jrbartlett

You should post this on the Riviera forum site. I have two 1966 Rivieras, but have not had a spindle off them. I have done so on a 1964 Lincoln, so will offer an opinion. You may not need to remove the spring, but you will almost certainly need to compress it using a spring compressor. Some compressors are designed to fit into the center of the spring, and some on the outside. This is not a job for the faint of heart, or for an inexperienced hobbyist. But it's routine for someone who does suspension work all the time. I suggest you find a front-end shop to do it for you. You need several specialized tools, and there is danger involved if you don't do things right.

I adapted a modern aluminum 6-bladed flex fan to my '35 Auburn. Improved airflow with less noise.

I bought a near-new 2007 Lexus that had a clear plastic covering over the front 3 feet of the car. I thought it worked well for 4-5 years. But over time the film yellowed, and it also accumulated its own stone chips that could not be touched up. Eventually I had to have it removed. But the stuff was impossible to peal off. It was brittle and came apart in 1/8th-inch patches. Couldn't be done without damaging the paint. It required repainting the front clip. Not sure the film was worth the extra expense.

In my case, a 2009 Ford F-350 Lariat dually with crew cab and long bed. Long wheelbases are one of the keys to stability in towing, as are the dual rear wheels. It has the V-10 with 457 foot-pounds of torque. Not as powerful as the diesels, but not nearly the maintenance headaches either, and it's really smooth and quiet. I've put 100,000 miles on it now and the only big repair was an air conditioning control valve under the dash. I'm pulling a 28-foot Featherlite enclosed trailer, hauling cars up to 6,000 pounds in weight.

Warranty job. Note the obvious manufacturing defect. The rotor is cracked apart and spread at bottom.

That raises the question -- what was it stock, an Auburn Speedster?

I'd take it. Even pay good money for it.

All the Duesenberg trunks I've seen have an indented left rear corner allowing room for the gas tank filler pipe and cap. I know because I own a Duesenberg equipped with a trunk. Uncertain if maybe some of the cars were configured for a plain-shaped trunk like this one.

Well, let me try again. Back in the '70s I restored a '64 Lincoln Continental. Pulled the distributor before sending the engine out for rebuild. When it came time to reinstall, I never could get it all the way in -- close, but not all the way, maybe 1/8th inch short. But when I started the car, the distributor popped right down into place. That has been the case a couple of other times over the years. Don't have an explanation, unless it was just the wear pattern on the gears preventing complete initial meshing. I've since put 100,000 miles on that car.

On one of my cars, the '35 Auburn, the distributor's male drive slot drops down into a female slot that is part of a round collar attached via a screw to a removable shaft with a tapered end. The shaft extends down to the oil pump and/or camshaft drive gear (I don't remember which). The idea is that it is adjustable; loosening the screw enables you to turn the distributor to the position you want, and then adjust the position of the rotor as needed, then take the distributor back out and retighten the screw and reinstall the distributor. Seems like I did just that when I restored the car 25 years ago. And the slots are offset, so they go together only one way. If your engine has a similar setup, it is possible that the screw has come loose and is sticking up too far, blocking the slot engagement. Or, that the collar held by the screw isn't fully seated on the taper of the removable shaft. Or that the screw has been replaced by one with a head that sticks up too high. It is also possible that your distributor doesn't go with this particular engine. If you can find someone with the same engine, perhaps you can exchange specifications/pictures, or even compare everything side by side. Also, again if similar to the Auburn, the adjustable external plate that when loosened allows you to turn the distributor to set the timing could be in the wrong vertical position -- too low or too high.

Keep in mind that we aren't talking about rapid spinning. Just a slow turn that gives you access to all parts of the wheel and prevents runs in the paint. Couple revolutions per minute. 20+ years ago when we painted my Auburn's wheels we just turned them by hand. Mounted them onto a cross plate bolted in place on a husky threaded rod and suspended the rod between a pair of jack stands on tables, so the wheels were at chest height. Perfect for spraying. Clamped a vise grip to the rod and used that to turn the wheel. Did one at a time. Only took 10-15 minutes of turning before the paint and hardener set up. Used a small Binks paint gun -- not the big Devilbus. Used acrylic enamel paint with a hardener and anti-wrinkle agent. Really stacked the paint on to fill in the pits. Worked beautifully. Of course everything has changed now -- the paint chemistry (and toxicity), paint guns and even the air compressors. Prep work included sandblasting, priming, filling and sanding, but not all that much. Can't really do much of that with thin wire spokes.

Thanks for acknowledging that, Lebowski. It was Navy Seabees in the Mekong Delta and Parrot's Beak areas.

In the mid-1970s my father bought a 1968 Cadillac sedan. I offered to clean it up for him. While down on the front floorboard vacuuming, I noticed a magazine stuck on the firewall behind the glove compartment. I pulled it out and it turned out to be a program for a Houston Oilers pre-season football game in 1968. What made that interesting was the fact that I had attended that game, one of the last enjoyable outings I had before shipping out for Vietnam. That was the only game I had attended for years. Million-to-one shot running across that program.

Back in those days Buicks were recognized in the automotive press for having excellent brakes. A good rebuild of your system may be all you need for a car that you're not using every day for commuting.

You mount the wheels vertically so you can rotate them while spraying to ensure you get full access and coverage. You stack the paint on heavy to help fill in the pits, and then slowly rotate the wheels to prevent runs. Need to use an anti-wrinkle agent if such a product exists anymore. We did the wire wheels on my Auburn -- they were rough -- using acrylic enamel paint, flowed it on until it filled in. Used a hardener and an anti-wrinkle agent. They came out beautiful, and still are. But that was in the early 1990s and the paint systems are different now, so we need others to weigh in.

Why such a low limit on cars? The eastern Gliddens always attract a lot of cars, the general area would seem to offer plenty of attractions as well as hotels, and the host club has resources.

To me, contributing factors to reducing the appeal of the hobby are donating rare, desirable cars to museums, or hoarding them up into the huge vanity car collections, thus reducing the number of such cars available to individual collectors. I drive all my cars, take them on tours, and enter them in shows. More people see my cars, touch them, sit in them, hear them run and sometimes even ride in them than would ever be the case if they were housed in some museum where "people can see them."

Careful, my wife had a brand-new Skyhawk in the mid-80s. The engine blew at about 40,000 miles.

Yes, high RPMs. But you may be off on your tire circumference. These cars ran 700x20 and the tires that size I saw on the Coker Tire website show diameters of 33-35 inches. (Yes, I know tires could be larger now.) We had a '29 Packard Super 8 Club Sedan during the 1960s. My father ran it hard, over 80 more than once according to the modern cars running with him -- though he normally cruised much slower. Finally burned out a rod bearing in a race against a '31 Buick Model 90. I have a '29 Super 8 Roadster now, and have run it at 75 for about 10 minutes once when I inadvertently had to enter a freeway when a country road ended. I wound up in the middle of a big pack of trucks and the safest thing to do was run with them until they worked their way around. Didn't want to run that hard, but the car did have more speed available. My normal cruise is 50-55. I've put 7,000 miles on the car since I bought it. It was low-mileage at the time, just over 40,000 on the speedo. Still has the original rod and main bearings, but did have a ring and valve job when first restored. So I'll take the factory's word at 85. Just not for long with, as you say, the long stroke and the babbit bearings.

These cars always had a good reputation for performance. But I never dreamed they'd be geared like that, and thus run that fast. Makes you wonder where they envisioned driving it back in that era of mostly dirt roads.

Relatively powerful car for the era, with 109 horsepower. Factory said they would run 85 MPH. What color do you think it was? Clearly not black, and looks too light to have been red.

Be very careful with Simple Green. I love the stuff, but it's very harsh on paint, particularly oil- or lacquer-based paint.

Dudes, that was one of my favorite movies back then.

Definitely a '29 per dashboard and headlights. 28s & earlier were different, plus they only had six-cylinder engines in the shorter wheelbase cars. Standard 8s came along in '29. My guess is this is a model 626, meaning sixth series with a 126-inch wheelbase.

100 MPH with what rear end gear ratio and tire size?