LeRoy

Good luck Marc. I recently overhauled my carb and came to find it's a frakencarb. The top and bottom seem correct for a dashpot but not the center section, I've got a fluid drive as well. I have it running pretty well but I think I'm time I'll buy a correct one from that outfit that rebuilds, installs, tunes and swaps for a core. I don't recall the name of the place of the to of my head but it seems like it was about 400 bucks for a guaranteed top running carb.

I'd like to install turn signals pretty soon. Is there a comprehensive tutorial that anyone is aware of? Thanks Andy

I drove a 1970 Peterbilt cabover with manual steering in my younger days, the steering wheel in that thing looked like a wagon wheel.?

I spent some time on my speedo and finally have significant improvement. I cleaned the cable and sheath with brake cleaner yet again. Relubed with the liquid graphite and used a zoom oiler on the little tube on the back (there's no wick in mine, just an empty tube). That didn't make any difference so I took it apart again. In the process of taking it apart I brushed my finger across the back of the speedometer and realized the part that sticks out actually spins with the cable. I spun it back and forth and found it was pretty stiff. I soaked a rag with brake cleaner and let it soak around that joint. After it freed up some I re-oiled with the zoom oiler and now the needle is steady. I assume whatever was used on the wick in the past had set up somewhat and made that joint sticky. If the speedometer was out of the car it'd probably be a much easier clean up task. Thanks for the suggestions. Andy

Where is the spare on a business coupe? I have trunk envy, mine is covered with thick tar like coating I'm slowly chiping out. I got about a third of it cleaned up yesterday.

I put several drops of oil on my wick yesterday and it smoothed things out a fair amount but there's still some bounce. I'll pull the cable out today, clean the casing well with brake clean and lube with graphite.

I need the drum. Mine was all busted up and out of balance when I got the car. I trimmed it up to get going but now I'd like to get one that's not damaged. As it is I only have about 3/4 of the band touching drum and I've still got a little drive line shake. My angle grinder skills aren't up to high speed balance specs? I'll attach a pic of it before I trimmed it. No idea how it got damaged but that must have been something.

Does anyone know where I could source a parking brake drum? The car is a 1947 dodge 2 door sedan but I suspect several models use the same part. Thanks in advance Andy

I hope you have better luck than I did with my new tank, it leaked at all 3 possible locations. So I've had it off and brazed it up 3 times. I hate getting flame on used gas tanks.

It seems pretty short to me to but I put about 100 miles on it today and looked for opportunities to stretch the rear end down. Everything went well. I got the tires balanced and discovered one of the wheels is bent, 1/8th or 3/16ths runout. So that one is my spare. The others only required .5oz of weight so I'm pretty happy with the cheap tires so far.

I think some rings would help the appearance a great deal, I'm not sure where to get them or what would fit this wheel.

The sidewall says max of 44psi, this thing floats down the road like a baby buggy so I was trying to firm the ride up a bit. I took a page out of the autocross book and aired them up harder to make cornering stiffer, currently at 44psi. This morning I tightened the worm gear in the steering box a couple of times and significantly improved drivability so I'll likely back the pressures down slowly and see how it impacts things. I also installed the rear shocks so that likely had something to do with it too. On a side note the new rear shocks are much shorter than the ones that were on it. I called the manufacturer and they confirmed they are correct but I'm skeptical. The shocks I took off are 20.5" extended, the new ones are 17.5 fully extended. The fronts were an exact match. So it's much quieter and smoother going down the road, not sure which thing made the most difference. Headed to the alignment shop in a few minutes to have the tires balanced and toe checked.

Yes sir I did. I've got them aired up pretty hard, 40psi currently. I got the narrowest tire I could find but they are still considerably wider than the 600x16. still plenty of clearance closest thing is 3/4" away.

I got my wheels powder coated almond color and mounted some tubless 205/70r16 tires. I don't like it quite as good as I did the baby blue wheels and wide whitewalls but it may grow on me. I may put a blue pinstripe on the wheels and an almond pinstripe on the car. The ride is much improved and the tracking is considerably better.

Geeze 57 is getting up there ?

I used some spray white lithium grease

Hey y'all I recently put together a 1947 d24, during the install I took the center cable out of the speedometer cleaned it, shot a little wd40 through the sheath, greased the cable and put it all back together. Now my needle bounces 5 mph above and below the speed I think I'm traveling. Other than being really dirty the cable and outer sheath seemed to be fine. Any ideas? Thanks Andy

I recently flushed my radiator, newly rebuilt engine and heater core. I wasn't very scientific about it.... I dumped in a jug of the prestone flush, drove it 150 miles over a 3 week period. When the time came to dump I opened both petcocks and stuck the garden hose in the top of the radiator. I let the water flow until it ran clear from the radiator neck, radiator petcock and engine petcock. Then I started and ran the engine a while with the hose still running and petcocks open. I closed the petcocks and turned off the hose, ran the car till it was warm (had to cover the front of the radiator so it got warm enough for the thermostat to open). Opened the petcocks and drained as much as possible, refilled with distilled water, ran a few minutes after the thermostat opened and drained again. Final fill was 50/50 distilled water and green prestone. Took it for a drive to get it hot and topped it off. So far it seems ok. Andy

I certainly didn't mean for it to stir anyone up but I guess if you ask 8 or 10 people you will get about that many different opinions. I appreciate the banter and different thinking as much as I do the facts. When I started fooling around with these old cars I would have given anything to have this group of people to bounce things off of. I'm still a little shocked I found it in the first place. Good day all. Andy

I forgot to mention, when I asked the guy behind the counter at the ancient little NAPA store in my neighborhood he laughed and said he couldn't remember the last time he sold a spark plug gasket. He dug around until he found an old box and gave me a handful for free.

Hey all I looked around a little more after I dropped this stink bomb of a topic here and have a little news / learnings you may find interesting, or not. As has been discussed here it's recommended to use new gasket every time you install a used plug, I never have. I run 306s which have 14mm thread and a tightening spec of half a turn after its finger tight (quarter of a turn if you reuse old gaskets). If you're using a torque wrench tighten to 16-29 ft lbs (reduce by 30% if you use anti-seize, I do use anti-seize). I haven't used a torque wrench in the past, I've always put a very light coating of anti-seize on the threads (and the seat if it's a tapered plug) and tightened till it feels right. I backed my plugs out with a torque wrench the other day and I had retightened them to about 35 to get them to stop bubbling (as I mentioned above number 4 still had an occasional bubble at that torque). When I reinstalled them I added new gaskets and tightened 1/2 a turn. When I ran the engine I put water in the plug wells to give it the check, no bubbles. In the future I'll add new gaskets when I reinstall if I have some on hand or maybe just give them a little extra snug and know they may seep a little. Good day all Andy

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I encourage everyone to go fill your plug valleys with water and start your engine and look for bubbles, I'll wait here for you to report back......

Ive always heard you should use new gaskets but in 60 years I've never done it. Then again I've never had the situation where there was water in a plug hole to expose a leak.

I don't think I've ever seen spark plug gaskets for sale anywhere. The washers on these new plugs are white metal, I suspect aluminum or steel. A quick search on Amazon shows some copper washer sets but they don't look much like a spark plug gaskets to me, more like oil pan or carb gaskets.