keninman

I found this on Facebook Marketplace and thought it was neat so we went and bought it this evening. I know very little about it. The previous owner has removed the interior, the water pump is leaking bad and it is going to need at least 2 tires. Someone has performed some rust repair using sheet metal, rivets and repainted it red. Their repairs are now bubbling up so I will have to weld in new metal and then turn it back yellow. I have learned that it is based upon a Fiat 850 and I cannot afford to buy a new waterpump so I hope to repair it. Does it use packing or a seal? I guess I am about to find out. Any information that anyone can provide will be appreciated.

It is a GL 6 cyl. I am suspicious of leaking. Last year it got about 10mpg.

While sharing my post about nothing to share (and complaining about gas mileage) I realized that my pic was still of the Stude covered up for winter. I looked for another photo and found this. The man in the passenger seat is / was my best friend of many years. Though he joined the US Air Force a couple of weeks before I was born in August of 1965 we had much in common and were best friends for many years despite our age difference. He passed away in January of this year in my home of lung cancer. He never had much money and was physically disabled, he was always quick to offer to help and worked as a security guard because it was something he could do. I hope that everyone, at some time or another finds a friend like this and can become one themselves.

I check the board about everyday but I have nothing to ask or share so I decided to share something. We took the 29/30 Dictator into town yesterday. We went to Home Depot and then grocery shopping at Walmart. I filled the tank at Murphy's, we drove home and no where else, about 10.5 US mile trip at a top speed of about 35mph US. We returned to Home Depot and Walmart today and I topped off the tank at Murphy's, again which cost nearly $9 with gas running $2.799 (yes that extra .009 is correct). That is really bad gas mileage. While probably not important I just thought I would share something.

Ironically, I have lived in Indiana my entire life, I now live less than 35 miles from the speedway. I have never been to a race there and the only event I ever attended at IMS was a Rolling Stones concert on Independence day in 2015. I am not much of a race fan but I love these old pictures.

These are mechanical with rods. I believe it is only one wheel but I don't know which one.

Starlightcoupe, I am not finding a schedule, I am just East of Indy so it is a short trip for us. Do you have a link for 2018 info?

My 29-30 GL Dictator, this winter developed an odd condition where sometimes when you stop it seems one of the brakes stays engaged for a second after you remove pressure from the pedal. I first thought it was related to the parking brake as it happened leaving a parking space at Wal-Mart during a cold snap. Sometimes it is fine and other times it seems to hang on. I may make many stops with it fine and then every stop it hangs. I haven't tried hard to troubleshoot it yet but wanted to ask for suggestions.

My owner's manual says (.025), I give up I couldn't spell it.

I would be interested in it as a decoration, I don't think you said how much you wanted though.

Watch several videos on hand cranking first. It is great way to break an arm or damage a fender. I prefer push starting but yours is probably awful heavy.

I looked at my starter and it is a Delco-Remey 726-F. What worries me about this post is that I know my bendix often sticks in the ring gear, I just quickly reach down and pull up the floor pedal to disengage. Is there a chance Mr. Clark that you could have driven with the starter stuck in the ring gear? Though I think this would have been very noisy. The starter would act as a generator, backfeeding the electrical system and itself would eventually sustain severe mechanical damage since these models were not designed to act a generators. For troubleshooting determine if any other electrical devices work, i.e. - headlamps, horn, dash lamps? As for the starter smoking, a motor is a dead short when it is not turning, the expanding and collapsing magnetic field is what provides the electrical resistance. This is what is called, locked rotor amps and they can be very very high. As SC38DLS said, points, loss of power to the coil, a short in the coil to points somewhere would be much more likely suspects for the engine dying. There is an overcurrent relay on mine mounted right beside the fuel gauge. It buzzes like crazy if I try to draw too much current. I think all of the power coming into the car goes there from the starter connection. It would be a good place to start. One last thing, the car should be a positive ground vehicle the exact opposite of a modern car, don't mess this one up. The starter doesn't care, it will run backwards, nor do the lights or coil, however I doubt your generator would survive a reverse connection long since I believe it will try to run as a motor.

Post some good pictures of your starter please. Include any mechanical or electrical connections. Mine is completely mechanical, as you step on the starter pedal in the cabin it pushes in the starter lever to engage the bendix (they call it a pinion) with the ring gear on the flywheel and finally pushes down on the starter switch to energize its motor.

You didn't happen to put in a battery switch did you?

Two things struck me about this thread. First of all, until perusing this discussion, I did not appreciate the artistic value of modified / customized automobiles. Well except those modified for special purposes like movies or to fulfill a utilitarian need. The other is how well the persons on this forum write. This may or may not imply something about the membership of this particular forum but I would rather think that it does. "Any ol' who", I think the Internet needs more civil, though sometimes not too civil, discourse like this. I also think there should be room for those whose tastes run to customization as well as those whom prefer to keep everything as originally produced.

Looking at this pic of Kclark's picture of his 1928 Dictator Six, it looks like it came with 6.50-19 tires. My 29-30 GL Dictator had this size for the spare.

I know of two that are still standing in Indianapolis, The Stutz factory which is now a business center. Also one building of the Duesenberg Motors Company that now houses IndyGo's bus garage.

Only a guess but since they are just an accelerator pump I doubt it will matter which you use because they only shoot in gas when you press the throttle quickly.

Were there not also solid steel wheels? I am not sure if they mounted the same as the wood using rims or not. Also has anyone ever heard of one of these wood wheels failing while driving. I have worried a bit of what would happen if one my nearly 90 year old wood spokes failed at say 35 or 40 mph. I am glad I put seat belts in the car as I suppose it would be a hell of a crash.

I turned in about 5 of them. So far I have received 2. I also found out that you cannot drop off the old return at a FedEx location, you have to call and have them picked up.

As for improving conditions in Indiana here are a couple of picture of a 12 year old me after the blizzard of 1978. I don't remember any winter worse than this one. I was pleased because we missed nearly a month of school since Indiana was not prepared to deal with this kind of weather. For weather like you speak of one would have to get pretty far south though the temps warm quite quickly as you go. We traveled to the Bahamas last January, were it is nearly always summer and nearly froze but that is how the cookie crumbles.

I reused what was there, someone had put a modern spark plug wire on #6 and I have not gotten around to ordering any more of the straight down ends.

It's winter here in Indiana but we have been enjoying an unusually warm spell. It looks like that will come to an end next week as old man winter blows in. I am glad I have a heated garage. In the land of the Hoosiers we will see often see swings like this, sometimes within one day. It leaves me torn on global warming, it has actually been improving the climate in Indiana.

This is the color I used, it is called Army Green. It has held up well under heat and of course some oil and antifreeze. It also has the advantage of being under $4 a can

Oldcar, I listen to books while working on other things. I just don't have the time read them anymore. I searched for Wodehouse on Librivox and found many. If you are not familiar with Librivox, they use human readers to create audiobooks from books that are now in the public domain. I have listened to many and right now I have most recently completed Oliver Twist and am now on to Bleak House. I intend to listen to A Christmas Carol around Christmas. I love Sinclair Lewis because his works often include something about early autos, especially, Free Air and Main Street. It is a great way to be able to listen to great works while completing other work. https://librivox.org/author/420?primary_key=420&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results