Matt Harwood

Yes, they're identical.

In most states, speed camera tickets are unenforceable. I know for a fact in Ohio, you can safely ignore them (because I have on multiple occasions with no ill effect). It boils down to being able to face your accuser in court, and they can't produce a microchip as a witness. They rely entirely on the fact that people are terrified of tickets and will willingly pay up when they receive such a thing in the mail. Cleveland gave up on them years ago for this very reason--they weren't producing the revenue that was promised and the company pulled out. Check your local regulations, but I bet it's likely that you can safely ignore camera-based tickets.

Looks like a decent car. No word on how it runs, so hopefully they'll post a video. Older restoration, good colors, not the most desirable body style but good for touring. Needs some engine detailing, but if it runs well there's no rush. Hackey electric fuel pump install. That trunk can go back on the shelf. Tires look like Denmans, which have been out of production for nearly two decades, so plan on a set of rubber for driving. Hard to guess on value, but I'd be shocked if it tops $35K. Still, BaT is unpredictable--there are a few guys there who spend big money apparently just to please the crowd, and a crowd that knows nothing about these cars. Plan on a week of inane comments like "I can see FDR riding around in this!" and "Someone call Jay Leno!" and "Needs a tommy gun and a fedora!" I'll be watching with mild interest. I'd also like to buy those spare brake drums...

Glyptal.

Looks like a new Ferrari marketing expo.

I guess a more specific term would be "ownership documents." States that only offer registrations on cars over a certain age are not a problem at all. You can turn a valid registration into a title without much difficulty as long as it's current. I buy cars from Canada, New York, Alabama, and Georgia all the time, and those are registration-only places. Ohio happily issues new titles in my name when I present the signed registration paperwork along with a bill of sale from that same owner. A current registration, while not a title, is much different than "bill of sale only," which is still reserved for fools or for vehicles that don't require titles, like race cars. So instead of splitting hairs between "title" and "registration" let's instead say it's a mistake to buy a car without official, current ownership documentation, regardless of whether it's a title or registration. Better?

The real point is that it is not the buyer's job to figure out a no-title situation. If the seller wants to sell it, HE should figure it out. If it's "easy to get a title" then the seller should do it, since he currently owns the car. Passing the buck to the buyer strongly suggests that he knows it's a goat-fark of a job and wants nothing to do with it. Why spend your money buying someone else's problem? The car just got a LOT more expensive for you, both in terms of time and money. Deals stop looking like deals when you stop to think about how much work you're going to have to do and how uncertain the result is, and that's before you even start turning wrenches. There is no state in which it is "very easy" to get a title on a no-title car. Some states have processes that are less cumbersome than others, but it's always papers, legwork, time, and money that the buyer shouldn't have to spend. There's usually a way, but why subject yourself to the whims of the DMV if you don't have to? And it's not always a sure thing--you might run into a situation where the car is listed in the database as scrapped and they simply WILL NOT issue a title. The end. Now you "own" a car you can neither register nor sell. Good job. We've had that happen and it was a dead end where the seller had to take the car back because it was unsellable. I believe he is still stuck with it, despite floating it around on a "bill of sale only" ad for about six years. It's poison. Unless you find a previously undiscovered Duesenberg J sitting in a barn without a title, I can't think of many cars that don't have alternatives that probably DO have good titles. Buy one of those instead.

Unfortunately, Mr. Peterson passed away in 2022. One of the Lincoln Club members had the foresight to purchase a bunch of Lincoln-compatible regulators, but he's down to one and he's saving it as a replacement for the one that's on his car, should it ever fail (that's the one I'm trying to buy). @AB-Buff has another one that he's trying to reverse-engineer, so I'm hoping that project bears some fruit.

Harwood's first rule of car acquisition: no title, no buy. Period.

Thanks, @Bloo. I think the problem is that what Lincoln called a "voltage regulator" is really just a primitive hi/low switch. I was reading my massive National Service Manual last night for the description of how the system works. It only has one coil with one set of points to regulate voltage, plus a cut-out. The voltage coil is normally closed and once battery voltage gets to a certain level, they open, which should drop generator output to half its former level. It's not really regulating the current to match the battery's needs, it's just going as hard as the third brush will allow, and once the battery is mostly topped off, it drops to a lower level. I have not seen that on the ammeter while driving, but it's apparently supposed to happen. This sort-of tracks with what I was experiencing, although 20 amps seems like a lot. I'm going to leave it alone at about 9-10 amps and see how it behaves once we have some warmer weather. There are also some tests described in the manual where I can apparently hook up a volt meter and watch the points switch from hi to low range (which is a difference of about 1.2 volts). The good news is that it's charging. Fine-tuning it will hopefully be easy and I think I can devise a way to lock down the third brush to keep it from moving around--maybe a piece of plastic in there somehow so it's non-conductive. I'm running dual Optima batteries, so I think they're probably tough enough to handle 8-10 amps constant charge and if I get concerned that they're over-charging on a long drive, I can always turn the lights on for a while. I did send an E-mail to the one guy in the world who has one last Peterson solid-state regulator for these cars, begging him to sell it to me. We'll see if I get lucky...

So back to the generator. My generator expert who fixed it said the third brush was all the way advanced, which blew the fuse and burned up the old regulator. He reset it to its lowest setting, but was unable to "lock" it in place because of the unique mechanism that allows it to be adjusted using an external screw. So it's not exactly "loose" in there, but it can possibly move on its own. Towards the end of yesterday's drive, it was showing 20 amps on the ammeter and about 5 amps with the headlights on. That's obviously too much. But why? I opened the generator today and moved the third brush around. It was almost all the way to the minimum end, so it hadn't moved much, if at all. So why was it cranking out so much current yesterday? I experimented a bit in the shop, moving it around a bit, turning the headlights on, turning up the idle, and seeing where it would go. It was inconsistent, sometimes charging, sometimes showing 0, sometimes showing a strong discharge even at higher RPM. Is this the regulator's normal operation? It took quite a bit of cranking to get the engine started yesterday--was the 20 amps just the regulator trying to put all that electricity back in? Would it really take 15 miles of driving to do it? Can the regulator even get to 20 amps if the third brush isn't in position to do it? I have so many questions. I took another drive and it seemed to stabilize at about 9-10 amps. Turning on the parking lights and it dropped to about +5, and with the headlights it was about -5. That tracks, since the headlights seem to draw about 15 amps. A lot, but consistent. I'm not really sure how the system is supposed to operate, to be honest. The primitive regulator may be doing something, but I don't know how it does what it does and therefore I can't determine whether it's working properly. I feel that a constant +10 amps is too much, so I may try to turn it down a little more and see what happens. But without any way of locking the third brush in place, maybe it'll move again? I don't know. Am I over-thinking this? It was stable and predictable before the regulator blew up, and now it's wonky. Should I just not worry about it unless it starts to cook itself? Will I even notice before it's completely fried again? I never saw what happened last time, it was just suddenly broken. One solution would be an electronic regulator but the guy who makes them is dead, so I'm kind of SOL there. Maybe rewiring it to use a Delco regulator like in my '41 Buick is a different solution? I'd like to eliminate the third brush to get rid of this concern that it will eventually go to max output and fry itself again. Oh, and the water pump is slinging graphite paste. I'm guessing the shaft is just rough enough to chew up the packing. We'll see how long it holds...

Rochester Clutch did the clutch in my '35 Lincoln and it's smooth as butter!

Even though everything was technically finished last week, I still had a lot of routine maintenance to do today. Firstly I wanted to fill the cooling system with something other than water, lest it start rusting again. So I opened the petcock and let the water drain out. While it was doing that, I removed the air filter to have a look inside. It's not a particularly effective piece and I think even Lincoln called it a 'silencer' rather than a 'filter.' When I assembled it, it put some fresh copper mesh in there, which was more for looks than anything else--it probably kept birds out but not much else. I saw a video with a skillful lady mechanic working on a Porsche 356 like the one I just acquired, and she used a foam air filter hidden inside the original air filter housing. Good idea! So I bought a K&N foam filter designed to wrap around the outside of an open-element filter on something like a muscle car. Air filter housing on the bench. Copper mesh that I installed when the engine was first finished was slowly being ingested by the carburetor. Good thing I went in when I did. Even with the mesh, it wasn't doing much actual filtering of the air. I bought a K&N foam filter and cut it to fit inside the air filter housing. I initially thought I'd also install the copper mesh just for looks, but it wasn't feasible. Foam was a little bit too RED and would probably show in the engine bay. I disguised it with a light coat of black spray paint. Once the paint was dry, I oiled it with some spray-on K&N filter oil that helps trap extra particles. I'll pull it out each spring and clean the filter. Painted and oiled foam fits neatly inside the filter housing and won't get sucked into the carburetor throat like the copper mesh. Once the air filter was finished, I reinstalled it and closed the cooling system drain. Then I filled it with 32 ounces of No-Rosion, 3 gallons of green anti-freeze, and about 4 gallons of purified water (not quite, since the No-Rosion took up some space). Melanie wasn't available to hold the hood, so I made myself a custom hood holder to hopefully cure my issues with the hood falling. I used a plastic tube that was just the right length and cut some slots on one end. Those slots would fit on a little square metal shield that protects the thermostat for the side louvers. With the lower end of the tube secured on a handy bolt head and braced against the radiator support rod, I was able to prop the hood open much more securely than before. Hopefully it never falls again. New hood prop rod should cure my falling hood problems. Seven gallons of old, contaminated coolant, ready to recycle. Once the cooling system was full, I used my bleeder valve on the water pump to eliminate the air bubble in that location, then pulled the oil drain plug. It was REALLY tight, probably because I kept snugging it up to kill a leak. I used a copper crush washer last time I changed the oil, but it wasn't very effective. I used an O-ring this time to hopefully get a better seal. Oddly enough, the oil drain plug was the biggest leak I had on the new engine, so I'd like to cure it. O-ring replaces copper crush washer to hopefully eliminate a leak at the drain plug. For future reference, the drain plug is 1-1/8" and takes a 7/8" O-ring. I've been fighting an oil pressure problem since I started driving the car, and my next step was to use some straight 50-weight oil. I think with more than 1400 miles on it since it was finished, switching to synthetic is OK at this point--it should be fully broken-in. The only brand of synthetic oil with an SAE 50 is Royal Purple, which I've used before in my Audi Ute (particularly the gearbox, which shifts like butter now). I bought 12 quarts of the stuff for the Lincoln. Filled the sump with THREE GALLONS of this stuff. It was the only straight SAE 50 synthetic available, but it should be more than adequate. Then it was time to fire it up. With a little cranking, it finally fired and ran extremely smoothly--noticeably smoother than before. It clearly likes the thicker oil. Oil pressure was EXCELLENT at about 55 PSI at idle, but bear in mind the engine was cold. It sure sounds sweet: Feeling good, I cleaned up and got behind the wheel. I drove it on my usual 20-mile test loop just to see how it felt. Pretty much the same as always, good power, very smooth, lots of torque. Oil pressure was better than usual throughout the drive, never dropping below about 30 PSI on the roll and staying above 10 PSI at idle, both improvements. However, it was also only 45 degrees outside, so that's definitely a factor. We'll see how it goes on a 90-degree day. And as always, the engine ran at ambient + 100 degrees, staying rock-steady at 140 degrees throughout the drive. LOTS of oil pressure at start-up. The only thing on my mind was seeing the ammeter slowly creeping up to +20 amps or so. That's a lot, and more than I've seen in driving before. I suspect that the third brush has moved (or is moving due to vibrations during driving) and is increasing the charging rate. I need to figure out how to secure that third brush to keep it from wandering around. Should be easy enough, right? I turned on the headlights to reduce the strain on the batteries and finished my drive without incident. When I arrived back at the shop, I let it idle for a minute and looked underneath--this is when the water pump would start leaking. No leaks now! We'll see how it looks tomorrow or Monday to see if it leaks after it's been parked. I sincerely hope the water pump issue is solved. I do NOT want to take this thing apart ever again. NOW the car is ready for the summer. I need to clean it up a bit, but mechanically, I think it's 100% ready to rock. Me, however? I'm more sore than I've been, maybe ever. I spent a lot of time crawling under the car and getting back up, and I guess I'm not as young as I used to be. That was an unhappy realization. I'm gonna go relax and watch the Maple Leafs in the NHL playoffs...

Our first cruise night of the year is May 3. From there, it's the first Friday of the month through September. Maybe we'll see you there.

1950 Plymouth.

I hate the start/stop feature on my 2019 TourX, but it only works like 2% of the time, so I'm OK with that. I don't know if my car is broken or something in the software is buggered, but it very rarely shuts off at a stop. As an old car guy, the most terrifying thing in the world is a car that goes silent at a red light. I'm really glad to not experience it very often in my modern daily driver. Good luck with the job--I'll be interested to see what's involved. Is it more than just a routine starter change? I bet there's a lot of plumbing in the way...

You are the only one who can determine if it's the "right" price. Do you love it more than any other $60,000 car you can find? That's your answer. If you are ambivalent about it, well, that's a different answer. It sounds like a good car and it's beneficial that you have access to the guy who has been maintaining it for the past 10 years. It has the 346 cubic inch V8 that's virtually indestructible and Cadillacs were still some of the best engineered and built cars of the period. Mechanical parts are plentiful, trim parts no so much, Series 65 parts in particular are unobtainium, so perhaps that is a factor in your decision. On the other hand, a rare car like that will always stand out and it's big enough to be impressive without being so massive that it's hard to handle. It should have a pretty good power-to-weight ratio, too. Do you love the car? Did you stay up in bed thinking about it instead of falling asleep? Have you been browsing Cadillac catalogs and websites and finding all the information about it that you can? I think that is a good indicator. But if your only concern is price and whether you're getting a deal, well, you're the only one who can decide that. I like cxgvd's answer--jump in and swim! It's just money, you can always get more. And remember that having a relationship with the previous owner can be valuable. Too many guys use up all their goodwill with me getting a good price and I'm disinclined to help them out later because they were just so difficult to work with. There are more factors in play than just dollars and cents. My advice is to always follow your heart. Nothing about this hobby makes financial or logical sense, so the only thing you can do is fall in love and run with it.

The Harwoods will be there.

Dang, and I had one.

They'd get their price if it was clean.

This is a 356C, which I believe was the base model. The SC was more powerful, more expensive, definitely less common, and I'm sure it's worth a lot more today. This one has mechanical upgrades that put it on par with a "Super 90." I'm not an expert on Porsche models and vernacular (it can be bewildering) but as far as I can tell the C was the final iteration of the 356 before it was dropped and the 911 took over. Of note, the C was the first production Porsche to have 4-wheel disc brakes, which is a welcome upgrade. I guess I'll have to become fluent in Porsche, something I've managed to avoid for 40 years. Meh, if I can learn to speak Packard, this shouldn't be any more difficult, right? Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

This is the latest car to end up under my care, a 1964 Porsche 356C coupe. It was a 10th anniversary gift from my mother to my step-father about 30 years ago. Sadly, the Doctor is now fighting Parkinson's and doesn't drive any more. We sold his other two Porsches (a '72 911T and a '78 911SC Andial) last year, but I told him this one should stay in the family. I'm not really a Porsche guy even though I grew up with the Doctor's cars, but this little guy appeals to me because it's simple and feels like an old car. It exists solely for the joy of driving, something I can certainly appreciate. The Doctor and I have been close for decades and this is a part of him that I'd like to hold on to. 356 at the Stan Hywet Father's Day Car Show last year in the special "Air Cooled" class. 356 today, in my shop. It was restored in the early 1990s, right before my mother bought it. I think she paid $21,000 for it. It has an upgraded motor with about 95 horsepower instead of the original 60, and it's pretty gutsy. In the intervening years, the Doctor put more than 38,000 miles on it, which is probably a lot. He often drove it to work and used it as a real car. There are a few signs of age and use, a notable scrape from when the Doctor was parking by feel there towards the end, but nothing critical and nothing I want to fix--it isn't a show car, it's a driver. I have a few items on my wish list, but we'll see what the future brings. The car has been in our shop for about four years, ever since the Doctor stopped driving, and I shamefully haven't driven it much and just let it sit. Mostly it was parked up front in the lobby where it was out of the way and safe. We took it out last June for the Father's Day car show at Stan Hywet hall where there was a special air-cooled class, and driving it to and from the show reminded me what a joyous little machine it is. But then I stashed it back in the lobby until earlier this week. I recently joined the Porsche Club and today was their new member brunch, so I pulled the 356 out last Tuesday, had Roman (our mechanic) change the oil and air up the tires and install a new Optima 6V battery so it was ready to go this morning. Well, mostly. It was very grumpy, refusing to idle and backfiring quite a bit at idle and on the overrev when I was off the throttle. I figured it was just because it was 45 degrees and maybe some old gas, but it didn't get better as I drove even with fresh gas in the tank. We took it out on the highway for a while to let it stretch its legs a bit (this little guy doesn't mind 70+ MPH speeds) but that didn't seem to improve things. It just needs some TLC. We still drove it more than 60 miles and hit a milestone along the way: So this is my next little project. We'll pull the carburetors and clean them, give the ignition system a full sorting, and put new tires on it (I think these are approaching their 30th birthday). It also needs a good deep cleaning everywhere. Parts are plentiful, although not particularly cheap, and the simplicity of the thing is kind of refreshing after dealing with the Lincoln for the past few years. We're not going to restore it, but we'll make it a first-rate driver like all my other cars and then have some fun with it. Melanie can drive this one, too, which she seems to enjoy. I'm not really a Porsche person, but we'll see if I can fall in love with this little guy.

V12 Lincoln K.

Or, if you have really bad luck like I do, then perhaps your compression gauge fitting was just long enough to hit the valves and destroy the engine. It had good compression for a few seconds, then it didn't.