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Sorry to add more to this long thread, but perhaps some notes on the fire I mentioned might be apropos. On a hot summer day tour we stopped for a break and when one of the drivers tried to restart it would just crank and crank. Thinking it was vapor locked he turned the electric pump on and kept pumping and cranking. It probably flooded first from percolation from the carb bowl through the main jets and then the accelerator pump. Soon smoke started coming up and flames out the hood vents. Fuel was running down the carb and manifold. Quick action by members with fire extinguishers got it out with just damage to the hood.
The pressure regulator on the outlet of the Carter rotary is mandatory. It will pump 8 psi and overwhelm the float valve which will overflow the carb and pour raw fuel over the exhaust manifold. A fire I have witnessed.
As I mentioned in my PASB vapor lock article a couple years back I found the thumper pumps barely might work when new, but not for me. Airtex also sells the big 6v rotary that appears to be identical to the Carter. They are way oversized for our cars, but get the job done. If the pump is set up at the back and the engine driven pump must suck through the check valve it has a definite cracking pressure drop that can increase vapor lock problems. I avoid this by mounting mine across from the engine on the other side of the frame rail in parrallel with engine pump. There are schematics and tradeoffs of the differant setups in my articles. The lowest cracking pressure fuel compatible check valve I found at McMaster carr.
Sorry,trying not to be too argumentative, but just to do a more apples to apples comparison, the NAPA website sells both BCI-4 and redtop batteries, and so one can compare the specs directly and should be comparable to current standards. Cold crank amps for the BCI 4 is actually listed at 975 vs 800 for Redtop, so yes, two redtops in parallel would give potentially 1600 CCA which would keep the voltage to the coil a bit higher when cranking the starter. A single redtop would gave a bit more voltage drop due to the amperage rating. The reserve capacity for the BCI-4 is listed as 250 minutes compared to 100 minutes for the redtop, so a bit more than 2 redtops in parallel.
I think the primary advantage of the Redtop is the technology allows a higher amperage capacity relative to the size of the battery and I understand they are supposed to last longer. The total energy available (amp hours x volts) I think is still pretty much a function of the volume of lead and electrolyte contained in the battery, similar to a 12 gallon fuel tank is only going to take you half as far as a 24 gallon tank regardless of the fuel pump max flow capacity. As long as the tank keeps getting filled up before it is empty (the battery recharged) you don’t have a problem.
I have had a regulator fail on my Packard and driven home about 200 miles on the single big battery. I also had to take the Packard to participate in my daughters wedding 60 miles away the day after the generator failed (3rd brush shot), and managed to do all the starts and some night driving on a single charge. I carried the Pierce’s battery in the trunk just in case, but didn’t need it. A long time ago I was on my way for the first time to a PAS meet at Monterey with my ’66 T-Bird and the generator failed. Drove to the meet and then all the way home about 300 miles on one charge on a fresh battery but didn’t use the AC.
Having two batteries of 1/2 the capacity does mean you get a good idea of when you have expended 1/2 your capacity and how much further you might be able to go on the last half.
You pays your money and takes your choice!
Jim
I know many old car guys swear by the optima, but as Greg says, there is only one 6v size available. and it is 1/2 the size of the original in a Pierce. While its technology manages to put out almost as much current -800 cold crank amps- it still is only rated at 50 amp hour capacity, compared to the 140 a-h of the big original. That means it will crank the engine less than half as long if it is having starting issues. Of course you will burn the starter up if you just crank continuously until it goes dead. Some have put two optimas in the tray in parallel to double capacity, but there can be issues charging two batteries hooked up in parallel. The big 6v from NAPA puts out 880 cca, is $111 and mine have actually consistently lasted 5 to 6 years – why I don’t know because I do no maintenance on them and until recently never trickle charged them.
While we’re on the subject, I am wondering if any type of caulking or weather strip is used under the top fabric when it is tacked in before the nail strip, and then also between the nail strip and the top fabric. I have perused the PAS service bulletins and and recent posts here and don’t see it discussed. I don’t think the surface of my sedan’s channel is uniform enough at the many leaded panel joints to get a seal without something.
Jim
On my ’35 the primary ground path is not via the engine mount bolts but via a large lattice braided copper ground strap direct from + battery terminal to a large attach bolt on the transmission. A secondary 8 or 10 gauge wire grounds the body.
Jim
I am as stodgy as the next old car guy and dread updates that change the interface, however sometimes it is well worth it. I was frustrated at first with navigating the new format, but it is well done and really just a matter of using it enough. I don’t think there is a website out there that just works the way everyone thinks it should. I remember all the complaints about the shortcomings of the old website. The posts yesterday about not getting a hit on a key word search is a good example. You have to understand that these things are incredibly complicated and don’t just magically work. I have just as much challenge doing key word searches on huge professional sites like the National Archives and the NASA technical information server, not to mention ebay. The amazing thing is that it is actually there and does work if you put a bit of effort into it. Not so long ago the process for finding PAS service bullitens was to pour through multiple years of indexes and then sending a check via snail mail to Bernie Weiss to get hard copies a few days later of what you hoped might be relevant. That system in its day was far better than other clubs at the time.
My one suggestion for the site would be to shift the recent activity listing on the mobile app forum to the top above the categorized listings. Not a big deal, means I have to spend an extra 2 seconds scrolling down.
Thanks again for the great work.
Jim
The keyword search can need a few tries, they usually do. I put in only “tappet” with no other qualifiers like subject or year and came up with 1 hit. I put in “lifter” only and came up with 4 pages of hits starting in the 1960’s. If you don’t come up with the same you might want to contact the webmasters in the thread below. Meanwhile I will forward my two articles. I would go through all the cleaning and checks before trying to replace any, they are usually just dirty or possibly the ball check is corroded. The plungers are supposed to be fitted to each bore and mixing and matching miscellaneous plungers from other engines could be a problem, although I found my ’35 type 1 1/2 to be very consistent except for a single one that was .001 undersize and leaking down to fast. I would first do everything to clean them up and test via leakdown. The ball checks are just 3/16 ball bearings, cheap and easy to buy new, but a pain to get the cross pin out that holds them in.
Jim
There are many posts and articles on the lifters in the PAS service bullitens through the years including a couple of mine over the past couple years. They can now be found with key word search and immediate download as pdf thanks to the new and improved website.
Jim
Is this the material that was tslked about a couple years ago hete that was closer to the originsl pattern? I didn’t see anything whether a run was made after that thread.
An electric pump since removed does make more sense. The valve needing to be turned off manually when running on electric to prevent short circuiting.
Looks like someone had a theory that they wanted to preheat the fuel, perhaps to improve vaporization in cold. Looks like it wouldn’t work well anyway, with no valve in the direct line and the heater line open the flow has to take two 90’s through tee fittings, so most of the flow is still going along the main. Just having the main fuel line paralleling in close proximity to the the exhaust pipe is a big vapor lock issue.
Electrical not my thing, but you might double check. The MoToRs manual states in the general section on generators (not Pierce specific):
“Open circuit operation: The generator should not be allowed to operate for any length of time with the generator armature terminal disconnected and the field terminal connected. This is open circuit operation which would permit a high voltage to develop in the generator fields and armature which might damage them severely.”
The ’31 Pierce wiring guide indicates this is an internally grounded field – so it would be connected – and the armature would be disconnected by the externally mounted relay (cutout) at rest or if the wire was disconnected. The wiring guide indicates that the voltage generated when running should close the relay contact at 7 mph and 7 to 7.3 volts. I think it is not a problem at idle and slow rpm, the relay will leave an open circuit as mentioned, but at high RPM it will generate higher voltages with no load to absorb. There is a thermostatic breaker in the generator field circuit, so maybe that will protect it. I remember on my ’36 Packard when I first started it I left it disconnected and it didn’t damage the generator but blew the fuse in the voltage regulator. On my ’35 Pierce I went ahead and connected the generator wiring to the ammeter and battery to avoid this. Telling you 200% of what I know, so may not be a problem.
I am a lor slower, when I get stopped dead it seems to be measured in days weeks or months! Fortunately this wasn’t one of them, as it looks like the better part of valor to leave them alone. At least I now know what the configuation is if I need too. What unscrews and what must be pressed. All of my hinges are off the car currently as I slowly work through the painting process. Three doors done so far, except for some rework. I have rigged up a vertical tree to mount the hinges to that I can get to everything that shows open and closed.
Thanks Rich, I’ll give that a try.
Guess I was a little quick to ask, answered my own question. I ran a sewing needle up and down the hole a few times to loosen up the old grease and then found my standard grease gun would hold on the fitting well enough with pressure, and yeah verily some grease went down and out the middle of the pin. 99% of the grease of course went out attachment at the zerk, but it looks mission adequate.
Larry, thanks for doing this at a very reasonable price. My check is in the mail also.
Jim
Peter, thank you very much for the offer, but this is done. There is more to the problem than just this. The pin that the cover is hinged on was broken off and I had to slightly alter the design to redrill a new hole in a different position to avoid breaking a .0595 dia drill bit going down the shank of a hard steel pin locked in a soft zinc housing.
As tedious as it was, I decided it would be less time to build a new cover than trying to find a needle in a haystack. The odds are that if I did find the correct piece, it would be pitted and need to be replated on zinc. It seems that any obscure Pierce part on ebay commands a price of at least $175 if it is so badly pitted as to be good only for patterns. Another $150 for plating if it is actually intact enough to get it replated badly on zinc.
The clear coat is a good idea, but aluminum is very corrosion resistant and in Nevada I don’t really don’t have much problem with corrosion. The attached picture is an ordinary steel bolt off my Packard. 30+ years ago this was a badly pitted chrome plated piece. I turned it down below the pits and polished it. This was part of a piece I found after the rest of the chrome had been done and it would have cost a bunch to take the two tiny pieces to a chrome shop by themselves, so I never got around to it. The surface you see is the bare steel after sitting 30 years without ever being repolished.
Jim
Bill, I can produce the decal through the miracle of CAD and inkjet printing on water slide decals. At some point I will need to make them for my ’35 as well. To do it I need as good a picture dead on perpendicular as possible and a dimension to get the scale set. I can add the missing bits if I have enough to tell the patterns, but perhaps someone with one in better shape could help.Ideally it would be someone who has a loose repro decal that hasn’t been applied yet to avoid the distortion of the original attached to a curved surface.
Jim
Why it takes so long to restore a car. I thought I was finally ready to start the finish body work, and first up was fitting and final adjustment to the trunk lid (I replaced some rotten wood along the bottom several years ago). To do that I needed to fit the trunk latch and a weatherstrip to get the lid to its final fit. To do that I needed to repair and fit the trunk lock, hence the sudden problem of discovering there had been a trunk lock cover once upon a time. Thanks to Ed Minnie’s picture I had an idea of the trunk lock cover. Then asked the new owner of the green Club Sedan to look at his car and he told me it appeared to be the same design as the sidemount hubcap locks. I dug out my sidemount hubcaps and then could reverse engineer the design. New lock cover machined from aluminum, only took a week! i will finish polishing and replace the tiny screw with stainless.
progress is being made – very very slowly!
Jim
