Rusty_OToole

I've fixed up a few cars and worked in garages and body shops for 20 years. There was a time I would have tried to fix such a car but not anymore. Eventually I smartened up. Let me try and save you a 20 year learning curve. The best suggestion I can make is to find a better one that does not need so much work. For one thing the car itself will be a monster to fix. Second it will never be much good with that amount of rust in it. In other words you could do $10,000 worth of repairs and still have a patched up old car. Or spend $5000 and buy the best 59 DeSoto sedan in the world and have a better car, not to mention saving yourself a lot of time and grief. It depends what you want. If you love 59 DeSoto sedans I'm sure a better one will turn up on Ebay or Craigslist. If you can expand your search to other years and makes all the better. There are good buys turning up all the time.

The question is, could Pierce have made an up to date car with all steel body, independent suspension and possibly automatic transmission which was just coming in then. And sold enough to make a profit. I have tried to figure out a way to exploit the Studebaker connection and came up with nothing that made sense. Could they have used Studebaker suspension or Studebaker body, suitably modified? Not if they kept their own engine and made a car of the size and quality they were used to. Could they have sold an improved Studebaker Land Cruiser with Studebaker straight eight as a Pierce? They could have but not without destroying the Pierce name. Could they have stayed in business until WW2 came along? That is an interesting question. I can just about picture Pierce continuing to make their own cars with solid front axle and composite bodies, as Lincoln did with their senior line. But only if they had the support of some other business. The Pierce Travelodge trailers were a great idea but that was not enough to save them. Support from Studebaker fell through, in fact they were struggling themselves. Without a cheaper line, which all the surviving luxury cars had, they needed some contract work or some unrelated products that made money no matter how boring and dull. What this could have been I can't imagine. I can imagine them staying in business making a few thousand cars a year until the war, if they had the support of Studebaker and some unrelated products. Then, after the war, coming out with something spectacular using their wartime profits.

Guess I need to learn how to count.

Here is a pic that shows the key switch on the left and some other switch on the right. Auto Hobby Page Car Pics

All New Yorkers had 8.00X15 tires except the long wheelbase or limo models which got 8.20X15. There is no separate call out for the station wagon, in the reference I looked at. So I guess your car came with the 8.00X15s.

Good point. If they knew the car was getting a vinyl top they did not bother to paint it very well at the factory. It just got a thin coat and they did not worry about dirt, scratches etc.

It would be a lot easier, faster and cheaper to just buy a car with the options you want. In fact you could probably buy a decent car for what it would cost to put those things on your car, and then you would have both. Or, sell your car and buy one with the equipment you want for nearly the same money. All the options you mention were available by 1956 except disc brakes. For those you would have to go to at least 1966 or even better, the early seventies. The first disc brakes were kind of experimental. By the early seventies they had come up with much better designs, which they kept for many years making the newer ones a lot easier to service and get parts for. Just a few weeks ago I looked at an early seventies Cadillac Eldorado convertible. It ran and drove fine, the body was good, and it was only $2500. It needed exhaust work, a top and tires, total $1500 or so in repairs. I turned it down because for that kind of money I could get a better one. The point is there are some great buys in sixties and seventies cars that have all the modern conveniences. If you look around you should be able to find a neat old car that has all the features you desire.

In the same vein, a Jackson Pollock painting bought in a thrift store for $5 is now for sale in an art gallery for $50,000,000. CBC News - Art & Design - Controversial Pollock for sale in Toronto

By the way a seven figure value is $10,000,000 minimum. What kind of car is worth that much dough to begin with? A previously unknown Bugatti Royale? What? There should be enough clues in the original post for you auction mavens to identify the car in a flash. A $10,000,000+ car, previously unknown, in the hands of the heirs of the original owner, been in storage and hardly driven since new, recently sold by mistake as a replica by a major auction house. A free lollipop for the first person to correctly identify this car. If it exists and is not just another urban legend.

I'm with you except for the part about the auction house taking responsibility. Unless you can prove fraud I don't think you can do a thing to them. Their job is to sell the item to the highest bidder. If the seller is afraid the bids will not go high enough they can always put a reserve on. There are stories going back centuries about valuable paintings or antiques being bought at auction for pennies on the dollar and being "discovered" by a sharp eyed dealer or connoisseur. Some were sold and resold several times at a cheap rate, discovered, and sold several more times at steadily rising prices. So who knows what is true value?

You said it. And how. If you are putting on a new top, kill the rust and stick on the top. If you want to paint you have to take it down to bare metal, fix the rust and refinish from there. It's quite a job to strip and refinish such a broad expanse of metal and get it perfect. Much quicker and cheaper to replace the vinyl. No one has mentioned this but there are some expensive cars from the 70s and 80s that came with a vinyl top only. If you strip the roof you find some big ugly seams and in the case of a Chrysler Fifth Avenue rear drive model, the last foot of the roof is a plastic or fibreglass add on. They were never made with a painted roof and it would be practically impossible to make one.

If you install a padded vinyl top you don't have to remove the glue, just treat the rust spots and put on the new top.

The term heavy ends may be old fashioned and obsolete. A long time ago it was in use in the oil business. In refining crude oil they distill it to separate out the different products. The thinner, lighter products are at the light end of the scale the thicker heavier products are at heavy end. You could arrange them on a scale from naptha gas, gasoline, kerosene, stove oil, diesel fuel, light lubricating oil, heavy lubricating oil, grease, asphalt. Gasoline at the pump is a blend of different chemicals. Octane is an actual chemical which would be at the light end of the scale for gas, kerosene would be at the heavy end. There is no hard and fast cutoff for any of these. In the early days of the oil business the demand was for kerosene or coal oil. They put everything they could into the coal oil including what we would consider low grade gasoline. In those days before 1905 kerosene had a strong piercing odor and coal oil lamps sometimes exploded. Gasoline was so light if you left the cap off a gallon can it would all evaporate in a few days. By 1913 it was the other way around. They sold more gas than coal oil. So they started putting more of the low grade gas, or high grade kerosene into the gas. It was about this time that car makers lowered the compression ratios, went to long stroke motors, and developed hot spots and vaporizers on their intakes to burn the new low grade or low octane gas. This went on until they developed the cracking process which allowed more flexibility in what they got out of the crude. From that time on octane ratings slowly rose, helped by the addition of more and more tetraethyl lead. The peak was reached in the sixties when heavily leaded gas of over 100 octane was available. Starting in 1970 leaded gas was taken off the market resulting in the gas we have today. Today's cars are all fuel injection so it doesn't matter how easily the gas evaporates, it is under pressure in a closed system from the tank to the intake. I'm suggesting to raise the boiling point by adding heavier or oilier substances such as kerosene. Yes the light elements will still be in there. But the heavier elements will raise the boiling point of the mixture.

Interesting theory. If this is true, how come adding antifreeze to water raises the boiling point? Wouldn't the water still evaporate at the same temp?

You could remove the glue with lacquer thinner. We tried soaking shop rags in thinner and laying them on the glue, and it did soften the glue. Eventually. Then you could scrape it off with a sharpened putty knife. Most of it. Then you could grind off the rest with a disc grinder. We found it quicker to grind off the whole mess. Use a fine grit disc make light passes and the glue paint and rust come right off.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. What if Mr Collector overpaid for a car under the impression it was something it was not? What if he found out afterward that the car was really worth half what he paid? Would the seller give him back half his money? I seriously doubt it. If Mr Collector bought the car and paid for it, it is his. Good, bad, or whatever. He did not lie to the seller or deceive him in any way. Now if the seller claims the auctioneer was incompetent that is another issue. Good luck with that one. I have sold antiques at auction and got way less than half what an antique dealer friend told me to expect. I suspect the auctioneer of buying most of the items for himself but can't prove it so tough noogies for me and serves me right for trusting an auctioneer.

Add some heavy ends. Kerosene diesel fuel or stove oil will work. These will raise the boiling point of the fuel but reduce the octane. Lower octane will not hurt your car if the compression is low. Generally speaking if your car was made before 1953 it has low compression. Prewar cars have very low compression and will run better on gas that has some kerosene added. Depending what your compression is you could add 5% kerosene up to 25% for cars from the 20s with very low compression, like 5:1 or less.

Wow cool. This would make accurate valve adjustments a cinch.

There is a long section in the DeSoto repair manual on testing, cleaning and adjusting the voltage regulator. It is not especially difficult, the adjustments themselves are easy but you need a basic knowledge of electricity or electronics to understand it. Best suggestion is to get a manual and try it, or take it to an auto electric shop with the right skills or take them your manual.

Cut the vinyl around the edges and peel it off. The vinyl comes off easy, the glue harder, the rust hardest of all. We used to grind off the glue paint and rust with a very fine disc in a disc grinder making light passes. Then gently and carefully sandblast the rust off, neutralize it and fill and paint in the usual way. You have to take the chrome off to remove the vinyl under the edges and to cure the rust. Be very careful and follow the manufacturer's instructions. It is the easiest thing in the world to bend or kink the trim and then it is pretty well ruined. Removing a vinyl top for keeps is one of the hardest things you can do in bodywork because of the rust and glue underneath. It is easier to replace the vinyl top, then you can kill the rust and paint the top with POR15 and cover the whole mess with new vinyl. This is much easier than trying to refinish the roof.

Wasn't that story covered in a book called The Cobra In The Barn? I'm pretty sure I read an account of the collection and sale someplace.

Gas gauges seldom go wrong. It's usually the wiring or the sender. So check them first.

Yeah, a 1929 fuel injection tester lol. I like that one the best.

So does that mean the flywheel is marked for the position of the following pairs of pistons, 1&8, 2&7, 3&6, 4&5? What about 15 and 17?

What kind of car is it?