Matt Harwood

Sorry, Brian. Shared pain is still pain. That sucks. Nobody understands the frustration better than I. It's always the pretty ones, isn't it? I just acquired this banner and plan to hang it in my shop where everyone can see it:

This car is local to me and also to Doug S. If Doug S. doesn't have it, then there's something amiss--I suspect it's the price.

None of them are worth watching if you want to learn something about fixing cars. They're all ridiculous. My favorite part about "Fantomworks" was the end when they give the guy the bill: Fantomworks guy: "You brought your Corvair in for an oil change and to replace the cracked steering wheel. But we found a lot of other problems with the car and ended up doing a full restoration instead. The estimate was $600 but the actual bill is $87,000." Customer: "Gee, that's a lot of money. But I really like the car. OK, I'll pay it." Fantomworks guy: "Oh, and by the way, we painted it the wrong color and changed a bunch of other stuff on it so it looks weird." Customer: "Cool!" Reality TV rots your brain. Don't watch it.

Not a surprise and probably a good idea whenever you're parking on uneven ground. I recon the concours' insurance company probably paid for a significant portion of the re-restoration...

Took the generator to Earl and Jeff. Good news? I didn't damage it with that screw. The field plates are right under that screw and they're solid steel, so no damage there. The bad news? They won't know what's wrong with it until they take it apart. So it'll be a few days, probably next week before I get it back and we find out if it's working again.

Spent a few hours after work this evening pulling the generator and water pump out of the car. Coming out is always a lot easier than going back in. I'll have to make all those gaskets again (this will be set #10 I believe) so I'll do that while I wait on the generator. Earl and Jeff at Certified Auto Electric said they can take a look at it this week, so if I'm lucky, they'll be able to fix it in time for me to reassemble everything this weekend. If, on the other hand, things go like they usually do, the generator will need some bit of unobtainium. Fortunately, my friend Lynn (AB-Buff) says he has a spare generator that I can use for parts if necessary. I can also check with Ray T. or the guys at the Canton Classic Car Museum, all of whom have helped me out of previous jams. I'll drop the generator off in the morning and we'll see what the experts say.

Well that doesn't smell scammy or anything, does it?

Unfortunately, I've already perfected my ability to do this job. I've done it 9 or 10 times over the course of my ownership of the car. It's a huge job, not a quick R&R that you can knock out in an afternoon. Access is restricted, it requires a cherry picker to pull the generator/water pump assembly into place, custom gaskets, cleaning mating surfaces that are impossible to reach, working around other delicate parts, etc. I'd rather donate a kidney than do this job again.

Some continuity testing this morning reveals that the field coils are shorted to the case. It's coming apart again and I'll let the pros at the electrical shop handle it from there. Four days of work, flushed. Ugh.

With this new information, I think I know what happened. When I had it off the car and on the bench, I noticed one of the mounting screws for the regulator was missing. I found one that fit and screwed it into place. I bet it was just a little too long and hit the field coils inside the case. Of course, when it was blowing fuses, the first thing I did was remove the screw to take it back 100% to the way it was when it was working. It's still shorting out. My guess is that the screw was just long enough to damage the field coils, which are now shorting inside the case. So it has to come apart. I'll take it to my electrical guys and see what they say. What are the chances that they can find new field coils for this generator? What are my chances of finding a replacement generator? Foot, meet bullet.

Unfortunately, I had everything fixed. Now I'm fixing everything for the second time.

Well, it appears that this car's default state is broken. How much blood is enough to satisfy it? Was looking forward to a drive and then an oil change and a few other little things to get it ready to go. So I pulled it outside and left it idling to close the shop door. When I got back in, I noticed the ammeter was showing discharge, even when I revved the engine. Generator is offline. A few posts up, you'll note that I learned it has a fuse, so that's what I checked first. And it was blown. So I replaced it. And it blew that one, too. And the next three. Something is amiss inside the generator. Unfortunately, getting the generator out involves tearing apart everything I just spent the last month working on. So I guess I'll do all that again. I have no idea how the generator and regulator work, there is nothing obviously amiss, I didn't do anything other than take it out of the car and put it back in, but it's broken now. There are no details in any of the manuals, so I can't even do basic troubleshooting. I'm in the dark, so out it has to come to let the experts figure it out. Broken, broken, broken. Being broken is what this turd of a car likes best.

The big thing for me is the 472 cubic inch V8 that arrived in 1968. The 429 in the '67s is pretty good, but it's no match for the 472, both in terms of torque and reliability. My '67 felt fragile while the '70 that I had years ago was notably more durable feeling. And yes, I do like the parking lights on the fronts of the fenders. On the '67s, there are filler pieces there that look amateurish, like they decided at the last moment not to put the lights there. The '68 is a much more cohesive design from a detail standpoint. It's all personal preference, of course, but the '68 is the perfect confluence of early hidden headlight styling and big torque muscle.

I also think that a drastic change takes some acclimation. For years I thought blackwalls looked low-rent and basic, and I pushed back against them. Full Classics should have wide whites, right? I bought my '35 Lincoln with wide whites on it and I liked the look. But when it came time to put new tires on it, I chose blackwalls, primarily because I'm tired of maintaining whitewalls, but partially because I trusted the advice of experienced hobbyists like Alsancle. I added trim rings to keep it from being too dark, but the change was pretty drastic. And yes, at first I wondered if I'd made the right decision. Now, a year later, I'm very happy I chose blackwalls. The car looks serious yet understated and looking at the whitewall photos I think it's too busy. Over time, I have become accustomed to it, and it changed my perspective. I really like the look. I'm also considering blackwalls on my '41 Buick Limited when the time comes for new tires. To reflect on Alsancle's comment about the 5 color rule, I'm not sure where that came from but Walt seems to understand it best. Essentially, it says that you shouldn't have more than five colors on a car, otherwise it starts to look too busy. There's body color, secondary color (if applicable), pinstripe color, wheel color, interior color, chrome, and tires. If all those are different colors, there's just too much going on. My car has five colors: two reds on the body, gray interior, chrome, and blackwalls. The whitewalls moved it to six and yes, with hindsight, it looks busy. All that said, if you like whitewalls, install whitewalls. If you like blackwalls, install blackwalls. Few things on our cars can make such a dramatic change in its appearance while simultaneously being quite easy to change. It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for the dramatic change it provides. You can always try it and go back if you don't like it. Oh, and I very much wish I had installed blackwalls on this car four years ago when I first got it. What a difference!

Well, I finally found the time to finish putting the water pump back together. Life kept getting in the way. I bought some thinner gasket stock for the oil cooler lines in hopes that they would be easier to install. And they were technically easier, but still far from easy. Eventually I got everything bolted together and sealed up. Two oil lines. Four bolts and four nuts. Took two days to install them. I also noticed that one of the head studs was leaking coolant, leaving a track mark on the cylinder head, so I removed it and added some sealer on the threads. Fortunately there was no struggle and the ARP studs have provisions for an Allen key on top, so they're easy to remove. Once it was back in place, I re-torqued all 58 head nuts to 60 ft-lbs. Some were a little loose the rest were right on spec. Once it was all back together, I filled it with 7 gallons of water, and, of course, while doing that the stupid godd@mned hood fell. AGAIN. It's an incredibly poor design with no secure place to hold it in the open position. And in falling, it yanked itself loose from the center mount on the firewall, so I have to figure out how to fix that next. At least no paint was ruined this time. I wish I could find the guy who designed the hood and kick him. Anyway, I fired it up and oil pressure was good and it didn't leak. No water pump leak, no lower radiator hose leak, no water manifold leak, all good. Of course, idling in the shop for 15 minutes isn't the same as a 55 MPH drive on a 90-degree day, but I'm optimistic that it'll hold. I'm very glad I changed the packing nut so I never have to do this job again. What a monumental task just to replace water pump packing. Next time should be easier (famous last words?). Tomorrow I'm going to put it on the lift, clean up the underside a bit, maybe figure out how to fix that hood (I bet we'll need three people for that because the stupid thing weighs 150 pounds). I'm also going to change the oil with some SAE 50 synthetic to see if I can bolster oil pressure a bit. It's supposed to be dry tomorrow so maybe I'll even take it for a drive. We'll see...

And here we have another seller who thinks one record-setting sale changes the entire market in their favor. It's probably the correct color. Here's my '67 that I owned for about two months a few years ago. Flamenco Red. I bought it because I wanted one really badly and it was local, then sold it because I realized I didn't want a bright red '67 but rather a triple black '68.

Fixed that for you.

I always wanted a Cord. Then I got a Cord. It left me stranded in the middle of the busiest intersection in town when all forward and reverse gears vanished. Now I don't want a Cord anymore.

This is 100% scam. In fact, it's one of the most common ones. The whole "oil rig" part and the "shipping is free and if you don't like it, we'll ship it back and give you your money back" should have told you that. It's 100% BS. What these guys do is set up an internet storefront using the address of a plausible business, maybe one that closed. You think maybe Google is just out of date or something. They will often set up a website, maybe several--one for the shipping company, one for the "escrow" outfit--and then set the bait. It's always a deal just a little too good to resist with a plausible story about why the reasonable price (dad just died, widow wants it gone, divorce, whatever). Then when you're hooked, they give you the song and dance about how it's already in the crate or shipping is already finalized and they can't break the contract, or perhaps the car is at a different (and inaccessible) location while the seller isn't available because they're on an oil rig or they are deployed in the military. But don't worry about that, just send us a deposit and if you're nervous, here's an escrow service you can use. Just create an account and give them your E-mail and a password (which they're counting on being the same as the one you use everywhere else). There is no car, they're just harvesting passwords and collecting deposits on vaporware. This isn't real. Period. It's one of the oldest scams in the book. Don't fall for it.

As you may know, the timing chain in my Lincoln was off by two teeth. It still ran reasonably well, but it wasn't happy and got really hot. It's certainly possible that yours could be off a bit, which would cause all kinds of mischief that's hard to trace. I'm also thinking that setting up the timing gears on the Buicks is unusual. It isn't as easy as "line up the two dots" like on most cars. I think you have to make sure the dots on each gear are pointing at 3 o'clock or something like that. It would be easy for a shop unaware of that fact to do it incorrectly and simply line up the dots like every other engine. But that might also make the cam timing so far off that it would not run, I don't know. Here are pages from the service manual with some information, particularly showing the timing marks.

What kind of fittings are they? Single flare is pretty common in pre-war cars. If they're not sealing, you can get little copper washers that will provide the crush surface and should conform to the shape of the fitting, even it it's a bit deformed and damaged. If they're standard compression fittings with ferrules, you can get new ferrules that should fit and as long as you're using new tubing, they should seal. Stainless can often be difficult to seal properly but if you work with it a bit and get it seated properly, it should be OK. Do NOT use any kind of goop in compression fittings, it should not be necessary and probably won't be effective anyway. The threads have nothing to do with the sealing process, it's all on the seat or the tubing.

I'd be thrilled just to have a part I wouldn't ordinarily have been able to acquire. $35? Meh. I'd spike the football and call it a win.

Compound Carburetor on Buicks was 1941 and '42 only. It was standard equipment on all Series except Specials, where it was an option. After the war, Buick went back to a single 2-barrel on all engines, and then briefly a 4-barrel in 1952 before the Nailhead V8 showed up in '53.

A pox on the guy who rewired that whole car using red wires. AND a 12-volt conversion? Yeah, no thanks.

BaT is technically just advertising, not a real auction. Nothing is truly binding. Yes, when you list a car there you acknowledge that you'll honor the high bid and if you're a buyer, you pinkie swear that you'll pay if you're the high bidder, but I doubt any of it has any teeth beyond BaT being able to take their 5% from your credit card. Deals that fall through, depending on the party responsible, either result in being banned from BaT (seller) or being banned and your 5% buyer's premium is not refunded (if you're the buyer). It's not really a major punishment, but as far as I know, that's all BaT can do. The seller in the case of this Dodge looks like a first-timer with no history, so being banned isn't going to hurt him. BaT will refund the 5% buyer's premium to the buyer who got stiffed and that'll be the end of it. I'll wager that Dodge will show up on the market with a price tag somewhat greater than the final $6800 bid. I occasionally get E-mails that a car I was watching has been re-listed because the buyer refused to complete the transaction. BaT will re-list the car at no charge and does a decent job of pointing out that the prior buyer backed out, they kept his money and banned him, and it wasn't any fault of the car or the seller. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. My experience says that once a car is marked sold and then quickly comes back on the market, potential bidders assume that the first buyer saw it and ran away, so bidding may be depressed. In this case, there's no real penalty for ignoring the result of a BaT auction and there may be some upside if he can find someone else willing to pay more for the Dodge. The buyer, well, he simply doesn't get a car he might have wanted, which happens all the time in the real world. Another case of a seller expecting his audience to be stupid and being reminded that they aren't.