Well I am so happy to say we now have brakes!  What a nightmare it has been trying to assemble all the parts, knowledge and time to get this silly brakes working....but as of last night we are rocking!

 

I ultimately had to by a very short reduced shank 7/16" bit and drill blind into the old bleeder screw hole....then of course I had to grind two 1/4" NPT taps...one longer and one shorter...in order to cut enough thread into the wheel cylinder to put the 1/4" bushing inside of it.  Of course, when I got that all done the orginal acorn nut that fit over the inlet brake line didn't fit....so I had to fabricate a flat, 3/8 X 24 nut to fit on top of the hose connection....phew...that was alot of monkeying around.

 

Needless to say I hooked up my handy dandy homemade pressure brake bleeder and bled the whole system in less than 10 minutes....by myself (note to self....never will I bleed brakes the old way again).  Following that we took our first road test!  Over to Wilderness Chevron to fill 'er up!  Yeahaw a full tank of gas does wonders for your attitude.

 

Following our road test we went to our first Golden Era of Automobiles club meeting and met some really helpful, friendly folks that understand the joy and challenges of pre-war automobiles.

 

Then Erin and I raced back home, picked up the Chrysler and promptly drove the 14 miles to my folks house to pick up the kids.  I can honestly say I never, ever saw myself driving this neat old car considering when I was around 5 years old I was terrified of it and always prayed that it wouldnt' start so I didn't have to go for a ride in it!

 

My dad was excited to see it out on the road (since he road around in it when he was just a little guy) and our kids were so excited to see the car come to pick them up.  Rowan remarked on the way back in 'Mom, Dad we don't need the suburban anymore...we can just drive the old car everywhere we need to go!'.

 

I'll get some more pictures up soon and of course we are looking forward to our first tour this summer.

 

later,

 

 

 

-josh

Well this weekend was primarily consumed w/ father's day duty and a 3 in 1 brake job for some dear friends of ours...well spent indeed.

 

I have been stymied by the brakes on this old girl....the wheel cylinder doesn't have enough depth to get the pipe thread through...so I have to pull the drum...but the pressed on tapered axel drum will not come off without a special tool...that of course no one is making anymore.....so back to the circut to find one of these puppies.

 

It is a 2 5/8" 18 TPI hub w/ a bolt through the center to pull the drum off...so if you have one sitting around let me know.  I'll buy it from you, or borrow it...whichever you like best.

 

I can't wait to get back on the road as I have things tuned up very nicely, and we are all ready to go for a family cruise.

 

later,

 

 

-josh

Well...new master cylinder back from the rebuilder is on the car.  Spent copious amounts of time trying the execute on the bleeding process....but just ended up spilling my own blood sweat and tears!  Talk about a pain.

 

But, there is hope!  I fabricated my own pressurized bleeder to hook up to the reservoir....worked like a bloody champ!  I will not bleed brakes the old fashioned way again.  So I got things all hooked up and had the best brake pedal action you could imagine out of a 1925....and then....I found that the bleeder in the rear was stripped out...so with each pedal press the goodness went down a bit further....until no more brakes.

 

So now I am in the fab business.  I hogged out the previous hole to thread a 1/4" pipe bushing into it, and then tapped the bushing out to 7/16 x 20 for the bleeder.  We'll see what happens next!

 

Also got all the switches working again...man those things were frozen solid.  but none the less it sure feels good to throw the choke, flip the ignition switch and fire it off and drive it down the street......stopping w/ the hand brake.

Well this weekend was a spectacular weekend from the car project perspective.  My trusty brother-in-law came over and we swapped out all the tires.....if you have never done tires by yourself (especially antique tires) make sure you are ready for some real work....Fun...but in a painful sort of way.  But it sure felt good to see the new rubber on those rims.

 

The master cyl is still being rebuilt (should be done today or tomorrow) and then I will have to tear down the rest of the brake system and have the bands rebuilt and the slave cylinders rebuilt as well.  Then I think I will be done for this summer...we'll have a runner/driver that actually stops w/o the help of the parking brake.

 

As to trials...I started working on the fuel delivery problems.  The original vacuum driven fuel setup has been bypassed w/ a modern inline electric fuel pump.  Two bad things are going on.  The fuel always drains back into the tank and takes an inordinate time to come back up to the carb...and when the pump is running but the car isn't' gas just pours from the throat of the carb.  This is a major pain as it might take 3-5 minutes to get it started, and by then I have a pretty good puddle of gas in my garage....grrr.  I tried to solve the problem by putting a pressure regulator into the system (assuming the pressure is just blowing past seals) but that didn't seem to help.  So now I am going to have to get a carb expert involved...as that can't be good.

 

Number two on the 'pisser' list is the attempt at fixing some of the controls inside the car.  Over the years the choke/run switch and the ignition switches have frozen up and then broke.  Folks before me were using vice grips to get them to turn...and of course now they are totally frozen.  Well as I started to investigate I ended up breaking the glass on the gauge...that was a real bummer.  So not having any good glass or lexan to use I made spare parts out of CD cases / hard plastic.  It will hold for now...but I think I will switch to lexan for the time being as it is cheaper and easier to fabricate with.  Now I just need to find a good way to put a new switch on top of the control as the back is an intricately machined piece which I don't want to try and duplicate.  I am thinking of shaping the tops of the switches to a hexagon and then drilling/tapping the shaped sections and threading on a modern switch so that I at least have something other than the nub that is there now.

 

However....on the super cool side of things...the old OOOOGA horn is working again...now that makes all the kids smile.......

 

 

More later..