martybose

Niel, I'd argue that you did it the right way! My mechanic, an oldtime funny car racer, kept a 1" thick piece of perfectly flat glass that was about 8" by 8" that he would tape a really fine grit aluminum oxide sandpaper to, add a little oil, then use that to flatten carburetor gasket surfaces. It was sometimes amazing how long it took to get some Holley 4 bbl bases truly flat to ensure sealing! Marty

Sounds like what you really need is one of those higher second gears that I've heard about a few times; I gather George Ashe usually has them available? Marty

As a point of conversation, the road race cars that I work on generally require about a 60/40 split in line pressure to stop well, assuming the same size brakes all of the way around. Or to put it another way, the front line pressure is 50% higher than the rear line pressure. Marty

Although I'm sure that a late model disk brake is much more powerful than our OEM drums, and thus will work better than the drums, my bet is that even with a disk/drum setup you won't come anywhere near achieving the braking force that you could achieve if there was a proportioning valve installed. The primary purpose of the proportioning valve is to get the front and rear brake systems working at their maximum efficiency at the same time. Factors to be dealt with include the fact that disk brakes can use (and generally require) higher brake line pressure than drums, weight transfer during braking, differences in tire diameters or widths, etc. Without a proportioning valve, you will typically lock up the rear drums a long time before you are using the front disks to their full potential; a proportioning valve starts limiting the pressure rise to the rear drums while allowing the front disks to go up as much as possible. So while a front disk conversion will work better than the OEM drums without a proportioning valve, the car will be able to stop a lot quicker with a properly calibrated (BIG CAVEAT THERE!) proportioning system. Marty

From your description I would bet that someone replaced the battery cable with a generic 12V one. Find a shop that can make you up a set of 00 gauge wire, and that problem will be gone! Marty

I've got Phillips cast iron headers on my motor. After my attempt at high temp paint failed miserably, I sent the headers and the 2 down pipes out to be ceramic coated; cost me about $220 in late 2005, still look new now. Marty

The unfortunate thing about the BW overdrives is that 6V and 12V solenoids do not interchange because of a design change. If you don't have one that matches the voltage of your car, you've got a problem. I'm going through this myself, as my car is now 12V but my OD is 1951 vintage 6V. There are 12V relays you can use, but the solenoid is another story, because it has both a holding and a shifting function. One outfit I talked to tried to come up with a 12V to 6V system for the OD, and gave up. Marty

Recently I got an email from Bank of America offering a new service where you can get a one-time only credit card number that points back to your regular credit card. That way no one else can use that number if it gets hijacked. Marty

I believe that PlyDo is reselling the Fatman dropped spindle. 3" sounds about right to me; if you click on my name in this reply and look at my car you'll see what a 47 Plymouth with stock springs all around and the Fatman dropped spindles looks like with 15" 60 series tires on it. Marty

In an earlier life I was in charge of a phone company central office. To put it in perspective, we converted 480V AC into about 1400 amps of 48V DC to run all of the equipment; we used solid copper bus bars that were 18" tall by 3/4" thick for power distribution. We had a gel cell battery bank ( 7' tall by 4' deep by 80' long) that would run the entire installation for 8 or more hours, along with a big diesel generator and enough fuel to run it for a week. The interesting thing was that the electronics liked to be cold, so we ran a BIG air conditioning plant to keep the equipment at 60 degrees F or less, but the batteries liked to be hot for maximum efficiency, so they put the batteries and the invertor/convertor bays (yes, when we ran on the battery plant we had to synthesize AC for the AC system and some of the equipment) into a sealed room with a dedicated AC unit and kept the temperature at 90 degrees F! It was always a shock to open that particular door and go through it in either direction! Marty

Yesterday I took my car out for a ride, and I checked the oil level first; it was just below the 1/2 mark (original 1947 dipstick), so i thought it was 1/2 quart low, no big deal. I take the car out, and notice that the oil pressure drops in right hand turns; not good, as it surely means that the oil is moving away from the pickup. So I come back to my garage, add 1/2 quart, and check the dipstick, which is now just over the 1/2 mark. Add the other 1/2 quart, and it moves a little higher up the stick. Add another quart, and it is almost up to the full mark??? So it seems that the 1/2 mark clearly isn't in quarts. Is it in gallons, maybe?? Or could it be 1/2 of the total capacity, meaning 2-1/2 quarts? Anyone know for sure? Marty

That thing is almost far enough off of the ground to just roll under it on a creeper! Quite a difference from my car, which has 15" 60 series tires on it! Marty

I don't know anything about the early cast iron trannies, but I can tell you that the Torqueflite 727's for a big block V-8 have a much different bellhousing on them than one for a small block V-8, and the third variant is the one for a slant 6. You might want to check all of them! Marty

I'm envious. I bought the engine out of a 50 Dodge that had been sitting in an old wrecking yard for over 30 years, but when I opened it up it was already .060" over, and so loose that the pistons rattled! We wound up getting a set of metric rings from a Toyota that worked out as .072" over, then had a set of pistons made for them. Marty

True enough, but there are photos of the XP-47 that had the Chrysler inverted V-16 installed as a test bed! Marty

Not to mention that since it is an inverted V-16, both of the heads and the intake plenum are significantly below the crankshaft centerline! Maybe if you raised the engine so that the driveshaft was about shoulder height you could find room for the driver! Marty

I knew that it wasn't in San Leandro, CA, but I didn't know where it was. Interestingly, when Ma Mopar sold the San Leandro plant, it became an International Harvester assembly plant for class 8 highway trucks. I worked there until IH closed the plant; they sold it to Caterpillar, who built engines there for a while, then they closed it. It is a shopping mall now, and the original 2 story building is still there; if you know where to look, you can find parts of things left from it's earlier life. Marty

Working in a shipyard where we do a lot of welding, about the only time we use fluxcore is when we are welding something that can't be shielded from the wind. Otherwise we always use MIG with a gas mix. Marty PS in regards to the original question, most of the welders who have been at it over 10 years use a high diopter lens to make it easier to get a good quality weld.

After reading this thread, I went and looked at the filler neck hoses for sale on eBay; interesting that all of them are clearly green stripe instead of red ....... Marty

This comment about the radio isn't necessarily true. If it is an all original radio, like the 802 that I have, it will work just fine on 6V negative ground. I was told that the OEM vibrator didn't care about polarity, but an upgraded electronic vibrator would. So my radio was unaffected when I changed from a 6V positive generator to a 6V negative alternator. Marty

The consensus in the past here is that even 2 gauge is too small. I had mine made from 00 gauge, really made a difference! Marty

It's there so that you can find top dead center using a piece of welding rod, or something similar. Cylinders 1 & 6 go up and down together, but have the ignition cycles 360 degrees apart. Marty

I was under the impression that back in the day pistons were available up to .080" over for our motors. When I disassembled the 230 that is now in my car, it turned out to be a worn out .060" overbore already. I couldn't find any .080" over pistons, so we found a metric ring set from a Toyota and had a set of pistons made to use them; I wound up about a .072" over. We bored and honed the block with a honing plate that we made, and all seems well. Marty

Well said, and totally agreed with! Marty