Str8-8-Dave

The Alpine radio is long gone sorry to say or I would have happily given it to you. I suspect a PO installed it because they disconnected the battery in the car which then requires entering a password to get into the Blaupunkt. I bought a used Blaupunkt and contacted them and they happily provided a password. That radio worked great. Radio wars- Alpine on the left got tossed, Blaupunkt on the right, correct for the car. The gizzy on the left bottom is the power amplifier and the bayonetted wire harness very bottom center connects the power amp to the receiver in the center stack. The original wiring had been cut to adapt to the Alpine radio and I cut it again to install an original hard-shell connector for the radio. Finally- in went the Blaupunkt.

So my 1931 Buick 8-66S coupe project is languishing in the garage waiting delivery of wood grained garnish and dash moldings and completion of the interior seat by Shelby Auto Trim. Due to timing of the recent sale of our summer home in Michigan's upper peninsula I missed out on buying a 1933 Cadillac V-12 coupe that Gullwing Motors had listed on Hemmings and E-bay for over a year. Someone else finally recognized a 90% completed high quality restoration of that beast was worth the $67,500.00 entry price and got to it before I could. That kinda stung for awhile but the more I thought about the more I thought I might want to diversify, have something, well, sporty, that I could drive now. Many years ago I bought a really nice Porsche 928S4 on E-Bay and had it shipped from Vancouver Washington to Michigan. It was a low mileage car in mostly excellent shape. I always go for original so I took the cheap Alpine radio someone put in the car and replaced it with the correct Blaupunkt radio. The original Blaupunkt power amplifier was still in place under the right door sill cover. The one place I varied turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I hated the original steering wheel they put in those cars so I bought a nice Nardi wheel with the correct hub and horn button and started to replace the original. When I removed the original I was confronted by a turn signal switch that was ready to fall apart because for some reason it had collapsed under the original steering wheel. It turned out someone else had the column apart and dislodged the lower column shaft bearing and not realizing what happened reinstalled the column which then would not install correctly. I had to buy a complete column from a Canadian salvage yard to harvest another bearing to repair my column because according to Porsche service records they had only replaced a few of those bearings over the span of models that used it and it was no longer in their interest to stock them. Then, as my wife would tell you, my midlife crisis hit. The 928 was my "sissy rod" for nice long drives in the country. Compared to my 1968 GTO and my 1963 max wedge dodge, the 928 was, well, rather boring. I set out to buy a real Porsche. I settled on a 911 Carrera 4S or Carrera Turbo 4S! I started shopping on Hemmings but their list of cars was skimpy compared to E-Bay's population and many of the cars I saw on the Hemmings site were listed on E-Bay. I looked at a ton of cars, early air-cooled cars are very pricey as they have a huge purist following. Water-cooled cars ran the gamut from dirt cheap low optioned high milers to very expensive low mileage later model offerings, many of which were turbocharged. I also did some research via Porsche Club of America (PCA) and discovered water-cooled naturally aspirated 911's from 1998-2010 had issues with intermediate shaft bearings. Porsche added the intermediate shaft (IMS) as a balance shaft and drove the overhead camshafts off the intermediate shaft. The rear bearings on the suspect models used 3 different varieties of sealed, lubed for life, single and doble row ball bearings, each having different life expectancies, all having a nasty habit of sending shards of broken bearing parts into the engine sump where they went on to destroy the engine. A Porsche Club member who owns one of the top repair facilities in the country developed a plain bearing replacement and sells it in a kit with an oil filter adapter, pressure hose, the bearing and a raft of special tools to successfully install the kit bearing but it is expensive and work intensive. PCA stated the only 911's in that range of model years not affected with the IMS bearing malady were the turbocharged cars which came from the factory with pressurized plain bearings on both end of the IMS. Later cars drive the cams directly from the crankshaft which takes the load off the IMS. Car #1: I found an 84 911 Turbo cabriolet in Arizona that had just under 5,000 original miles, clean CarFax, service records, a kazillion pictures of the car including hoist pictures of the pristine underbody and a great running and driving video of the car. It was very reasonably priced. There were a couple of items I didn't like. The convertible top was speckled with something that didn't look right. The car was silver with a light gray leather interior that I didn't really care for and the backs of the headrests had indentations where someone left a brass headboard or something in the back seat leaning or pushing against the headrests on a very hot day, the headrests were noticeably deformed. I asked the seller about the items and actually got a call back. The nice lady said there was nothing wrong with the top or seats "its still a new car" she said. She followed up with "If you want the car you should give me a deposit now because a gentleman from Nevada is coming in either today or tomorrow to buy it for his wife". I said I think I will pass. Car #2: I found another Turbo cabriolet listed by a Texas dealer. It was a 2008, silver with a red interior. It had a clean CarFax and I was able to trace the car from the original owner who bought it in Florida, sold it in Colorado, second buyer bought the car there and took it to Canada. Eventually it was sold at auction and bonded back to the US and was shown for sale by the Texas dealer. It had 24,000 miles on it which meant I would definitely want to see pictures of the underbody and get it's service history. I wasn't crazy about the red leather interior but it looked to be very clean with no deformed headrests or other issues. I contacted the seller and we chatted and talked on the phone. I asked if he could take some pictures of the underside and if he could provide service records. He said the car was just serviced and tried to impress me with how particular he was with his cars. He took one picture from behind the car of the underside while the car was sitting on the ground and didn't turn his flash on, the bottom of the engine was just a dark blur. I texted him and asked if he could put the car on a hoist and get some good pictures under the car. He wrote back and asked me what a car hoist was. I explained what a car hoist was, then politely told him I couldn't consider an expensive car like that without copious service records. Car #3: This car was a 2015 model, 911 4S cabriolet which is naturally aspirated and has all-wheel drive and more importantly is out of the model year range with the IMS bearing issue. It was rhodium silver with what I consider to be an absolutely elegant dark brown leather interior, and had a rare 7 speed manual transmission. The car only had 6,300 miles on it with a clean CarFax report showing 2 owners. It was listed in an E-Bay fixed price ad with best offer or buy it now by Marshall Goldman who has been a Cleveland dealer for many years and recently opened a new store in Beverly Hills, CA. I noticed they had 273 transactions and only a 67.5% positive rating on E-Bay. I looked into the seller ratings and there were some that couldn't say enough about how wonderful Marshall Goldman was to deal with and some others that complained they bought a car using Buy it Now and the dealer didn't even have the car and wouldn't talk to them. I then decided to go to the Marshall Goldman website to see if the car was still listed there. By this time it was after 9pm eastern time but I found the car and clicked on it to look at the pictures and descriptions there to see if there was something not shown in the E-Bay. By that time a chat person asked if I had questions so I asked her if the car was still available. She said she thought it was but told me if I gave her my cell phone number she would have a sales person contact me. Soon I got a text from Nate at Marshall Goldman who extolled the virtues of the car and said it was still for sale. I decided I would make an offer via E-Bay Best Offer to leverage the buyer protections there. I told Nate I was going to do that and he inquired why. I didn't say anything about the negative feedback I had reviewed on E-Bay but said the advantage with E-Bay is it offers buyer protection when you are dealing with buying from a dealer you don't know and gambling a lot of money. Nate was ok with that and asked what my offer might be. I told him my offer was going to be $2,000.00 under the buy it now price which amounts to only 0.089% less than the advertised price but I thought the dealer would go for that and the 2 grand would defray some of the cost to ship the car from California. Nate thought that was a good offer and said he would run it by the president of Marshall Goldman. A few minutes later he came back with a hand-shake emoji and said I should go ahead and place my offer. Then the fun started. I've been a member of E-bay since the early 80's and have made 1602 transactions since they started counting and have a 100% positive rating. I hardly ever sell anything there anymore because their seller fees have become outrageously high. As a buyer I find I can find stuff no one else has and other stuff everyone has but cheaper and often with free shipping. If something doesn't work out I can return an item or if it doesn't show up I get another item or my money back. For whatever reason I could not get E-Bay to accept my best offer. I kept getting an error screen that stated for my protection my account was limited and I should contact customer support. I got a live chat going with E-Bay support and after 40 minutes of trying to fix the problem they finally told me they couldn't fix the issue in the chat and I would have to resolve it in a phone call. I agreed to receive a phone call and grabbed the phone up on first ring, by this time it was 12:45am and I didn't want to wake my wife. The support rep fixed the problem in 5 minutes. I entered my offer and told Nate it was done, shut off my computer and went to bed. The next morning I got a response from Marshall Goldman. Instead of accepting my offer like Nate claimed they would they counter-offered me with a price only $100.00 under the buy it now price. I texted Nate and told him there was no way I would accept that. He asked me to be patient, "it must be someone in the Cleveland store that had no idea what we had agreed to". A couple hours later Nate wrote back to say he thought my original offer had now been accepted. I looked and that was not the case. We went back and forth a couple of times and they couldn't figure out how to accept my original offer but they managed to withdraw the erroneous counter offer and Nate asked me to make my offer again which I did, immediately. Over the next few hours my offer just sat there, no response from Marshall Goldman. Finally I got a note back from Nate explaining there was a problem with the car's availability, someone at the Cleveland store had supposedly taken a deposit on the car the day before I tried to make my deal. I told Nate I was still interested and he told me he would let me know if it was still available. I never heard back. This morning, some 2 days later, I got notice from E-Bay the Marshall Goldman car I had made 2 offers on was ending in 11 minutes. My wife and I were having breakfast and wondered why 2 days after I was told the car was sold the E-Bay listing was still active. This afternoon the car was relisted at the same asking price as before. I never heard anything back from Nate, but that's Marshall Goldman and Nate's loss. Monday night, the day Nate told me the car wasn't available, I put a deposit on the next car, read on McDuff... Car #4: Monday night I was in a bit of a funk, I'd had a spot on my forehead that I showed to our family Dr. and he referred me to a dermatologist. That was a month ago and I went to the dermatologist and they biopsied the spot and sent tissue out for lab analysis. It came back positive for Squamous cell cancer. I had a follow-up appointment Monday and thought they might not do anything because the sore healed and looked good to the untrained eye. Little did I know. Instead I had a much more extensive procedure Monday and it appears they got my cancer under control but there will be another follow-up to make sure. Monday night I went back to the 911 listings on E-bay and found another car. It is a 2015 911 Carrera S4 coupe, rhodium silver with beautiful black leather interior. It's an automatic with manual paddle shift. It has 5700 miles on it and is a one owner car with clean CarFax, service history and a massive list of equipment with a bunch of pictures and was listed $11,000.00 dollars less than car #3. This listing was a straight classified ad. The seller is David Mizrachi at MotorCars of the Main Line, an Automobili Company in King of Prussia, PA. After I talked to him briefly Monday night I told him I wanted the car. This guy was EVERYTHING the other sellers were not. For all the pictures the one thing I didn't see were shots of the underbody. David told me he would get them for me in the morning before I committed to buy. The pictures came back nearly perfect. The car had a very minor close encounter with a curb on the bottom edge of the front right fascia that is not visible from above. The belly of the car and the bottom of the engine look new. There is no curb rash on the wheels. The CarFax revealed there were 3 open Porsche recalls and David offered to take the car to the local dealer and get them addressed before shipping the car. I asked if he could store the car until beginning of April because the weather in Port Huron is awful and our garage is full of cars, 1 1931 Buick, 2 Subaru Outbacks (His & Hers), one of which we will probably drive to Texas to see my daughter who is expecting, then sell. David said he would store the car indoors in the back of the showroom with a car cover and a battery tender on it. I asked if they did the 3M paint protection film in his shop and he said yes and he would get a price on it. Later he discovered the car already had the protective film. He also shared a receipt for oil and filter and inspection service. At that point I gave him a security deposit via credit card. Tuesday morning he sent closing documents via DocuSign and I express mailed a check for the car. Since I will pay cash for the car and will register it in Michigan the bill of sale I signed off on DocuSign has yesterday has only one additional charge of $422 for documents and that's it. Finally, David got a quote of $1200.00 to ship the car enclosed via a carrier he has used for years. The Porsche 911 has been the company's flagship sports car for 50 years. The 2015 car I bought with naturally aspirated 3.8l dry sump flat six makes 430 hp and 350 lbs/ft of torque. It is several tenths of a second faster in 0-60 times at 3.8 seconds with the Porsche Doppelkuppling 7 speed automatic than the manual shift cars. It has fully automatic normal driving mode my wife can handle and dual zone climate control, heated and cooled seats, 10 speaker Bose surround sound to keep her comfy and entertained. It also has Rally Plus package with a rally chronometer, manual paddle shift, sport and sport+ driving modes with a launch feature and driver selectable suspension and exhaust settings. I can't wait to get it here to play with.... Dave This was my old 1997 Porsche 928 S4 I bought from a dealer in Vancouver Washington via a trouble-free E-bay auction. The 928 was Porsche's answer to NHTSA's claim that Porsche should be banned from the US market due to the inherent oversteer of early rear engined cars. The 928 is a front engine rear transaxle car with a torque tube drive to connect the lumps at front and rear. The car's weight distribution was near 50/50 compared to early rear engine designs with 30/70 weight distribution. Those cars handled very well in the hands of drivers who knew how to control them but they were not for hot rodding teenagers. The 928 engine had it's nemesis in the 7 foot long rubber camshaft timing belt which would destroy the 5 liter interference V8's heads in a jiffy if the belt broke. The ugly original steering wheel. 1997 was the last year for no airbag in the steering wheel. I decided the office would be much more to my liking with this nostalgic Nardi wheel. This is what I encountered when I tried to replace the original wheel with the Nardi wheel. The steering could have been lost had I not discovered this lower bearing had been wrecked when someone dislodged it from the column tube.

Oh- you guys all started so late in life- I drove my mom and dad's black and white 1955 Ford Skyliner when I was only 6 yrs. old. My mother threw me in the passenger seat of the car and drove to the inclined parallel parking spaces behind the old National Bank of Detroit branch on Michigan Avenue in Wayne, Michigan. She shut the car off, took the keys and her parting words were "I'll be right back, you can stay in the car". Well- let me just tell you- she was quite angry when she found the car about 100 feet across the parking lot with only a parking lot bunker between the back tires of the Ford and the steep inclined bank down to the Rouge River! All I had to do was stand up on the seat and pull the little lever on the steering column from P to R- after that we were off to the races...

My Harnesses Unlimited harness connectors are all done like the picture of the Rhode Island terminal insulation and a length of the rubber tube was included with the harness kit for addition of non-stock accessories like heaters and Trippe light or turn signal adds.

So to answer some questions here- I put 2 coats of Sig sealer on my float to start with, the second was done after assembly to the float arm to assure fuel does not find a leak there. Balsa has a slightly higher buoyancy than pure virgin cork, you can't buy pure virgin cork anymore, it's all glued re-grind and does not float well if at all. Regarding the nitrophyl conundrum I had one major disaster with the original nitrophyl float which was parts in assembly of the original Rochester 4MV Quadra Jet carburetor on my then 1 year old 1969 Ram Air IV GTO which did catch fire and would have burned to the ground except a neighbor across the street rushed over with a 5lb dry chem extinguisher and put the fire out. It ruined the pristine engine compartment on a car that I have seen sell for 250k today. A year and a half later I had the float sink in the replacement fire from the first go round and limped the car to some relatives and replaced the float in their dirt floor garage in zero degree weather. I have no doubt the nitrophyl material in today's floats is a petter product but I'm not the only one who is skeptical about it. Jon (Carbking) is also skeptical and tells folks who buy his kits that contain a nitrophyl float to coat it with either Sig hot fuel proof dope or POR fuel tank sealer before putting the float in service.

I wasn't very observant either with the E-bay item. It is missing inner tubes, has some chips that might be start of a crack. Anyone interested in Pete's item- he prices fairly and doesn't sell junk. I bought a bare casting riser that was perfect and an exhaust diverter casting with butterfly that had been broken but very skillfully repaired. I built a complete functional spare Marvel heat control system with the parts I bought from Pete... Thanks Pete...

Gee- I didn't know all you guys heaped so much praise on my project. Thanks to all for the kind words. Anyone who has followed this thread probably knows I enjoy writing about this stuff. If my work is good enough the bigger payoff for me is it provides some guidance to others to help with their projects. It's pretty for the Buick right now, it's very cold in the garage and I have seat and garnish moldings farmed out and am waiting for others to finish their work so I can continue mine. We had a big stumble with the interior seat job because my trim guy discovered we were 2 yards short of enough material to finish the seat. The material I gave him was left over from the previous interior work and most of the interior is done in that particular material. Finding more of it 10 or 15 years after it was purchased sent me on a hunt with numerous suppliers. I gathered lots of samples, none was even close to what was in the car. I finally sent a swatch to SMS in Canby Oregon and asked if they could match it. They sent 2 samples back, one is very close on color, sheen and luster under different light situations but the nap is shorter and the backing is lighter. The other sample had the right nap and backing but color, sheen and luster when exposed at different angles to a bright light was way off. I finally ordered 3 yards of the first sample and directed my trim guy to use it on the wood seat frame where it won't be subject to the wear and tear of sitting on it. He will use the rest of the leftover matching material on the seat cushions. When he is done with the interior seat I will give him the rumble springs to upholster. Keith Payne at Old Dominion Oyster in VA is working on refinishing my garnish moldings. He advertises his services in the Buick Bugle services offered want-ads and has a good reputation for high quality work. Once I get those back I can finish the door trim. What I have been doing over winter is gathering and organizing a spare parts inventory. Once the car is finally done and off the jack stands I'm hoping it will be a reliable driver. Back to the Bricks in Flint, MI is the nearest big Buick gathering, with some luck my car might be shown there. Thanks again for the encouragement, highly appreciated. Dave

My 2 comments about the smell of horse manure... If you really want a treat visit Pure Michigan Mackinaw Island on a hot day. Nothing like the combined smell of horse S and fudge... We are just far enough out in the country you can smell horse S instead of just hearing it all the time...

The master at work...

I have done this a few times on E-Bay but have largely given up on it. Some sellers appreciate the advice and a few correct their ads. But there is so much stuff that is mis-listed and some intentionally I've come to an opinion that the buyer should know what a correct part is for his car before he starts looking at E-bay. E-bay sellers are not always subject matter experts, they just like to sell stuff, get paid and go away. Others are interested enough to know what they are selling and describe it correctly. It's buyer beware. Also, E-bay lets you return most items, if you get something and it's not right, as I just did, they make it pretty easy to returns something, you just have to pay the return shipping.

More specifically the Snyders reproduction springs I have use the "unobtanium" lower seat rail with encapsulated wood tack strip. The seat base spring shown here is a 31 Chevy RS coupe spring I narrowed 2 inches to fit my 31 Buick 60 rumble compartment. The leather strap passes thru slots in a wood header mounted on the floor in front of the springs to keep them from sliding forward, then the straps hook over knob nails to hold the front of the seat down. The wood tack strip is visible in the picture.

This is not mine but these are scarce and someone is looking for this... 1934 BUICK marvel heat riser manifold 146-124 GREAT CONDITION | eBay

Hey- this getting old stuff is a PITA. I just sold off a cottage in the UP which had a 3-1/2 car garage full of tractors, boats and ATV's and a cottage with furniture, antique clocks, TV and stereo junk for 2 reasons. A- at age 71 I was starting to hate driving 7 hours to get there and B- spending the next whole day catching up with lawn cutting, yard work and cleaning the dust stirred up by speeding tourists on our private gravel road off my windows. But then there is C- the most important part- not leaving my wife with an estate nightmare trying to figure out how to liquidate all that stuff and keep the peace with the vultures now circling her, waiting for their "just inheritance" for putting up with my existence for all these years. It worked out. The realtor I hired lives on a hobby farm and when I mentioned to him I would be cleaning some stuff out of the garage so it didn't look to prospective buyers that I was a hoarder he said "Oh- what do you have in the garage?" When I showed him all that stuff he got his checkbook out and bought it all- lock stock and barrel. Then, in about 8 weeks he brought a buyer to the closing table who bought the cottage and furnishings for about 2500 less than the original asking price. I didn't have to winterize the place and didn't have to go back since end of October and I did the closing paperwork thru express mail with the title company and had proceeds wired to my bank account. Yesterday we went to the lawyer's office to close on my trust which will be funded from the cottage sale and lists all my tangibles and avoids a row with the IRS. And guess what- it all goes to my wife. She will have unilateral control over everything. If the heirs behave and can work together she might parse out tangibles and money while she is still alive. If they wanna fight she can tell them get lost, and they don't get anything until she passes and then only what she hasn't liquidated or spent. I know, it sounds harsh, but I told my kids how it was gonna work and they have gotten to be quite humble and accepting. I'm kinda fond of the arrangement. As far as cars go I will leave her with the car I'm driving when I check out and maybe one or two antiquers.. She can put any or all of them on E-bay or Craigslist or BAT to get rid of that stuff.

Another problem with the low octane stuff in the US is it all contains ethanol. You have to buy 93-94 octane if you want ethanol free.

And, in very severe cases, does pose some risk. First of all, everything else being equal, the correct fuel for any engine is the cheapest, lowest octane fuel that you can buy at the pump that will not cause pre-ignition detonation in the cylinder at the worst load conditions. With today's cars, spark knock sensors and the engine control module take care of that. I pulled out Bloo's phrase because in severe cases the slow burn rate of too-high octane fuel put's exhaust valves at risk. If the combustion cycle completes before the exhaust valve opens, we're good. If, because the octane is way too high, the combustion cycle continues after the exhaust valves open, the exhaust valves are going to run very hot, hot enough to damage them over time. When the exhaust valve is closed and sitting on its seat it can transfer the high temperatures of combustion to the cylinder head by conduction. Once it lifts off the seat the valve has to absorb all the heat which can cause them to pit or warp. Once upon a time I owned a 63 Dodge with a 426 max wedge engine that was not designed to run on unleaded fuels. I used to keep the tank full of a mixture of premium unleaded and some Torco 110 octane race fuel. At least once I had too much Torco fuel mixed in. In the correct mixed proportions the car would accelerate hard and rev smoothly to 6,500 rpm. When it had too much Torco it was louder out the exhaust pipes and very lazy on acceleration and would not rev to redline. That was a sure sign to back off the Torco. Fortunately that only happened once to the car. A steady diet of that would have had me pulling heads...

I actually don't know the exact reason why integration of A/C was delayed, but I have an idea/theory. Another project my dad worked on a few years later was called Project Wiggly Worm which was variable ratio power steering. This was also a project aimed at the luxury segment, Lincoln, T-bird. My dad drove 2 concept prototypes home, a 1960 T-bird that instead of having a traditional steering wheel had a slanted table in front of the driver with 2 8-inch dials with pin handles to turn the dials with that steered the car. When the pin handles were at 12 o'clock the car steered straight. Rotating the dials clockwise steered the car to the right, counterclockwise to the left. If I remember correctly full lock was at 5 o'clock for right turns, 7 o'clock for left turns. There was a cloth cover in the front seat of the car so when parked the experimental stuff was covered and the car was locked. The better version came along a little later. The steering column in the second prototype had a T-shaped steering column, a horizontal cross bar was mounted atop the column where you would expect the steering wheel to be mounted. That cross bar did not move, but it was adorned with beautiful, polished aluminum machine gun handles connected via sprockets and chains inside the T-bar to the steering shaft that rotated 90 degrees either side of vertical. Handles straight up- the car steered straight. Turn the handles to the left, car went left, turn them right, car went right. The beauty of the variable ratio gear was at highway speed the car was not the least twitchy if you turned the handles slightly from straight up, but as you turned the handles further the steering ratio quickened so full lock was 90 degrees either side of vertical. The accelerator pedal remained and had to be used. The brake pedal was there in case of emergency or malfunction of the machine gun handles, but here were also triggers in the machine gun handles that operated the brakes. Small toggle switches on the handles operated turn signals and headlight functions. Small push buttons operated the horn. Finally, these 2 prototypes along with a third with a conventional steering wheel with the variable ratio steering gear were delivered to the test track for HF II (Henry Ford II) to sample. He decided the project was interesting, but the financial presentation showed it would be expensive to tool so the project was shelved. The next year Saginaw variable ratio power steering was offered on Cadillac! Many interesting Ford advanced programs met their doom when they got to top management, sometimes permanently, cases in point, the original Mustang was an open rear engine sports car with a Cardinal engine, no doors and no top, Lee Iacocca proposed to HF II the Mustang be built on the Falcon platform which was a unitized body compact farm tractor by comparison to the original Mustang, but Iacocca's concept hit the road in 1964. Climate Control Division experimented with a cast aluminum 6- cylinder swash plate A/C compressor to take the place of purchased Frigidaire swash plate compressors on the Lincoln and later T-birds. The Frigidaire was a very good compressor whose design was protected by a not very robust patent which Ford figured out how to evade. The compressor was going to be built in the Sheldon Road plant in Plymouth, MI. The program was on the cusp of going into production, high pressure casting machines were bought and installed at the plant, a pre-production run of compressors was made. One last milestone had to be completed. It had to be approved by HF II. On the big day in a conference room in Dearborn the Ford and GM compressors were displayed on a table, each presented and described to HF II with hopes he would approve the new aluminum compressor. At the end of the presentation, he pointed to the Frigidaire and said, "I want that one." Other projects, like A/C and variable ratio power steering survived, but they had to wait until the competition across the street put them in production on their cars.

So in 1945 with WWII ending my dad was an aeronautical engineer at Ford Motor Experimental Bay 8 at the old Ford airport in Dearborn which has been reconfigured as the Experimental Garage, Ford Dearborn test track and shares land with The Henry Ford Greenfield Village. My dad must have impressed someone with his stint during the war because he was immediately transitioned to Advanced Vehicles on the automotive side of the business. One of the first projects he was involved in was development of an automotive A/C system for 1950 Lincoln. After several trips to Bastian Blessing in Boston to get prototype heat exchangers, development work at the Dearborn research labs a 1948 Mercury was modified with a rear package shelf evaporator case with clear plexiglass ductwork from the evaporator case up the rear window to distribution ducts and registers in the headliner. An A/C condenser and a constant-run A/C compressor were added equipment under the hood. In the heat of summer of 1948 my dad and his boss, Helmut Graetzel, picked the car up at the experimental garage and headed south for Florida. The Mercury's 220 cu in flat head 8 struggled with the accessory load of the constant run compressor in Blue Ridge mountains on the way down. One morning they stopped for breakfast in a small town in Tennessee. It was hot and muggy and the A/C evaporator drain, which was routed down the fuel filler tube behind the rear fender, deposited a substantial puddle of water under the fuel filler. When my dad and his boss came out the door of the restaurant an unknowing local said "Hey mister- your car is leaking gas!" My dad was just finishing his post-breakfast cigarette, took a good drag on it and said to the local "Oh yeah?" and pitched his cigarette right into the puddle where is hissed and went out. He looked at the local quizzically and said "Must be cheap gas." crawled into the driver's seat and took off. After they got to Florida they spent several days testing operating dynamics and the effectiveness of the A/C system and evaluated how it affected the performance of the car. Finally it was time to head back to Dearborn. As they travelled north the weather cooled and there wasn't much need for A/C as they got into the Blue Ridge Parkway. Again, the Mercury began to struggle with the A/C compressor load. Finally my dad's boss had enough and instructed my dad to pull over and shut the engine off. Graetzel raised the hood, produced a pocket knife and cut the belts off the A/C compressor, threw them in the trunk and said "Let's go home." By summer of 1949 the project to put A/C in the options list was approved for 1950 Lincoln. On a hot summer weekend in 1949 my dad had a prototype home for weekend evaluation, loaded it up with my mother, my then 11yr old sister and 6yr old sister (I didn't come along until about 9 months later) and drove to East Tawas, MI for a vacation stay in the campground. My mother told me years later the locals all thought my parents were nuts as they drove blissfully thru Tawas City in blistering hot weather with all the windows rolled up...

I can believe that, the government chemists can't leave fuel alone it seems. When I was a boater the hot rivet according to Boat US was the government was out to raise the ethanol content to 15-20% for all pump gas. I queried on Nitrophyl plastic trying to find a chemical patent or chemical mfg co specifications that would state clearly what Nitrophyl is and is not including cell structure. All I could find was Rogers articles stating the stuff is closed cell, won't absorb fuel and in general is the best invention since sliced bread. Looked like a sales campaign to me...

This is a long sad side note about my 1969 GTO. I bought the car brand new from Rinke Pontiac in Warren, MI. My 18yr old age and gas station job didn't pass muster with the loan company so I got my mother to co-sign the loan with the proviso if I ever got to where I couldn't make a payment the car would be sold. I shopped carefully at a couple of other dealers before ordering the car. Every dealer in town had "The Judge" with it's tacky rear spoiler, fender decals and the 366 hp oval port Ram Air III engine. Red Holman Pontiac in Westland, MI, 2 miles from home had a red Judge in stock and offered to remove the spoiler, bondo the holes in the decklid and remove the fender decals. None of the local dealers had or wanted to order a Ram Air IV car. Rinke Pontiac was the nearest dealer I could find that would take a deposit and order the car I wanted. I ordered a 1969 Ram Air IV GTO optioned as follows: Verdoro Green Black vinyl top Black bucket seat interior Console Ram Air IV engine package TH 400 automatic Safe-T-Trak 3.90 limited slip axle Power steering Power brakes Retractable headlights Rallye gauge pack AM/FM stereo radio I waited 8 weeks for the car to be delivered to Rinke. It finally arrived and after my mother got out of her teaching job for the day I drove her to Warren for the delivery. I should have known the car was a jinx that day. We took a short test drive up and down busy Van Dyke Avenue in rush hour traffic and I knew immediately something was wrong with the brakes. The car was sluggish on takeoff and as soon as you lifted your foot it slowed to a stop. The service manager drove the car and tried to fluff it off as just being new. I said no- fix it. He rummaged around and found a new vacuum booster, then proceeded to lean over the bare fender of my new car with a GM tie clasp rubbing on the new paint. I made him put a fender cover on the car. He did get the new booster on, we tried it and it cured the brake problem. Papers were signed and we drove back to Westland. All was good for a few days except there was a 2-inch-long crease in the hood sheet metal right in my line of sight. It looked like someone slammed the hood down on a tooI left under the hood. I made a body shop appointment and they dollied the crease out and spotted in the paint, but it was yellow, stood out like a sore thumb. My complaint led to an encounter with the field service rep who told Rinke Pontiac to paint the kid's hood all one color. A few days later I picked up the car. Now the paint matched but it fish-eyed along the brushed stainless hood molding. I decided to cut my losses and drove the car home. The car had quite a bit of exhaust growl coming from under the hood. One day I pulled it into a service bay at the Sunoco station I worked at and ran the car with the hood up and discovered there were no less that 5 exhaust manifold bolts missing. I rounded up the correct bolts and installed them and the engine room got much quieter. I hated the cheap corporate console shifter and conned a buddy into swapping the nice Hurst Dual Gate shifter out his 1968 GTO in trade for my corporate shifter and a little cash. I did the work on both cars and they both worked well when I was done. I drove the car carefully, broke it in properly and thought I was on top of the world at age 18. In the late fall of 1969 I garaged the car, put it up on jack stands, changed oil and filter and covered it with a soft cotton car cover for the winter. By that time I had required a 1962 Ford Galaxie with a 292 Y-block V8 to drive for the winter months. The GTO didn't move until spring of 1970. Then I let the car down off the stands, removed the distributor and used a speeder wrench and 3/8" socket to turn the oil pump and primed the oiling system before I started the car. During the spring a few modifications were made to the car. A Hurst Line-Loc was added to the front brake circuit. Heat riser passages in the intake manifold were blocked off. Resonators were replaced with straight exhaust pipes. Air Lift bags were installed in the rear coil springs. The TH400 got a firm shift treatment. The rear axle got a set of 4.88-1 gears and in a later experiment a 3.23 gearset was tried. The 4.88 setup was really good to wake up the car's drag strip performance. With the automatic trans and free flowing RA IV round port heads the car was sluggish off the line, not making really good power until the revs got up to 3,500 or so but then the car was limited to 55-60mph which made expressway duty a pain. The car could definitely keep up with traffic with the 3.23 setup. The next calamity was a summer 1970 vacation drive to a Lewiston MI cabin owned by a co-worker at a later place of employment, Gad-A-Boat, in Livonia, MI, where I took a job repairing outboard motors. Everything was fine as we drove up I-75 but then we exited and got onto County Rd. 612, a two lane blacktop road that led into Lewiston. By the time we got there it was pitch black dark and I didn't pay much attention to a sign that just said "Loose gravel ahead". As soon as I hit the loose gravel I could hear it hitting the bottom of the car so I slowed to about 30mph. 30 minutes later we pulled into the yard at the rental cottage. I got out of the car and there was tar and pea gravel up to the mirror on the side of the car. I spent the 2 weekend days at the cottage soaking the tar and gravel off the body with kerosene saturated rags. That poor car's undercarriage was loaded with tar and pea gravel. I spent a good week with the car on stands getting as much of that off the car as I could reach. In the fall, just before I was going to put the car away for winter I made the mistake of leaving the car parked in an empty church parking lot to go on a field trip with a youth group. When we returned that night my car's driver door was caved in and there was a note under the wiper from a very apologetic church secretary who backed her Mercury Cougar into the side of the car. The car went back to Red Holman and the door got re-skinned and painted a not real close match to the rest of the paint. Eventually the car went back in the garage for the winter. It was when I started the car for the first time in spring of 1971 that we had the big fire. The nitrophyl float was the culprit- it became saturated with fuel and couldn't close the float valve. The car started and I was just about to back it out of the garage when it popped, stumbled and died. I tried to re-start to no avail, then noticed white smoke coming out of the gap between the hood and fenders. I managed to push the car out of the garage which probably saved the garage. The neighbor across the street was in his front yard and I hollered at him that I had a car fire. He grabbed a dry chemical extinguisher and put the fire out. My beautiful engine compartment looked like a bomb hit it, vacuum hoses and foam ram air hood gasket, wiring, all burnt to a crisp and white powder everywhere. The insurance company had the car towed to the dealer and it was gone for quite awhile while they re-wired it, re-plumbed it, replaced the carburetor and air cleaner assembly and re-painted the hood. The insurance company paid for everything except the cause which they defined as the carburetor. That cost me about 500 of my dollars. They gave the carburetor back to me and I took it apart, removed the float and put it in a jar of gasoline where it promptly sunk. Then one day I noticed the car was dripping oil. Hoist inspection revealed a stress crack in the oil pan just above the oil drain plug. Off to the Pontiac dealer for some warranty work. Red Holman Pontiac tried to blow me off saying I hit something and broke the oil pan. That wasn't likely, the crack was just above the front cross member and factory paint was undisturbed at the crack. So we had another Pontiac field rep encounter. He took one look and told Red Holman to put an oil pan on the car, he had several more cracked oil pans in his office. A couple of days later I drove to the dealer to pick the car up. It wasn't quite ready when I got there, still on a hoist and curiously dripping green anti-freeze. I inquired why that was and was informed when they got the oil pan off the car they found quite a few of the white nylon camshaft timing gear teeth laying in the pan. So they tore the water pump off, opened the timing cover and replaced the timing gears with heavy duty steel gears and a good Cloyes roller chain. For once I thought I was gonna make out with some dealer service. Little did I know what was coming next. After getting the car back all was well for awhile, then I began to notice a slight knocking sound at idle, faint, but there. As summer progressed the noise got a little bit louder, then seemed to stabilize. By this time the car had about 15,000 miles on it. Around Thanksgiving that year I decided to visit my dad's aunt and uncle in East Jordan, MI. The weather was nice when I left with the GTO but as approached Grayling it began to snow. So much for keeping the car a summer-only affair, I pressed on to Gaylord where I would turn west on M-32 to go to East Jordan. When I slowed on the exit the car began to run rough and stumble. I had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach but using a two foot approach, one on the gas, one on the brake I got around the corner onto M-32 and kept going. About an hour later I arrived in East Jordan and parked the car right in front of the one stall garage at the end of my great aunt and uncle's driveway. The next day as I recall was sunny and about 5 degrees, above zero, not below at least. I raised the hood on the Pontiac and tore the Quadrajet off, carried into the dirt floor garage and took it apart under the light of a table lamp connected by several dime-store extension cords to the house, there was no electricity or lights in the garage. Sure enough the float was laying on the bottom of the bowl patiently waiting to be changed. I obliged it by driving great uncle Howard Taft's 64 Buick Special with a V6 and 3 on the tree into Charlevoix to the Pontiac GMC dealer and bought another float. Later that day when the car rumbled to life and settled to a nice 1000rpm idle I thought I had done something. The following Sunday I was on the road home to Westland, in a snowstorm with a car with summer street tires and way too much power. I got fed up with following the car in front of me that was doing a solid 30mph about a mile before the Grand Blanc exit. I signaled and pulled out to pass and when I checked the outside rear view mirrors I saw white puffs of smoke I thought were coming from the exhaust pipes, looked down at the oil pressure gauge which was bouncing off zero, reached up and killed the ignition. I just barely coasted up the Grand Blanc exit and turned into the discount gas station at the top of the hill. I raised the hood ad EVERYTHING was dripping with oil. I didn't even have pay phone money on me but after hearing my story the station attendant called a wrecker for me. The wrecker showed up and towed the car with me in the truck's passenger seat to Superior Pontiac/Cadillac in Grand Blanc. We got there just before the service department was going to close for the day. The dealership had me sign a work order, paid Captain Hook and pushed the car onto a hoist and raised the car. The mechanic produced a pocket knife and cut the belts off the crankshaft pulley, reached up and grabbed the pulley and rotated it back and forth a good 20-30 degrees producing a nice CLANK CLANK, looked at me and said "I think I found the problem." I called my mother and she drove 50 miles in a snowstorm and picked me up and took me home. A few days later I was summoned by the dealer to come got the car. The failure explained the dull knock. Red Holman Pontiac's service guy must have forgotten what he was doing and failed to torque the damper wheel bolt that attaches the damper wheel to the crankshaft. The knock was an ever-increasing clearance between the key slot in the cast iron damper and the hard drive key that keyed the damper to the steel crank. Over time the damper wheel keyway wore to a ramp shape and finally the seal flange on the rear of the damper exploded throwing shards of iron into the oil pan and ripping out the oil seal in the timing cover. The mechanic at Superior explained that he would have preferred to replace the oil pump after a failure like that but Pontiac couldn't supply replacement because it was unique to RA IV engines, no other Pontiac engine used it. So the mechanic at Superior took the pump off, tore it apart and cleaned and inspected it and decided to re-use it. As it turned out the oil pump had a piece of debris in the pressure relief valve. When cold the car started and pegged the 130psi oil pressure gauge and stayed there until the oil warmed up. I learned the hard way oil filters didn't like the arrangement, one burst on the car and a couple others deformed under pressure. In December of 1972 I landed a job at Ford Research & Engineering in Dearborn, MI in a brand new 8 million dollar Climate Control HVAC lab. In spring of 1973 I traded the GTO in at Hines Park Lincoln/Mercury on a used 1971 Lincoln Mark III. I didn't get much for the GTO and lost track of it immediately. Between the fact the car was constantly beset with problems and the fact it was an outcast in the Ford parking lot I couldn't wait to get shed of it. In retrospect I should have kept the car, I've seen only one RA IV automatic car sell at a Barrett Jackson auction north of $250k. I paid just north of $4k for the car new.

I think Jon is spot on on the sealing. If you ever sawed a GM float you will discover a big difference between the color of the outer skin and the core because the GM floats had some kind of sealing operation. Unfortunately, it wasn't consistent, and as Jon was indicating by suggesting it should be sealed after assembly to the float arm, if it is not entirely sealed it can and probably will absorb fuel, become heavy and sink.

Hi Tom- I never measured the final thickness of the float but initially it was cut from 3/4" thick balsa and later had a 1/8" thick piece of balsa sheet to increase the thickness just enough to get the fuel level below my reference line inside the bowl of my carburetor. So it would have been close to 7/8" thick.

Well- here's the story on my nitrophyl float in the Rochester 4MV Quadrajet on my then brand new 1969 GTO Ram Air IV automatic car, one of about 50 1969 GTO's out of the total 1969 production run with that engine and trans. I started the car in my garage, heard a little dull pop, then it stalled and smoke started pouring out of the hood seams. I managed to push it out of the garage and the neighbor came over with a powder extinguisher and put the fire out. That was round one with the nitrophyl floats. The second one sank in that same car about 18 months later on the way up I-75 to Gaylord MI. There was no fire that time, just a slobbering rich running engine when I slowed the car down. I managed to nurse the car another 40 miles to East Jordan MI to my great aunt and uncle's place. Next day I borrowed my great uncles 64 Buick Special with a V6 and 3 on the tree and drove into the Pontiac GMC dealer in Charlevoix, bought another float. I spent a very cold afternoon in a dirt floor garage rebuilding the 4MV and got it back on the car and running. That was what happened to me back then and why I'm skitter-ish about nitrophyl. I'm sure the chemistry has improved.

I did a complete brake adjustment on my 1931 Buick by the 1931 Specifications and Adjustments BOOK and unlike what has been said here it starts from the pedal. The car has to be on jack stands or hoisted so all wheels are off the ground and can be turned. 1. Disconnect link rods at rear brake backing plates and front brake cross car bell cranks. 2, Adjust each brake until you can't turn wheel by hand then back off the adjuster nuts 12 flats 3. Remove the brake rod clevis pin at the brake pedal and adjust brake pedal toe board clearance (set screw on pedal stalk under floorboard) to 1/4-1/2". 4. Disconnect the hand brake connecting rod by removing the clevis pin at the hand brake lever. Now make sure cross shaft bell crank rests on chassis stop pin. 5 With hand brake handle and service brake pedal in their fully released positions adjust brake pedal link rod and link rod so clevis pin holes line up and clevis pin can be reinstalled to eliminate all slack without lifting cross shaft off stop pin. This eliminates all slack in the service brake to cross shaft and hand brake to cross shaft rods. Verify when this adjustment is done both brake pedal and hand brake lever are fully released and the cross-shaft bell crank is still at rest on the stop pin. 6. Adjust each front and rear wheel servo rod length to align clevis pin holes at backing plate levers in rear and cross car bell cranks for fronts and reinstall the clevis pins. 7. Adjust each brake adjuster nut in 6 flats. 8. Apply just enough brake to get brakes to drag and check to see that each wheel's drag is about the same. 9. Road test. Brake application must not cause car to pull. If it does adjust brake adjusters at wheels to correct. Before you start adjusting your brakes take the time to remove front and rear brake drums and inspect the shoes to make sure they are not coated with grease and check for minimum required lining thickness. If they are coated with grease but linings are still thick enough to be serviceable you might get by with thoroughly cleaning the grease off linings and other parts and replacing leaking grease seals to prevent recurrence. How about the drums- are they scored, coated with grease? If you want your car to stop correctly these items have to be addressed before attempting to adjust the brakes Taking the drums off is a good opportunity to clean wheel bearings, inspect the grease seals. This is what I found in my front wheels on both sides. Shoes and drums were clean and in good shape. Wheel bearings were pitted and replaced. Felt seals were good and re-used. Use the right wheel bearing grease designed for drum brakes. Read what it says on this Valvoline grease can below "General Multi-Purpose Grease". Disc brake grease won't properly support ball bearings used in older drum brakes. After reinstalling drums, you can begin adjusting the brakes. Buick used fully mechanical brakes until the mid or late 1930's so my 1931 Buick used for the example here is all mechanical. Step 1: Start by disconnecting all of the brakes from the pedal system. Front brake rods on 1931 Buicks should be disconnected right at the cross-shaft bell crank by removing the clevis pins. Rear brakes are disconnected are disconnected at the backing plate bell-cranks by removing the clevis pins. Step 2: The next step for Buick is to adjust the shoes until they are in hard enough contact with the drums to prevent you from turning the wheels, then backing the adjuster nuts off 12 flats. This is repeated at each wheel. Step 3: Next remove the clevis pin from the brake rod at the brake pedal, then adjust the set screw at the base of the pedal stalk to give 1/4-1/2" clearance between pedal stalk and the bottom surface of the toe board. Step 4: Then remove the clevis pin from the hand brake handle to brake rod connection. Step 4 continued: With both brake pedal and hand brake rods disconnected the brake cross shaft bell crank must rest on the stop pin as pictured below. Step 5: Now with the brake pedal and hand brake lever in fully released position adjust the brake pedal rod to line up the clevis pin holes and reinstall the clevis pin. Then line up the hand brake clevis pin holes and reinstall the clevis pin. Again, check to make sure brake pedal and hand brake lever are in their fully released position and verify the brake cross shaft remains at rest on the stop pin shown in the picture below. Now the 4 brake rods can be reassembled. Step 6: Start with the rear brakes making sure the brake is fully released with the backing plate lever resting on the stop pin shown in the picture below. Adjust the clevis so clevis pin holes line up and reinstall the clevis pins on each rear brake. Step 6 continued: Moving to the front brakes make sure they are fully released by pushing the flex cable and brake actuating rod forward into the slide housing as far as they will go. Note that the brake flex cable wires must move freely in the cable jacket or it will be impossible to assure full release and front brakes may stick on in use. Assuming cables work freely and front brakes are fully released adjust front brake clevis to align clevis pin holes at the brake cross shaft bell cranks and reinstall clevis pins. Step 7: Adjust each brake shoe adjusting nut, seen it 2 pictures immediately above, in or tighter 6 flats. Step 8: With the car raised so all 4 wheels off the ground apply just enough brake to get wheels to nearly lock up but not quite. In the case of my car the hand brake operates all 4 brakes and makes a convenient way to apply the brakes as above and hole them. Fine tune the brake shoe adjustment by getting each wheel to drag equally. Step 9: Test the car on the road. When the brakes are correctly adjusted the brakes should not drag, there should be some brake pedal travel without resulting in a low pedal condition and the car should not pull left or right when stopping. If the car does pull brakes on the opposite side of the car from direction of pull may be too loose or brakes on the side of the pull. Pedal travel should be considered when deciding to loosen or tighten brakes on one side of the car. be too tight.

I would argue simply setting the float in such a manner might not be exactly what you want to accomplish. The real desired float level is that which has the maximum fuel level in the float bowl slightly below the height of the open end of the low-speed nozzles so the level is high enough that fuel is readily available to the nozzles under idle vacuum but just low enough to prevent fuel from being discharged from the low-speed nozzles due to gravity pressure working on the fuel in the bowl. Be aware the old cork float is not as buoyant as it was when it was installed. Be aware a plastic float, brass float, any float may have a slightly different buoyancy and therefore affect the fuel level in the bowl. Make sure ALL the nozzle base gasket washers are present and do not leak. Make certain the float valve does not leak. The fuel level in the bowl is the key variable that has to be gotten right. If your nozzle gaskets leak, if your float valve leaks the float will not properly control themaximum fuel level in the float bowl and too-rich idle mixture can be expected. I hate nitrophyl plastic floats due to a fire I had because one absorbed fuel and sank, you can't buy virgin cork anymore, it is all recycled and glued and doesn't float. So I made a float from solid 3/4" thick Balsa. I took my carburetor apart to get an accurate measurement of low-speed nozzle height and transferred that measurement to the float bowl to determine maximum the fuel level that meets the level described above. Then I installed the carburetor on the car and modified my float to get the fuel level just right in the bowl. My car went from running slobbering rich at idle to running pretty clean at idle and as a side benefit the air valve adjustment has a much better defined happy setting. Conveniently you can measure low-speed nozzle height below the top of the bowl casting. MAKE SURE the fiber gasket washers visible in the picture at the base of each nozzle is present and does not leak. If they leak there will be puddled fuel on top of the nozzle plate that will be picked up as an extremely rich mixture. Transfer the low-speed nozzle measurement inside the bowl and scribe a line to indicate the fuel level just below the low-speed nozzle height. I fabricated a new float from solid balsa and thoroughly sealed it with SIG hot fuel proof model airplane dope. NEVER try to adjust fuel level by bending that cast brass arm, it will surely break and send you on a hunt for an "unobtanium" replacement. Balsa by the way, when sealed so it does not absorb fuel, has a very slightly higher buoyancy than virgin cork. You can't buy virgin cork anymore, it's all reground recycled and glued and it won't float in fuel. Make absolutely sure the float valve does not leak and adjust the float level by either changing the float dimensions slightly or using shim washers under the float valve body (preferred). I didn't have correct shim washers to put under the float valve body so I wound up thickening the float slightly by adding a 1/16" thick balsa shim to the float and re-sealing it. Again- washers under the float valve body are a better way and NEVER try to bend the brass float arm.

Someone teaching law enforcement forensics or anthropology might have tools to do this. Might be a local university project. That's really cool that you even have this tag.