Mark Kikta

Tonight I took Terry Wiegand’s recommendation and turned this deformed brass fitting for my vacuum tank on my lathe and it came out great. I should have much better luck getting it to not leak now.

I'm going to try to turn it in my lathe to get the underside flat

It appears to be solid

OK I'll check it out Thanks

I left the outer tank to get painted but brought the rest home. The pot metal top doesn't look cracked in these pictures but I will inspect it closer.

Today I got most of my Stewart Vacuum tank parts back from the glass bead blaster and they really cleaned up well. One issues I noticed was that the bolt that holds the fuel line on the top of the tank was really deformed from someone really torquing it down,most likely to stop it from leaking. I think I need to do something to it so it won't leak for me. Maybe I will file the underneath of the bolt head smooth?Someone must have put a lot of pressure on it to deform the head like this and also crack the bolt around the hole for the fuel to go through. Anyone have any other ideas or anyone have a similar bolt they want to sell?

Couldn’t believe it today when my locksmith called to tell me he fixed the lock on my shifter. He managed to manually make a key that unlocked the shifter. I think it’s very impressive that he could make that lock work again without destroying it. I can’t wait to put that all together again.

So then I removed the shifter shaft and pulled the shifter out of the transmission case. You can clearly see the small shaft that slides in and out of place to lock the shifter when the key is rotated. If my locksmith can’t free up the lock to rotate, I’m going to cut off the small locking piece so this can never lock again. In fact, I think I should cut that piece out even if he frees up the lock so I never have this issue again.

So then I tried to knock out what I thought was a pin holding the the small cover on. Turned out to be a screw that I chiseled out because the head was ground down to look like a pin. The threads are now stripped for sure. So I pulled both covers off and removed the pin holding the shifter shaft in place

Tonight I took my shifter apart to see if I can get closer to getting the shifter lock to work. Here you can see the shaft and forks coming out and the springs coming out also. Then I started knocking the dome cover off with a hammer and large cold chisel round the outer edge. It came off just so far and then stopped. I realized then I needed to take the cover off between the large cover and lock.

Thanks Hugh, a lot different it seems Mark

I also sanded more of the black streaks off with a course wheel on my dremel before applying the stain which helped a lot.

Thank you Morgan! Spar varnish should make it look nicer

Well I have decided to stain my wheel and as soon as that cures well, I'll begin putting some spar varnish on.

So far my locksmith has had no luck picking the lock or making a key to unlock this shifter. Has anyone tried to take these forks out to get inside this shifter mechanism? It looks like this shaft going left to right may have pins holding it in place that may have to be drilled out.

Here is some info on the bumpers

I have the same Lyon front bumper for my 22-45 that I just had nickel plated.

BenP By the way that family photo is priceless!!

BenP, Thank you for that interesting analysis. The moisture theory is certainly possible.. The 1922 wheels had the little bumps to aid in gripping on the underneath of the wheel vs on the inside of the wheel like they were in the teens. Also the 20s wheels seemed to have small ridges on the top side to aid in gripping where the wheels from the teens looked smooth on top. What didn't make sense with my paint theory was the fact that the bumps were all black covered and shiny with whatever substance it was. I had to sand them all to get it off. Looked as thought they were worn between them over the years. I would have thought that if it was paint that was worn, the bumps would have worn first, not the space between them. I'm starting to think I should just stain the wheel with a dark stain and be done with it. Then use a gloss poly on top. Plus the wood is very hard and not very pretty in grain etc. Seems very gray like it may be walnut or something

No Black paint on those for sure. Maybe they made changes by 1922/23

Wow, sure enough.....thanks Jim

Here are photos of the numbers on my shifter plate and lock. I removed it from the transmission and can't see much in the area of the forks. I guess I will need to take the shafts out to remove the forks and see up inside of it.

In my quest to try to figure out why my wooden steering wheel has so much black in the crevices and grain of the wood, I am beginning to think the steering wheels were painted black on the open cars. If you compare these photos I copied from a very nice Buick brochure of the steering wheels of a touring car and an enclosed car, there does appear to be a real difference in finish. I know they are black and white photos, but you can see a real difference.

Here are a couple photos I took today of my steering wheel today. I painted the spokes with a single stage acrylic enamel with a hardener.

My next step with this is to take the top plate off of the tranny and see what I have.