Rusty_OToole

The old time brake fluid was glycerine based not castor oil. Use the parts store Dot 3 it will be way better than what they had in 39. Yes you will probably wind up replacing all the rubber parts anyway. They only last so long, and need to be replaced every 15 or 20 years.

According to Old Cars Price Guide a rough condition parts car is worth $550. A complete, drivable car that is a little shabby but functional, $2800. Very nice but not perfect, $6200. A perfectly restored 100 point, major show winner is worth $14,000.

Many auto upholstery shops can do the fabric tops, it is much the same as the padded vinyl top that were so popular in the sixties, seventies and eighties. With today's materials the vinyl top will last 30 or 40 years.

Frank will the transmission shift up with the wires off? Or will it stay in low gear of high range? By the way Joe the TDH fluid is equally good for the fluid drive and the transmission.

A lot of us use TDH tractor fluid (stands for transmission, differential and hydraulic oil) ISO 32 grade. It sounds to me like you have a wire shorting out when the tranny jumps around. Check the wiring carefully. Marty I thought you fixed that? Your prob sounds like the kickdown switch on the carb is not working. It is supposed to "cut out" the ignition for a split second to allow the downshift. Again it sounds like a wiring prob or possibly the switch not making contact.

I had a similar problem with mine until I rebuilt the carb. There is a little metal gadget that sticks up at the top of the carb, from memory it has to be set with a clearance of .040". It gets bent easily if you are not careful removing and replacing the air filter. I had to readjust (bend) it once in a while to eliminate hesitation. The acceleration pump is another thing to check. 93 octane should be OK, barely. Try retarding the spark a few degrees if you get ping. Water injection is a small tank of water under the hood, and a device to squirt a small amount of water into the intake manifold. It has the effect of quenching ping and also keeps your combustion chambers clean. It allows the use of lower octane fuel safely. In your case a lead additive or substitute may be the best idea.

The serial # should tell you what size motor and what year.

The problem is the gas is too high in octane. You need to lower it. Do not add lead additive, av gas or any high octane substance. For a 1923 Buick you should be able to add 25% kerosene or more. Diesel may work but it is oilier and may cause smoke. This has all been discussed pretty thoroughly in this thread already.

It is possible to change to a straight manual trans. I know a mechanic who changed one in a day back in the fifties. When the customer came to pick up the car he drove straight into a wall, he was not used to the car taking off as he released the clutch LOL.

It would be easier to fix the tip toe shift. What do you mean slipping out of 4th? If you mean what I think you mean it could be the trans is low on oil. There is a little pump in there that pressurises the shifter, if oil is low, no pressure, and it won't stay in 4th. Could even be something as simple as a loose wire. Or a short, the wires get frayed and the insulation falls off after 40 or 50 years.

OK so you have a 3 speed manual trans with fluid drive. Glad we cleared that up. It sounds like the shift mechanism is jammed up. Look under the hood at the base of the steering column. See if the mechanism is stuck. Move the levers by hand to the neutral position. It could be worn, out of adjustment, in need of lubrication, or just stuck. Also check the mechanism for wear, missing bushings, loose bolts etc. Gearshift adjustment is under the hood, on the mechanism at the base of the steering column. The end of the shifter rod is adjustable where it goes into the shifter mechanism. Adjustment as follows: Place the transmission gears in neutral position. Loosen the lock nut on the front end of the selector rod. Tighten adjusting nut until all end play is removed from the rod.Back off adjusting nut 1/2 turn for clearance and tighten lock nut. This is from a 1951 DeSoto manual, instructions for adjusting 3 speed manual trans linkage. I hope yours is the same. It is the closest manual I have to hand. It also suggests disconnecting the shifter rods and checking the bushings for tighness. If they are binding or excessively worn they should be replaced, or if the binding is due to misaligned brackets they should be adjusted. I hope a little cleaning lubricating and possibly adjusting does the trick. Good luck.

This transmission has its own peculiarities. It is not quite a manual trans and not quite an automatic, but has characteristics of both. To start with the gearshift appears to be a standard H pattern column shift. But the low gear is omitted making it more of an h. The reverse gear is in the usual place, toward the driver and down. Low range is in the second gear position, away from the driver and up. High range is in the 3d gear position, away from the driver and down. In normal driving you would use the clutch pedal and shift into High range with the hand brake on. Release the clutch fully. Now release the hand brake and drive away like a typical automatic. When you reach a speed of 14 MPH or more, lift off the gas pedal. The transmission will shift into high gear with a soft "click-clack". If the car has over 100,000 miles it may be more of a "click-clunk". Now step on the gas and go someplace ha ha. The subject of the operation and care of the fluid drive transmision has been gone into extensively in a couple of long threads in the Chrysler or Dodge boards. This was a year or 2 ago but the threads should still be available. I could explain the whole thing in a couple of days if I was over there, but I don't think I am up to typing it all out again. Do a search for "fluid drive" in the Chrysler and Dodge boards, and possibly the DeSoto board as well. I guarantee you will find much valuable information and the answers to your questions. After you do this, if you have any more questions just ask. But please, search the existing information first. PS Here is a recent thread on fixing a similar problem. This is not the long thread with all the info. http://forums.aaca.org/f145/advoce-needed-49-chrysler-fluid-drive-281853.html The trans seems complicated but really it is quite rugged and usually trouble free, most problems can be repaired easily and cheaply as it usually the wiring, oil levels control switches or adjustments, almost never does the transmission or fluid drive unit give trouble.

Are you sure it is a manual trans not a fluid drive?From the driver's seat it is hard to tell the difference, as both have a clutch pedal and column gearshift. Fluid Drive, I believe was standard equipment on a 41 Windsor but this may not be true of export models. Can you get a look under the car? The Fluid Drive trans looks like a 3 speed manual trans and clutch except for a king size bellhousing, to hold the fluid drive unit and clutch. Under the hood, it would have a special carburetor with 2 electric switches built in, a box about 2"X3" attached to the air cleaner support strut, and some mysterious wires from the coil to the box, then to the carb, the disappearing under the floor. There are a couple of long threads covering the operation and maintenance of the fluid drive transmission. They are in the Chrysler, and Dodge boards. They date back a couple of years now. The fluid drive models originally came with a clutch pedal pad with "safety clutch" moulded into it. If you can't find the info you need come back and post a new question as soon as you know for sure which transmission you have.

Panel adhesive is used in new car construction. I believe Ford started gluing their pickup boxes together more than 10 years ago. Body shops use it a lot. It makes a permanent repair, the seam is sealed if done properly and there is no danger of warping. If I do another body job I'm going to get some.

For a quick, funny explanation of the world's financial situation watch this "laughing as we sink" from Australian TV. Clarke and Dawe ask the million dollar questions - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

If the thermostat is working correctly removing it will not make the engine run cooler and may make it run hotter. Old time hot rodders used to remove the thermostats but found it made the engine heat up worse. So the put a big washer in place of the thermostat to create a restriction and it then ran cooler. The theory was that they had to slow down the water as it went thru the rad so it had time to cool. I think the restriction raised back pressure on the pump and prevented cavitation. Short answer, keep the thermostat, taking it out will do nothing for you unless it is broken, in that case you need a new one.

You don't know the half of it.

If there is a ridge at the top of the cylinder you must remove it before taking out the piston. There is a special ridge reamer tool for this, many auto parts stores loan them or rent them for a small fee. As long as the wear or taper of the cylinder is less than .007" (seven thousandths of an inch) it is OK to hone the cylinder and rering. In fact you can go up to .010 if you don't mind the ring job having a short life, like 10000 or 20000 miles. This may not be a concern on a car that is driven only 1000 or 2000 miles per year as that represents 10 years of use. What we are talking about is a ring and valve job and tighten the bearings. This was a standard overhaul procedure, done in every garage around the country when your car was a late model used car.

I guess that answers your question LOL.

There is no reason you can't overhaul or rebuild the engine yourself. In fact you can probably do a better job than the local auto machine shop. They will not be familiar with an engine that old. You can afford to spend a few hours learning how to do the job where they can't. Slight pitting of the cylinders will not prove a problem. I was surprised by this myself. But an old time mechanic told me that during WW2, he put an International truck back into commission that had the head taken off and left outside for more than a year. All the cylinders were pitted with rust so he honed them, replaced the rings and crossed his fingers. Parts were difficult to come by at the time and so were trucks. He told me the engine smoked a little but soon settled down and ran fine. Several years later he had the head off for a valve job and found the pits all filled with carbon and the surface polished smooth. As long as the pits are not big enough to snag the rings you should be OK. If it was mine I would hone the cylinders and install new rings, and do a valve job. While you are at it you could check the bearing clearances with Plastigage and remove shims if necessary. Another thing they used to do, is turn the wrist pins 1/4 turn to present a fresh surface to wear. This was standard practice on bearings and shafts in general.

To add a little more to the story, chief engineer Ferguson published some information on how he came to design the Pierce Dual Valve engine. I read it about 30 years ago but never forgot it. The inspiration for the design came from the first generation of V8 luxury cars from Cadillac and others that came on the market for 1915. They had nearly as much power as the Pierce six even though they were much smaller in displacement, not to mention size and weight. Ferguson considered making a V8 but rejected the idea. At that stage of development, the V8 was not as smooth running as a six cylinder. The V8 had a 4 cylinder type secondary vibration and also had problems getting even carburetion and smooth low speed running. These problems were not solved until 1923, 10 years after the first V8s were put on the market. So he took another look at the 6 cylinder. A straight six is inherently smooth. It has the smallest number of cylinders that have perfect primary and secondary balance, and overlapping power impulses. This is why so many luxury car makers stuck with the big 6 concept for so long. Further analysis revealed that the V8s had a valve area very large in relation to their displacement. Not surprising as they had 16 valves where the six had only 12. To get the same valve area in relation to displacement the Pierce would have required valves 3" in diameter. This was impracticable due to the excess weight, and cooling problems that would inevitably lead to burning and warping of the exhaust valve. Next he considered 2 valves of 1 1/2" diameter. This would give the required breathing improvement and would not require a cam lift of over 3/8" which he considered the maximum consistent with silence and long life. An experimental engine with the dual valves gave a 40% increase in power. Not only that but the small valves and accompanying light valve springs, made the valve action practically noiseless , and reduced friction and wear in the whole valve train. The Dual Valve Six debuted in 1918 and powered the big Pierce Arrow for the next ten years. It earned a great reputation for unfailing power, silence and long life. It is said that rum runners used Pierce engines in their speed boats because nothing else could match them for power, reliability and silent running. So Ferguson was definitely looking for a solution to the breathing problem, and the valve troubles that were an everyday fact of motoring life back then. He may well have considered the sleeve valve engine. The sleeve valve was something new on the market as of 1909 and had considerable vogue among European luxury car makers like the English Daimler and Belgian Minerva, Scottish Argyll and later the French Voisin among others. It would not be surprising if he bought a sleeve valve engine for evaluation purposes.

Or you could do what everyone else does.... lie.... ha ha ha.

After they are squashed they go on a truck to a steel mill where they get melted down and made into new metal. The metal goes to China where they make it into cheap car parts and sell it back to us. The junkyard got about $150 for the Studey. When it comes back from China in a container load of parts to O'Reilly's we will pay about $500,000 for it.

They certainly were available. I have seen Oldsmobile V8s up to 1957 with 3 speed manual trans. Don't know if it is the same as the 6 cylinder cars, I believe the V8s used the same trans as the Cad-LaSalle used up to 1950. Warner T85 or T86? I saw them in junkyards but this was many, many years ago. You should still be able to find one. I would think a significant percentage of 49s had manual trans, the percentage shrinking as the 50s wore on. Your best luck would be to find one in a junkyard so you can get trans, bellhousing, flywheel, clutch pedal and linkage, steering column, gearshift mechanism etc. Or, even better, buy a car that has a manual trans to begin with.

This sounds like an early water injection, like a Thompson Vitameter. They injected water into the intake to quench knocking. Aluminum heads were high compression, and were more prone to knock than the standard low compression heads. The water also kept the combustion chamber clean as a whistle, steam cleaned as you drove. They usually used a mixture of water and alcohol to prevent freezing and give an extra octane boost. Water injection is still used today on high compression and turbocharged cars. You won't need it on your car because the compression is so low compared to today's higher octane gas. The cheapest regular today is better than the highest hi test of the 30s or 40s.