Bought my Fourth car yesterday! 1947 Oldsmobile series 76 fastback
 

I've always loved classic cars. Back when I was around 10 I picked up an old (80's) book consumers guide to cars of the 40's and that influenced me to want a 40's fastback. I've been trying to find one that hasn't been ruined by customization or rust and isn't a 15K+ show quality restoration...Not an easy task. I might have had one sooner but the previous times I have found good cars I didn't have money...

Things finally came together yesterday. It started with a 59 caddy way up north that I didn't buy because it was in worse shape...I had taken the money for that caddy out before seeing it in person (didn't want to make 2 trips) and decided instead of redepositing it I'd put out a want ad. That led me to this...
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1600899536

The Car was originally sold by the local Oldsmobile and Harley dealership in a town in North Dakota to the town barber who was driving it atleast until 1982 by the inspection dates. Some years ago he sold it back to the same guy at the local Harley dealership that he bought it new from. The person at the dealership planned to restore it but never got around to it. He eventually sold it to Ron who planned to swap the original straight 6 for a V8 and build his wife a hotrod. Ron decided he had more projects than he was ever going to get to and sold it to me... Possibly the most amazing thing about the car (asside from it having almost every factory option) is that after the original owner signed over the original title nobody ever tried to retitle it in their name. I have the original title the original owner signed and gave to the harley dealer!...Once I retitle it in my name I will effectively be the SECOND owner on paper!:jawdrop::thmbsp:

It was running and driving 3 years ago and garage stored since. The engine and brakes are free but the battery is bad and the previous owner thinks based on the popping out the carb it did when he tried to start it last week that a valve is stuck...I have a battery on order (them wide 6V jobs are surprisingly expensive) and me and my buddy Chris are going to try and get it running this weekend.

It's pretty much all complete, original and solid. There's a hole in the driver's side floor about the size of 2 golf balls and a finger hole in the trunk but otherwise she is solid. I think one of the previous owners installed front drop springs (they look too new to be original) which I will eventually replace to restore the stock ride height. I have the hubcaps but half the wheel clips for them are missing along with possibly the front carpet. The lower half was originally a less vibrant sage color (but less faded than the factory paint fender skirts) the top is factory paint...those 2 colors were actually about the same as the colors the living room of the first house I grew up in was (it was built within a year of the olds) originally (I chipped down to it more than once as a kid).

So far I've been able to verify the head lights and 2/3 of the tail lights work, and the radio dial lamp works...My battery charger has confirmed that the battery it came with is pretty worn out. Most of the other electrical is not responding.

Anybody know if these use the same door key as the ignition or trunk key? Ignition and trunk keys work but the door lock cylinders aren't responding to either key... lucky for me the doors are unlocked...

I don't have a spare ignition key (I should try to get one made soon) so I don't want to risk snapping it trying to persuade the doors.

It's got an Oldsmobile special engine tag on it that stumped the oldsmobile club president (according to the previous owner).

This morning I found a 1942 half dollar below the seat.

Time to see if ace hardware can copy the ignition key...EDIT: they had the right blank...more surprisingly I tried the ignition key in the driver's door and it just worked...Then I put some graphite powder in and it played dead again for a while before coming back. The passenger lock was much more stubborn. I had to play with it for a good 5 minutes and it only came around after some PB blaster. Both door locks seem to work consistently now...If it's good tomorrow I may start locking it at night.

Pretty cool! Glad you were able to save it from a hotrodder, they're just as bad as the people turning console TVs into a dog beds.

Thanks, though putting in a bigger engine is plan C...Plan A is make the original engine in it work, plan B get another 40's olds straight 6 (I think I know where I can get one). Plan C comes into effect if A and B fail/cost too much or if after driving the I6 I find it to be under powered for the rural highway and interstate driving I mostly do.

I know where a much rougher 47 Caddilac with flat head V8 motor with hydramatic that turns over is...that would be a period correct way to hop it up if the original engine is not up to the job...I wouldn't even have to change the column shifter since my olds is already factory Hydramatic.

good news!
 

So I got a new 6V battery today and tried starting it. Like the previous owner said it was popping out the carb...even shooting flame. So after confirming firing order, twisting the distributor 90 degrees in either direction and observing change in backfiring I cranked the distributor ~180 degrees and she started right up for the couple seconds a squirt of starting fluid is good for. :yippy:After some whoops of joy (that had the folks run out scared I'd hurt myself), and a quick repeat demonstration for them, I added a couple table spoons of gas and a squirt of starting fluid and had her running for a good 30sec. She sounds pretty good (especially considering the distributor is set to a fairly random position) and almost idles on her own.

She'll probably be moving under her own power in a couple of days.:zoom::thmbsp:

I'm super happy right now. There's no stuck valves or hard problems as far as I can tell... just little goofy stuff like the distributor cap wired backwards.

I would love to have seen that.

Congrats on the car and the Westy!

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Lol, Thanks. I did capture a phone video of the 30sec run after that.
This morning I dumped more gas down it and confirmed the transmission has drive and reverse and the brakes will stop it (it even squeaked the tires)...I only moved it a couple of car lengths in the driveway but I got to drive it and now I know more of the important stuff is working. :thmbsp:

I have the distributor better configured (I was able to reconnect the steel vacuum advance line) soon I'll get to setting it correctly.
I need to figure out fuel before I try moving it more....the carb is either not getting fuel or not giving the engine fuel....or both.

:) Congratulations on getting that car , I love it !!!!!

I will be watching for progress reports and I especially hope you will be restoring the original tube radio , gotta love a car built with not a single transistor in it :D

My uncle had a 1940 Olds that had a Hydramatic, AFAIK the first model to have it! Sometime during the war, the transmission failed. Parts were unavailable because of the war effort, so the dealer had to change the steering column and install a clutch and manual transmission, probably out of a salvage car. Needless to say, he wasn't very happy!

Friday evening after verifying fuel to the carb she started running off the tank so I took a drive to the end of the block all I had was 1st gear barely perceptible acceleration and banging in the trans as it struggled to get above 20MPH.

Yesterday me and my buddy Chris got the timing dialed in as good as we can (the repair manual basically instructs to time the distributor for the zero position of a user distributor adjustment lever, and to consult the user manual on adjusting that "octane selector" lever on the engine block for compensating for the specific gas you want to run.
We checked the trans level then took it for another block drive and this time the trans woke up and grabbed second or third and it cruised at 30.
We changed the oil. After that Chris worked on the carb....that became a case of temporarily making it suck less. The carb kit the previous owner threw in was for a Carter WO but the carb on it was a WA and things don't interchange between the 2. So there's no accelerator pump presently... While he did that I worked on fixing the electrical so that the brake light (among other things it supplies) fuse would stop blowing...I did that by rewiring the front and rear fog lights....the cloth insulation where they pass into the lamps and went through bare metal of the body was gone in 4" sections... I took some cloth wire from IIRC a radiola 44/46 power cord I replaced (the other cloth that bound the inner leads together was mostly shot but the insulation on the individual wires inside was most excellent) and used it to replace the bad sections visible outside the car...It worked well. I also extracted the radio.

Then we decided to motor to a station and fill the tank to dilute the old yellowey gas in it...we got it up to 50MPH and it rode well to 4 miles to the Heartland BP...then I was told that station was expensive and decided to try for the Pewaukee BP another ~4 miles away. In the portion of JJ that's nothing but swamp on either side I got her up to 60 and that seemed to be about all the trans would permit...it had been slowly getting better and smoother as we drove... sometimes grabbing second like a new car.

At the gas station I overshot the pump I wanted and after stalling it a couple of times trying to reverse (this isn't the first time that has happened) I gave up and went forward to the next pump. I added 15 gallons of premium and we set off... since we were almost half way around lake Pewaukee by that time we decided to take the long way back that would complete out circle of the lake....as we came to the stop sign of choice she gave a stuttery 1-2 shift to warm us we were being dump but we persisted...we had to take one steep hill in 1st which didn't help things much but we probably went about 6 miles before it got hot enough that it would either do 1st or try for second and bang and trash and keep doing that for long enough to prompt a stop...the old whale oil in the Hydramatic was good and hot and seafood smoke whafted...When we stopped an older couple in an acqua late 60s chevy truck that had been following us (they digged the olds as much as I do) stopped to chat and offer help.... After a few minutes letting it cool with the engine off we tried to set out in 1st then tried grabbing a higher gear....that didn't work well so Chris suggested flooring it in low to hit 30 then shifting back to drive, and that worked. We had only one stop sign between trying tho and home(something like 4 miles). We made it back and we still had like whafts of whale smoke. I took my IR thermometer and measured the head and thermostat housing and registered 178F the trans was a whopping 215F! A minute later Chris grabbed wad of paper towels and checked the trans fluid again...it was still full but this time the entire dipstick was smoking... It was hilarious watching that thing smoke. As I stopped laughing I almost got a picture as the heat got through the paper and Chris reflexively dropped it... But I think the camera of my mind will retain that image for decades to come.

After that we had dinner during which I showed Chris how the Westinghouse H840CK15 works but it decided not to have horizontal freq in locking range) then we changed the belt. The old one was stretched to about the end of the tensioner range and we made the mistake of picking one the same size...so it's tight enough to spin everything but the generator pulley barely has enough grip to charge...The fleet farm we got the belt from closed by the time we got back to try it, so that is a job for me to complete. We ironically almost bought a smaller one that would have worked.

Since it was dark we tackled the radio Chris has figured out that you can fix a non-working car radio vibrator by hooking the coil to a variac and cranking it up to 30V for an instant dropping it to 6V and repeating a few times....it came right back to life with the coil working and got good reception, but the lytic was getting hot, the dial pointer cord was snapped (before I bought it) and the speaker was buzzy at and above moderate volume....So I gave the radio a full recap, a new dial cord, and tried to deal with the speaker...the cone on the original is badly warped and I don't know if I can straighten it. I ended up trying another 6x9 I had and ended up cutting the frame of that new speaker to fit in the right radio case. I also added an RCA input and switch on the bottom so I can inject audio into the radio directly... the RCA jack I bolted through a vent hole, the switch I had to drill another 3/16" hole (same size as the vent holes) as an extension of the vent hole grid because there wasn't enough clearance inside the existing vents to fit the switch. I got it all together and working for 5 min and the speaker died....

It was very late so Chris went home and I gave up and went to sleep.

I'm almost caught up on the TV I skipped the last 2 days...if the rain has stopped I may grab a belt.
Tomorrow the new oil filter will come in from Chicago...it's top loading so I won't loose oil changing it.

In future weeks Chris and I plan to pull the transmission pan, clean everything we can (the dip stick had a lot of crap on it the first time we checked) do anything else we can, and refill it with dextron.
Hopefully we didn't mess it up too bad, and can make it good again without too much issue.

Well I got enough of a break in the rain to get the belt and oil filter changed and give it another 2 block test drive...The trans in drive range shifted fairly smoothly all the way up to 40MPH so I don't think I messed it up back on Saturday.

I'm at the point where the electrical is almost all sorted out...I need to get the sized screws on the license plate light off so I can change the bulb, check the sending unit for shorts/sunk float (I know the guage and wiring up to the tank is good), and see if I can fix or need to replace the dash light rheostat (which is part of the main light switch). I want to replace the wiper vacuum and wash fluid lines before I reinstall the radio since it's easier to get to them with the radio out.

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.

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 ½" 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.





From what I understand the bands adjustment is critical for a proper 2-3/3-2 shift. The throttle adjustment may be important too... There's a proceedure in the repair manual and I plan to look at that after I rebuild the carb.

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.

Lots of progress!

Snow tire in the trunk?

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When I dropped the fuel tank on my 51 Ford it looked terrible inside; I'd planned on coating it so I ordered a POR-15 fuel tank sealer kit. First step they include is an enzymatic cleaner. After that was done the tank looked so nice I never bothered to coat it; that was nearly 10 years ago. There must have been 1/4" or more of hard, black sludge in the bottom (lead?) and that cleaner really knocked it out. I haven't had trouble with clogged filters since then, though I do see a bit of silt in the glass bowl on the fuel filter.

One of the many great points of a car like this: you can DRIVE it! You don't have to be afraid of stone chips or door dings. I drive my Ford year round (avoiding rain), usually 3k/year. If I want to go down a dirt road...I go down the dirt road. Henry II built it to drive, right?

And she'll do 70, that's pretty good!

I still have my '59 Ford up on jack stands at the moment, the new Mustang 3 speed 3.03/toploader is finally fitted to the 223. I just need to build a plate to adapt the tranny mount to the cross member, replace the muffler, have a longer drive shaft built/fitted, de rust the engine, maybe replace the radiator...........

Today on my classic tire we have a Remington super safe traction 4 ply tubeless. The darn thing still holds air. Not sure how much but it might be enough to limp to a tire shop on...or explode the second it has the cars weight on it. It's only marginally less sketchy than the thin wall/tread factory compact inflatable spare for my Lincoln (which resides in the basement so a real spare can reside in the trunk).
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.

I thought I saw a date code, but September only has 30 days...


http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1603123804

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She may do more than 70...it was night on a vacant stretch of rural road marked 45 in a car that doesn't have a current plate or the transfered title or seatbelts...I didn't have the err, um ...Stupidity (I think that's the word I'm looking for) to push it to it's limit. The carb is still unrebuilt and not dialed in. The 110 speedo is probably optimistic for even the 8 cylinder that has 10 more horses, but it probably has 85 in it if everything is working to spec... Gotta test it on a faster road. Highway 16 on a empty hour would probably work. The trans only heated up to 160f on the last AutoZone trip (when With the clothes fuel filter it was doing 215f before) so things are getting better. I changed the trans fluid again after the 70 run and the whale oil had been diluted to the point it looked like motor oil instead of crude oil...I need to take it on another test drive with the cleaner fluid.

Good luck on your 59 project.

I agree on the advantages of driver quality collector cars. When I was looking I had a goal in mind of a 8k or less driver quality car...nice restored cars of the same model are around 17k and while I could afford that I don't want one too nice or to spend that money on that.

I'll keep that tank treatment under advisement incase the filter keeps plugging.

Yesterday I cleaned the tank out with a gallon of CLR, 8lbs of marbles and about 30 min of sloshing (there was about a quart to a gallon of fuel in there too) I got most of the rust, grit and sludge off the bottom there's still a some flea bites of surface rust, but I think I got most of it. I probably should have focused on the sides for longer since they are still a bit crusty, but things are overall much better. The cleaner mix at the end was milk coffee brown and non-transparent. I followed up by putting in a gallon of the old gas pumped through a filter and sloshed that around to try and flush out the cleaner and residual debris. I think it got most of it. Many moons ago a relative used to own a parrot...CLR, gas, and the junk in the tank mixed together smell exactly like that parrot...ma who used to take care of it while her sister was on vacation agrees the mix smells just like a parrot.
The filter I put on last week is pictured below with the crud it was pulling out of the uncleaned tank. I changed that filter after the cleaning; but before installing the new one I ran the engine for about a minute off starting fluid and let the fuel pump shoot any sediment in it/from the tank on the ground. The new filter is getting some black sediment in it's grooves but only a fraction of the orange the old one was. The old new one pictured was still flowing okay despite the crud so I think now that there's less crud everything should be okay.

So I'm finally calling the floor done. A few weeks ago when I was painting the floor with Eastwood rust encapsulator I ground the front drivers rust hole till I knew where solid metal started...I realized to fix it I needed to unscrew the aluminum inner door seal trim, and to to that I had to unscrew the door jamb step. The step was easy... penetrating oil got most of the screws and the remaining 2-3 the metal they were screwed into was dust. The aluminum I only got 2 screws out, the rest I had to grind. Under the step was more rust so I had to make 2 patch panels. One for the door jamb and hump under the trim and a second for the floor. Not having a sheet metal brake or any good sheet metal working tools I had to use 28 guage metal to get the contours right with the hammers, angle iron, clamps and torch (getting the deep bead for under the trim right required a heat and bend strategy). It may not be as strong as the original but it's at most 3" of the new metal between thicker guage original structure (and that bead which is pretty strong)... So it looks okay, keeps the mice out, and is strong enough to keep my feet in... The floor section is booger welded in with my gasless harbor freight BOTB welder...it's a bit much for the sheet metal I'm working with so I switched to soldering for the door jamb panel and it's seam with the other patch. After it was all in I gave it a coat of seam sealer inside and out and a coat of rust encapsulator. I think it's good enough for now.

I have the radio on the bench again now. Vibrator audibly runs, heaters light, speaker seems to be fine, but absolutely no audio... Next up is verifying B+ and signal tracing. Edit: main B+ pi network resistor went open. Replacement fixed it.

Still got to change reverse light power source, and swap the brake switch.

Once it gets below the upper 50s outside like it has working on cars becomes very unpleasant...
If it drives good and there's no more significant issues after this I plan to rent an indoor storage space for it drive it a few times and park it before the road salt gets put out...next year I'll pick up where I left off.

So yesterday I got the radio back in it, changed the back up light wiring, and took it for some gas and it's first highway drive. This also marks the first time I've run the radio while driving it...I decided to play swing music from my phone through the audio input on the radio most of the trip with some live radio here and there.
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1603209341

Even with a long downhill ramp it still didn't want to hit 65 by merging time (not surprising with the accelerator pump not working well). However with time it got up to speed. In a mile I found it's top speed in it's current state on level ground...Floored, it will hold an indicated 90MPH and it happily cruised at 80 (pic below) along side the rest of traffic.:banana: It cruised nicely on the highway. Ride quality and handling were atleast as smooth and relaxed at 70-90 as at 50. After 4 miles of ~80MPH I got off and returned home at 45mph on rural roads...she did fine till I had to wait for a train at the foot of a steep uphill about 2-3 miles later (while I was waiting for the train I took the trans temp and it scored a 160f temp reading). Then it wasn't shifting up well on the hill...It pretty much held 30 regardless of throttle (which I gave it plenty of occasionally backing off) only reaching the speed limit of 50 as it leveled off at the summit. A couple miles later back home it was at 209f...It seems it doesn't like hills unless it's at speed before reaching them. Perhaps it needs another quart of ATF to handle hills. :dunno:

Today I plan to change the brake switch again and hope the second napa sourced switch lasts more than 3 weeks without intermittently sticking on. I'll also look into installing the fiber board side kick panels under the dash....they have been laying in the back seat since I got the car and I held off on trying to do the install till I had the front floor done. I may also change the transmission fluid again...It only lets out ~ half its fluid when drained so I am slowly diluting away the last gallon or so (probably more like quart or 3 by now) of whale oil...

Back in the early 1990s I ran into that very problem with my 53 Buick , a new brake light switch wouldn't live long before the contacts had become welded together . The bulbs and sockets were fine , and I suspected the new switches weren't built to the same level of quality as the original was . After switch #3 failed I wired in a 6V relay for switch #4 to control and in the few years I owned the car afterwards there was no further problem of the brake lights being stuck on .

That's a good suggestion. My contacts stick but usually come loose either pumping the pedal or tapping the switch housing with a wrench so I wonder if it's really welding or some mechanical deficiency... I've got 6V relays so it would be fairly trivial to make one into a buffer...the up side is I probably would be able to hear it engage and disengage and notice the problem faster if it isn't mechanical...

So I installed the relay and the old switch behaved it's self for about a day before coming on by itself and sticking. So I installed the new stoplight switch and went for a test drive and after a few blocks the stoplight relay started chattering at triple the rate of the turn signal flasher. A quick stomp of the brake pedal stopped the chatter but it comes back periodically...It will still also stick down.

There's ~1/8" of play in the pedal when released and jiggling it within that will click it on and off... I'm not sure if the switch is too sensitive or if the master cylinder has some problem.
The 2 switches were both napa cheapies. I'm thinking about trying an autozone part to see if a different source fixes it.

Wow that sucks . I'm curious , does your car have the brake light switch mechanically linked to the pedal or is it a pressure activated switch plumbed into the brake lines or master cylinder ? The one I had the problem with was the pressure switch kind and with slight applications of the brakes the switch wasn't fully closed and the brake light would flicker , when I put the relay in I put in with a brand new switch that hadn't been permitted to arc across it's contacts and the relay action was smooth with no chattering .

The switch is a hydraulic pressure switch plumbed in. This is the exact part I'm dealing with. https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/MPES...oplight+switch
Both the old switch that was installed before the relay and the new one installed after the relay was installed are acting up.

One potential kludge I may try (if I can't make the stock confuguration work) is a 1970s trailer brake controller l have...it plumbs into the lines like the stock part (I have to look into pipe fitting compatibility though) and has an adjustable switch pressure threshold.

I'm left wondering if you got two bad switches . I know the odds are pretty high , but if a process failure ruined one it's an outside possibility that there could be a few bad ones in the same batch . I like your idea of sourcing one from a different autoparts place , Hopefully a different brand/manufacturer might work as it should .

When I was fixing up a '49 Packard I had to replace that switch & I remember folks on forums commenting about the poor quality. One option might be trying to find a NOS part. I would guess there are only 1 or maybe 2 companies making them these days; I know oftentimes NAPA carries 2 lines with Echlin probably being the better.

The third switch from autozone didn't fix the issue either. I discovered a grease fitting on the brake pedal mechanism under the car and filled that up with no significant effect. There is a return spring I may try beefing up and I got a suggestion about filling the replacement with fluid before installation using a cyringe (which I was told about an hour after plumbing in my kludge) but I just want to finish fixing the brake light and get this into storage for the winter. It's getting much too cold for recreational car work. The original switch was a big hex nut with terminals and a pipe thread end, but the new ones are round...I found a vintage NOS hexnut style on everyone's favorite auction site that I'll probably buy and try in spring.

So last night I kludged in a 1979 vintage trailer brake controller and that seems to allow me to reduce sensitivity to a level that should prevent false triggers. I still need to give it a test drive but it works and looks promising. The one trade off is it's LED is always on, but that's far better than the brake lights coming on and sticking when parked. I'd guess that it would use less power than the clock does. It's brake line threads into the place the factory switch did and I screwed it's bracket into an existing screw (on the steering column bracket) under dash right of the steering wheel...So it's installation is completely reversible and no evidence of its presence will remain. I think it's hidden well enough especially the LED that its presence won't distract and I can still get at it and adjust while driving...I can also use it to manually turn on brake lights independent of the pedal if I want.

Sooo, a few hours ago while waiting for my birthday dinner to be ready a neighbor knocked on the door to inform us that the lights of our car were on...Guess which one?

That trailer brake controller wasn't the fix, and I think I may now have a sound theory about the problem.... correct me if my logic is flawed. The way I understand it drum brake cars have a residual pressure valve that keeps some pressure in the lines even when the brakes aren't applied. There was a youtube video where a guy explained that his 70 disc brake Caddilac that he was dragging out of a field needed new brake hoses because when the rubber gets decades old it looks fine outside but swells inside to the point where fluid won't readily flow (unless pressure pries the line open)....What that does on his car is allow fluid to enter the wheel cylinder but not to return so the brakes lock and drag...
The hoses on mine are of unknown vintage. They look good and clean but are a bit hard and for all I know could be older than me.
So my theory is that the residual pressure valve doesn't adjust to pressure change when the pedal is not being pressed, and that the inside of some of the hoses are swollen such that they hold more pressure in the wheel cylinders than the residual line pressure valve but don't hold it indefinitely...If the switch is on the wheel cylinder side of the residual valve and the hoses and wheel cylinders are storing pressure and releasing it back to the brake light switch then that would be the source of the false triggers.

There's no way I'm replacing the hoses and bleeding the brakes in 30-40 degree weather for a stinking light...but I think I'm going to order new hoses for spring.

Darn, and I thought that brake controller was a pretty slick work-around! Still well worth remembering. I was aware of the brake hose issue but until your explanation I didn't quire understand what the issue was. I was a service writer at a small shop for a few years and our mechanic refused to replace a caliper that had locked up unless he could also replace the hose. I don't recall seeing this happen with drums but I can well imagine a case study like this being in the old "Model Garage" series in Popular Science.

This Video gives a bit of a summary of the last year. It'll be live at noon central.
One thing I didn't mention in the video is I changed the rear window seal and the door weatherstrip.
https://youtu.be/iJvXDYAWd8c

Those brake switches are made out of absolute crap now from China or Mexico. I had the same problem on my 57 P-350 delivery van.

Middle of the night the pressure would come up and the brake lights would decide come on till it drained the battery. I got tired of pulling the battery terminal off every night and rerouted the brake wiring to the ignition switch so the brakes would only light with the key on.

In addition to doing that my switch will chatter on and off with road vibration...I know because I have a relay installed between the switch and the lights and I can hear it chatter when I drive, and I can give the pedal a short hard poke and the chattering will stop.... perhaps I should hit up a junkyard with classics grab a few NOS switches and see if those help.

I find the old used ones are corroded. I think a bit of brake fluid and some moisture gets up in there over time and it corrodes. I took a few old ones apart hoping to be able to repair one.
They develop a white slimey crust that stopped it from working. Then once they were apart the way they rolled the metal over at the bakelite end makes it pretty much impossible to get them back together. These were all old used ones that were on vehicles that hadn't been on the road since the late 70's to early 1980's so I could rule out Chinese and Mexican inferior parts.

They seem like a crapshoot on how well they work. The one on my 63 Econoline only came on it I was really stepping on the brake. It was a new one in 1998 - 99. It's now dead as well. On the bright side, that one never came on at random.

Here's a NOS one on epay for 15 bucks plus shipping. Might be worth a try.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/263321578012...UAAOSw-olaCmig