Ulu

Too much overcast here, plus we're still getting smoke from the Sequoia/Kings canyon fire, when the wind is easterly. I was out looking, as I'm normally out late in the shop, but no dice. I did get to see some meteriods falling back before the fires started. Our sky for astronomy is highly variable here, with overcast smog being common. But the forest fires have really ruined it.

Pretty stout looking chassis there. Still I bet that Hemi can wind it up like a spring when you launch hard. Anyway, my hemi-envy meter is on eleven right now.

Neat little machine. When I was a Teamster, I used to demonstrate those & rent various trenchers to the public: from a little 12hp walk behind, up to a 65 hp 4WD model. Everybody used to get tripped up by the hydraulic creeper gear. People would start one up, and they'd be pushing the clutch and stirring the shifter to no avail, and panic when the machine just kept moving relentlessly. The brakes were useless against the creeper gear too. It would simply not stop until you unlocked the creep speed knob. I watched one poor guy slice the boom of a 40 HP Ditch Witch right through the wall of a steel Butler building, in slow motion as he fumbled about the controls. He finally had the presence of mind to shut off the key, but about a foot too late.

BTW, some of you guys may be poor as church mice, but some clearly have as much money as Jay Leno, judging by the cars you can afford. I'm getting a serious case of car guy envy.

Thanks 'Fish. That's Baggins the Nomad. Right now she's up on jacks waiting for me to replace this output shaft bearing. Too much hot-rodding overheated the bevel gear box & fried a bearing. It's the bearing behind the big hex nut in the closeup photo. I'm checking backlash with a dial indicator there, and Hoo Boy! there was a lot of lash. (EDIT...wow, those are some crappy pics. Sorry...)

Yes, they must be as Parallel in both dimensions as you can get them. If the shafts aren't parallel, your driveline will vibrate, and thump under hard loads. Your u-joints and oil seals will wear out fast too. I've seen people lose driveshafts on the freeway, and it's pretty dramatic when a u-joint gives out suddenly, so it pays to keep an eye on these.

Yes welcome, and do post photos. They are an invaluable help to others working on the same model car.

This is true in some states, but not in others. As you note, the rules vary from state to state. Sometimes the plates stay with the car, and sometimes with the owner. In some states you must hand them in to the DMV if you sell the car.

PS, I saw the Stude coupe... Mom had a Starlite Coupe. 1951. Couldn't figure out the clutch, & refused to drive until dad bought her an automatic car.

Yup. Easy fix, IF the pump is the issue & it sure sounds like it. just make sure you don't mount one upside down. I did once on my Edsel. Ran 5 minutes & quit. But for diagnostic purposes you might put a fuel pressure gage in the line where you can check it. I also have a Vis-a-flow glass float bowl that lets me see the fuel level for tuning purposes. (Not for daily use!) That won't help you though. Not with that carb. As for filters, purge the bubble out! if it reappears you have another issue. I like the Lark styling & in its own way it's charming. My Dad wanted a Studebaker wagon, but eventually bought the less expensive & more modern & reliable Valiant wagon.

Oh Lord that is pure BS. Mea culpa! I was looking at a modern .30-30 cartridge with wonder at the special forming technology to make the high tech dum-dums out of what is really a primitive 100 year old cowboy bullet. That's when reality hit me. I'm looking at various bolts in my shop right now & they do have very nice fat shanks, and shoulders, and knurls, and allen heads, and other stuff, and clearly it can all be done. They can form bolts to a broad variety of shank/shoulder/washerhead/locking wave/etc. configurations by rolling and upset-forming techniques, and it's a technology I've benefited from but never had to spec. I suppose I was only thinking about the type we see in building construction, which are designed case-by-case by formula and code, and are not tested on the same basis. in fact, not at all, which is why the requirement for a known (if weaker) quantity. Upset-forming is allowed on mass-production bolts, when the manufacturer pays for and passes certain tests. In the auto industry, everything gets tested before mass production. We're making one-offs, so all testing must be avoided. Sometimes you shoot weaker loads, for the sake of more consistent shots. The building code is often geared like that.

Well they're certainly faster and cheaper to make, once you have the tooling that is. But they don't work where the shank must be larger than the threads.

Normally you shouldn't have to worry about gear oil going bad from age. It eventually does but using it 10 years is not usually a problem. But moisture can get inside sometimes, and I like to change it every couple years for that, and to see what shavings and metal dust comes out in the oil. You don't have combustion byproducts in the gear oil, so it takes much longer to go rancid; but it does.

They can be, but aren't automatically so. It depends on how they were made & what from. The state does not allow us to use roll-formed bolts to anchor buildings or most structures. That is partly due to the infiltration of cheap foreign bolts too. I don't ever recall seeing roll-formed bolts used on jet engines either, though I am no jet mechanic. I just used to get lots of free bolts off old scrapped ones.

Thanks for bumpin' this JB. My Tacoma has the same issue, maybe worse: car springs on a truck. If you put real springs on a light truck it gets too bouncy for the masses.... So far I have only added a rear stabilizer bar, but that has helped drivability a lot. Toyota recalled like 1/4 million for weak springs. You might, if you were a total airhead, drive a Tacoma with a broken spring long enough to gash a brake line or the plastic gas tank. I've got two letters, but no new springs yet. Meanwhile, a pic of me with one of my other rides: I've been skating since '63, but didn't officially learn to drive until 1972. This was My 6th car, built the engine from scratch & hopped up a little, taken circa '78. 1966 VW fastback ~1800cc stroked w/ dual webers, Long gone... Classic '69 Evinrude, still runs my fishing boat around. My '84 Dodge van, also long gone. This was a slant six with 4-speed, and fixed up as an overnite camper. My '04 Kawasaki Nomad. This has about 45k on the clock & runs great. I was still pretty fat in that photo. Over 200 lbs for sure. This was taken about 4 years ago. My sport Balloon...Just kidding! This ride belongs to a friend, but I have flown in it. My '09 Tacoma, towing the '74 Olympian tri-hull, w/ '69 Evinrude Lark 40HP I sold this Edsel some years ago & I regret it. We also own a red 4-cyl '12 Camry, which my wife drives.

OK, When I saw this I immediately regretted my original criticism. OMG!

Natural oils (not synthetics like Amsoil) actually go "rancid" with time and exposure to oxygen. You need to change motor oils twice a year and gear oils each year or two to prevent this. Or use synthetic oil. I have not used synthetics in the flathead, because they leak out easier. They don't get thick in the cold, but your engine loosens up in the cold, and it leaks. I do use synthetic gear oils, because they're thick enough not to leak easily. Also they do not go rancid with age. But they still collect dirt, and changing that oil is the best way to get rid of that dirt. Anyhow 2-years is fine with synthetics, and I've gone over 4 on my motorcycle and it still smells good. When oil smells bad, it is bad. That's what I mean by "rancid". It will have a sour varnish smell or similar depending on the brand of oil. You might like to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification

I feel for ya Phil. Mail-order business seems like more of a crap-shoot nowadays. I ordered a set of custom machined alloy wheels and custom urethane tires for my favorite skateboard. Big ones. Over $300 with shipping and tax. The maker packaged the stuff poorly and one tire was lost in the mail. It's like a big rubber soup can. How did they lose it? He refused to make me another tire, because he doesn't want to buy the minimum stock order to make just one. Unfortunately he's on the East Coast, so impossible to reach if he doesn't want to be reached. I ordered 2 custom pressed skateboard deck blanks from another guy. Imported baltic birchwood, quality glue, vacuum-degassed pressings, nicely sanded, drilled srtraight. Really good quality work. I'd bought from him twice before with excellent service and the decks were great, and built right to my specs. Bugger has had my money since February, and no decks have arrived. He stopped answering my e-mail about April. It's only a couple hundred dollars, but I need those decks! The lack of the product is worse than the loss of the money. I've had better luck with car parts. I had one mirror go missing, but everything else I ever ordered for my P-15 came OK. I have never dealt with the Plymouth doctor, but before reading this I was toying with the idea of having my patch panels made up. Now I'll just make them myself.

I think they are just cheaper roll-formed bolts and not the highest quality cut-thread bolts. You can tell by the threads being fatter than the shank, with no obvious relief cut to reduce the shank diameter. Head bolts often have a reduced shank, I believe, to avoid seizure in the head. Also the "heavy-pattern" head bolts will have an 11/16" head, same as the typical SAE nut. The typical 7/16"-NC bolt head would indeed be a 5/8" hex (but the nuts would be heavy pattern 11/16" nuts x 3/8" thick, if it had studs instead of bolts.)

But not the brake lines. Those are rubber. The parking brake cable grounds the trans to the cab though.

I think it's normally groaty or groadie depending on which side of the Rockies you live on. BTW, those Cheezits in the Zen Master Executive Lounge Pantry are mine, so youse guys keep yer mitts offen 'em. (Note the effective use of a New Joisey accent whenever I want to be seriously persuasive.)

To me a 100% correct antique car is a toy. To be a real car requires at least certain safety mods. Now there's nothing wrong with owning toys--Just know what you've got! (That being said, the P15 is too close to modern cars to be a real antique yet. Mainly because the brakes and suspension were ahead of the pack in design and performance. I drove mine on the freeways all the time with stock brakes and suspension.)

Your truck has steel bushings on the rear shackles? My axle isn't grounded at all AFAIK. Rubber bushings everywhere. My bellhousing sits on rubber. Engine sits on rubber. It all grounds through the choke cable and throttle linkage of course, and I suppose the speedo cable, but I don't like to count on grounding through moving parts or bearings. (Of course clutch linkage grounds the bellhousing to frame on mine. Still a moving part.)

They look like Briggs & Stratton head bolts to me. (Did they own the Briggs Body Works?)

I just made my 1000th post, and suddenly I find that I am a P-15 Zen Master! After I put that on my business card, I'm gonna go Zen out in the P-15 Zen Master's lounge, and wait for Plymouthy to get me my key to the Zen Master's Executive Restroom. If I'm gonna breathe and eat vintage Mopar, well you know what must follow . . . The truth is that I've probably forgotten more than I still know about vintage Mopar, and even that was limited to the P-15 and close cousins. Most of what I know either comes from my Dad and from the 1957 Motor's manual dad gave me in the 60's. Also from various other manuals I've latched onto, or from hands-on struggles with a multitude of machines of every description, when I was working for a heavy equipment rental outfit, a big machine shop, a few auto shops and body shops, an automated factory, and an engine rebuilder. But all that professional work was almost 4 decades ago. I became a manufacturing engineer, and my mechanical pursuits since have been strictly as a hobbyist. Is a mere hobbyist qualified to be a Zen Master here? Probably not. So I'm gonna go practice my levitation some more until I really feel qualified. Seriously, you guys are tops! I'm honored and I'm very lucky to have found this place, and clearly anybody who can't/doesn't appreciate what P15-D24 represents has got to be pretty disconnected IMO.