James_Douglas

Either I cannot see it in the photo or it is not there...no vacuum advance? 1941 Dodge TRUCK WC shows a Autolite IGS-4111-1 distributor with a VC-1039A vacuum advance module. James

I think, but I am not sure, that Jon at The Carburetor shop may have oversize shafts for the Carter BB. God knows he has piles and piles of parts. Of course you cannot get a hard part out of him unless you buy a rebuild kit. Even with perfect throttle shafts I still had issues with my BB carbs. These were carefully rebuilt by myself. The issue is that the emulsion tubes wear. You need a special tool to get them out and place new ones in. In my case I got lucky, and $300 lighter, in that I found a NOS carburetor. I took it apart and put in all new gaskets and the car has idled perfect for 15 years. The leaded gas tends to erode the emulsion tubes. This carb has never seen lead. The other thing to watch out for is the piston on the high speed jet. The water vapor that gets created with the alcohol in the gas...it tends to get sucked around that power piston for that jet. See my old posts on the subject. The die-cast zinc starts to react to the water in that little bore and the piston hangs up. If it hangs open you get a rich condition. If it hangs closed you can burn up the head of a piston from a lean condition. Again, read my old posts on this. As to busing. Get a 3 flute drill bit from mcmaster carr and a reamer for the size shaft. Then line drill it and press in the bushings. Then line ream the bushing and you are done. James

That is actually a very early car. They did not start building 1949 Models until March of 1949. The 1948's were held over for six months. Sometimes that parts thing gets confusing for 1949. James

Marc, 1. Take drum off front right side. 2. loosen anchor cam bolt nuts so you can turn the anchors. 3. Make SURE that the minor adjustment cams are on the flat - as far in as possible. 4. Set the brake tool for 11.40 inch. 5. Place your brake tool pointer over the shoe lining as close to the anchor bolts as you can. 6. Turn the anchor bolts, ignore the arrow, so that you have the maximum space between the tool pointer and the shoe as you can get. 7. Then try to place the drum on and report what happens back to us.

For a long time I would have agreed with the above statement. But after my experience in the big Desoto, it is not as iron clad in my mind as it once was. See the old thread.... If one is looking for maximum power which can mean an stock to aggressive ignition setting then 94 may be needed. Of course this has to do with the compression and its relationship to the timing. I have replicated the issues talked about in the old thread since 2016 and it holds. I have the ignition such that it does not ping, audibly, with both high and low octane but it has more power with high. I suspect strongly that I have some flame front happening before TDC with low octane that is robbing power but one cannot hear it. James James

Hi Marc, It looks fairly clear to me in the following: https://www.web.imperialclub.info/Repair/Lit/Master/030/Page24.htm Of course if one does not have the tool then ... One way to accomplish setting the anchors without the tool is to have the slots in the end of the bolts. Just take two hack saw blades mounted in your hack saw and cut the slots. Then: 1. Make sure that the minor adjusters, the ones with the big springs, are full down. 2. Set the anchors, via the cam bolts, at full in from the base circle. (You can see this as you move the cam.) 3. Make sure that the anchor nuts are loose. 4. Slip on a drum. 5. Turn the anchor bolt, via the slot on the end of the bolt, with a screw driver until it hits the drum. 6. Back it off just enough to slip the drum off. 7. Carefully tighten the anchor bolt. 8. Slip the drum back on. 9. Adjust the big spring minor adjuster. 10. Done. Have a beer. James

This can only happen for two reasons that I am aware of: 1. The cam is turning when you tighten them. 2. The metal brake shoe is bent so that when you tighten the bolt it causes the main shoe spine to cock and one edge or the other of the friction material move out at an angle and meets the drum face and locks it. James

Just use a grade five bolt and not a grade 8. Why? grade five will bend and grade 8 just shears when they hit their break point. James

I am using the three speed. I ended up using the shorter bolts at the top and the longer ones on the bottom. Since I got the trans to index and up against the bell, I did not want to pull it out to use some very long bolts to measure each of the holes depth. With my back a mess and on the floor I wanted to minimize being on my back and twisting. At some point when I have the car up at the out of town house with the lift, I can revisit the bolt length issue unless someone here has a "Dodge" arrangement with a fluid drive bell housing and a three speed and happens to measure the bolts as they take them out... ************* Not wanting to start another thread.... It turns out that the folks selling the new manufacture wing style universal joints admit that the quality is not that great. I can tell you that my are showing strains after 15 years and about 50K miles and mine were greased every six months. Just like the overdrive pinion's this is another area where a lack of quality spares is a problem. Yes, I can buy NOS or NORS off of ebay but at $400 each and I need three that is a little ridiculous. Non wing high quality joints form say SKF are $14 each. I may have to talk with my machinist about making some wings that will take a normal u-joint and hold it in on the outside with a snap ring. What a PITA. James

Hi All, I did something stupid. I did not note the relative position of the four bolts that hold the transmission to the bell housing. I have two short bolts and two longer bolts and on the longer bolts one is a little longer than the other. I spent an hour looking at all of my Desoto and Chrysler Parts books. In none of them do they show (or I am just not seeing it) these four bolts with the length. If anyone can shed some light the bolt length for the four holes I would be grateful. Perhaps a Dodge or Plymouth parts book will list the lengths of the bolts. They are 3/8 course. *** As an aside, I purchased on of those Harbor Freight 2000 lb. Low-Profile Transmission Jacks. I tossed the the side bars on the top and put two strips of 1x2 down each side and bolted it to the plate. I then put in some 1 inch closed cell foam between the strips on the plate with spray adhesive. I then used two bungee cords to hold the trans to the plate. I was able to get the unit complete back in place by myself on my back here in my cold slanted San Francisco garage. The jack worked just fine. James

The oldest trick in the book and one people used to carry in their glove box in the event of a seal failure is to use a single bolt. What you do is get a bolt the same size as the fluid coupling filler hole. Then you rotate the inner turbine until you see one of the holes line up with the filler hole. Then you put the bolt in so that it goes into that inner turbine hole. I know of one person that drive it for years like that. You are correct on the clutch issue. If using it in the hills, you will be going through clutches a lot more often as the fluid drive clutch has a lot smaller surface area. I have been using the "Dodge" arrangement for 15 years. The hills of San Francisco, going to and coming from Lake Tahoe, and the freeways in between. I did switch the front to disc brakes about 10 years ago. Given that my car weighs more than most, and I never had any issues with hills, I think your concerns may be a little to critical. I would suggest hitting a bone yard and seeing if you can get another fluid coupling out of a car that does not look like it was leaking. Swap it in and see how it works for a while in your situation. I can tell you that in a pinch in the dirt, I like the fluid coupling as it will ease out nice in soft soil. On a hill you also don't have to worry so much about the back roll either. James

Anyone ever work up a set of Moog Cross-reference numbers for the Chrysler-Desoto and Plymouth-Dodge "mechanics" universal joints? James

That is what drives me nuts. My book calls them (steel) plates on the counter shaft then calls them washer (steel) on the reverse idle gear. **************** I found two machines rings on the parts table I could not account for. Extra parts are never a good thing. So, were they one for each of the two trans I have apart? Where they two for just one of the trans I had apart> It took hours for me to figure it out. Turns out that of the four counter shafts I have in my stock that one of them at the thrust bearing area is longer than the other three. It uses these rings which go in on top of the needle bearings and then uses ONLY the bronze thrust washer. These little rings act as the outside thrust washers that the ends of the needle bearing ride against. The hole in the counter-shaft for this one counter-shaft is just a little longer, although the gear spacing on the shaft is exactly the same. I ended up taking 1/2 the trans apart again to make sure the the center spacer that goes into the counter-shaft was not shorter and these were needed. They were the same length and that is when i went as got my big calipers and started to measure things and found the difference. By looking at it you would never notice. Are we having fun yet? James

So, when you put the counter shaft in a three speed you place the steel thrust plates up against the gear to hold the needle bearings in. Then you put a bronze thrust washer between that and the case. Good. Fine. Makes sense. Then you go to put in the reverse idle gear. The service manual says to place the "washers" up against the gear and install the reverse idle shaft. --- What? As far as I can tell, there are NO reverse idle bronze washers. Only steel plates. The service manual calls them washers as does the master parts book. Even in the exploded diagrams they call them washers, not plates. So my question for everyone is this--- is the reverse counter shaft supposed to use BRONZE washers or STEEL washers? James

Ok, So your drums are twenty thousands of and inch OVERSIZED as they are 11.020 inches. The maximum by the book says one can go to 11.060. Now what I am going to say everyone will have to take with a grain of salt. Years ago I ran across a man who was an engineer at MOPAR who designed the brake systems back in the 1950's and 1960's. We talked about drums. He said that the 0.060 max was one half of the "engineering tolerance" that they built in. The legal folks made them take the .120 and cut it in half. His take was that for a car that was used only on weekend and not driven hard he would feel fine driving on drums up to 0.100 inch over. For cars driven hard he would feel fine going to 0.080. Of course one should evaluate ones own risk on having a drum crack and take the above for what it is worth. Now back to Marc's problem. My Wagner Brake Catalog showed linings as follows: For Drums that measured standard size, in this case 11.000 one would order a 3/16 lining. For Drums that were between zero 0.030 inch one would order the lining at 3/16 inch PLUS 0.015 or 0.2025 inch thick. For Drums that were between 0.030 and 0.060 inch one would order the 3/16 inch plus 0.030 or 0.2175 inch thick. Then one would arc the above shoe in a machine using the drum diameter and the 0.030 cam grind. So as long as Marc's shoe lining is 0.2025 thick and they arc it with the .030 cam grind his shoes should fit. If not, then either the drum is not round (offset turned), the pins are not right, the wheel cylinder distance from the mounting hole to the pin boss is longer than original or something is wrong with the minor adjuster. James PS. Remember that the machine performs a "cam grind" not a perfect circle less some amount like the drum. The machine's cam grind makes the ends of the shoes have a .008 inch clearance on the heels and toes of the shoe so someone does not have to do it with a file or a block of sandpaper. It is built into the "Cam Grind".

Hi All One of the cups on my drive shaft which is off at the front for the trans rebuild has a needle bearing that cracked into to parts. I cannot find the needles. I also do not want to have the big two part suburban drive shaft out right now. New universal joints run form $100 to $400 depending on where you go look for them. I went looking for just the "bushing" which is what they call the cup with the needle bearing in them in the mater parts book. Interesting in that I could not find anyone that had the bushing or the block. But what did pop up was an entire universal joint with the same part number as just the bushing. This universal joint is listed for three decades of MOPARS up into the 1980's. It does NOT have the block with he two bolt holes that the bushing sits in however. So I ordered one from SKF directly with tax and shipping it cost $25. It will show up in a day or two. What I want to know has anyone every managed to press the bushing assembly our of the block? I tried it with my little 12 ton press with no luck. If the needles are the same then I will just take one out of the new cup. If they are not then I may try drilling the old cup out 50% and then see if I can press it out...assuming that it looks like the diameter of new cup is the same as the old. In the master parts book it shows then as different parts. One can see that they are in the one I have. But getting it out may be a problem. James

No...it is on the machined side of the case and looks like the attached. James

Marc, To be clear, your 11 inch drums measured 10.80 inch ? James

Ok, Attached are some photos. Since I have a second one apart, I can show you the relative positions up against the assembled one. James The slot BACK or rectangle needs to be installed so that it is perpendicular to the ground. The shift lever end must point UP to the top of the case. I have represented the top of the case with a blue line as it is easier to work with it on its side. I also have a shot showing the end of the rod sticking out of the OD adapter housing with the relative position of the cable handle. I hope this helps some future person who is fighting this aspect of the rebuild. In 2006 or so I rebuilt this the last time and I do not remember having any trouble. I must have just gotten lucky the last time as hit it right without even knowing it... James

I do not know...if it is in the other way... The problem is you will not find out until you put the whole thing and try it. A photo is not any good in this instance as you really cannot see it, you have to do it by feel. It also it the working in the book. I can take some photos of the parts apart perhaps that may help. James

Just get everything you can both in the trans itself and the wiring switches, the cable and handle (and the bracket for it) from under the dash as well. There is no way to know if it is a good or bad unit by looking at it. You would have to open it up. If the planet pinion gears are bad or the needle bearing are going the only way to know is to hold them in your hand. On the flange of the unit it is stamped with the car code and build date. What is it on this one? I am in the middle of rebuilding two units. My base for rebuilding them is 1953 Plymouth. This is with a plate not a pin type syncro clutch. My current unit lasted 15 years and about 50K miles. What failed was the overdrive planet pinion needle bearing in one of the three gears. This was a George Ashe unit that I purchased that did not work on delivery and I had to go through it myself. (Long story you can read if you go back and look at he old threads). There are a couple of items that can bite you, but just hunt me down and I can save you some trouble if you decide to go through it. James

Rich, Thanks for the downloads, yours are much more clear than the ones I have. James

Make note that the note on page 8 in this booklet and go see my earlier post on the addendum...some of the earlier machines DID NOT HAVE THE CLEARANCE BUILT INTO THE MACHINE. On the earlier machines you had to add the clearance before you set the caliper dial. I have also seen people add the clearance on the newer machines when they should not. Just one of those little things that can bite you in the ass. James

Also, make not of my other post about the Ammco unit as some of them has the clearance built in and so you added it in when you did the math. Print out the attachment I have on that comment and take it with you and ask...Rich makes a good point. MOST of the ships have the "simple anchor" on the Ammco and not the fancy one for the fixed anchor jobs like ours. Do ask if they are using the fixed head. James

I think I said above that... "The factory spec of 3/16 of an inch is for NEW drums at exactly 11.000 inches. The shoes should be cut to a drum diameter minus 0.030 of an inch. "