DonaldSmith

Fess up. hep2jive, is that really your picture? Recent? or 60 years ago?

Baed on my one year of mechanical knowledge repeated sixty times, I would opine: Valve job needed: Low compression in one or more cylinders. Vacuum gauge needle swinging widely in sync with engine speed. Magical suction test at the exhaust pipe, with dollar bill alternately blown out and sucked back.

The litle dog laughed to see such a sport...

Slap a little joint compund on that hole and call it a day. The house equivalent of "It'll buff out."

Dodge limo? We need photos! How come the front running lights are blacked out? Or do they flash red while some foreign dignitary parades by? Dodge limos have to be rare. I heard that foreign countries would tax horse power, so a Dodge, with the Plymouth-Dodge 23-nich engine, would be taxed less than a DeSoto with the larger DeSoto-Chrysler engine.

I'm an excellent driver. But not everyone thinks so. Visitng my daughter's parish, the epistle and sermon were about us all being part of the Mysical Body, all of us with different functions but part of the same body. After Mass, on the way out, I told Father that sometimes when I am driving, people suggest what part of the body I am. He laughed.

My photo is looking across the engine at the transmission relay. (The Voltage regulator was to the right of, or in front of, the transmission relay.) Upper left is TH. Looking doen on the relay, top left would be BAT with the fuse, top right would be TH. Afrermarket relay? Huh?

Here's a photo of the transmission relay: TH (Yellow to carb) BAT PRI SOL INT

How about "Kickdown Circuit for M5? The kickdown circuit goes from the kickdown switch at the carb (yellow wire) to the TH post on the transmission relay and to the governor at the transmission. The kickdown swiurch is at the back of the carburetor and is acturated by the throttle linkage and grounds the circuit. Normally, the transmission downshifts when the governor senses that the speed has dropped below a certain point. The kickdown circuit overrides this, to shift at a higher speed. I forget what the circuit does within the transmission relay. The shop manual shows the circuits and the functions. In the meantime you can connect the wires and get the transmisison to downshift when you floor it.

Canada ain't so bad, either. Nice people, (except for those Doukhobors my mother used to tell me about. Aw, the Doukhobors ain't so bad, either.) I remember 911, when air flights were diverted to Canada. Some lady with a van drove her van full of yanks from the west coast to a border crossing at a plains state, so the yanks could cross wihout interminable delay. I remember a dozen or so Americans trapped in Iran, who escaped with Canadian passports. (Great movie about it.) Today is 11/11, on the 115th anniversary of the end of the Great War (World War I). We celebrate Veterans Day. You celebrate Remembrance Day. Let's rmember our vetrans, and those who gave their lives defending the homeland.

Trying to remember- I ihad to get under the car to remove the bottom bolt. I removed the wheel and had the jack and jackstands firmly in place. Bolts a bitch to get to. Open end wrench to start, or maybe crowfoot. Socket and extension couldn't quite line up. I think I hoisted the starter up. And of course I had the fender covers on. Finally bought a set, No more old towels.

I had to move my starter recently to get at the oil filter pipiing. I put a pipe actoss the fenders and made a sling to support the starter while I moved it out. ith the top anf bottom bolts out.. I was able to pull he starter out and lower it. It was a bitch allenging. (Deliberate typo) g

Let me understand this. The ignition switch of the era has OFF in the middle, where the key can be pushed in and pulled out (notches up). To the left, (counterclockwise) is ACC, powering all the good stuff. To the right (clockwise) is ACC plus IGN. All the good stuff works, and the Ignition is hot. The way this switch is wired, turn it left for IGN, and the ignition is hot, reportedly. Are the Accessories on? To the right, are the Accessories on, but the ignition is off?

Pondering deeply the question "The best way to time an engine?" Surely, Labrauer knows how to time an engine; he's probably done it once or twice. He was asking the best way to time an engige. Maybe that's like asking the best oil to use. No single answer, and don't call him Shirley. Labrauer mentions the timing chain. When assembling an engine. one has to get the cam working in sync with the craink. That's a form of timing. The usual situation is timing the distributor to the crank and the cam. This involves finding top dead center of the crank and determining the end of the compression stroke for No. 1 cylinder, so the rotor points to No. 1 spark plug. Some guys use the probe hole in the No. 6 cylinder to find TDC. Some of us use the timhg marks on the pulley or damper. And the compression stroke can be found by a thumb, or golf ball, or whatever, on the spark plug hole. (Add your own favorite metnod.) As in all philosophical matters, further ponderings and opinions are in order.

See the crankshaft pulley. The pully or a damper, if one, should have timing marks on it. See recent posts on finding top dead center when No. 1 is finishing its compressionstroke.

Hmm. So, you have your probe in the spark plug hole, over the intake valve, rather than in the plug hole over the piston. It took me a minute to figure it out. Whatever works.

Shirley, you can't be Sirius. ( I have trouble being serious. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)

Hmm. So, you have your probe in the spark plug hole, over the intake valve, rather than in the plug hole over the piston. It took me a minute to figure it out. Whatever works.

The starter solenoid is the entire apparatus that rides horseback on the starter. The upper posts power the coil that closes the heavy duty connection between the two bottom posts and also engages the bendix drive to the flywheel.

There are two thin plates under the distributor that allow for making major and minor timing adjustments. As seen in the photo above, we see the upper plate bolted to the bottom of the distributor. The lower plate is bolted through a slotted hole to the engine block. This is for the major adjustment. The platea are bolted together below the vacuum advance. (The bolt head has a screwdriver slot in it, but it takes a big screwdriver.) This is the minor adjustment. The crankshaft turns twrice for every turn of the distributor, so a degree adjustment her makes two degrees difference in the timing. This is all 'splained somewhere in the shop manual

"Picky, picky, picky." (Just kidding. Comedian Pat Paulsen's shtick was to run for president. In answering his opponent's accusions of dishonesty, etc., those three words were his rebuttal. )

Maaybe set the distributor to 4 to 6 BTD with todays gas. One trick for getting the distributor close to right timing is to have a test light with two leads. First, check TDC on the compression stroke vs which plug wire the rotor is pointing to (7:00 is typical.) Then disconnect the distributor wire at the coil and connect one lead of the test bulb to that wire. Connect the other lead to the hot post of the battery, or other live source. The light bulb should remain on as the points remain closed, but shut off when the points open, which is when the coil would fire. . Loosen the distributor bolt(s) and rotate the distributor. Note where the pulley is in regards to the pointer when the light shuts off. Rotate the distributor until the pointer points to your intended target. If you hve a vacuum bauge, yu can tweak it finer, for maximum vacuum at idle.

When I turned 80, i didn't feel that old; But when I turned 81, I felt that old. Everything hurts, but thankfully, not all at once. The other day, briefly, nothing hurt at all I felt like I was 65 again.

Binger said: "The upper left is connected to the generator.' OK if the generator is OK. You could try grounding the wire somewhere else, as a test.

Images of the steering getting loose and the car swinging out behind the tow car. You would want to have a very strong belt. And it's probably illegal some places.