Grimy

Let me try to address the question even though my oldest car is a 1918, outside the brass era and not eligible for HCCA *national* tours. I belong to HCCA national as required to participate in three separate HCCA Regional Groups (RG)/Affiliated Registries. A key point is that *regional* HCCA activities often allow post-brass but still pre-WW2 vehicles, sometimes in limited numbers so as not to overwhelm the brass car drivers' need for slower tours. For each event, need for a trailer depends on the capabilities and limitations of your car, and locations of yourself and the start/end points of the event. There are also separate tours limited to one-cyl, 2-cyl, and smaller 4-cyl cars. It's a smorgasbord! * Bay Area Horseless Carriage Club (BAHCC), a RG, was founded in 1950 and is based in my local area. It is the type of club I grew up with 60 years ago: monthly meetings (some now on Zoom), annual holiday party, July 4 parade with following BBQ at a member's home, monthly half-day hands-on tech sessions at a member's home March-November, monthly one-day tours in the local area March thru November, including a day-after-Thanksgiving Pilgrim's Picnic in which we bring our own TG leftovers plus desserts to share (if inclement weather, we meet at a member's collection). * South Bay Vintage Touring Club, a RG better known as Nickel Age Touring Club (we had to drop 'nickel' as already taken when signing on with HCCA as national org), which does one annual 3-4-day tour (we used to do two tours per year, but we are suffering from the Aging of the Force). Some are nearby, some require trailering. * Nickel Era Touring Registry, an "Affiliated Registry" of HCCA, accepts 1932-and-earlier vehicles and has one annual 5-6-day tour in widely dispersed areas (Utah, Idaho, Washington, various locations inside California), and definitely requires trailering. Our superb 2023 tour in SW Utah had about 34 cars from 1912 thru 1932.

I'll be there with some smalls in #398

Time to clean up the Buick, too, now that the barn dust has blown off.

And the motto of the Armor branch is, HAUL AZZ AND BYPASS!

Isn't the booster--and associated plumbing and adjustments--the only variable in your test procedure?

Looks like the t'stat housing of a 1925 Paige 6-70 (large series), but which did NOT have the adjustable feature from the factory. I have a 6-70 engine from a parts chassis as a backup for my 1922 6-66. Paige is the most common (!!!) of the marques using the Continental 8A/9A/10A engines. My guess is that the adjustable mechanism was an available modification kit. My 1922 Paige 6-66 (nearly identical engine) had a smaller t'stat housing.

Link not working, Karl

It's gratifying to have that power in my old age! 🙂

A trusted friend who runs a boat repair shop servicing boats operating in both fresh- and salt-water environments says magnesium anodes for fresh water (us) and zinc for salt water (that would be @edinmass 🙂 )

I'm sure you do, Bernie.... 🙂

Agree that a top frame must be duplicated from another MoPaR. Need to find out which other MoPaRs used the same top frame, and that will be a narrow window. Then you must network to find a suitable car with top frame that has not yet already been finished--or (another unicorn) a finished car that has detailed tracings from its restoration. Be prepared to pay a VERY large deposit to borrow one for duplication.

As I said in another thread, the Inflation Calculator on the internet dashes all of our hopes of making money on our vehicles, to which I will now add even without factoring in opportunity costs. It may be a function of my advanced age, but I'm only interested in vehicles I can drive now, not projects.

Do we have a Rolls-Royce owner or mechanic to weigh in on the suitability of "modern" antifreezes, especially for our cars with aluminum components? I saw (but don't have) a RROC article from about 10 years ago which strongly urged "No OATs"--OAT meaning Organic Acid Technology. My recollection is that RROC found OAT antifreeze to be worse than unsuitable for pre-war cars. I don't know the science, but do in fact remember the "No OATs" mnemonic.

If you think only the USA has high inflation, look for a comparative chart of post-pandemic inflation rates in Europe vs US. As painful as it is for us, the European countries have it considerably worse.

Love it!!! -An old person

Almost all the time. That was the first year of column shift and that particular linkage design lasted at least through 1940. VERY occasionally my 1939 would get hung up between 1st and 2nd. In such a case, shut engine off, be sure the car is not being held by gears (i.e., depress clutch and let car roll an inch or two if it will, then apply parking brake). open hood, reach down and grab the shift levers off the steering column, and jiggle them up and down and it will free up. I don't recall if there's a grease fitting on that underhood linkage (it's been 15 years, but my Jeepster has such a fitting) but if there is, that's a high priority fitting.

For engine cooling systems running with dissimilar metals, add a sacrificial anode. My boat friends tell me magnesium anode for fresh-water boating, zinc for salt-water, so I use magnesium in the cooling system of my 1918 Pierce 48. Talk about dissimilar metals: iron cylinder blocks, copper radiator, bronze water pump, copper distribution tubes to cylinder jugs, cast aluminum water manifold carrying coolant output from cylinders to radiator. Without an anode, the cast aluminum becomes the sacrificial metal in this battery of a cooling system. To be fair, my car had an anode added over the years, presumably when a new radiator was built in 1994. It's a cylinder about 2.5 inches long and 3/4 inch diameter, drilled longitudinally with stainless wire through it, the wire formed into a hook like that of an old Christmas tree ornament, with the hook inserted into the overflow pipe. The wire is long enough that the anode can rest on top of the radiator core. Packard Twelve friends, do you use anodes to protect your cast aluminum?

Oh, THAT kind of International Hooker!

I have one of the tags and I had the car (1934 Buick 56S with 5-wheel equipment) for many years

The Ford/Navistar 7.3 TD I bought new 26 yrs ago specifies a Ford additive that (I think) is *currently* called VC-8 (differing names of 25 yrs), primarily for anti-cavitation and used *with* antifreeze. I stay on top of that. @ramair what do Cummins and Deere say about required additives?

@pmhowe all Cad flathead owners-for-some-time have had to deal with that. IIRC, the slow idle spec (in Drive if Hydramatic) is 375 rpm. An occasional chug (or fart, if you will) is acceptable. A constant Fart Machine sound is not, and should not provided that the engine is in good tune. See next paragraph. The 1937-48 Cads have hydraulic lifters with a pump-up range of 0.030 to 0.070--which is the gap for grinding valve stems for specified 0.030 to 0.070 clearance at the end of a valve job using Official Cadillac Tool J-1055. J-1055 was reproduced 20-30 years ago but I haven't seen it advertised recently. As my Cad mentor Glen Cole taught me, that tool is nothing more than a piece of bar stock the length of a *collapsed* lifter, with another piece welded on at 90* to serve as a handle. Of course, the Cadillac tool's handle was knurled for a better grip but mostly, I think, for a professional appearance. Glen used two inside micrometers as Go - NO-Go gauges: if "x" (3.032" sounds about right, the length of a collapsed lifter), then the mics were set at (x+0.030) and (x+.070). Speaking of which, one cause of hard starting and rough idle in these cars is that the distributor advance plate rides on three ball bearings which develop flat spots and wear flat spots in their channel and will not allow the distributor to fully retard at idle as it should. Then it is too advanced for an easy restart AND gives a rough idle. There used to be kits-- "Spark-O-Liner" I think--which was a snap-in channel for the distributor body to give a unworn surface for the advance plate to move. I don't recall the kits coming with new ball bearings but that shouldn't be a major hurdle. My first step on acquiring such a car, after an oil change, is to dose it well with MMO in the gas and drive it 100-200 miles to (hopefully) clear any sticky valve stems due to period of disuse or very light use. Please tell us about your entirely different technical solution.

Two other points: * listen to the exhaust pipe at a slow idle, hot. It should purr, not fart. I looked at a farting flathead Cad once and the owner said, "That's the famous Cadillac whispering exhaust." I replied, "It's whispering I NEED A VALVE JOB." * Differential ratio/cruising speed: I *think* this has 3.92 gears in the smaller pumpkin like 60 and 60S. The 75 series had 4.58s and I drove mine cross country at 55-58 mph. The 90 series (V-16) ratio was 4.31. The 75 and 90 interchanged only with each other, no substitute available. My of-happy-memory 75, which now lives 2 blocks away with a great friend, has had a Mitchell 26% OD added under his ownership.

What Matt and AJ said. The Inflation Calculator on the internet dashes all our dreams of making money on our cars..... Another strong experience-based recommendation: add a heat sleeve to the fuel line between the pump and the carb. I notice it has the bowl-on-top fuel pump which was not from the factory but was the only factory substitute pump beginning in 1943. There's a (reprinted long ago, I no longer have mine) Cadillac service pamphlet explaining the reason and vapor lock and associated ills even then. The bowl-on-top fuel pump was used through 1948 on the L-head V8s and for all replacement service.

@BobinVirginia I'll PM you contact info (later today) on a father-son Pierce team in FL who reproduced a number of gas tanks for Pierce series 80 a few years ago. They have a local vendor who built them. That would be much closer to you.