TodFitch

And thank you for getting back to the forum with the results!

I published it, but it was written by Bob Amos who should be the one getting the credit. Bob is/was a member of the Plymouth Owners Club and has an automotive electrical repair business in Southern California so he knows his stuff.

In the November 2020 issue of Skinned Knuckles magazine that arrived in the post today there is an article by a Cam Clayton about servicing Chrysler fluid drive units. It looks like it includes how to dismantle the unit, renew the carbon ring seal, reassemble, etc. along with some tool drawings for specialized tools to perform the operations. I don't know squat about fluid drive units so I am unable to pass judgement on how effective or complete the instructions are but it might be of interest to those who have a vehicle so equipped.

The middle car looks like a '39 Plymouth with a sealed beam headlight conversion.

I guess my ad and tracking block is blocking their subscribe limit thingy. According to the article they did check the runway first. And the correction to the article indicates that the first the bear was seen was after the plane was on the ground and was slowing down.

Way back when I was an engineering student I sometimes roamed the archive areas in the main library stacks looking for odd information of interest. One time I came across a graduate thesis/study on the engineering economics written a few years after wide spread use of road salt started in Upstate New York. The fellow compared the total costs to society before and after the salting began. This was before environmental issues of salt runoff into the watersheds was worried about so that was not included. What was included was medical costs, automotive repair costs, costs of salting and plowing. As I recall, one major result was a change in the rate and magnitude of collisions. Before salt there were more accidents but they happened at very low speeds. After salt, there were fewer accidents but they happened at higher speeds (regardless of how well salted there were still some slippery areas which were now approached at high speed as opposed to low speed). For collision repair the cost was about the same before and after salting. Fewer expensive repairs after salting were about the same total cost as more cheap repairs before salting. Medical went way up because the low speed collisions had nearly no injuries but the high speed collisions resulted in higher death rates and higher medical for those who didn’t die. Just between those two factors, salting was a net cost to society. But then if you added in the dramatically reduced life of the vehicles and the cost to purchase and apply the salt you were costing the public way more money by salting the roads than by simply plowing them. But the salt mines and auto manufacturers were happy and people could have a winter commute time closer to that of summer due to the roads being mostly clear allowing faster speeds. So the political will was to spend more to salt the roads. I don't know how much that has changed with revised auto design. But it was an eye opener to me back then.

Locked out mode and freewheeling will still work. I’ve never seen replacement or repair parts for these other than the dust boot for the clutch actuating rod. The big vacuum cylinder is pretty bullet proof but the control spool valve (the thing the cable and rod attaches to) is a fairly soft diecasting and there was no effective air filter on the inlet so they can be worn out and leak badly. If yours is working properly it will be a rare one. Actually any automatic clutch, working or not, is fairly rare as they were problematic and often removed and tossed away when the cars were pretty new. There were some folks in the Pacific Northwest who found that they could bolt a 1937 or so DeSoto overdrive transmission into their '33 Plymouths (I assume a Dodge would work too). Apparently you can use the weird shift tower and transmission cover off the '33 on top of the '37 transmission. Then they used the automatic clutch control cable to control the overdrive (the early overdrive units for DeSoto were fully mechanical). The person I spoke to about this update has passed away so I don’t know who one might talk to on this conversion but it sounded very simple with maybe only a new shorter driveshaft being needed.

It is your automatic clutch vacuum servo. The hard lined cable/wire to the transmission works a spool valve to turn it on and off. That wire attaches to the freewheel lever on the side of the transmission. There is another spring protected cable, visible in your photo working its way past the automatic clutch, the attaches to the same lever and goes to the dash. Three positions on that dash cable pull: Off, freewheel only and freewheel + automatic clutch. There is a rod, also visible in your photo, that connects to the throttle cross shaft running along the base of the firewall. This is the thing that detects the accelerator pedal position and engages or disengages the clutch as you drive. The whole automatic clutch and freewheeling concept was dropped in 1935 at the same time as the full length water jacket was introduced (which moved the starter location). 1935 is also the first year for synchros in the transmission so the use of freewheeling and automatic clutch for smoother and easier shifting was not needed.

You can get a kit that includes the counter sink drill, rivet set punch and anvil, etc. from most Model A and Model T Ford suppliers. Pretty cheap and it does make the job easier.

Assuming it is the same or similar to the 1933 Plymouth (from memory, it has been a few years since I last did this): For the shell and grill: Remove the caps at either end of the hood center hinge. With another person to help to keep from scratching things, lift off the hood. Remove screws holding bracing rods from fire wall to the radiator top tank area. There is some little reinforcing bits that will come off too, remember how they go together for when you re-assemble things. You may want to totally remove the brace rods as they will likely be in the way when you remove the engine. If so, then there is an obvious nut to remove at the firewall end of each. Remove the nuts and bolts holding the shell to the fenders (low, in front). There is a piece, I assume an air deflector, under the shell/grill that is likely in the way. I recall it being riveted in place. I recall drilling out the rivets on removal and using pop rivets on re-install. Work the hood lacing back to expose the flat head screws attaching the shell to the radiator sides. Remove all the screws. Hood lacing does not need to come off to do this and if you remove it you are creating more work for yourself on re-assembly. Shell should be free to be removed. For the radiator itself: The radiator carrier/holder at the bottom has two large bolts through the front frame cross member. Remove those. Remove the radiator hoses. Radiator should be free to be lifted off the frame and removed. I believe it is possible to remove the radiator, shell and grill as one assembly saving you the effort of removing the screws behind the hood lacing.

Interesting read on the pros and cons of rope vs rubber rear main seal. Thanks for posting!

Might want to look into the Concours d’ Lemon held on the Monterey Peninsula around the same time as the Pebble Beach show. Never been to the Pebble Beach show, too hoity-toity for me. But the Concours d’ Lemon was fun to attend when I lived up north.

I hope this topic does not become too political and need to be locked. Going on the assumption that we are all civil enough here that no moderation will be needed. . . I suppose someone put a small block Chevy in a brass era electric car simply because it could be done. But there are lots of things that can be done that probably shouldn’t. I’d count this as one. OTOH, putting modern batteries and battery management into a vintage electric vehicle does have some appeal to me. Might make it faster and almost certainly give it longer range. But I suspect it would not change the vintage driving experience as much as putting a modern internal combustion engine drive train into a car of the 1930s through 1950s. Probably where I live, but I see a pretty large number of Teslas and battery electric vehicles from other manufacturers (BMW, Nissan, etc.). Of course seeing and owning are two different things. +10 for not seeing the need or reasoning for modifying a vintage car. I have heard nothing about making existing gasoline cars illegal. What I have read about is banning the sale of new ones. If/when that happens it will be years after that before the attrition on existing gasoline powered vehicles gets to the point where gasoline will be hard to find.

There may be some LED lamps that can handle both 6v and 12v (LEDs are actually about 3v and there is electronics in the bulb to regulate things down and it depends on how that voltage regulation was implemented). But incandescent, quartz-halogen and lamps in general are designed for a specific voltage and 6v bulbs will be blow out nearly instantly in a 12v system. And 12v bulbs will be very dim in a 6v system. So yes, if you change to 12v you need to change all the light bulbs.

Sounds to me like the sending unit. The original style had resistive wire wound around a form and the wiper, connected to the float, moved across the wires to produce a resistance proportional to the float position. That wire is worn by the wiper and often breaks. If/when that wire breaks you get readings like what you describe. The fortunate thing, at least on the car side, is that a pretty standard set of resistance values was used starting in the 1950s so getting a replacement shouldn’t be too hard. For the early 1930s single wire senders the resistance range is not one that is standard nowadays to the options are a bit more limited.

Where are you measuring the resistance to/from? I assume one point would be the stud where the low voltage wire to the points in the distributor connects. But where is the other end? For what it is worth, the other end of the low tension winding in the coil goes through the armored cable to the ignition switch. And the wiring of that switch is such that everything is disconnected when the ignition is off. So a resistance test will show an open circuit. If you remove the power and fuel gauge wires from the switch, then I guess you could measure the resistance (with the switch in the on position) between the power feed to the switch under the dash and the stud on the coil in the engine compartment. But that is a lot of hassle. Much easier to simply crank the engine over with the ignition on and check for a hot spark.

As assembled at the factory, the whole instrument cluster is grounded. As long as your corrosion isn’t too bad, that is likely still true. If not, then clean up the screws and assure that the star lock washers which help provide electrical bonding are still on the mounting screws, etc. For the sending unit, the unit is well bonded to the tank. The question is how well the tank is bonded to the car’s frame. On my car there is some canvas between the straps holding the tank and the tank itself. So it appears the main grounding is actually through the fuel line. If in doubt, you can run a wire from one of the sending unit mounting screws to someplace on the frame.

Both the dash unit and the sending unit need good grounds.

Don passed away. It is to his credit that some of his thread/topics have long survived him.

Dash unit or sending unit. I was not aware of that option. Or maybe it did not exist when I was dealing with my sending unit issue. I ended up modifying a modern universal sending unit to work with my dash unit. Not sure which way I'd recommend going. My way is cheaper but fraught with the possibility of not working if you mess it up. The Roberts is more expensive but should work out of the box. I guess it depends on how much of a DYI person you are.

Once the water jacket is fully cleaned out the water distribution tube, new or properly cleaned up, should go back in. It directs coolant flow to the exhaust valve seats which helps keep them from burning. Nice that yours is intact and looks like it can be reused!

Generally a good idea to pull the water distribution tube to see that it is not rusted through or clogged. If brass, it is likely okay but a lot were steel and those rusted badly. If you have the whole block vatted, I think you want that tube out during the operation.

Unless you have a nice big body of water immediately adjacent to you to moderate temperatures all year round. From Wikipedia: Of course you’ve got to put up with all the people, especially the summer beach crowds.

Might be the top edge of the water distribution tube. Might also be the remnants of one of the wires used to hold the casting cores together. When making large intricate shaped sand cores they often used some wire in the sand to help hold things together. Bits of those wires are not always removed when they remove the sand from the finished castings. Given that the “wire” in your photo is fairly wide and looks copper or brass colored, my guess is that the water distribution tube is the more likely of the two.

I must be crazy. I live in an area where it never snows. Never gets below freezing even. But I do volunteer work for the Forest Service in the winter in the mountains. And that volunteer work includes shoveling snow. Nothing like a multiple hour round trip drive to shovel snow for no pay at all. Worse than that, if it has been several days since the plow cleared our parking lot then the berms will have become more like concrete than snow by the time we get up there on a weekend and it often takes a pick as well as a shovel to clear the walkways. If I lived in an area where it snowed, a snow blower would be first on my list of things to acquire. And the walkways, berms, etc. would be cleared before they compacted into hard to move “Sierra Cement”.