Old Crabby

Borrowing from your initial post I do not think any rational person likes earthquakes,or tremors and temblors either. At least you are still with us and the damage was comparatively minor. The earth is a truly foreign organism which I am afraid few understand and of those who do fewer still are the brave souls willing to admit what some know and many feel to be true. Anyway merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year to you.

Panhard Levassor, their slogan,displayed proudly on the radiator up to the mid '30's was SSS, Sans Soupapes Silencieuse, I,E, without valves silence. They were pioneers of steel sleeve valves as opposed to the cast iron sleeves used by almost everyone else.

Most everything one views on TV is simply entertainment and nothing more. Their chief assumtion is that we viewers are a bunch of synapse deprived neanderthals incapable of determining anything but the taste of beer. the so called "antiques road show" is another greatly exaggerated farrago with prices quoted by their "experts" {several of whom have had their names tarnished due to sharp practice and deception} which are far and above anything capable of being realized at a true auction!! I buy and sell antiques daily and have yet to realize any of the elevated prices quoted on this program, whether it be Galle' glass, Federal furniture or Louis Quinze gilt-bronze garnitures!and this with Sotheby's, Christies, Doyle's,Skinner's etc.

Ahhhh!!, The pause that refreshes. That sharply bitter yet aromatic taste that first heralds your emergence as a neophyte motorhead. It first occurred when I was 10,needing gas to run a recently discovered Fuller & Johnson lawnmower,the corner filling station attendant refusing to fill the glass milk bottle with gasoline I resorted to the dangerous and exciting expedient of slicing a length of 1/4"hose from an ancient air compressor which I deftly but with hands trembling,proceeded to insert into the filler neck of Mother's '64 Galaxie XL. Oh,the thrill,I can still recall the smell now,so much different from today's cheapened and vitiated hooch being retailed to us.

Tell me about it. When I was a teen I did some lead casting in my basement. It wasn't until much later I discovered lead fumes are the most harmful of all. Still here though.........................I think

Precise ignition timing is an art unto itself,on really high performance engines we do a "cylinder balance test" a complicated process impossible to describe briefly,the most difficult cars being those with dual points like a Lincoln "L" and my Nash 980. I'm assuming your Chalmers has cast extensions on the rod caps for dipping in the oil troughs? The previous owner of my '15 Interstate had the late Bobby Gustaffson install Chevy sheet metal rod scoops which really improve lubrication dramatically,particularly since the 4 cyl OHV "Beaver" engine was mildly worked to increase flexibility and top end RPM as this car was driven quite frequently at full throttle all over the east coast. Additionally it was statically and dynamically balanced,flywheel lightened etc. While these things help to extend the life of the motor there is really not much to expect in the way of dramatically improved performance unless you are prepared to radically alter the ignition and fuel delivery systems, not to mention the inherent limitations of their design.

Well now,one of the more advanced forms of engine balancing is a "C&C" otherwise known as a combustion clearance. There are several ways of achieving this, the end result being to determine how equal in volume and shape the combustion chambers are. On engines with removable cylinder heads one may inject a fast-drying non-shrinking rubber compound similar to what dentists use, into the cylinders at exactly TDC, remove the head,pull the casting and measure it comparatively with others. On Bentleys Simplexes etc, with non-removable fixed heads either a very accurate pressure gauge or combustion indicator is used, the object being to detect any variation in combustion chamber size or shape which can throw the motor out of balance,I once worked on a Bentley where the exhaust valve seat in one cylinder had to be undercut and reprofiled,which increased the combustion space noticeably enough to cause some vibration at mid-torque pulls. In cases where this is to be done to a motor the piston castings will have an additional wrist pin to deck height mass on top to allow for the removal of excess material to compensate for these slight variations. Next time you see a 4 cylinder Dodge Brothers or Model T Ford ask the owner to close the idle screw on the throttle until you can count each explosion, how low can it go?I guarantee some will be stronger than others and this anomaly will occur consistently at the same time,same position.

While most T head engines indeed "breathe well" on account of large section valve and port areas they are horribly inefficient from the point of turbulence and flame propagation. Balancing will indeed reduce the inherent stresses on the reciprocating mass but your power band is fairly narrow due to the aforementioned characteristics plus the necessity of a very heavy flywheel to cancel out the unequal power impulses. There are a few other things that can be done relatively simply. After precise balancing of the crank,pistons{hopefully aluminum} and rods the flywheel can be shaved and lightened slightly. On such motors with generally fixed heads a combustion clearance is nearly impossible except to mill the piston crowns like some Simplex owners do.

I agree with Bob's contention that it is early to mid '50's. Custom? perhaps but there were many outfits from whom you could obtain Kit bodies,and for that matter chassis as well. The scale seems off for an out and out race car though. Wish I could see some really well detailed shots of the suspension and engine compt.

A bit of family lore but perhaps appropriate. My maternal grandfather,Henry Dewey enlisted in 1917 to "watch over" his brother,the eldest son,upon whom the family pinned all it's hopes. A bit of favoratism was involved in keeping them in the same unit,as well as promoting them to officer status as their great uncle was Admiral George Dewey, hero of Manila Bay in the spanish-american war in 1898. In 1918 as it has been related, there was the hellish battle of Belleau Wood,well known to students of the "great war". My grandfather was within arm's length of his brother who precipitately led a charge up a slight incline only to be cut down by concentrated german machine gun fire. His family never forgave him for "allowing his brother to die". My father, on the other hand, spent the WWII years as a government inspector of aircraft engines and components since scoliosis and post-polio syndrome prevented him from assuming a more active role.

This is a fixed head coupe and not a convertible? The lack of a decimal point in your price invites the question is it 2,850.0 or 28,500

The Owen magnetic,magnificent though it was, represented a technological dead-end. The nearest thing akin to Prius practice was the Woods Dual-Power car, circa 1916-1918 that I Described here several months ago and may do so again if requested.

Then he should dress accordingly to avoid censure........ I knew a gal who was so shy.............AHHHH, I've said that one 'afore.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Carelton, Your link just calls up the NY Times online signup page. I get enough spam, so could you cut and paste the article here? </div></div> Hi Dave! Only too happy to comply - here it is in its entirety, and by the way, In three years of on-line subscription to the New York Times, I've NEVER had a problem with unwanted or unsolicited emails eminating from them - in fact, the only complaint I have with them is their increasingly CONservative bent and editorials! {translation - Neanderthal }; that - and their blind support of izrael are my only complaints with the Paper Of record - but that's fodder for another post! China Set to Act on Fuel Economy By KEITH BRADSHER UANGZHOU, China, Nov. 17 ? The Chinese government is preparing to impose minimum fuel economy standards on new cars for the first time, and the rules will be significantly more stringent than those in the United States, according to Chinese experts involved in drafting them. The new standards are intended both to save energy and to force automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology in China, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports from volatile countries in the Middle East. They are the latest and most ambitious in a series of steps to regulate China's rapidly growing auto industry, after moves earlier this year to require that air bags be provided for both front-seat occupants in most new vehicles and that new family vehicles sold in major cities meet air pollution standards nearly as strict as those in Western Europe and the United States. Some popular vehicles now built in China by Western automakers, including the Chevrolet Blazer, do not measure up to the standards the government has drafted, and may have to be modified to get better gas mileage before the first phase of the new rules becomes effective in July 2005. The Chinese initiative comes at a time when Congress is close to completing work on a major energy bill that would make no significant changes in America's fuel economy rules for vehicles. The Chinese standards, in general, call for new cars, vans and sport utility vehicles to get as much as two miles a gallon of fuel more in 2005 than the average required in the United States, and about five miles more in 2008. This country's economy is booming, and a growing upper class in big cities like this one is rapidly buying all the accouterments of a prosperous Western life, including cars. As China burns more fossil fuels, both in factories and in a rapidly growing fleet of motor vehicles, its contribution to global warming is also rising faster than any other country's. But Zhang Jianwei, the vice president and top technical official of the Chinese agency that writes vehicle standards, said in a telephone interview on Monday that energy security was the paramount concern in drafting the new automotive fuel economy rules, and that global warming had received little attention. "China has become an important importer of oil so it has to have regulations to save energy," said Mr. Zhang, who is also deputy secretary of the 39-member interagency committee that approved the rules at a meeting this month. China was a net oil exporter until a decade ago, but its output has not kept up with soaring demand. It now depends on imports of oil for one-third of its needs, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Angola. Before the war, Iraq was also an important supplier. By comparison, the United States now imports about 55 percent of the oil it uses. The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030, the volume of China's oil imports will equal American imports now. Chinese strategists have expressed growing worry about depending on a lifeline of oil tankers stretching across the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, a waterway plagued by piracy, and across the South China Sea, protected mainly by the United States Navy. Various Chinese government agencies still have three months to review the legal language in the fuel economy rules, giving automakers some time to lobby against them; as yet, there has been no mention of the approval of the new rules in the government-controlled Chinese media. But Mr. Zhang said that the rules in draft form were the product of a very strong consensus among government agencies and that "the technical content won't be changed." Two executives at Volkswagen, the largest foreign automaker in China, said that representatives of their company and of domestic Chinese automakers attended what they described as the final interagency meeting to approve the rules. Under pressure from the government, these auto industry representatives agreed to the new rules despite misgivings, the executives said. "They had no choice but to agree," one of the Volkswagen executives added. The executive said that Volkswagen's vehicles would meet the first phase of the standards in 2005, while declining to comment on compliance with the second, more rigorous phase, which is to take effect in July 2008. The new standards are based on a vehicle's weight ? lighter vehicles must go the farthest on a gallon ? and on the type of transmission, with manual-shift cars required to go farther than those with less efficient automatic transmissions. In a major departure from American practice, all new sport utility vehicles and minivans in China would be required to meet the same standards as automatic-shift cars of the same weight. In the United States, standards for sport utilities and minivans are much lower than for cars. The Chinese rules do not cover pickups or commercial trucks. According to General Motors market research, there is little demand for pickup trucks in China except from businesses, because the affluent urban consumer who can afford a new vehicle regards pickup trucks as unsophisticated and too reminiscent of the horse-drawn carts still used in some rural areas. Typically, heavy vehicles are much harder on fuel than light ones, but the new Chinese standards permit the heavy vehicles to get only slightly worse gas mileage. As a result, they provide an incentive for manufacturers to offer smaller, lighter vehicles, which will be easier to design. The new standards would require all small cars sold in China to achieve slightly better gas mileage than the average new small car sold in the United States now gets, according to calculations by An Feng, a transportation consultant who advised the government on the rules. But officials in Beijing would require much better minimum gas mileage for minivans and, especially, S.U.V.'s than the average vehicle of either type now gets in the United States. American regulations call for each automaker to produce a fleet of passenger cars with an average fuel economy of 27.5 miles a gallon under a combination of city and highway driving with no traffic; window-sticker values for gas mileage, which include the effects of traffic, are about 15 percent lower. Light trucks, including vans, S.U.V.'s and pickups, are allowed an average of 20.7 miles a gallon without traffic. But the Bush administration has raised the comparable American standard to 22.2 miles a gallon for the 2007 model year and is now completing a review of whether to raise limits further for 2008. The administration is also considering adopting different standards for different weight classes of light trucks. [color:\\"red\\"] Over all, average fuel economy in the United States has been eroding since the late 1980's as automakers shifted production from cars to light trucks. It fell in the 2002 model year to the lowest level since 1980. Automakers in Europe have accepted European Union demands to increase fuel economy under different rules that could prove at least as stringent as China's minimums. The Chinese standards would require the greatest increases for full-size S.U.V.'s like the Ford Expedition, which would have to go as much as 29 percent farther on a gallon of fuel in 2008 than they do now in the United States, Mr. An calculated. Sport utility sales in China have more than doubled so far this year, but are still a much smaller part of the overall market than they are in the United States. Because the American standards are fleet averages while the Chinese standards are minimums for each vehicle, the effect of the Chinese rules could be considerably more stringent. A manufacturer can sell vehicles in the United States that are far below average in fuel efficiency if it has others in its product line that offset it by being above average. But under the Chinese rules, the fuel-inefficient models ? especially new ones introduced after the standards take effect ? would be subject to fines no matter how well their siblings do, Mr. Zhang said, and the maker would not be allowed to expand production of the gas-guzzling models. In Garrison Keillor's phrase, China plans to require that every vehicle be above average. Mr. An said that at the final meetings on the new rules, the only outspoken objections had come from a representative of the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company, which makes Jeeps in a joint venture with DaimlerChrysler. According to people who have seen the new standards, many Jeep models sold in China do not now comply with them; neither do the Chevrolet Blazer sport utilities built by a General Motors joint venture in Shenyang. Some of Volkswagen's car models also fall slightly short, these people said. By contrast, Honda's cars, built at a sprawling factory complex here in Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southern China, would comply easily because they use advanced engine technology, these people said. Trevor Hale, a DaimlerChrysler spokesman, declined to comment in detail. "DaimlerChrysler complies with local regulations where it does business," Mr. Hale said in an e-mail response to an inquiry. "It continues working to improve fuel economy in the vehicles it develops, builds and sells around the world." Bernd Leissner, the president of Volkswagen Asia Pacific, said that his company's cars would comply because "it's just a question of how to adapt the engine ? it's something that could be done quickly." The fastest way to improve fuel efficiency is to switch from gasoline to diesel engines, as Volkswagen is starting to do in China. The latest diesel engines are much cleaner than those of a decade ago, but are still more polluting than gasoline engines of similar power. A spokeswoman for General Motors, which is beginning to introduce Cadillac luxury cars in China, said she did not have enough information about the newly drafted rules to comment on them, but that her company's vehicles were comparable in fuel economy to those of rival manufacturers in the same market segments. Executives of G.M. were preparing for an event in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday when the company plans to showcase examples of its work on gasoline-saving fuel-cell and hybrid engines for cars. [color:\\"red\\"]In the United States, G.M. has argued that tighter fuel economy rules are unnecessary because technological improvements will someday improve efficiency anyway. G.M. and other automakers have also contended in the United States that higher gasoline taxes would represent a better policy than higher gas mileage standards, because it would give drivers an economic incentive to choose more efficient vehicles and to drive fewer miles. China is still considering its policy on fuel taxes, but has not acted so far, because higher fuel taxes would impose higher costs on many sections of society, Mr. Zhang said. Another company that could run into trouble over the Chinese mileage standards is Toyota, which on Nov. 6 began selling a locally produced version of its full-size Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle in China. A spokesman said on Monday that Toyota had not yet heard about the new Chinese fuel economy regulations, which have been prepared with a level of secrecy typical of many Chinese regulatory actions. Japan is also phasing in new fuel efficiency standards based on vehicle weight that allow heavier vehicles only slightly worse gas mileage than lighter ones. American automakers have complained that the Japanese rules discriminate against them because Japanese automakers tend to produce slightly lighter cars anyway. China has more than 100 automakers, as Detroit did a century ago, but the bulk of its output comes from a small number of joint ventures with multinational companies. Total production has more than doubled in the last three years, to about 3.8 million cars and light trucks in 2002, nearly as many as Germany. The United States builds about 12 million a year, Japan about 10 million. The cars that Chinese automakers produce on their own tend to be very small and lightweight, but the engines are built on older technology, and may not have an easy time complying with the new fuel economy standards. The government has been encouraging the industry to consolidate, and the new rules may hasten that process by forcing investment in engine designs that small companies may not be able to afford on their own.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> It's just a great place to visit! </div></div> YES, but I wouldn't want to live here.

I generally eschew a bazaar like atmosphere as I consider it too bizzarre

There may be other reasons why folks are choosing not to post as much.

Don't forget the 3 stages of man: 20-35,tri-weekly. 35-50,try weekly, 50-65,try weakly.............

So what are you doing with your sleever? lemme know. I've had a few over the years and might be able to give you some tips for these questionable autos.

I'm in Huntington Bay, will pay $10.00 for all, no hard feelings if offended by my forwardness. [color:\\"green\\"]

Roger Wolfe Kahn once said to my father" you're only as old as the girls you feel".

Looks like a typical High-Tension buzz coil used on single cylinder stationary engines circa 1900-1920.

I can recommend him highly. He has made many for my customer's and my own cars over the years, even when there are no patterns to copy.

I made a frame for a Durant roadster once. The original one was rotted away. I used 3 tools, a bandsaw, electric hand planer and a drillpress. Got my kiln-dried ash from Constantine's in the Bronx. Some years afterwards the car was sold and the new owner commented on the "nice original toolmarks" in the wood....................................................

Classics from the '60's..... Hartmann, whither art thou.