Ulu

True & I've done it both ways successfully: feed the boot thru, and cut the boot then glue it. My issue was that the cross pin wouldn't stay centered on the shaft. Once it's off center by 0.05" you can really feel the vibration. I'd center the thing up and balance it, and the first time I mashed the gas really hard it'd go off balance again. I needed a new shaft, & so I just had a custom spicer-joint shaft built. Cost me about $300 in Visalia, some 30 years ago.

A very cool car, and I'll sidestep the whole patina thing by saying: "it's a sleeper". A sleeper can look rusty,or "square", or hillbilly-barn-brush-painted, or have one green door, or whatever. The object is to take people by surprise & that Buick does it well.

I'm young enough to have been weaned on rattle cans. Dad never had a compressor capable of paint spraying, & what he painted was usually done with a spray can. And stuff always got painted. Even if you couldn't fix body damage right away, you always painted it right away. Every time he got new tires, I had to sand & paint his wheels. Paint can be pretty or ugly, but its first purpose is not beauty but preservation. Unbroken paint is a good preservative, but once scratched, chipped, etc, it becomes a trap for crap, and crap plus water causes rust. If, when it comes time to re-paint Edith I (for some reason) cannot afford to have it painted professionally, I'll paint it myself, and I won't have to paint it with rattle cans

The first pro shop I ever worked in had a SUN machine like those, but it was a VW shop & they never used the thing. Never even got to turn it on.

LOL I own a Tacoma pickup, and lots of people on the Tacoma forum gripe about the little rattles and squeaks, the loose window trim, and the mediocre radio...minor stuff like that. But that truck really hauls, and when I mash the gas she never bogs, hiccups, or hesitates. Push the pedal & it takes off like a raped ape. As long as a vehicle keeps doing that, I can forgive a lot of minor flaws.

"Getting a flat" could take on a whole new meaning.

Rich, are you feeling OK today? Do you want your car to smell like burnt clutch? If I owned a 30's DeSoto, no newbie driver would be grinding steel offa my clustergear! Rent some econochitbox of the caliber she'll be expecting to drive & teach her in that. Once she demonstrates civilized clutch operation and precision shift timing, then give her a turn with the beloved antique iron.

Is there a rubber hose anywhere in the fuel system? First thing I'd suspect if there was. They can suck air & spoil your fueling.

As a side note: A Bezel is a trim. A Ferrule is a reinforcement. They are defined by function, not looks, and one can easily look like the other. They just do different things.

I found RH & LH lug bolts at a boat shop. They are commonly used on boat trailers here. I got chromed lugs cheaper that rusty OEM NOS ones I found for sale, But they are NOT replicas of the Mopar lugs. They look different but they worked fine.

I might go but my truck is a Toyota.

IMO, if you are going to polish the crank & hone & size the rods & install new bearings & bushings, then the rods can go the way they are numbered (barring other issues like a mis-stamped rod or "handed" rods that are mis-placed.) If you're just going to toss some new bearings in and run the crank & pins the way they are now, then I wouldn't move the rods. The truth is you probably have no evidence that this is an original matched set of rods. It may be a set culled from different engines.

That gap is also much affected by head gasket thickness and how much you've shaved the head or block. Turn the engine over with the plugs out & use a depth gage to check available clearance to the open valves. if this is too hard. Put a tiny lump of thick grease 1/16" thick on the electrode, screw it in & rotate the engine. Then pull the plug & look. Is there grease on the valve? if not you're OK, but if so you may be too close. some guys will use clay for this type of check, but I won't put clay in an assembled engine.

I'd love to ride in a steam car. I've been on a couple small steam trains before, which was loads of fun.

Many thanks indeed. The unaffected have no idea of the life endured by servicemen and their families.

Someone complained about my language & I have to apologize to you guys. Too many years spent hanging out in less civilized quarters of the world & the culture has rubbed off on me.

So, historically? It was a steamer, but it wasn't the first one... What's the skinny?

Can't pick their primer either evidently. Anyhow, we haven't been friends in many years. As for PP he seems very amenable, but I've only met him 3 times.

Oh, OK thanks. On Youtube it's touted: "It's the first automobile ever"

Maybe some controversy on which is oldest?

You simply cannot tell folks what they are determined not to hear, particularly after they misinterpret what "The guy at the store said..." My friend bought some primer for his classic Honda 305 Dream. I told him to exchange it for a sealer-primer. His surface was already fine, but he bought a very expensive brand of hi-build sandable primer, (because, "The guy at the paint store said...") . They gouged him on the price too, so he thought he had the world's best primer & would not listen when I told him it was the wrong stuff. I asked, "Did you get any thinner for it?" I figured to just thin it a lot & shoot it to make him happy. (Of course he didn't. "The guy at the paint store said..." he could use it without thinner.) "Well then," I told him, "I can't shoot this at all." He yells: "I'LL SHOOT IT MYSELF THEN #$@&*&^!" (Holy chit mon! I flinched a bit...) "Ok," I said "Here's the gun. Then he fills the gun with thick primer & doesn't thin it at all. That stuff was like putty it was so thick! I warned him again and again that it was way too thick to shoot, but he could barely hear me at all by that point. I said, "Check the regulator & see how much pressure you've got!" It was already on 40psi. That made him think a bit & he cranked the regulator up another 5 lbs. I snickered quietly to myself He pulled the trigger & not much happened. "Too thick!" I shout over the compressor. He shoots into the air repeatedly as he cranks the pressure up & up, and I step back in case he blows my el-cheapo primer gun apart. He satisfies himself that primer is indeed shooting into the air & without even testing the pattern on a scrap, he starts priming the bike. Anyhow he shot big, thick, drippy globs of primer all over a bike he's spent months stripping & metal working, and spoiled all his hard work in under 2 minutes. Then the guy blames my compressor, and he cranks up the air again! He then proceeds to shoot even worse blobs of primer on the other side of the bike. When he stoped cussin' I gave him a rag and a can of lacquer thinner, & while I cleaned his mess out of my gun, he washed all his expensive primer (& $5 worth of my thinner) off onto the ground. Finally he mutters: "Why the hell didn't you stop me?" "I told you it was the wrong stuff about 10 times buddy." I reply. "Yeah, but WHY didn't you STOP me?" Huh? He wanted to wrestle maybe? Fisticuffs? I guess I coulda cold-cocked him with the quart of primer, but WTH??? In spite of everything, he still tried to see this debacle as my fault, somehow. I didn't stop him. Huh! (And I didn't help him clean up all that primer either! )

I thought the oldest running auto was named Mercedes.

Epoxy will probably work fine if it isn't subjected to high heat while under stress & some are more heat resistant than others. If this bolt is right above the exhaust header, epoxy might not be the best thing. Also, if you use epoxy with powdered metal fillers, they will rust if not painted. Actually the stuff I used rusted through my paint too. I shouldn't have wet sanded it. You might want to make up a custom stud with really tight threads on the tank end, so it literally jambs tight metal-to-metal and galls there forever. Otherwise braze it in and re-paint your tank

I use various Loctites for various stuff, but I've used other things too. Once I had a carb float stick on the old B&B & had to pull the air horn out in some deserted parking lot at night. I ripped the gasket too. I had used loctite to keep the carb screws in & that glued the gasket down enough to rip. Now I had nothing but a few tools, plus a badly ripped gasket that was gonna leak like a sieve all over the exhaust header. The one store open there had a tube of Krazy Glue for 99 cents. I glued the gasket back together carefully & dried it & then soaked it from the edges with the glue until it swelled a little. I hung it to dry while I cleaned all the screw threads. Once it skinned well (the core of the gasket was still not quite cured) I put it all together with Krazy Glue on the screw threads too. I never changed that gasket & that carb never leaked. Hot gasoline evidently does not dissolve Krazy Glue Until I switched to a Holly model 1920, I modded that B&B many times, and several times I re-used carb gaskets which I'd soaked in Krazy Glue.