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My '64 Riviera was beige when I bought it in 1978. I painted it a factory maroon in 1980. Changing the color hasn't been a value issue to this point. And I don't expect it to be. Of course I did paint it "resale red" Bernie

Being into automotive trivia for over 50 years, I have noticed one thing. Cars generally have more door dings down the driver's side. I think I know who hasn't been paying attention. Trying to do the right thing might be determined by your seat location. Bernie

Is that an older Sun Super Tach? PM me. I might be able to help. Bernie

I just got the new Cadiilac-LaSalle Club Self Started magazine yesterday. It looks like there is a pretty good article on the 4GC's and WCFB's in there. I didn't get a chance to read it but the pictures were clear and detailed. On that .002 office size; that's a whisker. So I had to check: From the US department of Energy. 1 gallon of gasoline equals 5.8 to 6.5 lbs. 1 gallon of ethanol equals 6.59 lbs Interesting gasoline has a wide range and ethanol is exact to a hundredth. And then figure you are getting 10% ethanol at the pump A few years ago I was using some 20% plus in my truck, equipped with a FlexFuel system. It is a 2005 and flashed to monitor specific gravity at the time it was built. I was driving about 40,000 miles per year. I went through a lot. The mileage suffered a lot but was not consistent. Performance was poor and I threw a code on the evap system. I chalked it up to inconsistency in the ethanol. Maybe the reference tables recognizing the fuel were incorrect due to the variations of the gasoline and not the ethanol. I quit using it and economy and performance returned. Anyway, questioning the resizing of the bleed opened some new thoughts for "windshield time". Calculating the range of specific gravity in varying mixtures and the ranges of gasoline sp. gr. really make fuel injection look good. That's for sure. Any Caddy Club members have a .pdf of the article? Bernie

Here's another one to watch out for. Be careful not to get in over your head. Can cause lack of breath. http://www.ch.ntu.edu.tw/~genchem99/msds/exp26/water.pdf I am always amazed at the lengths they go to in defeating the laws of Darwin. A few years ago a local radio station broadcast a warning about high winds during hunting season. They warned hunters to stay out of the woods because a tree could fall on them. Okay, a guy with a gun goes into the woods so windy they risk a tree falling on them. I'd say that would help eliminate the risk of them spawning. Kind of falls in with that famous blindfolded lady with the scales. There sure is a big movement to take away her scales, but leave the blindfold. Whatever happened to good judgement. Bernie Oh, I like the phosgene and smoking. Smoke one cigarette while using cleaning fluid. Where do the other 19 in the pack go?

I have never had the need to do that, but back in the early 1980's I put a Buick 350 drive train into a '60 Ford pickup using an internally regulated GM alternator. All I needed was a switched wire from the ignition and a jumper between the two plug posts. Seems like one of those internal regulators could be externally mounted on a board and a post for a #10 wire to do the same thing; shouldn't be hard to do. The $100 dollar regulator comment is making me smile. My Son is a big conspiracy fan. I tell him conspiracy theories give far too much credit to the supposed conspirators. Bernie

I have a couple sets of drums and disks in my garage. Bernie

Drop it again, you can't break it now. I would, really. Bernie

That's a good looking car. Little things like the red power wire across the firewall being unpainted are the kind of details that show it hasn't been messed with. Nice color, too. Bernie

There are a minimum of 300 $100 jobs on any old car, minimum. Sometimes you don't need them all, but they will all show up at some point. Someone has to want the car to either do it or pay for it having been done or already completed. It won't be my next generation daughter. She thinks a weekend on the Cape watching seals is more fun than old cars. And I still remember warm spring days opening the door on a mohair upholstered car in a junkyard. I am not really inclined to spend time in the circus atmosphere of car marketing. I still prefer looking at old cars with an agitated red wing blackbird in the background. I have been to the February Atlantic City auction a few times. I like it, nice off season time of year, some excess stock is being moved for cash flow, and there is always a deal I should have brought home. We used to sit in on the fall Hershey auction for a rest on Friday afternoon. Much different, more comic memories and really no desire to join "the sip and bid club". Anyone remember the year the review stand jockys didn't know how to start a couple of Duesenberg's? I think that was the year the woman stalled the R Type Bentley on the ramp and it wouldn't restart. We figured they gave her 40 lashes. We also noticed GM A body hardtops were displayed with the doors open, pillared coupes kept the doors closed. And the descriptions didn't get to the level of carb digits. We needed seatbelts to keep us from falling into the aisle and tissues to dry our tear wet cheeks. Nah, auctions aren't for me. Last night I bought a 1959 Austin-Healey Sprite while sitting in Tim Horton's having coffee. I may never drive it and it could sit in the corner of the garage looking like a Bugeye. It won't matter. I can enjoy that without driving. It needed a friend. And maybe this winter I'll turn the heat up, rest my feet on the bench while I sit in my pneumatic draftsman's chair and enjoy the shapes around me. When the warm air cycles on I might even remember the red winged blackbird chasing me away from that '40 Pontiac coupe 55 years ago. Hell, I might even give a nod to that Bugeye and give a little thank you to the Brits for striking a blow against one world government. And THAT is more important that the money. Bernie

"Restraint is my least recognized attribute" If you only knew the things I don't say or write. The O'Dalaigh''s do for sport what those tough guys took serious. I thought The Departed was a PBS documentary on my cousin Kenny! Bernie

I looked at mine this morning and they are barely visible under the edge of the bumper. I remember cleaning them and putting them back on. They used a small flat pinch clip that I wasn't real happy with. I know I used trim adhesive on the outboard corners to be sure they were tight. The flap the fuel neck comes through is another item to remember. Bernie

You're fairly safe with the guy above. He's predictable. With the Irish, you gotta be careful. A hint of larcency and lace curtains.

Business owners have been in trouble since the first movie showed a landlord tie a young maiden to the railroad tracks. Pick up a movie, any movie, you won't see a business owner in a white hat. Ask that "other" Bernie. He'll tell you. I had my own nephew do a major job on my convertible. I was trying to teach him the importance of communication and timely billing. It was a fight to get a weekly itemized invoice from him, the point I tried to impress. Trouble starts when men do work for men and men pay men. Men are too easy about handling money and letting things slide. What seems small grows and turns into big problems. Anyone who has a woman taking care of their accounts receivable knows how aggressive they are. But that is a legal, licensed, code meeting, tax paying shop. The side garage home hobby shop IS in the cross hairs. It didn't happen to me, but I know of a casual shop that racked up about $5,000 against a car and the owner just refused to pay. He said he would turn in the hobby shop and the couple of under the table helpers. Period. That's leaving yourself open. And the general public has already been indoctrinated that the business owner is a bad guy. Well, break is over, back to work.... not fixin' cars! Bernie

I wonder if the key gets hot. You don't touch it for long when you shut the car off but I have felt some pretty warm ones. Bernie

I have owned my car and the shop manual and body manual have been all I needed. I have had it to the bare frame once and removed the body a second time. I never felt short of a reference in the nearly 40 years of owning it. Simple, reliable car. I could sell my manuals and never really miss them. Bernie

When I first started doing work for other people, and I don't anymore, I had a client who owned all the icons but didn't have a car to drive. All were restored. If anyone thinks TEXAS has BS try some restorers in western New York. You'd swear Niagara Falls is a big toilet being flushed. He had a '55 T-bird but it barely ran. The first time he called me his '59 Caddy convert had stalled in the driveway and wouldn't start after driving it home from purchasing. The litany on their condition would even bore me. After about four years of my work his biggest problem was choosing the set of keys rather than which car might run. Tip: If you pressurize the cooling system of a 1959 Caddy you shouldn't hear water running into the engine. And the white smoke that was diagnosed as a lean carburetor works for boilers but not cars. Body shops do make pretty restorations. And mechanics restore cars that run good. We visited an auction together once. The only criteria for evaluating a car on walking up was the finish of the window fur strips and door edges at the window channel. Boy! Did we save time. I own a car right now; it's in my garage. I bought it two years ago and it has receipts from a well known shop for a brake job, new fuel and brake lines, a new clutch and a few incidentals. I have been working through a redo of the shoddy work. The car is a looong time neglected project that was the old man's dream. It is not pretty. If they were capable of better work the only other reason for what I find is that they were trying to dissuade him from bringing a car that did not meet "their" "standards". Every time I work on it I ask if they did these things just to make him go away. It is hard to imagine but it is all I think. It is really hard work to redo all the systems and cosmetics of a car. I know body shop guys with really nice paint jobs and they admit it took two or three applications. The trouble with time and materials is only being able to afford one paint job. Bernie

I think I would measure the height of the crankcase section of the engine.and consider the plane of the centerline of the crankshaft. One half of the stroke below the centerline plus any flange, cap or dipper arrangement should be slightly above the oil surface line or slightly below for a dipper. I might allow for about 15% (about 2" on at 30" crankcase) for driving on grades and a slight amount for consumption during operation. The standpipe looks like it unscrews so you can measure down from the upper thread to the oil surface. Once that reference point is established the float, if it still has its original specific gravity, should be in a position where the markings become clear. Without some documentation I would be pretty comfortable with that calculation or something close if some other variables came to mind. Bernie

Keith, PM the full address and I'll tell you the total and send them on the same trip to the post office, can't be much if anything. OR I'll meet you at the Lewiston Family Restaurant by the river and we'll use the money for lunch. It's right off RT18. Bernie

I have a couple of Buick carb gasket service kits. They are not full rebuilt kits, just for guys who like to tamper with thongs. Applications are on the label. $18 includes shipping to locations within the continental United States. I take Paypal, cash, MO's, personal checks, indentured service contracts, just about anything but Euros. Bernie

This is reality. I specialized in servicing preserved original and restored cars as a part time hobby-job from about 1991 until 1999. I would restore components and fix the details of restored cars to make them steer, start, and stop. Believe me, you wouldn't want to throw the keys to the wife and send her to the corner for a gallon of milk in a freshly restored car. The great part was that I didn't have to deal with any virgins. The restoration shop took care of that for me. In the early '90's most owners had about $30,000 tied up in a typical car. I did a few very non-typical as well. I would tell a new client that if they stacked up all their receipts, even the hidden ones, they were probably about 90% home. And, on an average, I would say a car needed about $3,000 of mechanical work to make them reliable. I serviced about 35 cars regularly and averaged about $1,000 each annually. That's a pretty full plate when you add 8 hours of power plant operation on top of it. But it is a long way from making a living. There are about 200 working days per year. If you can schedule work for 75% of them you are doing real good. If you work 10 hours at $50 per hour you get $75,000 BEFORE you start paying for stuff. It doesn't take long to get back to that $12-15 per hr and provide your truck. $200,000 to $250,000 with one helper is a sweet spot. Your risk is just under $1,000 per working day. Take five days off for a vacation, deduct five grand. If the only thing you are selling is labor there is a finite supply. And you need to score about $100 per hour to cover expenses and have a few bags of groceries. There is a lot, lot, lot of restoration rework out there and it is good work with appreciative customers. But it has to flow quickly. Bernie

I have a couple of Buick carb gasket service kits. They are not full rebuilt kits, just for guys who like to tamper with thongs. Applications are on the label. $18 includes shipping to locations within the continental United States. I take Paypal, cash, MO's, personal checks, indentured service contracts, just about anything but Euros. Bernie

Running a legal business costs a lot more than expected and the hoops to jump pop up from nowhere. If you don't do it completely legal you are asking for trouble. I own an S corp in New York State, with employees, that is not remotely related to cars. It is expensive and demanding to follow all the rules. There are benefits. Given what I know now, I would have started it in the 1970's Looking back over my life I have few regrets; and those few are regrets for things I didn't do. AND the things I didn't do were things I let someone talk me out of. On the wife thing mentioned a couple of times, the business plan should stand on its own without her input. Unless it's carpenter work and she is holding the nail and you have the hammer. Give her a voice in the business and she''l talk you into holding the nail. I'd say go for it. If you have been subbing you already know how to get along without money from 120 to 150 days. Bernie

Aratari in Rochester used to sell two types of malordor counter reactant. http://www.aratariautofinishers.com/store/c/27-Odor-Eliminators.aspx It is not listed on the website but they are friendly and would take a call. I used to sell a wide range of car chemicals in the 1990's and I used it myself. The stuff was great. Bernie

It think the corporate guys at Dodge took a liking to it. Ten years later. Bernie