[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

A very curious result in my K-S gas gauge UV exposure test. The fluid in my restored gauge suddenly turned to pale brown in the period of about one week after being in the gauge for a little over two months. That gauge has been protected in the garage without direct sunlight the entire time.

Meanwhile, the two UV test fluids sat in the direct sunlight for over a month with no obvious discoloration.

The fluid in the gauge that turned was probably about 20 years old stored away in a box inside its black light blocking sleeve until I pulled it out in July.

The fluid out in the exposure test was bought new in August.

One of the surprising things was how suddenly the color changed.

Perhaps age somehow plays a role?

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Ironstone is about the only show I go to. Beautiful grounds, old gold country area, laid back, a very wide range of makes and vintages, race cars but no hot rods more or less, and even has trailers, commercial and motorcycles. This year was the smallest showing of Pierces I’ve seen there, so a special thanks for driving your car up, it was great seeing it!

Maybe some year I’ll be able to drive mine there. Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Thanks, have heard good things about the Atwater-Kent folks. Fortunately I think I have my original sending unit sealed and functioning properly (out of the car). I cleaned up the female ends by kissing with a Dremel conical cutting bit, some polishing compound between the new conical fitting ends and added the Teflon tape. Didn’t crank the fittings down too hard and now have the loss in reading down to 1 gallon in three weeks.

I like to make the originals work when possible, even if they don’t look factory fresh.

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Jim, yes they have, with multi-viscosity being one of the best improvements. My doomsday bearing failure scenario should be less of a concern now than when these cars were new, however my concern is all the details that go into an engine rebuild that can overwhelm the advantages of things like better oils.

My point of departure on this is that if this was 1935 and my car was factory fresh except for 1000 break-in miles, it should have no problem running at 65 mph with original gearing and all.

Further on the plus side, these engine designs were tested at max throttle and probably ~4000+ RPM, so even running at ~3000 RPM on the highway is significantly below their capability.

However, my Pierce engine was rebuilt by somebody in the ’60’s and about 50 miles were put on it before it was parked again for the next 50 years. All in all the bearing re-babbitting looks good but I can only determine how good the bond is by destroying it, and then I get to go through a few thousand dollars having someone else re-babbitt and line bore it, with no assurance it will be any better than what I have. One thing that is a reasonable assumption is that either way it won’t be as good as the original factory build, so taking precautions to compensate for the likely deviations from the original is what I am about.

My Packard has early copper-lead inserts that were notorious for problems relining. Packard had demonstrated them by running on the test track wide open averaging 92 mph continuously for 7 days and nights. My original inserts were serviceable but had worn the crank, so I hard chromed the crank up to standard and used the original bearings. Hard-chroming the crank weakens it, and I had aftermarket pistons that obviously hadn’t been tested in multiple engines at 4200 RPM as the originals had. For that reason I put in a high speed gear set to slow the engine down.

My Pierce has serviceable original pistons, good crank, a 4:23 rear end but a non-factory re-babbitt job. RPM at speed shouldn’t be an issue if I keep bearing temperatures down and don’t tempt fate by lugging at high load at high temperatures.

With the 50 miles put on it in the 60’s and acceptable but tight clearance my crank had significant drag (>10 ft-lbs) when the main caps were installed and torqued. Babbitt is forgiving, and that level of drag would have probably worked itself out with a good break-in, but I just finished hand-fitting each bearing and reduced the drag to 3 ft-lbs.

Bearing failures on babbitt rebuilds seem to be reasonably common. One of the papers was a by a Studebaker engineer who noted that just the presence of a copper washer in a cleaning solution dipper had disastrous results on a batch of babbitt. Is the guy re-babbitting today as meticulous and knowledgeable as the guy who did it at the factory day in and day out with a process engineer over-seeing? Maybe, maybe not.

As an aside, it is maddening that spell check insists on capitalizing “Babbitt””!

Jim”

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

My google skills are lacking! Placed an order, 2.95/vial vs 18.75 plus S&H from C&E. Will be interesting to compare – if there is any difference at all.

Thanks Bill! Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

I put new 700 17 Firestones on several years ago. They’re fine. The biggest problem I’ve had is getting a decent tube. The tubes sold with them now are actually for 18 inch and are too large and get folds when installed. I had two flats after returning from an event immediately after getting them installed. I found a smaller tube,can’t remember for sure but it I think it was for a 16.5″ radial and no problems since.

Nothing like the originals that were “”safety tubes”” with a tube within a tube and heavily reinforced on the wheel side.

Good luck! Jim

“

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

The problems of the red dye in the KS fluid seems to be a big problem. Talking with John Dillman, he told me that the fluid on his PA lost most of its color after getting hit for one day by the sun. He is thinking of making a little cover to put over the gauge when not being used.

My wife is in the picture framing business, they routinely use 99% UV blocking conservation glass to drastically cut fading for photos and artwork. I just did a quick internet search and the bottom line is that UV blocking isn’t available in convex glass used for instruments. The thought occurs to put UV blocking film on the gauge glass. I don’t know that the KS dye fading is from UV, but seems likely.

Might be time for an experiment.

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Chris thanks for responding. I re-soldered the cone fittings pushing the new tubing a little past the end to get solder in both ends as John suggested. I used a dremel conical cutting bit to cut through the edge of the fittings to make a fresh seat and followed up with Teflon tape as you suggest.

I was trying to keep my test jerry can outside to avoid fumes, but realized – duh – I have 4 cars with carburetors and open ventilated gas tanks in the garage – the 5 gallon jerry can with tiny holes wasn’t going to be an additional hazard. I have it inside the garage now and will see how it goes this week.

Thanks again! Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

John, thank you for the information, it is very helpful and I will give you a call. I am not sure if I have it sealed yet or not in my off-vehicle test. I thought it was still leaking two days ago when it dropped from 17 to 10 gallons from evening to morning without touching or moving anything, but rose back up to 17 again this evening – the variation in heat on the jerry can and unknown gremlins makes it difficult to tell. I have to be patient and let it go up and down a few more days, but suspect it still is leaking. I tested the head unit by itself by sealing the copper at the sending unit end and over the course of several hours it rose and fell just sitting in the garage. Attached are some pictures. The smart thing to have done would have been to get new tube/capillary/reservoir assembly but I like the DIY challenge and took a shot at restoring the original. I soldered a new capillary to the glass tube and it seems to be okay. If I still have a leak I think it is at the sending unit connection.

No doubt it will be important to have a working trip odometer!

Thanks again, Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Thanks all! I have hopes of getting it working without taking it apart. Would be a shame to take such a nice original gauge apart if not necessary. I was able to get some the column down halfway to the right spot with a few cycles of putting it in ice and tilting it over horizontal and upside down interspersed with putting it in boiling water.

A foolish thing to do since I haven’t been able to locate a simple cross-section to understand how the ether from the bulb interfaces with the red liquid column. In the process of doing this some of the column fluid has done a little mixing and now it has some color to it – not bright red but at least some color.

It seems crazy I haven’t been able to locate such basic info as a generic cross-section of one of these things, but obviously haven’t looked in the right place.

Looks like I will be messing with the King-Seeley gas gauge in the next couple weeks, experimenting to see if I can get it working and adequately sealed with new lines/fluid and the cleaning I already did on the sender. It isn’t critical path right now except I am working out where to put auxiliary fuel pump and lines, parallel vs series. I probably will run a new separate line up the left side of the frame.

Thanks again! Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

100LL (low lead) aviation gasoline is sweet stuff and actually has 2 gms/gallon lead if I remember correctly. I used to use it as an additive to prevent valve recession – actually for a while I could get 145 octane purple used in the air racers which had 4.6 gms/gallon and required less to get some lead.

Selling to someone to use as an auto fuel puts the seller at serious legal risk for not paying road tax, however, and to use 100% av gas is going to require serious amounts of it. A person might have to rent an airplane and fly it to a private airfield to drain the gas, and then the risk is on them.

I would be interested in seeing the comparison of ethanol blend on antique cars and the rise in exhaust manifold temperature. If you ignore the rubber deterioration, water pick-up and corrosion problems ethanol is an excellent fuel, burns clean with very high octane rating – more than 6/1 compression ratio engines have any use for. There is a fundamental reason gas mileage goes down, pure ethanol has less energy per gallon. Attempts to use it in aircraft run up against this fundamental problem that range drops by 30% or more.

I think the fundamental reason that exhaust temperatures would go up on antique engines is because they tend to be set up quite rich – particularly 8’s and twelves. A problem for carbureting long multi-cylinders is getting a consistent mixture both near the carburetor and at the furthest cylinder. The fuel tends to drop out on long intake lengths and makes the far cylinders run leaner. To make sure everything fires smoothly the mixtures are set rich. They become really rich when the booster valve opens up. I once measured the Air-Fuel ratio of my Packard on the highway and anything above 50 would open the booster valve and pegged the meter at 8/1 (15/1 is stoichiometric). 8/1 is similar to what aircraft use for takeoff to keep from detonating (knock) at max power. It is using excess fuel both as internal coolant and knock suppressant. Such rich mixtures on a 6.5 compression engine were probably needed when gasoline octane ratings were so low. In 1935 average gasoline octane was 72 and “ethyl” was 78.

What does this have to do with alcohol? Besides having a lower ideal Air/fuel ratio to start with, alcohols chemical makeup includes oxygen, so it adds to the total oxygen in the combustion chamber when it fires and will burn more completely. That is my theory why exhaust manifolds would heat up. In an over rich mixture the added oxygen burns more of the gasoline. Since the octane rating is higher, the timing could be advanced significantly to compensate for the increased exhaust temperature and increase power. Our low compression engines could probably be advanced further than the point where there is actually any gain in power. Note retarded timing and lean mixtures drive up exhaust temperature and is hell on valves.

I am not too sure that our current problems with exhaust boiling out of the carb on hot days is entirely from ethanol. I think it might have to do with the vapor pressure limits implemented by EPA and has forced the refiners to have very high fractions of light distillates at the vapor pressure limits and small or no fractions of the heavier distillates. It is the heavier distillates that don’t boil out as readily when hot. My theory that I haven’t really researched yet, others probably have.

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

It has been more than a year since this topic was discussed but maybe worth resurrecting.

I finally reached the point of replacing the insulation on the firewall of my ’35 and found higher density fiberglass batting that seems like a fair substitute for the thick Kapoc batt that is stuffed up in that space above the firewall. I think I will also use it for the insulation between the two metal firewall panels to replace the Kapok. It is much denser than the usual low density fiberglass batts. I got it from McMaster-Carr and rolls and stuffs nicely:

Very-High-Temperature Sheeting

Temperature Range: 0° to 1000° F

Heat Flow Rate (K-Factor) @ 75° F: 0.26

Density: 2.4 lbs./cu. ft.

Color: Gray to brown

Whether it’s for industrial furnaces or other extreme-heat applications, lightweight fiberglass sheeting can handle the heat. Can be used outdoors with metal jacketing. Meets ASTM E84 25/50 for flame and smoke.

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

That’s a neat trick. I really need to learn to do basic welding! Bought one over ten years ago but reticent to learn how to use it.

I got the cup out by turning the arms of a small three arm puller to the outside to engage the cup edge, put a deep socket down the middle to keep the arms forced outward and pressed it out. I used the same trick as mentioned for the cones above to push the new ones in: cut a slot in one of the old cups and used it to bear against the new cup to protect while tapping it in.

regards, Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Bill. I was facing the same problem around Christmas. I did the trick of using the old split bearing cone to drive the new one on, but I have a small press that is just barely long enough with a bit of finness to press them on. The press was cheap (okay, it was from Harbor Freight) but does the occasional job like this well enough.

The biggest problem I had was getting the outside cup out of the housing.

Good luck! Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Thanks, hadn’t thought of the biscuit idea for the mortise and tenon joint, that is pretty straight forward and could work really well. One of those “why I didn’t think of that””? thanks!

The thought of ammonia to soak the wood leaves the worry of whether it will leave a bad smell for a long time in a closed car. That might be the process the company I provided the link to uses (I haven’t yet bought any to try it out).

Jim”

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Looks very nice and well matched.

I added lap belts a decade ago and years after our daughter was mostly grown up and spent many trips loose. It was a bit of a challenge building up a structure to anchor the rear belts in the center since it was never designed for seat belts.

The front seats of these cars are problematic, no dash padding or collapsing steering column so lap belts are limited improvement. I am planning to install shoulder harnesses in the fronts of my ’35 and lap belts in the back. An advantage of sedans and coupes having pillars to anchor the things to.

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Your right, 3 coats is what should be done for maximum effectiveness. Its kind of gilding the lily anyway, in reality I don’t think any painting does much as long as these cars aren’t left out for prolonged periods in the weather. To quote the Forest Service Handbook: Paints and varnishes are not used primarily to prolong the life of wood. Ordinary paints and varnishes are ineffective preservatives against decay fungi…Exterior woodwork that stays reasonably dry, except for wetting of its exposed surfaces by rain or snow for short times does not decay, but if left uncoated, will weather.

When I was younger trying to do everything “right” I “over-restored” by applying 3 coats, primarily because this gave 90+% effectiveness in reducing the rate of moisture change in the wood, i.e. the wood might gain moisture and stretch if assembled in dry Nevada and then spent months in the humid south. I don’t worry about that any more, and coating it is more a feel good thing. More important to seal the openings where moisture can ingress and get trapped such as the trunk hinge bolt holes above where moisture accumulated in 2 decades left outside in Wisconsin winters.

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Ed, thanks you’re right. After putting on my 3.50 magnifier reading glasses and poking at it I discovered I wasn’t looking at a rusted steel retainer but the dried gasket itself. A nail sticking up between the wood and the gasket misled me to think it was nailed in, and the woodgrain of the steel window reveal backing it up must have transferred to the gasket making it look like surface rust. The inner plastic layer of the window of course was disintegrated but I managed to get the two thin glass panes out intact after breaking up the gasket.

Dis-assembling without causing more damage is always a problem, particularly when dealing with wood framed cars where the framework was glued and screwed from the outside before assembling the sheet metal to it.

Thanks for your help!

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

The temperature regulator was installed on more cars than Pierce, senior Packards among them. I have the SAE technical paper by the engineer who originally developed it. Indeed, its purpose was to warm the oil up in winter and cool it on hot days – maintaining within a closer range of temperature.

My first one leaked, my second one has been fine for 30 years – maybe. Years ago I put peak temperature indicators on the goes-in pipe and goes-out pipe on a 400 mile 65 mph 90 degree+ summer drive down I-80 and I-5. The max temperature in was the same as the temp out – in other words the oil temp was pretty much the same as the water temp and water wasn’t doing much to cool the oil. Multi-vis oil solves the cold start/run issue, so seems prudent to bypass it.

Reminds me of another 1930’s SAE paper I have somewhere with some interesting tests and analysis of oil cooling and other means to cool the bearings. Its been a few decades and mean to dig it out again but the conclusions were somewhat non-intuitive with some interesting insight on bearing failures with high speed driving.

Jim

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

I’ve used 50/50 mix of distilled water only with glycol (usually traditional Prestone) without problem for 30+ years. No corrosion inhibitors and several years between changes. Includes my Packard driven ~1000 miles a year. Only significant corrosion I’ve had is with my nearly all-aluminum Alfa Romeo that’s been my daily driver for 36 years (wet steel cylinders in alum block and head).

My big cooling issues shave been where something in the system – heater core or head- haven’t been thoroughly cleaned out and blocked the upper tubes. 2 out of my 6 cars have Tefba filters because of this, and by the way, I really liked Jack’s super Tefba style filter with magnets. I’ll be doing something similar on my Pierce when I get to that point.

Currently I am lucky in that none of my engines have aluminum head with cast iron block which I don’t doubt would require a lot more frequent changes and corrosion inhibitors due to the large areas of dissimilar metal in the coolant circuit. Spent an interesting weekend a long time ago getting Packard V-12 aluminum cylinder heads unstuck from the block due to corrosion around the studs. I think someone had used nothing but river or dirty well water in it for years, the cylinder jackets were totally packed with sand.

What I like about distilled is that I know what’s not in it.

Jim

[Author]

Posts