Can Anyone Tell Me Anything About This Pierce Arrow Straight Eight?

[trimacar]

49 minutes ago, edinmass said:

George.  The 3&1 were transposed. 

Ed sometimes uses the voice feature to send texts, maybe his accent, sometimes the texts are quite entertaining!  Is a voice feature for our forums available?

Edited August 15, 2022 by trimacar (see edit history)

[karguy12]

3 hours ago, Rusty_OToole said:

You describe it as having a plastic body, do you know what kind of plastic? Fibreglass reinforced polyester resin became available after WW2, Plexiglass was available just before WW2, I don't know what was available before the mid 30s unless it was Bakelite or celluloid, neither suitable for making car bodies.

A December 1941 article in Popular Mechanics was about a guy named Russell who used the exact same construction technique and similar materials and plastic to make his plastic car. His car was very awkward and not well designed or refined. He was an associate of Preston Tucker and Tucker was big into plastics pitching it to the military to try and land a contract.  The plastic that is on my car looks a lot like Bondo, but Bondo was not invented until 1955. My 1937 Adler Lemans race car has plexiglass (Perspex) windows in 1937.  

Edited August 15, 2022 by karguy12 (see edit history)

[wayne sheldon]

Henry Ford experimented with plastics for steering wheels and coil boxes in the mid 1910s. The less than one year 1917 only plastic coils were a result of that experimentation. They failed due to warping and swelling issues, and Ford went back to wooden coils for the remaining duration of the model T. Those plastic coils failed so badly that they are somewhat rare today, but I have one as a curiosity (it was in a box of model T stuff I bought a pickup truck load of years ago). About 1919, Ford did go to a plastic composite steering wheel rim that worked well for many years!

Henry's experimental department continued to work with plastics, and if I recall correctly, built a mostly plastic car during the mid to late 1930s (purely experimental!).

 

Fiberglas per se may have been originally developed during the World War 2. However, the idea of fabric bodies coated in heavy paint goes way back to the early days of the automobile! Weymann was famous for theirs. They were were very high quality, lightweight, and quiet (virtually rattle and squeak free!). MOST early airplanes around the world used lightweight cloth painted with a binder or "dope" to both strengthen and protect it. Many airplanes continued to use doped cloth well into a few mere decades ago. Numerous companies and individuals since well before WW2 experimented with different materials for both the cloth and the fillers.

Determining what specifically the materials are may help to date the car?

[karguy12]

Henry Ford's plastic or "Soybean" car was from 1941. He most likely experimented with the materials long before that. 

[1937hd45]

2 hours ago, karguy12 said:

Henry Ford's plastic or "Soybean" car was from 1941. He most likely experimented with the materials long before that. 

Some state made license plates out of that stuff during WWII, porcupines found them tasty, rare plates today. 

[edinmass]

Henry Ford had an entire soy car body built and driving down the road in 1937. It wasn’t practical and it didn’t hold up. A lot of things came out of the experiments. Somewhere there is a photo of him swinging a sledgehammer at a body panel. It’s probably the 1941 car. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by edinmass (see edit history)

[Grimy]

Further on Pierce 8-cylinder distributors (all are Delco, and ALL are clockwise rotation, 4-lobe cam, and no vacuum advance except as noted):

 

* 668-E dual point, dual coil.  Used on 1929 (all), 1930 (models A & B), 1931 (models 41 & 42).  As noted above, caps are rare and very pricey when you can find one.

 

* 652-E dual point, single coil.  Used only on 1930 model C

 

* 660-P dual point, single coil.  Used on 1931 model 43 and 1932 8s (model 54)

 

* 662-J dual point, single coil.  Used 1933-38 8s except for "transportation sedans" (e.g., heavy duty park & resort vehicles).

 

* 663-M single point, single coil, 8-lobe cam, vacuum advance.  Used 1935 and later on "transportation sedans."

Edited August 15, 2022 by Grimy
added info (see edit history)