keithb7

Growing up everyone spoke in miles per gallon. Its programmed into my DNA. Additionally, probably 90% of all flathead Mopars ever made were sold in the USA. That too reflects membership here. I tend to convert to imperial for the majority here. Litres per 100 km just doesn’t have much jingle to it. Here it is:

US gallons.

I too eye’d up the Chevron GL-1 here in Canada. I seem to recall it was only available in a 50 gallon drum. At this 1,000 miles per year, there will be GL-1 oil going to the new owner, long after any of my possible future grand-kids are done with the family heirloom! ?

385 miles round trip. Nothing to report about the car’s reliability , other than excellent. Calculated fuel economy worked out to 12.5 mpg. Seems too low for an OD equipped flathead era Mopar. Perhaps its time to look deeper. Float level high maybe. Rich main-jet maybe. I will look into it. I’ll check plugs, put some test equipment on it. Look at vacuum l, dwell etc. This was my longest trip in the car, hi-way driving. First time calculating fuel economy on my Chrysler coupe. The trip included hilly terrain. Some stop and go traffic thru Kelowna. Speeds of 55-60 mph mostly. Some strong head winds for about 1.5 hrs coming home today. Momma was comfortable and happy. Always a good sign when thinking about more tours.

Yesterday morning my wife and I left home and headed on a 300 km road trip to Osoyoos BC. My Chrysler was fantastic. OD was engaged on the hiway the whole way. Great cruising. Ambient air temps about 30 cel. The cooling system stayed between 170F, then up to 180F. T-stat would open then drop back to 170. The thermostat cycled and regulated perfectly. I did inatall a 6V electric aux pump incase needed. The whole trip was great. When we arrived in Osoyoos we got into some traffic. Stop and go. After 10 mins or so we got out of it. I hit the accelerator and she hic-cuped and sputtered a bit. I hit the switch on the electric pump, and it worked perfect. Just as I had hoped. 300 km back home tomorrow. Then I’ll post my fuel economy numbers. About and hour from departure I did advance my timing slightly. I could feel it. She got a little more jump in her step! A few picks of our area. Its been a great tour. More confidence building. More tours are to come!

Me too. Freshly rebuilt engine and same 2 pc rear seal leaked. I’’ve not gone back in there. Not sure what I’d do different anyway. I’m living with it. Kinda of a bummer but I can only blame the mechanic.

Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention, I will maybe state another way to look at this: You may want to understand what is unique about GL-5 and what it it designed for. What are the differences between the power transfer between gears in a transmission and a rear axle assembly? A rear axle has side gears and a crown a pinion set. The diff utilizes both straight bevel gears and hypoid gears. Hypoid and bevel gears, hmm. Are those types of gear sets also used in early Mopar transmissions? How does the transmission clutch gear work? Is it the same as a synchromesh? How does a synchromesh actually work? Does the power go through a synchromesh like it does in a hypoid gear set in the rear axle? Are straight spur or helical cut gears found in the transmission and the diff? A basic understanding here will guide you to what oil to put in your transmission and your axle housing. You can use modern oils for both, yet the right modern oils is important. I personally use a different oil in my transmission than I do in the axle housing. Modern oils, yes. Same oils, no.

Glad you found it. Unfortunately, 1 more ill-fated Pertronix story to add to the pile.

I think Red Line MTL has been mentioned around here before as a great xmsn oil. Fairly pricey. So maybe not ideal for the folks with a leaky transmission. ? Some good info here: https://www.redlineoil.com/mtl-75w80-gl-4-gear-oil They talk about GL-1, synchos, (clutch gears) GL-5 etc. Seems like the golden nectar for old Mopar trannies.

I seem to recall some confusion about reassembling the oil pressure relief in the block. It was likely because a year after I tore the engine apart, I was finally reassembling it. The parts diagrams weren't real clear on which way the plunger had to go in. Is it possible you put yours in, incorrectly? Another side note: I noticed my oil pressure was a bit lower with 10W30, versus 20W40 or so.

Here’s the stripped down simple, quick explanation: The manufacturer has several silos within their corporation. The glue crew is just responsible to make the glue. They are not to concern themselves with what’s going on over in packaging or procurement departments. The packaging team has a different set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to get their annual bonus. They are to package-up the glue as cheap as possible and maintain a higher level of profit than the glue crew. If the glue crew can hammer out 100O liters of glue per day for 365 days per year average, they get their annaul bonus. The fact that they only work 5 days/week is factored-in. Procurement people are to buy the supplies for the glue crew to actually make the glue. They factor-in 85% production machinery uptime and production. They also need the supplies to arrive “just in time” for production so there is no inventory costs. Quite often the supplies arrive late so the glue crew comes on on overtime to meet their weekly production target. The procurement team orders enough supplies to make about 850 or so litres of glue per day. Yet the whole supply chain has never really recovered from covid and a shortage of workers. So the glue crew can’t meet their target and won’t get their annual bonus. The supply chain team blames the packaging people for not getting all of their annual bonus. Packaging costs are too high. The packaging team switches to bulk purchase of UHU glue stix to secure the branding labels. Not only saving money, but the environment too. You see the UHU sticks are water soluble and do not come from a cobalt mine in Uganda. Meanwhile they only get 25% of their annual bonus. Yet they are salary not hourly employees. So no overtime. The accountants withold un-realized losses this quarter to keep stock prices up. Meanwhile the executives are up in the boardroom celebrating massive profits. Each of them getting 200% of their target bonus for the year. Perhaps a 3rd recreational lot is in the cards later this year. Simply, this is why the label falls off.

The story goes: I wanted a brake tool. I did not want to pay the premium for an original. i saw some ideas on line and here. I worked with my friend who has machining equipment. He made me one. I offered a few ideas for improvements. He has some ideas. He made another one. I thought we had it dial’d in. He and I worked together to build and sell many of these brake tools. I shipped them all over the world to Moapr lovers everywhere. Unfortunately Mopar Pro bought one and reverse engineered it. He copied it 100%. I challenged him on it and his response was pretty low. He mass produced them and sells them on E-bay. I believe he also supplies them to Bernbaum. Its a free country. There’s not much I can do about it. I stopped making the tool. I figure, maybe a good way to get even is show the world how to build their own tool. Lol. Spread the word folks. Maybe we can cut his sales by 75%. ?

Sure sounds like a fuel supply problem. Start with some diagnostic testing. What is fuel pressure at carb inlet? Put a vacuum gauge on intake manifold port. Check vacuum as adjustments are made. Is carb responding to A/F adjustments, effecting vacuum readings. Who rebuilt the carb? How thorough of a job was done? Ultrasonic cleaning? Could be a jet problem. Could also be an acceleration pump problem. If you put some raw gasoline in the carb, not starting fluid, will it start? Suggest you do not use any starting fluid. Its hard on piston rings and cylinder walls.

Maradyne offers a 6V fan. I’ve considered one for my beefed up 237 engine. However the electric fan may get in the way at hiway speeds. A custom shroud is on my wish list when I get some time. I plan to build one. I think it will probably help more than a 6V fan.

Great point! I was bare armed and in cargo shorts. Extreme caution is required. Someone might see your white pasty hairy legs in shorts!

A mechanic’s stethoscope is a handy item. Safely block up all four wheels. Leave the wheels on. Get a friend in the car. Start it. Put it in gear 2nd or 3rd at idle is just fine. Your friend should be competent in the workings of an automobile. Brake, clutch park brake etc. you cannot have someone behind the wheel that might panic. You lay under the back of the car and poke the stethoscope probe at both outer wheel bearings and rear axle pinion bearings. Hear anything odd? For extra safety use solid blocks of wood to block up the vehicle under the frame. Suspension hanging. Also have the front bumper right up against a firm wall. A brick or cement wall is nice. The car is not going anywhere while you are under it. I have done this and lived to tell the story. I found a bad wheel bearing.

If you are in hurry under time constraints, you may want to consider shot-gunning parts. I've been know to do such a thing in in my younger years. "Don't know why or how I fixed it. I just kept dumping new parts at it 'till the problem was cured". Lol. Also known as "spray & pray". What about building a by-pass/test wire. Get a piece 12 ga or so insulated wire. 20 ft or so long. Solder alligator clips to each end. Then you can clip it to your ignition switch. It'll stay there hands-free. Then run it out the car drivers door and into the engine compartment if needed. Clip it to the coil input. You can run multiple different tests. Use it to clip to the coil out, then to the distributor input. Also clip it from hot 6V at ammeter to your input of ignition switch. You can maybe work around a possible bad wire and isolate it. Between this little jumper wire, a digital multi-meter, and a little time, you will solve this. I have thrown distributors in cars that were way-out of time. Between major and minor distributor adjustments, I can get them to fire and run pretty quickly. If I was near-by I'd surely come and help you get your Desoto running for the upcoming convention. I use the tester lead wire mentioned for a ton for projects. Quick and easy for the process of elimination when troubleshooting electrical problems. Just last week my A/C compressor on my 2006 car was not kicking on. I ran this jumper wire from the battery directly to the compressor harness. Compressor kicks in. Ok, its not the compressor, we know its good. Onto the next thing. Keith

Speaking of quality workmanship. I’m currently tackling this. I always thought tube benders were cheap. Apparently the person who built this brake line is cheaper.

Thanks Bob. I knew my little '38 P6 237 ci was pretty zippy around town! My seat of the pants calculations were right. It's like a baby 'Cuda.

I agree. I was thinking of the power to weight ratio of the entire car weight. My ‘38 sedan with 237 ci seems pretty light to me. Much lighter than my ‘53 265 ci Chrysler. The only crumple zone is the entire car lol.

I just wanna drive a straight 8. Wish there was a friend around here with one. I’d love to see how it performs on the steep hill home. Perhaps the 25” 237 in my 38 Plym has a better power to weight ratio? Mine makes nice torque. Sure be interested in finding out.

Yup. My brakes are in good, property adjusted condition. Single master cylinder. Stock system throughout. I don’t have concerns. My cars travel at the same speeds they engineered to be driven at in 1938.

1938 Plymouth back in the day.

Trial and error. Just start turning your anchors and watch how the shoes move. Its easy when you have that tool. Start turning and you'll get it. There is no special steps. Just keep adjusting until you get the shoes concentric.

I see he performed a 12V conversion!