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#1
10-14-2020, 09:53 PM
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A great car; those pre-Rocket V8 Olds don't get talked about much but plenty of style & I've always loved those fastbacks. Funny how they fell out of style back then. From my experience a well-tuned flathead 6 can cruise you along just fine.
I've read a bit about linkage adjustments on those transmissions being critical (linkage to the carb?) The stuff I read referred to a some mid-50's models but mentioned they would shift rough & overheat if not adjusted right. My only experience with one was a beater '50 Cadillac I had for a short time. If my wife had let me I might have kept it as just that, a pure beater, but she'd have been too ashamed to ride in it! I've had a bad itch for a while now to pick up another project car; looks like a I found one & hope it will be sitting in my driveway soon. Bringing a car back from the dead is just as satisfying as doing the same with an old TV.
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Bryan 
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#2
10-15-2020, 11:08 AM
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So I've been busy....
Let's see if I can list off all the stuff I have done. The trunk was turning into a rusty estuary during rain, so I replaced the disintegrated petrafied weather strip, buzzed the surface rust off and painted it with Eastwood rust encapsulator. I also drilled out the trunk rust hole to ˝" and stuck that size metal hole cap from ACE in to plug it. I have every light inside and out working... though the mercury switches on the trunk and glove box lamps are flakier than a bowl of Kellogg's.... The mystery wire under hood turned out to be the hood lamp wire...the original lamp socket (and presumably mercury switch) are AWOL but it uses a #55 bulb so that and a dial lamp socket are there for temporary. I got the dash light rheostat going with sandpaper and PBlaster. I dropped the gas tank and unstuck the sending unit to make the fuel guage work (more on the tank later). Got the clock working...The winding solenoid switch contacts were dirty, the roto-pendulum was sticky, and the fuse was missing and a odd physical size so I had to cut down a standard size fuse. Every hose under dash is new. After some lube and coaxing the wipers work now but they don't go back and forth on their own...I pull the knob out and they move energetically to their stops and stay till I push the knob back in and then energetically return to their rest position...I can move them back and forth quickly if I keep working the knob. The washer fluid pump jar and bracket was missing so I bought a vintage one off eBay...I chose well; all it needed was the pump opened and the plunger gaskets cleaned with PBlaster and reassembly to work. I changed the wiper blades too. I installed a turn signal switch. That was a couple days puttering around.... Especially since I used the front parking lights as turnsignals but wanted them to also work as parking lights...To make that happen I wired 3 relays(a comment here about it having no solid state devices influenced me to choose relays) together into a 3 input, 2 output XOR gate. So the parking lamps can do double duty. The new napa brake light switch after ~3 weeks of use yesterday started to intermittently stick on and randomly turn on while parked which I need to address. I had to rewire the ignition switch since everything that should be off when the key was off was on and vice versa (the sole exception was the heater which works well). Some previous owners rewiring left a lot to be desired... I also got new hubcap clips installed and got the hubcaps on. Replaced the trunk Hydramatic badge with a reproduction, and installed a repro dome light lense to replace the missing one. I also patched all the noticable exhaust leaks out to the rear axle so now above idle it no longer sounds like a farm tractor having a bad day. The radio antenna has been replaced I had to mix and match pieces from the old and new ones to make it work. Radio gets great reception with it, but I think the modified replacement speaker I put in it died since the vibrator is running but I get absolutely no audio from it. I figured out the rear accessory lamp is a back up lamp. It's gear selector switch is powered by the parking lamp circuit such that it only works with the other lights on...the Hydramatic does not have a dedicated lever position for park but does have a parking pawl that is engaged with the engine off and the shifter in reverse.... I'm thinking about changing the parking lamp to the switched terminal of the ignition so reverse will work with parking lights off but only when the engine is running. When I did the sending unit I learned the previous owner either sucks at cleaning out gas tanks or lied about cleaning it...I probably should have fixed it when I had it dropped but it was late and I didn't have the stuff to clean it... draining it to fix it was poorly planned and between dropping the drain plug in a 70s Johnson boat tank (and the fiasco of retrieving it) and not having enough Jerry can capacity and having to make a long drive for more I lost a lot of productive time. The flare nut for the fuel line leaked a bit at the end, I retightened it the next day and it was good for a week then started leaking which caused more issues. Last weekend me and Chris intended to pull the trans pan and rebuild the carb...what we managed to do was adjust the brakes, unstick the E-brake, grease wheel bearings and steering points, pull the trans pan and sort of fix the fuel tank leak.... there's a brass adapter fitting that split when we tried to tighten it to stop the slow leak...which created a fast leak...it cost us the carb rebuild time and still isn't perfectly fixed... between that and the crap in the tank (which I'll circle back to) I'm thinking about dropping the tank to clean it (the fuel line is at bottom so I have to drain the tank to fix the leak which is better than half the process to drop the tank). The trans let out ~1.5 of it's 3 gallons of whale oil (the rest stayed in the torque converter, and removing the pan showed the bottom had a lot of tenacious sludge...carb cleaner and brake cleaner barely touched it so I had to scrub it with a wire brush...the window mesh trans filter was equally plugged with sludge... I'm impressed the trans worked at all with how plugged it was. There were some gear teeth ends in the bottom of the pan... fairly sludged ones so I suspect old damage. The trans sometimes requires moving the car forward to get reverse gear mesh so I suspect those chips are on the reverse gear. After cleaning and reassembling the trans and everything else it ran a bit better but after a few miles it still started bucking and not wanting to handle throttle....My intuition kicked in then and I thought the metal fuel filter might be doing it. The next day I test drove it to AutoZone and on the return trip it wouldn't do more than 30 unless you accelerated on a down hill and you couldn't give it much gas without it sputtering and bucking...when I got home I immediately changed the fuel filter and took it back on the road. The old metal filter was about completely clogged. I could barely blow through it on the pump side and when I blew through it backwards on the carb end about half a Titanic's worth of orange bits and liquid came out.... So how did it drive without a plugged fuel filter?...It drove great I had almost peppy acceleration, no bucking and it got all the way to 70MPH before I decided I was a bit too far above the speed limit and backed off. The new transparent plastic fuel filter is already starting to saturate with dirt so I'm thinking about dropping the tank and cleaning out with the marbles, CLR and slosh method. If I add teflon to the fuel line threads to stop the slow leak then I have to drain the tank which is half the work to drop the tank... I've been working on patching the floor too. I removed the door jamb rubber covered metal step grip and found more for under it...I could sweep it under the rug by reinstalling the step grip but I plan to fix it today if I can. The metal I patched the driver's floor with is a little thin but I couldn't have shaped it to match the ribbed contours of the original with my megar tools if it was thicker. It is a small patch and ties into sturdier metal backed with structure so it should be ok...at the very least it'll keep the squirrels out. That's where I'm at... Still plenty to do but it's getting better all the time. Quote:
Your right about this being fun. At the very least it's keeping me busy. Work has been slow lately (most days I have 3 meetings and an hour of other stuff tops). So I have spent a lot of time on the olds. Good luck on your new project.
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Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 Last edited by Electronic M; 10-15-2020 at 11:13 AM.
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#4
10-19-2020, 10:44 AM
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I need to look up how old the remington is...Odds are good it's older than at least one of my parents... So under the door jamb step next to the floor pan rust was more rust. Read about the repair in my next post.
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Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4
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#5
10-19-2020, 11:10 AM
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Quote:
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