Sam Buchanan

The hood release inside the cabin is a nice touch on my '48, but I've often wondered how in the world would I release the hood if something broke in the release cable. The front of the car is pretty much assembled from the inside out and releasing a captive hood, though no doubt possible, would be a major aggravation. I decided a belt and suspenders approach could alleviate this unfortunate scenario. Here is a little shop project that won't take more than an hour but could prevent many hours of frustrations. All we need is an emergency hood release. The release is a short length of flex cable, a handle made out of a piece of tubing and a bug nut. The cable has a Z-bend on one end which fits in a small hole drilled in the hood release latch. The other end of the cable goes through the inner left front fender: Here is the release handle inside the inner fender, completely out of the way until it needs to save the day: The release works flawlessly.....and a kidnapped hood latch will no longer be on my "Awwwh SHOOT!" list. ?

Wow.......that was really productive......

Much more pressure than that when combustion occurs.........

I mis-spoke, the two manuals I have are both originals best I can tell. The only ones I've seen lately are just scans of these old manuals, so there is no "proof-reading" occurring. But these are exceedingly simple cars that are much more tolerant of "shade-tree" engineering than the computers we drive today. Fortunately the superb Master Tech films are still available for download.

The question should be "Who wrote these?". The manuals I have are reproductions of manuals that were published in the early '50's. That means the authors are almost certainly long gone....RIP.

Or you can scab together a tranny cradle out of scraps in the shop that looks wretched but works wonderfully: I just put the jack under the transmission while it was still in the car and started adding scraps until the jack cradled the trans. The hole is for that little bump on the bottom of the three-speed. The 2x2 props up the shift housing and keeps the trans from falling off the cradle. Putting the jack in juuust the right place keeps everything balanced. ? And you need guide pins: A couple of flats filed on the pins make it easy to use a wrench.

Congratulations...you have jumped one of the most dreaded hurdles we have when it comes to refreshing our flatties. ?

Glad we have an option that we know works. ?

Thank you for the update, glad you have excellent results with the Red Line oil. A happy tranny makes the cost of the Red Line MTL a bargain. ?

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But the brakes won't be any better....... ?

Go head and buy the stud extractor.......don’t mangle the stud with vice grips to where the extractor can’t get a good grip.

Low fuel pressure due to vapor lock?

The kid has great potential as a corporate executive.......get the peasants to do the dirty work.... ?

The shift housing is easy to remove, just follow the manual procedure. That will allow you to determine if something is out of whack in the housing. You should find this recent thread an interesting read: https://p15-d24.com/topic/52787-no-reverse-or-first-gear/

I had to adjust the linkage after installing new tranny mounts.....couldn’t find all the gears. Your project looks great!

Points are fine with either, resistive core wire is usually needed if you have a radio to eliminate RFI noise.

Not older........wiser! ?

I wouldn't do it.....much better to just use unmodified jack stands you can trust.

Yep, a vendor that services the vintage tractor community is a good source for wires for our old cars.

The generic wire kit with 90* connectors I referenced earlier:

You will do well with the flattie and will really enjoy working on it....welcome to the community! Very nice slant six.....(but I have to say this.......replace that plastic fuel filter with a metal one......). ?

My local mom-n-pop auto parts emporium had a universal set of 6-cylinder cut-to-fit plug wires with straight and 90 boots for less than $25. It was very similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/26A60-Universal-Spark-Plug-Wire/dp/B07BSQBZ9D If you think you want to convert to Pertronix you will need non-copper conductor wires. But points work very nicely.

The issue we face when removing a manifold is compounded by the stud extending into the water jacket. When the nut refuses to budge torque is transferred to the stud which cannot turn because the end that protrudes into the water jacket has enlarged due to corrosion and is now wedged against the crankcase. So we apply some more torque and the stud breaks. Now we get to drill out the stud, clean up the threads and install a new stud. If we are really sharp, we will carefully install the new stud only far enough to prevent the end from extending into the water jacket and the corrosion problem rearing its ugly head for the next guy who removes the manifold. The bolts securing the two manifolds together on my car were so degraded that just the slightest torque snapped them. Fortunately there was enough of a stub sticking out of the intake manifold to allow grabbing the stub with a stud extractor and the stub could be unscrewed without damaging the threads. The stud extractor also made short work of removing a couple of studs in the crankcase that needed replacing. https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Iron-16023-Drive-Extractor/dp/B00265M8N4

If you put motor oil in it and it doesn't shift like you think it should.....is the problem with the tranny...or the oil???? Go ahead and buy the good stuff. If you need to go back into the tranny you can drain it and save it.....frugally. If the tranny works well, you won't need to change that oil in our lifetime.