DonaldSmith

I mis-spelled "tje" on purpose. You've got to believe me! Back on track. I'm in the process of (re)moving my starter. I got the bottom bolt out. Observations: The bolt has a 5/8" head. The cluch linkage limits the arc of the wrench, but will not interfere with moving the starter forward to remove it. An open end wrench worked, with some flipping. A socket was tempting, but I could see that removing the bolt would back up the socket against the starter body. I got the bolt loose emough to remove it by hand. The engine block protrusions will not interfere with moving the starter forward to remove it.

I'll be pulling my starter out a bit, to get at the oil line fitting. As i remember from years ago, the starter pulls forward, easy peasy, Except it hit some Rube Goldberg piping I had for the oil filter, which I have since corrected. Sorta. I'm on about the third or fourth iteration of the oil filter piping. maybe this time it won't leak. It looks from the photo I posted, that when I pull the starter forward, I'll have to move it out sideways a bit from the engine, to clear a prrotrusion. But it should clear, since it went in. And at my age, I'll rig up some webbing to support the weight of the starter as I move it out of the way. For just moving the starter over a bit, I can leave the wiring connected. As a younger man,I removed the top bolt, got under the car, removed the bottom bolt, and carried the starter out on my chest. There. I think I got all tje typos.

Here's a photo of my starter solenoid, with the oil filter removed, because of leaks in the fittings. (The plug in the block below the solenoid is where the elbow fitting had been leaking. I've got to loosen and move the starter to replace the fittinng.) The upper left post of the solenoid is grounded at an available bolt, in this case at the oil filter bracket. (Nearby, I have a thick ground cable connecting the engine to the body.) (I've got a welch plug below the bolt, to worry about. )

I think the only reason Ma Mopar grounded the solenoid post to the generator was to prevent the starter from cranking while the engine waas runnning. So forget the generator/alternator as a groud. Ground the post to a good ground on the engine block, like maybe a bolt holding the oil filter on. (Additional thought: I had grounded the post to the bolt holding the solenoid to the starter, but I figured that it had surfaces where the ground could be compromised by paint, dirt, etc. So I am grounding the wire to one of the bolts holding the oil filter on. I am working on fixing a leak in the oil filter plumbing, so I will have a good opportunity to make sure the surfaces at the bolt will be clean. (And I believe in start washers, to cut through the crud.)

Get or asssemble a momentary contact button with two wires with alligator clamp ends. Looking at the starter soleoid, the upper right post is where you would clamp a wire. (Thats''s the post nearest the steering column, for us who drive on the right side of the road.) The other lead clamps at the Hot post of the battery (The negative post if the car is positive ground, like most of ours.)

Check that the wire from the starter solenoid did not connect with the generator. If it did, just ground the wire, or run a shorter wire from that solenoid post to a good ground. Ma Mopar grounded the starter relay circuit so that if the engine were running, the genny would not provide a good ground, keeping the driver from grinding the starter and flywheel.

In Britain. a sedan is a saloon. In the old, wild west. a saloon was where cowboys would gamble, get drunk, and have gunfights.

Plastic Kit Car some assembly required

More Carry-All (49-53 Suburban similar):

I've had yellow coolant in my car for the last 20 years. What's wrong with that? Why green? I vaguely rmember some discussions on this, but I forgot the details.

Here's a 1950 DeSoto Carry-All. Like my Dad's '50 Suburban, the back seat looks normal, and the trunk is closed. But flip the seat cushion forward, and the armrests support it. Flip the back cushion down to and pull a hinged filler panel forward to fill in the floor. The Chrysler Traveler of that era had the same feature.

The "Drive Report" in the July-August 1974 Special Interest Auto Magazine featured the DeSoto Suburban of that area. The Report had a side bar feature on the Chrysler Traveler. The text as copied is illegible. It does mention the ash strips and luggage rack on the roof and an "odd little detachable step plate" which "hooked into the hidden rear running boards, extending them three inches on either side" which "made it easier to reach cargo atop the car." It also mentioned a canvas roof-rack cover. I adssumed that the Traveler had an open trunk and fold-down seat like the Suburban, but I find, Not So. DeSoto had a Carryall version, on the sedan body, with only two seats, but the second seat folded down and extended the trunk's cargo floor, like the Suburban.

Rare car. Like my Suburban,. but in the normal sedan body. Roof rack. I would like to see how the back seat folds down to extend the cargo floor. Do you have the Fluid Drive with semi-automatic transmission. or the 3-speed manual transmission?

My car has two tubes for running the plug wires from the engine back to the distributor, 3 wires per tube. Some of the older cars have six tubes. I sometimes wonder if the wires have their own private light show within the tubes. Nah, not with wires that are in good shape. Right? DO ONE WIRE AT A TIME. I'vwe been confused when pulling a plug wire, and having one of its adjacent wires moving at the other end of the tube. Take one wire at a time comletely out of the tube. You'll have to take off the boot and connector from the distributor end, or cut the wire. If you cut the wire, be sure to take in account the length you cut off whe you measure for the new wire. It sounds like a Duhhh, but been there, done that.

When facing the engine from the front, the left side is to my right. And around here, driver on the left is right, and the passenger sits on the side that is left, the right side. Enough fun with homonyms (words that sound alke but have different meanings). Why not use "starboard" and "port", which mean what they mean, no matter how you look at it?

How would cashew oil reduce brake lining wear?

What's so special about Plymouth spark plug wires? Aside from vintagfe-looking wires, there are two types of generic wire sets: Solid copper core, where noise suppression is not needed or wheree resistance plugs are used. Noise suppression core. These come in unfinished lengths, and are cut to match the lengths of the exisiting wires. Then the ends go on- connectors and boots.

I've often wondered about the function of the bypass line in the filler pipe. I remember my dad's Suburban, which like mine today, whistled during fill-up. As the tank got full, the whistling stopped. Ahah! Maybe that's it. When it stops whistling, the gas is up to the filler pipe, so stop pumping. This bypass line, or whatever they called it, did not vent the tank. It may have helped during the filling process.

For my 47 DeSoto, I bought a vintaqge headlight relay - actually two relays under the same cover, one for the low beam and the other one for the high beam. (I don't have fog lights.) I can't answer if 30 amps are enough .

Points vs Petronix. President Harry Truman once quipped that he wanted a one-armed economist, because the person could not say "on the other hand..." We have a spectrum of mechanical abilities among the guys. Some guys can gap the points at night, on the side of the road, in a rainstorm, using the edge of their thumbnail. On the other hand, I can cobble together a power steering setup but can't get my points ignition to behave. I had the Pertronix system in my DeSoto, with the resistor in the Interruptor circuit, and it was working fine. But the tales of sudden failures scared me, and I put the points back in. Now I have a miss. I'll check the plugs to see if there is an offending plug wire or termination, telltale track in the distrbutor cap, fireworks in the engine bay at night, check the point gap, etc., etc. Maybe I should have bought the spare igniter, damn the cost, and left things as they were. If you want a Pertronix system, go for it. Be aware that they can fail suddenly, as can anything. Have your spare ignitor. Meanwhile, more power to those who are masters of the points system.

"Fliud drive" is not specific. For Dodge, the "Fluid Drive" fluid coupling came with a 3-speed transmission at first, and eventually with the 4-speed semi-automatic. Do you have the 3-speed manual transmission or the 4-speed semi-automatic transmission? (Does it have the "H" shifting pattern, with "First" toward you and down, or not?) The Fluid Drive with 3-speed manual transmission will have no governor or other wiring at the transmission, no transmission relay that looks like a voltage regulator, and no wires to the carburetor.

I had trougle getting my DeSoto to rev high enough. The limit was in engine revolutions, not road speed. Lower speed in lower gears. My carburation problem was in the distributor - I had the points spring in wrong, and the points would float. Do you have the standard transmission connected to the fluid coupling (st gear toward you and down)? There is no automatic up or down shifting? Is your speed limited to what gear you have it in?

" in gear where second should be...? What does that mean? Dodge was slow to get the semi-automatic transmission. It had Fluid Drive with the 3-peed manual, as described above. Eventully, Dodge got the semi-automatic. Easy way to tell - Standard Transmittion, H pattern. Pull and up for Reverse, pull and down for 1st, push and up for 2nd, push and down for 3rd. Semi-Automatic - pull and up for Reverse . NO Pull-and-Down - No "1st". Push and up for "Power" (automatoic shift !st to 2nd - stump puller.) Push down for "Drive" (Automatic shift 3rd to 4th.)

You were correct to connect from the top left of thesolenoid (as looking at it from the front) to a ground at the engine. Ma Mopar grounded the solenoid through the generator so that when the engine was running the generator's emf or whatever counteracted the ground, to keep the starter from cranking when the engine was running. As I recall from when I installed my alternator, I grounded the upper left solenoid post. I abandoned the red wire that led to the generator A post. I conected the green wire that went to the F post of the generator to the post of the alternator. I bypassed the regulator, and connected the other end of the green wire to the black wire that had been connected to the regulator.

The drain plug needs some sort of square driver to get it out. Think 1940's tool box. No torx bolts and screws back then. These drain plugs are special, since the tank does not have a deep pipe-threaded hole, so the usual pipe plug will not work. (There are holes around the base of the threads, to drain the last drop from the tank.) But there are workarounds. For a workaeround, I had a close-coupled nipple and a pipe cap. The nipple screwed into the tank,and the pipe cap held a gasket against the tank. It woked for 20 years, until I had the tank recoated, and the recoater came up with something, I don't know what. But that should last another 20 years.