Rusty_OToole

TSC and other farm equipment stores stock 6 volt batteries too. A lot of farm tractors run on 6V with no trouble.

Cragar wheels were the thing to have in the late sixties. They must have sold a million sets. Most of the old ones are rusted, corroded or gone. Chev wheels wouldn't fit a Chrysler, they use a different bolt pattern. Ford and Chrysler will interchange but not Chev. Maybe they were on a Mustang or Torino.

If you want to clean 75 years of grease and grime off your suspension you will need to jack it up, put jack stands under the frame and start scraping and wire brushing. When you have got all the dirt off or at least loosened up, bow it clean with compressed air, spray or brush with degreaser, scrub it in, and wash with the pressure washer. You may have to go back, dig grease out of some corners, and wash again. If you want to get all Felix Unger this can go on forever. Blow dry with compressed air and brush or spray bomb some Rustoleum or other rust proof paint. This is a tough rubbery type paint that stands up well on chassis parts. You should do a complete grease job as soon as possible to drive the water out of the joints before it causes rust.

One thing you should know about Swiss cars in the 30s. Imported cars paid a large import duty or tax. Swiss made cars paid a small tax or no tax. If 40% or more of a car was made in Switzerland, it was considered Swiss made. A car importer could bring in American chassis, have the bodies made in Switzerland, and sell them tax free. This meant, you could buy a custom body car for practically the same price as a standard, mass produced car. The Swiss custom body makers seemed to specialize in convertibles and 4 door touring or convertible sedan styles. So there is a good chance your 1934 Chrysler was one of these. If you have any pictures it would be easy to tell which it was. A Swiss "old timer" enthusiast might be able to tell you who made the body, as each body maker had his distinctive style.

It's an electric but not a Ford. Date of photo, mid 1920s. Date of car, 1905 - 1910. It appears someone found an old car in a garage or warehouse and shoved it outside for a snap shot. Other than the bent fender and missing tire, appears to be complete and in decent shape. Probably typical of a 10 - 20 year old car that had been stored inside. My guess is the car was on its way to the junkyard as they were cleaning out the building. Someone had a Kodak handy and snapped a pic of the funny old car for laughs. Should be possible to make out more details if you had the original photo and a magnifying glass.

Back in the thirties, forties and fifties only the biggest garages and dealerships could afford a "steam jenny". But some high end garages automatically steam cleaned an engine if it was dirty, and put it on the bill. Their mechanics did not work on greasy engines. When the two bit car wash came in you could get your engine clean for a quarter or fifty cents. Be careful not to flood out your carburetor or ignition. Today you can buy a pressure washer and do it at home. But as others pointed out, engines don't get as greasy as they once did, and a drop of water in the wrong place can kill your electronics. OK here is the answer. I have been doing this for years and it works great. You can do this inside your garage and it doesn't make a mess. Get one of these cheap wand sprayers. This one is $7.99, they have them at flea markets and parts stores too. Pneumatic Spray Cleaning Wand Degreaser Washer : Amazon.com : Automotive Spread a piece of cardboard under the engine, covered with a piece of old carpet. Used carpet from the dumpster in back of the carpet store is fine. All it is for, is to catch the dirty water. Scrub your engine with Gunk degreaser and a stiff brush. Don't bother cleaning any dirt off, just loosen it up. If the engine is really caked with dirt, scraping with a blunt screwdriver, putty knife and wire brush may be in order. But if you clean your engine regularly all you need to do is spray it with engine cleaner. Now get your cheapy wand sprayer. The secret is, to feed it from a 2 liter plastic pop bottle filled with the HOTTEST hot water you can get out of the tap. You may want to wear leather gloves. The hot water comes out as steam and steam cleans your engine. Very little water runs off the engine. The carpet catches the water and dirt. You can let it dry, roll it up and use it over and over. Once your engine is clean and painted it is very easy to wash it off once in a while and keep it clean. I have been doing this for years and it works great. Of course, for real heavy duty cleaning the pressure washer is quicker but much messier.

I don't think you were asking too much but evidently he thought so.

Is there an industrial bearing store in the yellow pages? If there is, they can get you any kind of bearing you can name, and a few you can't. There is a fair chance they have your bearings in stock, if they were used on other things besides 37 Pontiacs. If you can find a phone number give them a call, give them the bearing numbers and tell them you want high quality bearings not made in China. You will need the bearing numbers off your old bearings and seals. They have no way of looking up a 37 Pontiac but they can look up the bearing by numbers.

Believe it or not I read Unsafe At Any Speed when it first came out, twice. The first time made me sore because it was such a hatchet job. The second time I laughed like hell at all the errors, mis statements of fact and twisted statements. You and I must be the only people who actually read it. Over the years I have seen many people who refer to it, who have no clue what is in it or how it was written. As for whether cars were designed for safety, some were and some weren't. One that was, was the 1955 and 56 Fords. Ford made a big deal at the time, of their safety door latches, collapsible steering wheel, padded dash, and (available at extra cost) seat belts and other safety features. Meanwhile Chev was advertising their hot new V8 engine, power, performance, style, hardtop bodies, 2 tone paint, etc. Chev beat Ford's brains out in sales. For 57 Ford took a new tack. They brought out an all new, longer, lower, wider car with bigger engine, even a supercharger. Also the super deluxe Fairlane model. They went all out for stock car racing, and whatever performance publicity and advertising they could get. They completely dropped the safety pitch. In 1957, Ford outsold Chev for the first time in years. Other cars designed for safety that promoted their safety features: The 1926 Safety Stutz, 1948 Tucker and stepdown Hudson. Hudson was proud of their excellent handling and road holding, and low center of gravity for avoiding accidents. Their extremely strong bodies, with guard rails running down the sides of the car and outside the back wheels. And their double action brakes, with a cable operated backup connected to the brake pedal in case the hydraulics failed. The side guard beams and double brakes eventually became mandatory, many years after Hudson featured them. So what happened to Stutz, Tucker and Hudson? We mourn our loss, in the old car hobby. Nobody else cares what happened to them. Everyone who tried to sell safety, quickly found the public wouldn't buy it. The public had nothing against safe cars. It just wasn't high on the list of things they were looking for, and willing to pay for. Other cars, like Chrysler, built safe cars but did not push them in their advertising. For example, one of the safety featured Ralph Nader wanted, and Ford had in 55, was the padded dash. Chrysler had it in 1949. The same year Chrysler also had window winder handles that hung down from the handle, as became mandatory in the sixties for safety. Chrysler also had very strong bodies, frames, bumpers, and door latches. Chrysler also had the best brakes, with twin wheel cylinders and double leading shoes, backed up by a hand brake on the drive shaft, completely separate from the wheel brakes. Chrysler also had the center mounted brake light, from 1941 through the forties. This was hailed as a great new safety invention when it was made mandatory in 1986. None of these things were stressed in their ads, but they were on the cars just the same. Another thing Chrysler had was Safety Rim wheels. These were wheels made in such a way, that in case you got a flat or a blowout, the tire stayed on the wheel while you brought the car to a stop. The tire did not come off the wheel and get balled up and wrapped around the axle, throwing the car out of control. Flats and blowouts were a lot more common and a lot more dangerous back then than they are now, so this was quite an advance. Chrysler held the patent on the Safety Rim wheel but they offered to license it to any car or wheel maker, free of charge, in the interest of safer driving. None of them took them up on it because it would have cost a few pennies, less than a dime a wheel, to change their tooling. I also agree that today's cars are safer. I do not agree with the way the legislation was handled. One auto expert remarked, that the new safety laws (in the sixties) reminded him of a convention of drunken plumbers laying down rules and procedures for brain surgeons to follow. The safety laws, and pollution laws, are the reason cars of the late sixties and seventies were so lousy, unreliable, poor drivability and performance, ugly and overpriced. The sudden drop in gas mileage (due to safety and pollution laws) had a lot to do with precipitating the gas crises of the seventies. The gas crisis, plus the destruction of the domestic auto industry, which brought in the Japanese imports in droves, had a lot to do with destroying America's industrial base and bringing about inflation, stagflation, and depression through the late sixties and seventies.

Look under the hood, on the firewall. Some GM models had the blower right there where you could get at it. Sometimes you get lucky. If not you probably have to get under the dash. Sorry I don't have a manual or any details.

Speaking of starting a 6V car.... I just sold a 1949 Chrysler Windsor six. This car has been off the road and out of commission since 1965. I got it running a couple of months ago and the engine is a honey. Here comes the story. A couple of weeks ago a fellow came along who wanted to buy it. The car was in my garage, but had not run for months. I put a heater under the oil pan, put a freshly charged 6V battery in it and it fired up with no trouble. Let it warm up for 15 or 20 minutes and shut it off. 4 or 5 hours later Mr Buyer came to see the car. I didn't even open the door, just reached in the window, turned the key and VOOM it fired up in 2 seconds. This was on a day that was -10 Celsius which is about 15F. The point is, your car will start and run perfect, red hot or stone cold, just like when it was new if it is in good repair. If something is not working right it makes no difference if it is 6v or 12v, just fix it right and your car will work grand for you.

Listen to Mr. Call. One of the problems with your Dodge is that it was so much better built than cheaper cars like Chevrolet, Ford etc. By that I mean your car has or could have, electric windshield wipers, built in heater with electric fan, the electric controlled transmission, in addition to radio, lights, etc. This makes it much harder to change to 12V without doing a half assed job. We frequently get questions similar to yours, where a new owner is trying to fix a car like yours that the previous owner tried to change to 12V and couldn't figure out how to finish it, and eventually abandoned the project and sold it. Of course once a car is lobblollied about, messed up, wiring hacked, parts wrecked or thrown away it is a big job to change it back to where it was stock. MUCH easier to keep it 6V which works PERFECT if everything is in PERFECT shape. Seriously, they never went to 12V because of cars like yours. They did it to keep up with starting the big high compression OHV V8s and to handle the new accessory loads of the fifties of power windows, power seats, air conditioning etc. As your car has none of these things the 6V system is plenty good for your car. If something is not working correctly it is much easier and cheaper to fix it that tear up your whole car and replace everything. Now having said all that, if you REALLY want 12 volts, don't be a sucker. Sell that heap and buy a newer car that came with 12V. Don't waste hundreds of dollars, or thousands of dollars, and hours of frustration, when you can just buy a car that is already 12V.

What I object to is looking at the film of the crash test of the 59 Chev and the new (09?) Chev and saying "Yep... them old cars sure are unsafe.... they were never designed for safety in the first place". This may be true of the X frame Chevs and other X frame GMs and for that matter, GM cars in general. But it is not true of other cars that were built better and stronger. I suggest if they used a Hudson or Chrysler or even a Dodge in that test the results might be very different. I agree that new cars have safety devices that were not even dreamed of in the fifties. But even then, some cars were safer than others and the GMs were not at the top of the list. So let's not make too much out of a test carried out on a car that has been known for years for its weak construction.

I don't know about Pontiac but Chrysler products of that period had a plain steel hub cap with a thin brass skin crimped on them. Antique parts dealers used to sell the brass skins. You took the old cover off and crimped the new one on , it looked like a brand new hub cap.

Old Cars Price Guide says #4 $5600 #3 $12,600 #2 $19,600.

OK next time I see a red 1933 Continental Beacon roadster on a car lot I will let you know.

Plymouth gets broadsided at 100MPH , driven through a guard rail, tumbles 30 feet down the embankment and hits the bottom in one piece. Driver rescued, taken to hospital in serious condition but lives. This may not mean much because those cars were reinforced and equipped with roll cages. I'm not saying the Plymouth survived a far more severe crash than the ones that tore all those Chevs in half and killed their passengers because it was a stronger car, part of the difference was the roll cage and other reinforcements.

Every ounce of gold that has ever been mined is somewhere on earth. Every barrel of oil that has ever been pumped, is burned up and gone. As oil gets scarcer it gets harder to get. You have to go to more remote sites, drill deeper, drill underwater, extract it from tar sands, oil shale. The easy shallow wells are pretty well pumped dry. They say there is more oil in Canada's tar sands than in Saudi Arabia. But it costs $100 a barrel or more, to get it out. Oil and gas may go up and down, it may get cheaper temporarily but the long term trend is rising. They say the world's production of oil peaked in 2005, from here it goes flat or goes down. Notice, every time the price of gas and oil goes up, the economy takes a hit. Every time the economy crashes, the demand for oil goes down and so does the price. But as soon as the economy starts to recover, and we burn more oil, the price goes up and down we go again. We were warned this was coming in the seventies. Then we got a temporary breather thanks to new oil discoveries in Alaska, the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Western Canada. So everyone ran out and bought 10 cylinder SUVs, HUMMERS and 4000 sq ft McMansions. Now those sources are running dry and we are fracking and going for the natural gas. But those wells typically only last a year or 2 before they run dry. That flapping sound you hear is buzzards coming home to roost. Better get used to it.

What color?

Are you going to make them an offer?

Don't look at my Chrysler when you say that, or a Hudson, or several other strong, well made cars. I know that 50 years ago crash safety was in its infancy but that doesn't mean all cars were flimsy and badly made.

Thanks for the pictures, they really clear things up. I think the easiest way would be to use the six cylinder engine. As I would have to move the engine back about a foot to get the look I want, maybe I should move it back an extra 6" in case I ever get a straight eight. It was supposed to be a quick fun project, a simple boat tail speedster body patterned after the 1931 Auburn.

That could make things "interesting". As it is an industrial engine powering a crane I don't believe it has a bellhousing as such, at least not one that would work with a car transmission. What is more, so far as I know, all straight eights after 1938 came with Fluid Drive. So, it sounds like it would be quite a job to put a manual trans on this engine unless I can find a 1938 str8 bellhousing and trans. How about Fluid Drive, would a Fluid Drive bellhousing off a six cylinder Chrysler or DeSoto fit?

Speaking of the factory being aware of the correct valve clearance.. Chrysler spec's an extra .002 clearance on slant sixes used in trucks and vans vs the same engine in passenger cars. Evidently they are aware that trucks may be used hard, and the valves may run hotter, and benefit from a little extra clearance. I have set them both, and the extra .002 makes little or no difference in noise. Little difference on a neglected engine with pounded valves and rocker, no difference on a well maintained engine. If the valve train is in good shape the valves will be dead silent whether the clearance is .010 and .020 or .012 and .022. This is a completely different situation from Mr "I like to hear 'em working" who sets them so wide you can hear the valves hammering from 50 feet away, with the hood closed and the engine idling. It is also completely different from an engine that has NEVER had the valves adjusted in 100,000 miles and sounds like a diesel. In both those cases it is impossible to adjust the valves to be quiet, once the mechanism is pounded to oblivion. Believe me I have tried.

Why do you buy such lousy cars? Do you really think the engineers who designed the engine are so stupid they do not know how to adjust valves, or they did not test the motor under all conditions from red hot to stone cold? I have had old motors with solid lifters that were dead silent even though they had substantial miles on them. I sincerely believe that a solid lifter engine, that has been adjusted to factory specs and maintained by the book , is as quiet when new, and quieter than a hydraulic lifter engine once it gets 50000 miles on it. My policy is to listen to the factory that designed the car and built it. I believe they know better than I do. Usually when I go getting ideas of my own, or listen to some old boob, it turns out the factory was right. On the VW engine. The valve adjustments definitely will tighten up, especially the #3 exhaust valve, as the valve wears or the stem stretches. If you find you have to adjust the #3 exhaust valve at every tuneup, better plan on a valve job quick before the head breaks off the stem and smashes your piston, and cylinder head. Much as I like the old air cooled VW they were basically a 1930s design and required a LOT of maintenance if you expected reasonable engine life and long service. They usually didn't get it.