Rusty_OToole

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?

It would be easier and cheaper to buy a good used door unless you mean the upholstery panel.

By the mid 30s mass produced cars like Chrysler Airflow, Cadillac V8 and Packard 120 had become so good it was hard to justify spending twice as much on a hand built car that was not a whole lot better. Plus, the depression had made the old fashioned aristocratic car unfashionable. Another factor was the new developments in chassis and body design. Independent suspension and all steel bodies were a lot more expensive to tool up for and the expense was prohibitive for low production cars like Pierce Arrow and Stutz. The Roosevelt Recession of 1937-38 finished off a Pierce Arrow company that was already too far gone to save. Maybe if they could have faced cheapening their cars and going in for a mass produced Studebaker based Pierce to compete with Packard 110 and 120, LaSalle, Lincoln Zephyr and Chrysler they might have lasted until the war. But cars of the Pierce type, like their customers and executives were a dying breed. Nothing could have saved them and perhaps it is better they died with dignity when they did. Their time was up.

A more accurate way to do the same thing is to make a pipe to screw into the spark plug hole and make a soap bubble on top. You can tell when you reach TDC when the soap bubble stops growing. This is surprisingly accurate.

Canada stopped producing cars before the US. England declared war on Germany in September 1939. Canada followed suit one week later. The US kept out of the war for 2 long years, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Canada's industries were on a war footing 2 years before the US.

That is a very good explanation of the role octane ratings play and what they mean. A couple of things are worth emphasising. One is, octane tells you the knock resistance of the fuel and nothing else. Another is, you need the correct octane for best performance, either too high or too low is not good. One thing I take issue with is the relationship of octane to compression ratio. Their chart is good in the higher ranges but does not apply to our old cars in the lower ranges. Prewar cars with 5:1 and 6:1 compression did not require octane anywhere near as high as they say. Such high octane fuel was simply not available at that time from normal gas stations.

All existing stocks of unsold cars were commandeered by the government and put into warehouses in early 1942 when production stopped. These cars were rationed out to civilian and military users as necessary for the war effort. Some time ago there was a long thread on a Packard bbs about the "atomic Packard", a Packard limousine used by the Los Alamos laboratories. It was recently salvaged from a junkyard and restored. This car was one of several hundred converted by the Fitzjohn bus company. They made airport limousines out of Chevrolets before the war, during the war they made similar cars out of Chevrolet, Pontiac and Packard cars. These were used for bus type service in various war plants. “In mid-1942, the US Army contracted with Fitz John Coach of Michigan to take 100 Packard Clipper Sixes from government stockpiled reserves and convert them into economy-style eight door stretch “Civilian stretch transports.” These were to be similar to pre-war conversions that FitzJohn had built largely on GM Chassis. The war-era conversion had been done with what was available, including wood parts except for the metal frame extension. This would prove to be the largest single group of any type APLs [Airport Limousines] built. There is evidence that FitzJohn later converted some government Chevrolets into APLs in 1943. Some saw service in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and likely in diverse places such as Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where large government projects (related to the Manhattan Project) were set up in unimproved wilderness areas, which became new cities. This is not to be confused with several large direct-to-Packard military orders for 1941 and 1942 Packards for staff, general use vehicles and a number of Henney ambulances and hearses. These Packards included all types of models, many being non-Clipper One Twenties and Super-8s for the Army and Navy. Some Clippers were included and found service as staff cars for the most famous military leaders of the war.” So it appears that they used up existing stocks of vehicles, and made a few hundred more, probably assembled from spare parts left over when the assembly lines shut down. Here is the full thread on the Atomic Packard at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and Industry. Packard Motor Car Information - National Museum of Nuclear Science & History Packard Limo (aka It's an Atomic Packard!) [Packard Forums - Pre-War (1899-1942)]

Is it a worm or a snail? I think I know what you mean but do not have one. If I am correct the same adjusters were used on Bendix brakes up to the early 50s. I think Jeep and Studebaker used them and possibly Ford.

I don't know why everyone wants to replace the engine. It should be a simple matter to rebuild the original block if all the parts are there.

So Cadillacs had a total of 3 air pumps built in.