the case.

How far back can you pull the transmission before it stops? Or does it not pull back at all?

Vaseline is petroleum, dissolves in motor oil, and melts at a very low temperature. It's what we used in the old days. You could do worse. Today "assembly lube" might be a good option. Chassis grease was also often used, and it has ingredients that are not just oil, and has a high melting point. That would be more likely to have the issues you describe, although over the years I have never heard one single story of anyone having a problem from it. It all gets forced through and blown out right away from oil pressure and flow. The vaseline trick exists because there is often a long period of time between when the pump on a new engine gets assembled and when the engine gets started. With insufficient oil in the pump, it doesn't seal well and has trouble picking up the oil.

Harbor freight has gasket punches for cheap. That and a little ball peen hammer for cutting shapes around the edges will get you a long way. A tool to cut large circles also exists, but I don't know where to get one of those. A scissors will get the job done. As for the synchro, what's wrong with it? You can bench test those. When you get it out, get it super clean. put a couple drops of oil on, and then twist it against it's taper. It's just a brake. It should stop or at least grab pretty good. I believe you called it the front one. If it interacts with the input gear, that is the 3rd (direct) gear synchro.

Fuse panel should always get power from the alternator side of the ammeter. If the ammeter reads backwards, reverse the connections to the ammeter.

This bit of wisdom is not nearly as widely known as it should be.

My nightmare. I just have to ask, where was it parked? Out in public someplace? Store? Motel on a tour? What time of day? I've not heard of it happening a lot, but wonder if I should be doing something to make it more difficult.

The primary thing with battery cables is that there is a good path through nice big cables from the battery to the starter. On some cars the battery ground cable goes directly to the engine/transmission. In cases where that is not true, there needs to be a third battery cable or strap. It goes from whatever the battery cable connected to on over to the engine/transmission. Example: On a 1936 Pontiac, the ground cable goes to the frame. There is a big heavy ground strap from the frame over to the engine/transmission to complete the circuit. You mentioned a fender. If the Olds is supposed to have the cable connected to the body like that, then there should be a big strap or cable from the body to the engine/transmission. All connections need to be clean and tight. Think of an electrical circuit as a big circle, and for a starter that is 1) from the battery to the starter with a cable, 2) from the starter case mounting to the bellhousing or block, 3) from the bellhousing or block back to the battery, either through one cable, or cable-frame-cable, or cable-body-cable. The cables and connections need to be equally good all the way around the circle from the battery to the starter and back. I hope someone in this thread with Olds knowledge can tell us whether your negative cable is connected in the right spot. If not, you should move it where it belongs. Starter cables (and grounds) as I have described need to be a lot bigger for 6v cars. 2/0 (00) cable is usually recommended, or equivalent to that if we are talking about straps, but in any event bigger than the 4 Gauge usually used on 12V cars. Stores that sell parts for tractors should have 6v appropriate cable, as 6v tractors are still common.

There's 2 of them in a Stromberg WW. One underneath the pump piston, and one under the triangular cover at the squirters. https://www.carburetor-blog.com/knowledge-base/checkball-placement-for-stromberg-ww-and-wwc/

It was less prone to breaking under that sort of abuse than most other things that were available at the time.

The big Buick is is a completely different transmission family. The quickest way to tell is a 5 bolt top on the small transmission and a 6 bolt top on the bigger unit. The famous Cadillac/Lasalle transmission may share some design features with the big Buick, maybe even some internal parts, I'm not sure on that point. The Buick transmissions are both toploaders and the Cadillac/LaSalle is not. This is a Pontiac, but it is the Buick large transmission family. Ignore the tailshaft, because Buick would have a huge torque ball there. Look at the shape of the top cover. That top cover still had the same shape back in 38 or so when the shifter was still on top. Internal parts changed over the years too, but the basic shape of the case and the top opening remained the same on the big transmission. Note the top has 6 bolts. Now here is an older one with top shift, another Pontiac, but it is still the Buick large family. Note the tall rather normal looking shift tower. Now the small Buick family. This is a 39 Buick small transmission, top view. Note the more oval shaped opening at the top. Those pans look different on different years, some are flatter with stamped cross ribs. Also note 5 bolts holding it on. The whole transmission is smaller and so are the parts inside. It is much lighter duty. Back around 38 when the small Buick transmission still had the shifter on top, the top opening was a different shape than the 39 pictured above. This is a top view of a 36 Pontiac with top shift. It is of the small Buick family. Note that the top opening is less oval on this version with a top shifter, and more like the shape of the big Buick opening. The holes marked in red are not bolt holes, so there are still only 5 bolts. Here is the same 36 Pontiac transmission in the car. Note the shift tower and how odd looking and short it is. Even with it's black rubber boot on top, it barely sticks through the floor half an inch on most cars. I know of no other transmission that looks like this. If you see this odd short shift tower, you are looking at a transmission of the small Buick family that is old enough to have a top shifter. Still 5 bolts on the top cover. Here is a column shift LaSalle. This is laying on it's side, and the bolted cover at the right is the bottom of the transmission. And here is what it looked like in 1937 when the shifter was still up on top.

34 Sounds fine to me. I wouldn't run any less than that. Back when there were a lot of daily driver cars around with radials that came with bias originally, the rule was sidewall maximum. Sidewall maximum back then was usually either 32 or 35 PSI. Even more would be fine if you want. If it feels squishy put in more.

Height affects gearing, but what really matters is the radius, distance from the center of the wheel to the ground when rolling. There could conceivably be more difference with the weight on or off and rolling on a radial. In any event, the little difference you see there isn't going to be a big deal. Original bias ply tires sometimes varied wildly from what they are marked. The aspect ratio on a pre-65 tire size is either 90% or 100%. I suspect 100% is correct for 650:16. Making that assumption, 16 + 6.5 + 6.5 = 29" tall. I just went and looked at the specs on some currently available 650:16 bias plies. Firestone 29.1 Garfield 29.26 BF Goodrich 29.3 Goodyear 29.41 Coker 29.26 Lester 29.25 Coker's radial 650-R-16 claims 29.26 inches. I think you might be closer now than you were before.