Back on the Road Again

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Thanks to Bill Morris and Scott Stastny, my car is finally back on the road again! The latest bugaboo turned out to be a charging issue, which, upon, turned out to be some home made contraption masquerading as a cutout relay. Bill rigged a new relay, and the car was running well, even coming home with the headlights and dashlights on during the ride home. Picture is at the Park Ridge, IL Cruise Night 9/6/2019. Classic cars were parked in front of the train station, while Fords, Chevys, Cadillacs, ox carts, and similar vehicles were in a common parking lot across the street.

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Nice looking car Kenneth. Thanks for representing our marque.

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Hi Ken, glad to hear that your car is on the road again.

What was the odd irregular miss at idle? That prevented you getting your car to the Gathering?

Bill Morris was pretty sure it was the distributor rotor?

Greg

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Greg, It turned out to be pathetically simple. Two of the spark plug wires were crossed. Evidently the old owner had them crossed, as the car was missing and backfiring before working on it. There also appears to have been a problem with the distributor cap. I have one of Bill’s on the car right now and we’re seeing how it works. So far, fine. Another problem that cropped up was the cutout relay on the generator. The past owner had rigged a home made device inside the original housing of the cutout relay but now it’s fine. The car was running off of the battery alone. Now I can drive it at night, with the lights and dash lights all on without a problem. I have been driving the car several days a week as long as the weather is fine, and she seems to be running better and better every time I take it out. I just scored a nice leather trunk on eBay for the trunk rack, and now I have someplace to store my tools rather than in the passenger compartment. Have a few minor things to do, put the clock in the passenger compartment, install the correct tail light, fix the locks on the right doors (latches work perfectly but will not lock), small leak in the gas tank where the sender unit comes out. I also want to install the radio that I now have back from the shop, an original Pierce Arrow Model ME, and install a switch I found through the parts locator on this website which allows you to use the parking lights and tail lights as turn signals. We also broke one of the leads on the capacitor on one of the horns, and I need to check the model and determine the correct capacitor value to replace that. Bill told me I could burn out the horn contacts otherwise. Other than these minor things, the car is a joy to drive. Taking it up to a car show in Glenview on Saturday. By the way, where did you find that copy of “Flight Of The Arrow?” I plan on showing the Pierce V12 salesman’s slides at upcoming car shows, and I’d like to have the Flight of the Arrow, too. Young people perk up when you mention the records that this car holds.

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It was actually three wires that were crossed, but who’s counting? I’ve never owned a car that was cross-wired so I didn’t recognize that pattern. I didn’t tumble to it until I was ready to change out the cap and saw that the showed the plug numbers on it. When I removed the wire that was screwed into number one I discovered that it didn’t go to plug one. After that it was a simple matter to connect each wire to the correct hole on the cap. Suddenly we had twelve cylinders firing.

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Ken: I own the actual film of the ‘Flight of the Arrow’

The digitized full-length film and the 20 minute version are on thumb drives.

I’ll see if I can capture a few images and email them to you.

Greg Long

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Ken, it’s great to hear that your efforts are finally paying off.

Integrating hotrod gatherings dispels popular thought about the

usefulness of aged vehicles and you’ll get your rewards maybe during

this life. I love your picture of your car with the brand P car in

quarantine.

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Tony, don’t be too hard on the brand P car. It’s nice that there’s something for the little people. Actually, taking my car out to mixed shows really seems to be a good ideal. People are shocked by the records held by this car. Kind of like my favorite Brit car, the Daimler Majestic Major. Big, old, stodgy looking sedan that would blow the doors off of any contemporary sports car, including Jaguar.

I meant to ask you earlier, were you involved in that power blackout?

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Hi,

The blackout came within 50 miles. I wasn’t effected as we have a community

company that gets about a third of our power from P G & E. SO Cal electric

companies didn’t do the blackout and several deaths and over 70 houses

burned in one of the fires caused by a guy who’s trash burning got away from

him. There were several other fires started down there.

Was the Daimler sleeve valve and did it hurt your eyes to look at the

design?

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Love that Daimler; one of my favorite British makes. There was a postwar Daimler at the Branson auction about a year ago; will check to see what it was. It had a Wilson pre-selector transmission.

Tony: glad you’re not in a bind over the power issue.

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I hope everyone checked out the selection of Daimler cars at John Steckbeck’s during the 2019 Annual Meet. They are a very impressive car.

Those who did not make it to the Annual Meet lost out !!

Greg Long

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