Rusty_OToole

There used to be a special fluid drive fluid made by Chrysler. This has been out of production for years. Some use automatic transmission fluid. Others recommend tractor hydraulic fluid. That's what I use. I don't remember the exact name but it's something like TBH fluid for Transmission Brakes and Hydraulics. The grade is ISO 32. It's under $10 a gallon at auto parts stores and farmer's co-ops. By the way you might have better luck with technical questions in the Dodge forum below.

And don't park under any more trees. Does anyone know which trees are the worst to park under for ruining the finish on your car? I'll start the list off with falling trees LOL.

Value of 1952 Windsor club coupe, condition #3 "Very Good" $9000 #4 "Good" $4000 #5 "Restorable" $2400. Your car would probably fall in the "Good" to "Very Good" category. You shouldn't have too many problems with your experience. Don't know what you mean by brake cylinder "revision", new brake cylinders and rebuild kits are available. The Chrysler Centerplane brakes on that car are about the most efficient available at the time. Of course they don't compare to modern disc brakes but if you keep out of real bad hiway traffic you should be ok. They are at least as good as what's on your Caddy. The Edsel is a much more modern, more powerful car with 12 volt electric system, OHV V8, automatic, power steering, etc and drives very much like a car from the 70s or 80s (but watch out for those drum brakes). It would be similar to your Caddy, at least more so than the Chrysler. The real downfall of a car like that is the complexity. The basic mechanical components such as engine, steering, brakes etc are reliable but the luxury features like pushbutton transmission, power seats etc can drive you nuts if they go wrong. In this case you would want to hunt up the Edsel club. They have no doubt figured out how to fix everything that goes wrong long ago. One make car clubs are good that way. As to which I would buy, I already told you I bought a DeSoto which is practically the same as the Chrysler with a different grille and cheaper trim. It even has the same body, frame, wheelbase, engine, trans etc. It's pretty much a matter of which you like better, or which is in better condition and offers the best deal for the buck. For comparison a 59 Edsel Ranger 2 door hardtop in #4 condition has a book value of $3520. By the way these book values tend to be on the high side if you ask me. I think they do this to quell squauks from the 1949 Blivet owners "You said my Blivet is only worth $5000 it's worth a lot more than that blah blah blah". So they jack up the price a little and everyone is happy.

I have a technique for driving a fluid drive that works very well and makes it practically the same as driving a modern automatic. Start the engine with the transmission in neutral, the hand brake applied and your foot off the clutch pedal. Let the engine warm up until it will idle at its slowest speed. Depress the clutch pedal shift into gear and release the clutch, all with the handbrake still on. Release the handbrake and drive away like any automatic. When you get up to 15 MPH lift off the gas and wait for the "click-clunk" and step on it again. This is very easy, it is based on the owner's manual recommended technique. You have to drive it more like an automatic, if you drive it like a standard you will hate it. It is not a standard, it is a primitive automatic with a few quirks of its own but with a little understanding your fluid drive or fluid torque drive will work great for you. This came from a post I made on this thread. There has been quite a bit written on this transmission. http://forums.aaca.org/showflat.php?Cat=...ge=1#Post402103

First of all are you in Canada or the US? That would be a clue. Second look under the hood at the ID plate on the firewall and at the plate on the doorpost, one or the other will give the country of origin. Probably the firewall one.

I sympathise, I used to own a 1952 New Yorker. Now that battleship had a lot of chrome and almost all of it was pot metal. Managed to find a few NOS pieces but the chrome was so poor they needed to be replated after they were on the car a year.

I happen to have a 1951 DeSoto coupe which is almost the same. I can tell you they are a comfortable well made car with no real bad faults. But you must remember that car is over 50 years old and there has been a lot of progress in the last 50 years. For a start it is going to be slow, heavy and sluggish to drive compared to a modern car. That is part of the character. The Fluid Drive is a transmsission all its own, neither a standard nor an automatic. There are a couple of excellent threads on how to drive and maintain the fluid drive, in the Chrysler and Dodge message boards.You should look them up before you try to drive the car, it does need a different technique from anything you ever drove before. It isn't hard just different, and if you don't read the threads you may be a long time figuring it out. Another thing is the 6 volt - ground electrical system. This is OK in itself except cars have not been built that way for 50 years. There isn't much point in changing it to 12 volt, it would be like hanging a satellite dish on a haunted house. You will have a whole lot of things to learn on that car. You would really be better off with something newer that had better performance, more modern design. But if you really love the car and are willing to learn you can have some fun with it. First thing you will need is a repair manual. You should also look up some old gray haired or bald headed mechanics and parts men to help you keep it on the road. There were around 112,000 Chryslers produced that year and about 60,000 of them were Windsor 6's. Of those 60,000 roughly 10% or 6000 were coupes. The 4 door sedan was by far the most popular body style. Would you mind telling me what you had planned for the car? Because if you have a garage to put it in and were planning on keeping it for special occasions you should be OK. If you planned on using it for regular transportation it won't work out. The car is just too old and too far behind today's designs especially in the brakes. The other thing is, cars back then were high maintenance. Oil change and grease job every 1000 miles and there are 26 grease fittings for a start. Plus regular tuneups and lots of other things. When that car was built there were about 1/4 the cars on the road as there are now but there were 5 times as many garages if that gives you any idea.

I thought they all allowed fuel to flow thru??? The old ones I am used to worked this way. If you can find the old style low pressure pump for carburetors that was used in the 60s.

There are lots of cars around that are 50 years old and they weren't sealed in a concrete vault. If it was reasonably dry it should be in excellent shape. I think the car and everything else belongs in a museum. If the ground water didn't get in my guess is it would be in the same condition as a car that was stored in a garage maybe better.

The Spitfire marking on the head indicates a Chrysler flathead six. The number C48 indicates it came from a 1950 Chrysler Royal or Windsor. C48S = Royal 6, C48W = Windsor 6. They were identical in bore, stroke and horsepower. I don't know what the difference is if any. Bore and stroke, 3 7/16 X 4 1/2. Displacement 250.6 cu in. Horsepower 116@3600. Torque 208 ft lbs @ 1600. Oil pressure 45lbs@45MPH. This would make an excellent engine for a 54 Dodge pickup. If the pickup was made in Canada it will bolt right in. If it was US made you may have to make room at the front of the engine by moving the rad, also change the motor mounts and a few other things. The transmission is probably the M6 semi auto. I believe all Chryslers had this transmission. You can tell if it has this transmission because it looks like a standard but has 3 electric devices on the right side, a solenoid a governor and a switch. If it just looks like a plain standard transmission that's what it is. In any case it will have the fluid drive which is a device like a torque converter but simpler. That is why the bell housing area is so long, it has clutch and a torque converter (fluid drive) both. You could use this transmission or you could change it for the standard out of the pickup. So far as I know the flywheel clutch and transmission off your truck will fit the car engine. Hope this helps. You might have better luck getting answers if you go down the page to the Dodge pickup section and post there in the future.

If you like newer Packards there is a murder mystery called He Walked By Night starring Richard Basehart. In it the villain spends a scene working in his garage with his 1950 Packard convertible. There is another movie Sudden Fear with Joan Crawfor being stalked by Jack Palance in a 1952Packard Mayfair.

If anything the big block chev head design was copied off the Chrysler polysphere. Chev introduced it (1965) just as Chrysler was getting rid of it. Actually the 348 and 409 had staggered valves, the new head design leaned them at an angle. This was the Polysphere design Chrysler had been using since 1954.

Can anyone identify this model, Studebaker Whiskey Six? I'm sure it's not an official name. But during Prohibition there was a Studebaker that was popular with rum runners and bootleggers that was give that nickname. I believe there was such a thing because I have seen the same name in a couple of different books and they were not fiction, they were history or reminiscences of old time rum runners.

Try writing or calling your local DMV. It varies from state to state. I know here in Ontario Canada it's a piece of cake. You give them the VIN and they check it out. If it's not stolen and you have a bill of sale they give you a new ownership.

I was surprised to find out recently that Chrysler DID make dual exhausts and dual carbs too. They were used on 6 cylinder flathead engines in big trucks. I don't know what year or model but I believe 1 or 2 ton and larger, dump trucks etc, up to 1962 or whenever they stopped making flathead truck engines. Some of these would interchange with the DeSoto - Chrysler long block engine but they also made exclusive truck engines in the 300 to 400 cu in range.These would be much bigger than the car engine and manifolds would not interchange. But the 250 or 265 cu in model will. This is the engine that measures 25" long at the head. Look for a Dodge or Fargo big truck or bus from the forties or 50s. I'm told in the west and midwest there are lots of these languishing on farmer's back 40s and rural junkyards.

I would suggest you vacuum them and cover them with seat covers. All the old cars with good upholstery I have seen had seat covers or were stored inside. Sun will kill those seats in a couple of years if not sooner.

Rome was not built in a day and neither are old cars, they are mostly built at night LOL.

There is a used pair on Ebay. Bid last night was $5. They are listed as 1947 or 48, are they the same?

The Inliners International site has some great ideas. Try the Mopar section. On the overheating all I can suggest at this point is to make sure the rad is clean and not plugged up and likewise your engine coolant passages. Try running some CLR mixed with water in your rad. Get it at the hardware store, it removes calcium lime and rust. Put 1 container in your rad and fill with clean water, drive 50 miles or so (in one go if possible) and drain it out. Might take more than one application. I can't be responsible if this causes rad leaks. The CLR will not hurt your rad but if it removes the caked on lime and dirt it could expose old leaks that were sealed by dirt or by 50 year old Bars Leaks.

The more I think about it the more I think your symptoms sound like the shift levers are loose on the side of the transmission.

The supercharger I plan on using is a McCulloch VS57 made by the McCulloch chain saw people between 1953 and 1957. It was designed for the 1953 engine which was typically a flathead 6 or 8 of 200 to 300 cu in and 100 to 150 HP. Most of the testing was done on 239 cu in 100 or 110 HP Ford flathead V8s. The VS stands for variable speed and refers to a variable speed belt drive. This is arranged so you can get some boost from 2000 RPM, full boost from 3000 RPM. Yet when you don't have the gas to the floor the blower slows down and "loafs" at a lower speed. The downfall of this supercharger was the introduction of larger higher powered OHV V8s. A 150 to 200 HP engine was a walk in the park. 200-300 HP made it sweat. After that, you were beyond its design capabilities. They did try beefing it up with heavy duty drive etc but in the end they brought out new larger designs. They did redesign the VS57 without the variable speed feature. In this form it was used on Studebakers from 1960 up, and is still in production. They sell them for 302 Mustangs and 305 Camaros, they also have a bigger blower for bigger engines. But the original design (without the variable speed drive) is still being sold as the Paxton SN model. I happen to think the old low compression flatheads are ideally suited to supercharging. One of the first thing they do is lower the compression ratio on a supercharged engine - ours are already low. Plus the engine is so detuned with mild cam, small carb, small valves etc a blower is the best way to make it breathe. Then there is the fact that vintage speed equipment is so expensive. The same week I bought my blower on Ebay there was also an Edmunds 3 carb manifold for the same engine. The manifold sold for $512. My VS57 went for $275. I believe I can get a substantial performance improvement (McCulloch claimed a 40% increase in rear wheel horsepower) cheaper than I could with a conventional hop up. Plus, if I want to remove the blower I can restore the car to stock trim in less than a day. If you are interested here is a web site that does an excellent job of covering the McCulloch supercharger story from the 1930s to the late 50s. http://www.vs57.com/

You've got me there. The only 3 brush generator model I ever owned was a 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle and it responded to moving the brush. All I can suggest is you try to find an old time auto electric repairman. I would try to help but from this distance there isn't much I can do.

I looked up the transmission section of my MoToR manual and it looks pretty straight forward. Don't know what problems you will find inside. It's a good rule to replace the low second synchro any time you take a tranny apart, it is usually the first thing to go. In your case it's the 3d gear one. Maybe because in the case of FLuid Drive the last owner habitually started off in second then shifted to 3d. You should get a repair manual if you don't have one.

I have heard the same idea many times especially from newbies. They are afraid of the old engine but they are not afraid of an engine swap, probably because they don't know enough about old engines and definitely don't know what an engine swap entails. Not sure what troubles you are referring to but if you are a mechanic I suppose it must be a rod sticking out of the block or something equally drastic. As for the traffic problem, I have 1951 DeSoto coupe with the original 236 cu in 112HP flathead 6 and fluid drive so I know what you are talking about. That's why I recently bought a supercharger for it. No I'm not kidding. For various technical reasons I believe a flathead engine is ideally suited to supercharging and I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

Now you know why they changed to the more sophisticated, but more expensive voltage regulator. Your system gives a constant charge that does not vary with load. Sometimes it charges too much, sometimes too little. You have to set it for "average" conditions. Puttering around town, shove it up. Going on a long trip, shove it down. A little old lady would need a different setting from a travelling salesman. The only thing you can do is set it for "average" conditions. One thing you can do today that they couldn't do in 1937 is bleed off excess voltage with a zener diode. English motorcycles used to use an unregulated alternator - wide open all the time - and bleed off excess voltage this way. You need a zener diode and a heat sink to do this, that's all.