rallyace

I gave up on Hemmings as a source years ago. Too much info available on the internet. I do subscribe to their Classic Car magazine, in fact it is the only car related magazine for which I have a subscription. I find the articles to be very good and most are about cars owned by mere mortals like ourselves.

When I did mine, it took me all of about 15 minutes to make the adjustments (ok, it was while the trans was out of the car). It is not a difficult task. Make sure the rear wheels are in the air as being able to turn them helps when checking for any dragging and follow the instructions that Sniper posted. Bring a cotter pin with you when you crawl under the car as you will very likely have to replace the one on the passenger side adjustment. Having a helper saves a ton of time.

I agree with checking the motor mounts. Also make sure the nuts holding the shift arms on the transmission are tight and there is not a lot of slop in the joint where the linkages attach to the shift arms. Too much slop would make it look like the arms are working properly but will not allow enough movement to properly shift gears. I found out the hard way that the shift arms (formed steel parts that attach to the transmission) have different diameter holes where the linkages attach. An arm with a large diameter hole used with a small diameter linkage will cause the problem I mentioned above.

I had a vibration in my trunnion style driveshaft on my 51 Cambridge so I bought the parts and rebuilt it. It still vibrated but not as bad. I took it to a truck drive line shop to have it balanced and they could not get it to balance as one of the trunnion shafts was off center by about 0.050" and they would not try to center it. They built a new shaft with Spicer u-joints for $325 and it solved my problem with readily available new parts. It was well worth the cost in my opinion.

Regarding relays on OD units, I have two 6 volt, 30 amp rated cube relays for mine. I found a seller on Ebay offering 4 for $20. Two years later and they are still working fine. I do not have a throttle kickdown switch but have added a dash mounted toggle switch that controls the low current control circuit for the OD. I use it judiciously and have never had any problems.

As Conn47 mentioned, you can get a cable made up. Check with your local truck driveline repair shop or a farm equipment repair shop.

The current carrying capacity difference between 1 gauge (180 amps) and 0 gauge (200 amps) is minimal using chart data but that is for a continuous load. With short cable lengths, open air cable exposure and short term, high amperage loading the current carrying capacity is much larger, more on the terms of 3x to 5x the continuous loading. Now this is where the clean connections are paramount. You can easily have a cable with a much higher current carrying capacity than the terminations on the high amperage carrying parts of the system (battery, starter solenoid, starter motor, ground connection to the block). If it takes less than 15 seconds to start a cold motor then the cable size difference is negligible. If it take longer due to slow cranking, check and clean your connections. Don't forget that all of that starting current must pass through the starter motor frame to the block so those two bolts that hold the starter to the block are part of the circuit. Sometimes we get carried away when cleaning and painting our engines and accessories and forget that electricity does not pass through paint very well and will need to use those mounting bolts to be part of the circuit.

I hit the reply button too quickly, the notched belts are fine. Just make sure that the belt does not ride above the sides of the grooves on the pulleys.

Unless you are going for a concours level restoration, just use plastic c-clips from your local car parts purveyor and screw them on. The metal ones are spot welded in place and need to be chiseled off. The cylinders are bullet connectors. The wire has an end crimped on that looks like a bullet. The ends get pushed into the cylinder and it connects the wires. Quite common way to connect wires back in the day. Quick and easy, just what was needed on the assembly line. The horn wire is simple to thread through the steering column. I would remove the horn button and use the existing wire to pull the new one through. If this is not possible, you can run a piece of stiff wire down the column from the horn button location. It is easy, getting the horn button off may be difficult as some are screwed on from behind the steering wheel and some are removed by twisting the plastic part of the button about a quarter of a turn. Several of the Mopar parts purveyors have the bumpers. Check with Andy Bernbaum's www.oldmoparts.com

Assuming your caster and camber are the same on both sides, check your toe in. I have 1/16" of toe in on my 51 Plymouth with radials. When I first switched from bias to radials it would pull left. My mechanic buddy said to open up the toe and make sure that the steering wheel is straight and the steering box is tight when setting the toe in. It solved the problem. Note: wandering will occur if you do not have enough toe in.

Sorry for the long post but this was an interesting conversation I had after my original post. I spoke to an acquaintance who makes a living with search engine optimization about this. Ads on forums like this do come primarily from Google searches and Facebook key word searches. First and foremost he said that the people running the forum and made the arrangements for selling ad space should be able to limit the types of ads shown and more specifically, be able to block certain types of ads. He said that targeted ads displayed are based on search engine search history, and key word and key phrase searches from Facebook and other social media sites. The social media searches look for the word or phrase and not the context. As an example he said that if you post on FB a comment about naked trees after the leaves fall off, the word naked will be part of your profile sold to advertisers. In addition, FB will associate your name with things posted by friends with common interests. The example he used here was if you have a friend with whom you have common interests with you and you comment on their common interest posts. If that person also posts a lot of pictures of large busted women, FB will associate you with those photos and that, too, becomes part of your profile sold to advertisers. He said that Google and Yahoo work to consider context in the lists sold to advertisers, Facebook only wants to sell the results of the searches independent of context. Bottom line is he said the pay per click ad business is all based on who they think you are and it is extremely difficult to change that profile when it is wrong. Interesting thing to know.

I don't look at porn and I clear my browsing history and cookies every time I shut my computer down. I have been told that when accepting banner ads, the site administrators can list the types of ads they will accept.

Moderators: I understand the need for advertising to support the site but some of the ads that appear on my feed are disgusting and have anything to do with this forum. I do not need to see ads about male enhancements or risque ads for clothing while visiting this forum. Please do what you can to eliminate these ads. Thank you

I agree. At the brewery we used a LOT of stainless fasteners. We just assumed that they were the same strength as a grade 2 hardware store quality bolt and went one size bigger whenever possible. We also assumed they were one time fasteners as they would usually get all galled up when trying to reuse them.

Does anyone know if a clock from a 49 Plymouth will fit in a 51 Plymouth?

Small set of hand tools, spare tire, jack, tire iron, tie wire, wire ties, about 5 feet of 12 gauge wire, VOM, duct tape, electrical tape, spare bulbs, fan belt, oil, coolant, paper towels and hand cleaner. When several of us go on a more extended trip, we divide up things like a spare distributor, spare generator, and spare starter motor. I have set up my tools in a bag that I move between our 51 Cambridge and our camping trailer as both need the same tool setup.

I had an issue on my freshly rebuilt 218. I could not get any oil pressure while cranking before its first start. I checked everything, tested with an inexpensive oil pressure gauge from O'Reillys, tried cranking with one of the oil gallery plugs removed, and found that I had all kinds of oil flow, just no oil pressure. I checked to make sure that I properly installed the plunger in the relief valve as you can easily put it in backwards. It was properly installed. That is when I found that the new oil pressure relief spring was not much stronger than a ball point pen spring. I cleaned up the spring from my old engine, installed it, and it solved the problem. Too weak a spring allows the relief valve to open fully and bypass too much oil back to the oil pan. Just something else to check out.

One thing to consider with alcohol fuels is that they are less dense than the gasolines that were available 70 years ago. This means that you need to set your float lower than spec. Lower density means that the float needs to sit lower to offer sufficient pressure on the needle valve to shut off the fuel flow. I set mine about 3/32" lower than spec. and have not had any issues with full throttle acceleration and starving the carb.

Keep putting things in the attic and they will eventually find a rapid and noisy way to move themselves into the basement.

Dwell is more important than the actual point gap as the dwell is the amount of time the points are closed and charging the coil. Point gap and dwell work in opposite directions, smaller point gap means larger dwell and larger point gap means smaller dwell. Set your points for the proper dwell. Once you have your dwell properly set, set your timing based on vacuum, you want the maximum smooth vacuum at idle for the correct timing.

Go to a marine supply house and get a lower unit gear oil pump. They are about $10. It will screw onto the gear oil bottle and you can pump the oil into the trans or diff. Much neater and cleaner than trying to squirt it in.

Pay attention to the two steel balls. They are NOT the same size. The smaller one is for the accelerator pump. You may have to measure them with a caliper or micrometer to determine the smaller on. Don't ask how I learned this (yes the large ball is still stuck in the orifice of the carb I was rebuilding).

Something to ponder, modern gasolines are less dense than the fuels available decades ago. This means that the float level needs to be set lower than what the book says to get the same amount of pressure on the needle valve. I usually set it about 3/32" to 1/8" lower than spec to compensate.

I had a truck driveline shop build a new driveshaft with Spicer U-joints for my P-23 Cambridge. It cost me $300 and took care of all of my problems with driveline vibration and eliminated those troublesome rubber boots that are difficult to install. You may want to look into this as a solution to your issues.

I used a Harbor Fright trans jack that I borrowed from Greg G. We had to use some wedges and wood blocks to square it up but it worked fine. To do it again I would take the time to build a better and stronger wood cradle to hold the trans level on the jack.