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They originally had piping. Remember it's aluminium [ correct spelling ], and softer than steel. It will look nicer with the piping. Sounds like you are a panel beater.

One of those cars won the 2 litre classis in the 1951 Mont Carlo Rally. Not bad for a naturally asperated 1500 cc flat four eh. Is that yours matt or just a job for you. Hi Matt, looks like I have 3 copies of this book. Let me know your address and i will send you one. It only has black and white pic in it but shows a few of the different cars as well as history. A Javelin was severely modified for racing in Aussie [ the Wylie Javelin ], and is pictured in this book. Doesn't look anything like its parent car.

Its a Jowet Jupiter. Sports car version of a Jowet Javelin [ well sort of ], made in Bradford England. Only 31 came to NZ, which included a complete new chassis [ which was homed in the street next to where I grew up in Titahi Bay ]. Mead built some bodies and I think Farina built about 4. One Farina exists here in NZ just north of Whangarei. My first car was a Bradford van and then I went on to own a Javelin. Did a lot of miles in that car. One of the nicest original Jupiters is in the Southward Museum at Otaihanga. As a mechanic, I did a lot of work on the Bradford and Javelin. Learned how to make rod brakes [ Bradford ] work really well, which helped me to understand and get the brakes on the Dodge really good.

It's not a seal. It's an oil slinger. It's what it is and not much you can do about it except hope you have no blow-by when your rings have settled in. some engines could be fitted with a split seal top and bottom halves to fit into the block [ before crank fitted ] and rear main cap [ before fitting this to the block ] but not sure if you can get one for this engine. A friend of mine has a 29 Chev and was quite surprised when he saw the size of the Dodge diff on my car. Even the gearbox is tiny in comparison to the dodge one.

There were some really good parts guys around a few years ago. In the 70"s and 80's there was Dominic, at the Austin agency, who knew every part off by heart, and every modification needed as well. Magic. I think he was a bit stuffed though when they took over Honda as well.

You can see how little room I have to operate in. I get by though.

Ok. busy all day today practicing. Tomorrow i may showeth

Know what you mean Matt. I changed the oil in my commando forks yesterday and the sweat was just pissing out of me. At least Bussleton has a building on the ends of it eh. [ not to mention a wee railway ]

Great work Matt. You have made some excellent tools to do that work. Looking forward to see the rest of the exercise. Dereck

The photo of the left fender more resembles what mine looks like. The right fender appears narrower, so it's shape could be causing the bottom to be lower. If you reshape the right fender to match the left, you may cure the problem. Its 100 years old so don't expect it to be perfect though.

Retarding the spark is likely to cause hotter running. Reading this, you seem to have removed and cleaned the radiator and flushed the engine since the overheating [ is that correct? ]. Does it now over-heat?? You described the water flowing out the overflow also after a shorth time, [ or did you??? ]. That would indicate combustion gases in the cooling system. You mention adding some stop leak type crud to the cooling system and that is also likely to block the radiator [ or the block ] enough to cause overheating [ possibly ]. In order to assist you with the diagnosis, you need to be precise in describing the problem and the timeline for your observations, otherwise we are all guessing.

Thanks for this info. My rims are 21 x 3 inch[ measured from inside the rim ] with 5.25 x 21 tyres on them. Obviously Jaxon rims.

Is this a Chev rim.

All going well since the refurbished mag was installed and the carb thoroughly cleaned. [ I was busy writing up about the work on the car in other threads, to realize I had not finalized this thread. ] Working on perfecting the brakes after finding one drum was only 30-50 thou thick. Obtained a replacement that was very rusty and took some time to clean up. Still a work in progress but getting close. Current job is repairing hood bows and sorting out the remanufacture of the hood [ soft top to those from the States ] The hood had been made from the original Touring hood, but never was able to fold down without covering the seat. No way you could drive the car with the hood down like that. I have reworked the front "irons", to allow it to fold back. I have to do this because or the recommendation to keep the hood up at all times to prevent shrinkage, but it needs to be fold down to get into our garage. Only 2 inches of clearance between top of screen to the tilting door when its up. The last hurdle to finishing the job is that I live over 90 kms away from the testing station the tests vehicles prior to registration when they haven't been on the road in NZ for such a long time. Problem for me here is that the inspector is required to see the car and it's production numbers before he can get permission from LTSA to check the car. I am supposed to trailer the car down there and back just so he can check the numbers. That really is an insult to my integrity. Why would I lie about the numbers if seriously want to get the vehicle registered for our roads. That's bureaucratic nonsense at its worst. By the way, the over fueling problem was related to under ignition problems. Once the mag was fixed there was no more over fueling problem. Just now, I fixed the problem with the right hand door easily lifting off its hinges. I measure there was 1/4 gap between the top of the top hinge and that restricting bracket, then cut a piece of 1/4 inch rubber sheet, jammed it in above the hinge then refitted the inner cover. That's All fixed now.

As we say here " It's got me buggered" as well.

Hi JF. I have a variety of drums, some worn with a huge ridge and others that have been machined , and having very little ridge. Yes they have external contracting bands as well a a full shoe inside for the hand brake. The hand brake would probably not wear the inside of the drum so much. I was just hoping someone would have information on what the original spec for the drums were. Not a problem though. I should have mentioned that we are talking about a 1923 Dodge here. We have tyre shops here but they are not brake specialists. Estimation of our greater population is approx 16,000. Hard to know how much the drum would compress, but I suspect it would be minimal otherwise that would be no good. I am a retired mechanic that used to own my own business way down south of here.

JF You must live in an area with a very big population. The nearest brake specialist to me is 0ver 50 miles away. If I am right, the drums were 14 inch OD and there has been 1/16th inch wear, bringing them down to 13 7/8 inch OD. Near enough for me. Still no guarantee what the original thickness or OD might have been though. When the weather cleared again, the road test showed a great improvement in brake performance. I had to really step on the brakes to even get a feeling the the l/rear was about to lock up. Need to do plenty of driving now to bed it all in.

Got it all back together and while filling the engine I saw the float rise. Trouble is, it sank to the bottom again. Stuff it. Thanks Mark. Most of the V8's I worked on only held a gallon so presumed I was on the right track. Still had plenty of oil pressure. Now a road test to test that brake again, now its stopped raining.

Understand. Dodge did work to inches and fractions of inches except in 2 places that I have found so far.. the 0.2 inch size of the pin through the front of the crank and the 0.4 inch square on the rear sump bolts. Not sure how accurately I can measure the inside and outside diam of the drum though. I don't know of a 14 inch micrometer so it will have to be a gestimation.

14 inch O D

Does anyone know what the original thickness of these drums was. Metal spraying could be an option but I suspect it would be very expensive. I think a qualified boiler maker would be able to weld on a new band better that spraying. After all. Steam boilers are just bombs waiting to explode. I remember watching a video on running steam engines and the driver mentioned that the engine is just a big bomb running on rails and 80 mph.

Where the hell did I read that it takes 4 quarts. Yes, the book does say 5-6 quarts. [ in two places ]. That's good because I see no fault with the float. [ all three do the same when floating in water. Will sink lower in oil as it is lighter than water as I indicated above. Just have to fix the oil leak. I did notice after rebuilding the engine that I could not get the front engine mount spigot into the front hole. I had to carefully reverse file the upper right edge of the sump. I think this has reduced the ability of the sump to squeeze the gasket at the right front allowing the leak. An easy fix. Mark, none of the floats leaked, one of my spares has a wee rattle in it but not leaking. I will fit the better spare and add more oil.

After spending time getting my brakes working really well I finally got the chance to remove the left rear wheel and inspect the drum thickness. Ages ago, I could not get the left rear hub loose, so I left it alone and jut drove the car. More recently i had another go at getting the hub off and found it loose. I measured the drum thickness and it was between 25 thou and 50 thou thick. Also, I noticed the hub was further into the diff housing so that the axle protruded about 20 thou. No wonder it was loose. [ Doesn't explain why it was so tight in the first place thou ]. I managed to track down a used drum and a 20 inch wheel fitted to a Dodge rear hub. Got the lot home and set about removing the thick rust on the inside and outside of both drums. In the mean time, I checked the used hub and found it cracked along the keyway. I had a quick look at my original drum and found it was ok. After making a few measurements, I made up a 5 thou shim to go between hub and axle and fitted the used drum I had emeryed the rust off.. On the road test, the left rear kept locking up under harder braking. Thought I had cleaned the drum up satisfactorily but obviously not. [ quite badly pitted, buy as it was 125 thou thick, think it better to not machine it. Then the weather turned shitty so spent the time having another go with the emery tape. Still pissing down and some flooding around the country, so decided to remove the sump as per the other thread. Will have to wait for the weather to clear before putting it back on the road again.

After I rebuilt my engine and got it running, I noticed the oil level indicator sank. If I lifted it then let it go at about the right level [ 4 quarts ] it hesitated then slowly dropped down. I didn't want to pull it apart so drove it. I am still in the stage of getting it ready for the authorities to let me get it tested for road use etc [ another long story ] so have been driving it up and down my and my neighbour's driveways. I have just done about 12 miles in it. I could not seem to stop oil leaking from the front of the engine, [ sump gasket area it seemed ], so decided to pull the sump today and check it out. i noticed uneven compression of the gasket, and when I checked the float against another two, by floating them in water, they all appeared to float the same height [ i.e. 5-6mm of the float sitting above the water level.] There was no noticeable resistance to the movement of the original float. I haven't checked it floating in the running in oil but expect it to sink a little lower. Bit of a conundrum I think.

Adam 72. You have not mentioned whether you have points ign or magneto. iF YOU HAVE A MAGNETTO , READ ON. iF NOT, DONT LOOK ANY FURTHER. My switch did not appear to be operating correctly so I took it apart. It inly had 2 springs in it where there should have been 3. [ Because I didn't have a key, and In order to test the switch I made a key blank out of a sheet of galvanized iron, ] I ended up converting that into 2 keys., I had lost any form of key I.D. so I set about resetting the toggles/tumblers and making 2 keys to fit. One of the keys had a spigot at the end from when I first made the blank. That switch worked well, and the other didn't turn the mag off, [ IE short out to earth ]. I took the switch apart again and worked out that there should have been another spring in the centre to act as the earthing contact. After reassembling, my switch worked perfectly. When the key is rotated to the anticlockwise position, it is in the running position, and the toggle/tumblers stop the key falling out. When turned clockwise, it shuts the engine down because it has earthed out the coil. Like the carb on these engines, it is virtually bullet proof until some numb-scull has a fiddle. Hope this helps.