TodFitch

Agree that having the shoes arced to match the drums makes a big difference. If you don't have access to a shoe arc machine, you can get a roll of sticky back sandpaper and do the job pretty well: Line the inside of the drum with a strip of sand paper and then rub the shoes inside the drum on the sand paper until you have uniform contact. That will arc the shoes to the diameter of the drum minus the thickness of the sandpaper. The paper I used was a bit thicker than it ought to be for the exact right arc but it made a huge difference in being able to properly adjust the shoes and in the final pedal height and feel.

About 2:30 this afternoon while out on errands caught a glimpse of what I think is a '41 Plymouth woody near the San Clemente Trader Joe's. Does anyone on the forum know a person in that area that has that car?

You need a breather hole in the top of the cap so that air can come in to replace the fluid pushed into the lines. Gasket on the cap is to keep too much fluid from sloshing out as you drive down the road. Having a gasket there does not mean you don't need a breather hole.

If the engine dies while idling during hot weather my experience has been that the fuel pump is not operating as desired. Easy check, simply pour some water on the pump. If the engine quickly and easily restarts and then runs after you cool the pump down then it is not the carburetor. In my case, I've only had this happen on hot days after the car has been driven hard. In my case also in those hot running conditions, if I stop for a few minutes, say to refill the gas tank, the car will restart and run for as long as there is gas in the float bowl before dying. Again, cooling the fuel pump will cure the condition. If it was a case of percolation in the carburetor, I'd expect that I would be unable to restart it and cooling the fuel pump would have no effect.

Ditto for information on where you found a new 6v motor. The one in my car is pretty weak despite my ministrations (or maybe because of them).

Chrysler owned New Process from the early/mid 1930s through the 1990s, so I think they would count as Mopar.

And the serial number will be on the front passenger door hinge post which can tell you exactly what the car is even if the engine has been swapped out. I am a bit confused on your posting, it sound like the oil and air filters are being referred to interchangeably. Original air filter is a housing with wire mesh that you periodically clean with gasoline or kerosene and then re-oil with heavy (SAE 40 or higher) oil. Original oil filter is a throwaway canister mounted on the engine. You should get at least 10,000 miles between filter changes and those filters are getting hard to find and a little pricy.

Maybe one of these: http://p15-d24.com/topic/31764-dash-nutbezel-removal-tool/?hl=%2Bbezel+%2Btool

Antique Auto Parts Cellar (a.k.a. Then-N-Now Automotive) carries fuel pump rebuilding kits. They seem to be pretty reasonable people to deal with and might sell the diaphragm by itself, you might want to give them a call.

It is actually 142 ft-lbs minimum, see: http://www.ply33.com/Repair/torque I weigh a bit over 200 lbs. I figure with a 2 foot breaker bar and most of my weight on it, the nut is probably tight enough. The bear is going to the next castellation slot after that to get the cotter pin in. And you really, really, really need to put in the cotter pin. Don't ask me how I know (fortunately it was adjacent to a garage/shop and at low speeds).

Test for fuel pump is in the factory service manual which you should have a copy of.

Lots of good suggestions in the previous posts but I'd like to add one: On some of the newer point sets there is a separate spring that needs to be installed on the contact arm. If missing then the spring action is only from the copper conductor and the car may start and idle but not run at higher RPM.

Feel free to add it to the downloads. . .

The last fuel pump rebuilding kits I received from Then & Now Automotive (a.k.a. Antique Auto Parts Cellar) had pins with grooves cut in them and there were c-clips in the kit to secure the pin.

And don't try to yank it out. Take up the slack very slowly. If you have an old fashioned truck with a "granny gear", just let it idle as you pull.

I used the original valve on the sprayer. But it looks like your aquarium valve is better quality, if I had that I'd have cut off the original valve. If you are going to use DOT5 fluid in this, don't use the built in pump as it pushes air out the bottom into the fluid so you'll get air entrained in the fluid. Not sure how much of a problem that is with DOT3/4, it may be okay for that. I added a Schrader valve at the top of the container and use my tire chuck to pressurize it. That adds air above the fluid so it doesn't bubble through it causing an issue.

At the risk of having to delete my own post for being too far off topic: Yesterday at the local "farmer's market" there was a vendor that had a sign saying they had "frozen hot tomales".

There is a pipe plug on the cylinder head above the #6 cylinder. If that is removed then a stiff wire or small rod can be placed in the hole and you determing the piston position (#6 and #1 cylinders are on the same throw on the crank).

Maybe the new white LEDs are different. But the older ones were simply a red, a green and a blue LED closely fitted together on the chip to simulate white. Net result is that only 1/3 of the light had a chance of getting through the lens. For a single color red LED, even the red from the LED needs to be matched to the characteristics of the lens. Apparently the thick glass lens on my car is designed to pass a different color red than the red LEDs I tried emitted.

Redundancies are all around us, if they bother you then I assume you are always upset. Next up, complain about a "VIN number". Regarding the original topic, I tried a LED replacement in my '33 a while back and it did not work well. At the time the issue was that the red color of the LED did not match the frequency that would pass through the glass lens so there was less light getting through than with the 6v incandescent. There has been lots of work on LEDs since then and not all lenses transmit light the same way so I hesitate to extend my single point observation to other situations.

I'm thinking that is the most likely too. From what I read, the cars most often stolen by professionals are those that have a strong aftermarket parts demand. I can't imagine that a '41 Dodge is in that category. But it sounds like it was done by professionals who knew that they were going for and how to get it. So it could well be they had a foreign buyer all lined up.

True. . . One issue I have with silicone fluid is that it takes much longer for the bubbles to work their way to the top of where ever they are. Talking seemingly hours rather than minutes or seconds. So if you splash some fluid into the master, entraining some air bubbles in your careless haste, you will probably need to let everything sit for a long time before you pump them into the tubes while trying to bleed the brakes. If you just go ahead and start your bleeding process with all the little bubbles in the master all it will do is move those bubbles into the brake lines.

The allegation is that hydraulic switches fail faster with silicone fluid than with conventional fluid. That might be true. Or maybe it is just that modern manufacture hydraulic switches fail quicker than the ones built in the 1930s and 1940s. My current switch has been on the car for about 5 years now, the previous one was, as far as I could tell, the original one from the 1930s and it failed (brake light no longer turned on) after about 15 years of silicone brake fluid use. Silicone fluid is more viscus and entrains air bubbles a lot easier than conventional fluid. This means two things: First you have to be very careful in pouring or otherwise handling the fluid to keep it from getting air bubbles in it. Second, at least for me, it takes a lot longer and many more times around the wheels to get all the air out. In fact, I wasn't able to get a satisfactory pedal on my car with silicone brake fluid until I used a pressure bleeder. I made one using a garden sprayer as described by many on this forum, but I did not use the built in sprayer pump as that introduces air at the bottom which would create air bubbles in the silicone fluid. Instead I mounted a tire stem/valve high on the side of the container and pressurize it with a tire chuck (seems like 15 to 20 psi is about right).

Don't know anything about them other than I've come across their website while chasing other links a few times, but have you checked with http://www.autocolorlibrary.com

You are not confused. . . I messed up. It is clockwise as viewed from the top of the distributor.