Last Indian

Welcome! Every bit of what JustA said. If you’re not sure ask. If it doesn’t sound right to you ask again! And pictures are, you know, worth a 1000 words.

Welcome ! Nice Judge! There’s a guy on here who’s a little frosty, but he has the Jury!

Oil!! Who needs stinking oil?! JustA throw some Vaseline on it! 🥴

Ditto, Ditto. No VSS in a “70s” /2nd gen F body! All where gear driven speedo cable to an analog gage.

Oh he’s got a connection, but not to Waterford, the other part! But, under which car?

Well I would if I could, but it’s not 2020 anymore, so not a good idea! JustA knew what I meant! He’s a patriot, & a good one. Let’s JustA say someone who truly speaks the truth, was really close to JustA’s hometown yesterday! In this very moment & in this time, there is a book that never lies. It says the truth is cast to the ground & it names who does it! AND it’s not the one who was in Waterford township yesterday!

I’m thinking JustA is smiling ear to ear tonight! Waterford township, Mi. Elite jet center!!

That sounds like a good choice! You probably have thought of this already, but if not, wire. What ever gage you buy & that will most likely be more than one. Consider silicone coated or PVC coated wire because of it’s flexibility. They also make multi wire jacketed wire in PVC, which is flexible & would actually help you to reduce wire runs to the same area.

That’s it Peter! You put your pissed off hat on & show those little electrons who there messing with! Its a lot of work & detail, but oh so worth it. Are you leaving those bulkheads & just going to go from the interior side of the car? If you are, clean those male bulkheads/terminals up with some fine soft steel wool. Then spray them with some LPS 1 & let them sit for a day or two. Then wash them down with some alcohol, not beer, but isopropyl! And let dry. The female side is a little more difficult. Get some 280 grit wet & dry carborundum paper & cut & fold it so it will go in to the female terminal with minimal effort. Then slide it in & out. This will help clear out corrosion & debris. Then once again spray with LPS1 & let sit, then the alcohol thing again. When you put them back together use petroleum jelly liberally on the terminals. This material is not a dielectric, but does help those type of terminals connect & it also prevents corrosion.

Peter, I’m telling you you are close, at least with the issues you are currently dealing with. Two lane is saying what I have been indicating. You need a solid 13.5 to 15 volts out of the alternator. The car runs off the alternator not the battery, keep that in mind. From the 13.5 to 15 volts coming out of the alternator it all starts to drop from there because of resistance. Those plugs that you show are really going to knock the crap out of voltage. So it’s good that you can now clean them up & that will help reduce resistance, but as soon as you can see about getting the voltage adjusted & I personally would say if & when it’s adjusted push it towards the 14.5 or 15 volt side.

Well if you decide to try to see if you can adjust the voltage regulator. And you can, use your meter at the battery & see if you can get 14 or 15 volts. If that happens see what you get at the fuse box. If that goes to 12 or over, put your blue streak wires back on & see what that nets.

Peter, I did get sidetracked from what I was going to say. If you have the desire to pursue JustA little further you might be close. You say you have 12.7 volts at the battery while the car is running. That says that is all the regulator is allowing to be put out. That’s a problem! See if you have an adjustable regulator. It should be but, I can’t assume so. 12.7 volts at the battery means much less at every place else in the car! Even the entire ignition system, coil, distributor, spark plug, etc. that in turn impacts timing with respect to a good fired mixture or bad. So if you want to step through things one last time before you throw in the towel, I’ll give it a go with you.

Peter, I understand that feeling & in many cases true. This is why so often you see a ground up rebuild of these old ones that basically is like building a new car! Not one component is left untouched or it’s replaced. The car is completely dismantled down to nothing. That’s an expensive & arduous task. And the ancillary items needed to do such a task is such a daunting task on it’s own, that it can stager the mind. There are many things that can persevere a cars condition over long periods of time & prevent the issues you are seeing, but when you didn’t have that control from the beginning you have no idea what has or hasn’t been done to preserve that condition. Well, you have issues that can be troublesome. Most of what you are experiencing can be rectified without enormous cost, but it’s really about what you want to tolerate & how much you are willing to endure to get it. Best of luck with whatever path you take.

Agree with Joe hard to tell, but does look red. Do me a favor, take the dipstick with the trans fluid on it & wipe it on a white paper towel. Than take a picture & show me that. Also check the fluid again. Engine warm, drive the car around the block a couple times. Engine running pull the dipstick out wipe it off. Put it all the way back in then pull it back out & note where the solid fluid line is on the stick & let us know. In general from the quick view it looks ok & the level looks adequate, but let’s make sure before you make your next move.

Kiwi, Peter, my reply on both subjects, voltage & spark plug wires I will render, but a few questions. Peter have you taken a voltage readings at the + & - post of the battery while running? Is that were you took your reading with your volt meter or did you take it at a different connection point? Do you have an adjustable regulator? If so did you try to adjust it? Do you have a remote starter, the kind you can connect at the battery & starter then press the button to start? If so have you tried to start the car that way, which will eliminate all other car circuitry & if the car fires right up you’ll know that the slow crank issue is not with the engine (I.e. fuel, ignition, time or battery cables. And then it does lie in the car circuitry somewhere. In my opinion I would forget about all the braided ground straps, in fact I would get rid of them unless you plan on returning the car to a concourse condition. Then instead I would replace those grounds with a single 1/0 welding cable that goes to the frame & then a second leg from there to the engine. Welding cable will have the lowest loss of any cable, is the most flexible electrical wire you will find, it’s very fine strand copper wire & has as good of conductivity there is for the money. I suspect the problem lies in the car resistance circuitry since you say the battery stay charged at 12.7 volts that can’t happen unless the alternator/generator is producing at least 13 volts. Spark plug wires. Now there’s a quagmire! How long have you had the Blue Streaks, as in, i.e. miles, ballpark? My guess of that there is something going to ground. It may be the wires themselves or the resistance is so high, because 41,000 (41.4K) is approaching the max of 50k which is a racing application. That it’s causing something upstream to go to ground as resistance changes. Depending on the entire system, filament or fiber stranded wires, like blue streak, can be a problem small breaks in the fibers increase resistance. These type of wires are more typical for high energy systems, excuse me as I don’t remember what you run for a ignition system, but if it’s closer to a standard System than a ultra high energy system, than those wire will tend to cause problems if there is the smallest hiccup. Old carbon filled wires or copper strand wires are more suited for old style systems, because of their low resistance. I think you are seeing a ohms drop when you add the sparks plug to the wires because they are in the open atmosphere not in the head under compression. So they become a better conductor of continuity for the energy flow through the fiber cord. My two cents.

Voted! Unlike JustA mine said #1, ! Hey that hurts, stop hitting, it was JustA joke.

What Rick said! That is the engine oil dipstick. I can even see the soot in the oil on the stick, (those little black spec). The transmission dip stick is in about a 3/4 diameter tube close to the firewall. That dipstick will have a S shape configuration towards the bottom of it when you pull it out. The S shape is what helps hold it in the tube because of the disparity in size between the dipstick & the tube size.

All plastics are made from crude oil, which are refined into polymers for use in plastics. Old plastics are not as well engineered as they are today. Any, but especially those older plastics age & this is what occurs. What you are feeling are polymers. To fix this get a micro fiber cloth & isopropyl alcohol, make sure to use gloves. Use the isopropyl sparingly, I.E. don’t soak the cloth. Rub the wheel all over till the sticky is gone. When done use a good, like Meguiar’s, interior shine product. You might have to do this more than once depending on how badly the polymers are separating from the substructure. It’s important to keep plastics well replenish with high quality silicone products like a Meguiar’s.

Frosty, look at this word doc. This shows how the center hub can be moved back, it also shows how the wheel is backwards as I said & why it would appear larger. It also shows that I used a SS wheel adaptor I made to move the front wheels out an additional 3/4 “. Which I could have put more backspace in & not used the adaptors.

Frosty, be aware that you may need to call & speak to someone who knows that wheel. When I originally thought of getting mine their site said I couldn’t get the backspace I wanted & they weren’t an option for my car. I don’t know why, but it did. Upon talking to the supervisor that ran that area & discussing what I wanted he said in wasn’t a problem & told me haw we could do it. Hindsight I wish I had done more backspace. I could have had an 1” deeper dish on both front & back.

DO NOT get me wrong! I am not knocking Foose wheels, not in the least, but you in general are paying a higher price for a name as well as a smaller volume product. So if that is your absolute heart’s desire, than wait till you can get there. In the meantime you can consider what I said sometime back. Take the chrome rally ll’s & do what you can. And as I said back then was take wheel to a shop where they can remove the welded center from the outer ring. Reset the backspace you want & reweld the center to the ring. Depending on how much the heat impact the chrome on the front of the wheel you may be able to polish it out if not you can find a PVD company in your area an have the wheels rechromed with the PVD process. But, before you did all of that you might look at American Racing’s Torq Thrust SL wheels. These are what are on the Indian. They look similar to the Foose wheel & less than half the cost. They are a two piece custom welded wheel. They would give you what you need for back spacing & the look would be close until you could get the Foose wheel. One thing that is unique with this wheel is its built backwards! The step down portion of the rim where the tire falls into when mounting or removing a tire from the rim, which actually reduces the diameter of the rim where the center fits always is on the front side of the rim, which is where the center fits for that configuration. But on this wheel it’s on the backside & so where the center sits on this wheel is the larger diameter of the ring, which gives the appearance of a bigger rim. Additionally these actually are a quality wheel, well made & when I had mine made even though I ordered them through a distributor I talked directly to the supervisor that was in charge of the area where they made these Torq Thrust wheels, so I could get exactly what I wanted done. 6D84923C-13BA-421A-9A1A-A48E1B3F6B3C.webp

I know this will probably be a waste, but what wheels do you want for the car? I.E. style, diameter, width? Is it still the Rally ll’s?

Finally settled on a final design. Really impossible for me to capture what it looks like in a darkened room with the camera I have. The LEDs just overpower the light sensor & kind of wash out the color.

I think everyone has covered the needs of getting the studs out quite well. I would just add that you might consider using 316 stainless steel studs, nuts & lock washers. 316 stainless will never be a problem to get out ever again. This is what I always run on my exhaust or high heat source application, even my cats. Whether you chose to do so or not I would advise retapping the holes out to clean out any debris. If you chose to use the 316 you may have to make your own studs from longer bolts, studs are not necessarily that available. You can also use 304 stainless, but 316 is far superior for corrosion & heat oxidation.

Welcome to FP! Beautiful car! Always interesting to see just how far Pontiac enthusiasm can reach!