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Dave, that truck has the large Seagrave v-12 in it not the Pierce twelve engine. I think it is 700 or 800 cubic inch. It probably went to a truck collector. The price seems somewhat low.

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Hi, PAS member John Cislak is just finishing up a production run of the spring clips and hinge. They will be posted on his website on EBAY under the store name PIERCE-PARTS-STORE they are hand made and are tempered and coated with a black oxside finish. His phone number is 413-543-9017 east coate business hours. Enclosed is a photo of a new spring and hinge on a 36 V-12 Delco dist. Ed Minnie

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When ever I have a strange noise in my Pierce I am allways able to solve it by throwing Peg out of the car. ( I usually slow down first, the noise in the car goes away but then there is usually a very big one again when I pull into the driveway.) LOL

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Greg, I’m sure John Cislak has a good body on the shelf, he is out of town till Tuesday, give him a call. Ed

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I wonder if they poured the caps with a diffrent batch of babbit than the rods? I hve only seen OLD babbit fail, it was all over 50 years old. Have you figured out your game plan among the three engines?

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Inretesting that the failure is only on the rod caps. Last time I saw babbit priced out the mains were between 125 and 150 a bearing roughed out. Rods were 125 cut to size each. You get to two thousand real quick and still have to align bore the mains. Did the babit pull away from the shells/caps or crumble and still leave babbit in place?

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Many babbit guys will recycle old babbit into the new, and you end up with a unknown ratio of tin and lead. There is also a “high pressure” babbit available out of England that they run up to 8.5 to 1 on the blower Bentleys’’ that holds up well. I learned how to pour babbit from a Springfield Rolls engineer in the 80’s. His big push was that almost nobody correctly tins the shells before they pour it. He said that is what leads to bearing delaminating. I suspect the problem is two fold, used/poor grade babbit and also poor tinning. Add to that the higher rpm’s we run our engines today along with the tall gears that put way more of a load on the engine at lower rpm’s causing lugging much more often than when new. My 36 twelve has babbit in it, we now have 12k miles on the babbit and so far have had no problems, and I drive it vary hard. At the PAS meet in June John Cislak had a flyer on converting rods from babbit on all the Pierce engines. 29-33 eights require welding on the rod, later eights and all twelve’s can be converted on his fixture to inserts, and you can order the bearing size to the spec of your crank. As for the pitting I have also suffered from the problem both in the crankshaft, and cam as well as the transmission. It can only be caused by two things, water or acid in the oil. Most problems I have seen seem to be from very old oil that was left in for years at a time. I highly recommend that ALL fluids be changed every two years regardless of mileage. As far as the engine block cracking, there seems to be quite a few eights having this problem over the last few years. I would probably stitch it to keep the block original, and just freshen up the engine with rings and a valve job.

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Most of the gaskets I have seen or purchased over the last 20 years were of poor or questionable quaility. I have even seen failures on the “good”” gaskets that are available. The best gaskets I have seen lately are Jack Passys in Ca his number is 831-728-4738.”

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Hi, I know the car and made an offer on it last year. Anyone who would like my assesment of the car can contact me by email or phone. Ed Minnie

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Andy, There is one Pierce that was in the club years ago from Mass. that had a woods body, about a 1912 38 closed car if my memory serves me. Don Myer had the car for sale about 8 years ago. Ia this the car in question? If so I may be able to give you some leads on the car’s history. Ed Minnie

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Hi Dave, I think Rick is correct. I saw about 20 photos of the truck when it was on ebay, and thought it was a Hercules engine in it. It looked correct to me, but I have only seen two PA trucks from this vintage. It was used in the movie RAY , so maybe you can rent the video to get a better feel for the bus as it was on screen several times. Ed Minnie

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