martybose

I'll dig into my old car stuff tonight and check. Marty

Exactly which one are you looking for? What year and model car? I'm pretty sure I have an extra bracket that holds the coil and has two tubes for the wires, but they are different looking for various years. Marty

The wire that used to go to the BATT terminal on the regulator should go to the stud on the back of the alternator. When you first start the engine you should see a slight discharge, then after the first time you get the engine RPM high enough the get the alternator excited you should see a fairly heavy charge (maybe 30 amps) that rapidly drops off as the battery recharges. After the alternator kicks in the first time it will charge at any speed, including idle, until you shut the motor off. Marty

Correct, although the output should have been connected to the wire connected to the BAT terminal on the regulator, so that it goes through the ammeter. Marty

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. I just went to my Mom's 90th birthday last weekend. She just sold the house I grew up in and moved to a retirement community, where she is getting active in all sorts of things. It was a hoot listening to her and her little sister (she's 87!!) telling stories about life during WWII. My Dad, however, is another story. He's still around, but he is in an assisted living facility. He's doing okay, but doesn't recognize me most of the time. Sometimes he knows I'm his son, but he addresses me by my brother's name. You can't hold a conversation with him, as it just stops, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. I go visit him occasionally, but it isn't the way I want to remember him. Marty, reflecting .......

Look at the back of the alternator. Is there one wire coming from a stud on the back, or are there 3 wires? If there is only one wire it is internally regulated, and the external regulator isn't needed. If there are 3 wires, you will need a regulator in place. Marty

Yep, no problem at all. My 47 went from a 47 motor/47 tranny to a 50 motor/47 tranny to a 50 motor/53 tranny with no problems. Marty

Neither of these carbs is set up for a manual choke. The Carter/Weber has an electric choke that works pretty well, however. The biggest issue you would have with the Carter/Weber is that the throttle arm opens in the opposite direction from a B&B. The easiest solution to that would probably be changing to a cable linkage and running a bellcrank setup outboard of the carb. I'd also wonder about the jetting. The OEM application for this carb is a 2 liter motor. Since our motors are almost 4 liters of displacement, it's a slamdunk when you are using a pair of them. I don't know what you would need to do for a single carb installation. Marty

Not really. The gauge has a coiled bimetallic element, then a link attached to it that goes up at an angle to push against a lever attached to the needle. The link has an S-bend in it so you can adjust the length of the link. The needed adjustment is needle-nose plier work to get the right combination of angle and length of the link. I found it was real easy to get it to read say 200 degrees accurately, and then be a mile off at 160 degrees. It took me a couple of hours to figure out the correct combination of angle and length that worked across the range from 100 to 210 degrees, repeatedly heating and cooling a pot full of water with several thermometers in it to confirm as I fiddled with it. Marty

I agree with Greg. I went for years thinking that my motor ran hotter than normal, since the gauge usually read about 190. Finally I took out the temp gauge and put it, along with a couple of thermometers, into a pot of heated water. That's when I found that my gauge read about 30 degrees hotter than actual temp. It took me about 4 tries to figure out how to adjust the internal linkage, but it now reads within 5 degrees for the entire range, and shows 160-170 in normal driving. Marty

I've been using Autolite AP425 plugs in my Edmunds head. It's a 1/2" reach non-extended tip platinum plug. The standard gap is something like .032", but I opened them up to .060" for my HEI. A little pricey, but you get what you pay for. I had tried an Autolite extended tip plug, but just turning the motor over closed two of the plug gaps to zero, so not recommended that you try that! Marty

Interesting question! I had been looking at the first photo and wondering how he got the alternator so close-coupled to the waterpump, now I see that the waterpump is a different casting and positions the impeller (and hence the pulley) much lower. The fanbelt looks a lot shorter. I wonder what the original application is for the waterpump? Marty

I have to admit that when I first installed my Fatman spindles and their shock relocation kit (using Chebby pickup shocks), it rode real rough. Then I realized that the shocks were actually bottomed out, and the springs weren't doing a thing! We spliced on another piece of steel to raise the upper mount a couple of inches, and everything has been fine since. Marty

Don, Those are some scary circumstances that you're teaching in. Best wishes, and good luck! Marty

In a prior life (or at least it feels that way) I worked for a company that used 110V and 220V AC power supplies. Then they went to a single supply that was switch selectable for 110/220V AC. This was okay until someone would forgot to check which way the switch was set and fried them (did I mention that this equipment used a bank of 8 of these power supplies? VERY expensive to replace them all!) We eventually came up with a design that would work seamlessly from 80V to 264V AC, even worked from 47 hertz to 70 hertz. But I guarantee you'll never find something like this in consumer electronics, way too expensive! In the DC arena we used a nominal 48V DC input, the last design would run from 36V to 60V, but you won't ever find a DC input power supply that works from 6V to 12V seamlessly in a cigar lighter adapter! Marty

I guess it depends on the car; on my business coupe, with the small mirror I can already see all of the rear window, so a bigger mirror would just let me see more headliner. Marty

A friend of mine once put in a clutch disk backwards, so that the hub prevented the disk from fully engaging the flywheel. It worked for a little while, at least until he stood on it. Then he had to replace it. Marty

David, I have no issues with the quality of teachers, I have nothing but admiration for them, and my college-age daughter wants to be a math teacher! My beef is with the lack of support for them. No supplies, no equipment, classes too large, etc. When I graduated from our local high school you could take any of 6 different languages, they had well-equipped auto, metal, and wood shops and there was a diversity of classes to suit the individual students. Now there are just a couple of spanish classes, all of the shops are shuttered, and there are no advanced or alternative classes anymore. Blehhhhh!!! Marty

I'm less concerned about turning out college graduates, I'm more concerned about how few auto mechanics, plumbers, carpenters and metal workers our high schools produce. Not to mention musicians as well. At least in California, our education system sucks. Marty

For what it's worth, my brakes were originally set up with the AMMCO tool, and worked well. Over the course of a year or so, the pedal moved down so that the engagement point was only a couple of inches from the floorboard. Since the wheels spun freely, I took a wrench and slightly moved the minor adjustment on all 4 of the front brake shoes until they just touched the drum occasionally; I don't think the end of the wrench that I was holding moved 1/8". Doing this made a huge difference in the engagement height of the brake pedal; it went from 2" off of the floor to just having a inch or so freeplay before the brakes engaged. Marty

It looks to me like a later model Plymouth radiator. The early ones didn't have the shroud, and if the perspective looks like there is a fairly big gap from the top of the fan to the shroud, perhaps indicating that the radiator was lower in the original application. Plus of course the different filler neck with the overflow at the filler neck below the cap. Marty

I wondered about this as well, as my OD is completely silent in operation. When I first put my OD tranny in I didn't have the lockout cable adjusted correctly, and it only pushed the lever about half way. Even then, it was still silent, it just wouldn't shift into overdrive. Marty

The OD unit essentially replaces the tailshaft housing, so the assembled unit is the same length as the original tranny plus tailshaft. That said, it is not strictly a bolt-on unit, as it requires a modified transmission housing with a different shaft, so that putting the transmission in reverse also locks out the OD unit. Marty

??????? Seems to me that if you pressurize a cylinder through a sparkplug fitting it will go to BDC, not TDC. And BDC is the wrong place to do a leakdown test, you want to do it at TDC. Also, there is nothing to prevent a motor from turning backwards if you randomly apply pressure without knowing where you are starting from. Bottom line; you're much better off setting the piston to TDC and then doing a leakdown test. Marty

Mine is set up with a push-pull switch on the shifter arm, and I have to admit that there have been a number of times where I found that the reason the car wouldn't shift into overdrive was that I had flipped the switch and forgotten to turn it back to the normal position! I'm debating whether there is someplace to put a light to remind me of what state the switch is in .......... Marty