Old guy44

We have been sharing tools left to us by our fathers. Here is my contribution. I have no idea where this originated, I do know that my father as a young man plowed behind horses. I had never seen it when he was alive, only found it in his garage after his death. Obviously at some point someone needed a wrench for something and in the absence of a Snap On tool truck whacked this one out of a piece of 1/2 inch flat stock. You can see the torch marks on the side. Crude but probably worked.

Never have I seen it put so eloquently.

Getting back to Van Nuys Blvd. I was cruising the boulevard about 5 years before these pictures were taken. Did a lot of street racing a little west of there. THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!

I did speak with Wilwood briefly at the onset and they have nothing for that era Pontiac or other GM. They do have rear conversions for the 9.3 drop out axle but they are quite large and will not fit in my 15 inch wheels. Don't know about Corvette but Camaro/ Firebird hubs or rotors won't work because they have a 4 1/2 bolt circle and the Catalina has a 5. My present plan is to use the hubs out of the front drums, it is probable that they have 12 inch hats with the 5 inch bolt circle hopefully with a useable offset. Larry has known Bill Wood for years and is going to put me in touch with him to see what they have that I might be able to work with. Stay tuned for the next installment. I did get the L83 and 6L80 under the hood, by comparison the brake should be a breeze.

Just food for thought. I put Alden coil overs in it and it is a totally different automobile. Be advised that if you try it the Alden springs have a 3 3/4 inch inside diameter and the original springs had a 4 inch ID. I had to grind the flat on the final coil to open up the spring as much as possible and get up into the spring hole with a large crescent wrench to bend the spring pad in all the way around so the new springs would seat. I got them bent in enough that the springs started to locate. When I got it back together I jacked it up as high as my jack would go and dropped it down hard to seat the springs a couple of times before I did the final height adjustment. It took 3 days off and on to get them in but well worth the effort. It corners a lot flatter than it did and the front end float is completely gone. I do plan to contact alden about the spring issue.

Never needed the boat anchor, the 55 stopped better without power than the Indian does with, it is all in the brake design. The Corvette was a 4 piston caliper with a large pad. I did however think about throwing my ex wife out the window more than once. Frosty, I am now aware that MP makes a disc conversion however the guy I work for part time knows Wilwood very well and they are only a half hour from my house. When I get over the task of putting the coil overs in the car, it required more modification than I ever imagined, I am going to chat with Wilwood to see if they can come up with a set of calipers and rotors that are balanced for the weight of the car and have a parking brake in the rear. I can make all the brackets necessary and I know that when I get done I will have a brake system that works. The conversion I have on it now uses the single piston GM caliper which is what MP uses and the pads are over half gone at 5000 miles. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Wilwood disks and 4, or maybe 6 piston calipers work so it seems to me to be the best idea. When I eventually get to it I will post pictures and all details of the project. Thanks anyway for your suggestions.

The current kit is one I found on ebay. Wilwood does not make a kit for it and if I had fount CPP first that is probably what I would have gone with. After a lot of research and brain picking I have decided to build my own. I just need to find a hat that fits the original hubs roughly the same dimensions as a 90's vintage Caprice. I will use the Wilwood 4 piston caliper. The Caprice had a 15 inch wheel so that should not be a problem. As long as I own a cutting torch, arc welder and a drill press making a caliper bracket should be well within my wheelhouse. I will be using the CPP rear kit with a parking brake. Yes I do have a power booster and no it is not a must. The first disc brake conversion I ever did was 67? Corvette discs on the front of a 55 Chevy 210. Used the stock master cylinder without power and no proportioning valve. I had to remove the residual check valve because the constant pressure did not get along with the calipers, caused brake drag. Put a 3/16 smaller wheel cylinder in the rear to compensate for the lack of a proportioning valve and the last time I ever saw it it still stopped great. So those who say that it is impossible to have front discs and rear drums without a booster or a dual master cylinder my reality trumps your theory. It is just the kind of stuff we had to do waaaaaaay back when, before you could just call up summit and have a kit sent out.

It is amazing how the durability of racing engines has improved. 50+ years ago when I was drag racing that engine would have been scattered over at least a hundred yards of asphalt. I saw many engine explosions shut down a strip while a team of people walked the entire strip picking up engine fragments. I remember one event when the blower and oil pan were simultaneously blown off the engine. I happened to be about 50 feet from it at about the 3/4 mark. between the parts, the oil and the fire it was a spectacular event. Closed down Lyons drag strip for the night. I am sure that events like that one led to the development of the rear engine dragster. Better to have the explosion behind you than in front. You want to know how to make a small fortune racing? Start out with a large fortune!

I cannot disagree with what you say especially the part about morons in government. I personally adhere to the conspiratorial view of history. I happen to believe that there is a consortium somewhere that is influencing everything we do in one way or another. For instance take a close look at how we got involved it WW1 and 2. Those are the biggies but there are countless examples of things for which there seems to be no other explanation. Power generation definitely falls into that category. What little I have delved into the issue there is no logical reason for the path we are taking. It is certainly not reducing emissions the cost per KWH appears to be astronomical. The problem of waste disposal for the batteries wind farm blades, generator maintenance and all the other issues that have been discussed by people that are in a position to know is alarming. You will never convince me that the politicians are ignorant of this so who is pushing it? Hitler was undoubtedly the most vile person in recent history but he got one thing right. If you tell the people a lie often enough and forcefully enough it eventually becomes the truth. Somewhere in this thread the question was asked who has their hand up Bidens a.. making his mouth move. My personal opinion is that it is Commie Laharris. She seems to have disappeared from the scene and I am always concerned when someone at that level disappears. What are they up to that they don't want us to know about? Problem is that the peons at our level are generally stuck with choosing the lesser of 2 evils. Who or what is going to cause the least amount of trouble for us. Because the liberals control the school system they are not going to work at pumping out critical thinkers because they believe to their core that government is the answer to all issues.

Nuclear power plants have been around for decades and there have been more people killed in the back seat of Teddy Kennedy's car than in all the nuclear accidents in the entire US. They are also disposing of the waste safely for the time being. So I am comfortable with nuclear as things now stand while they are perfecting fission. Anything but the Circus that is now going on. The why is easy. If they develop fission it will become a dead issue and they will have to develop a whole new smoke screen to pawn off on the average non thinking voter.

I have thought about an adjustable proportioning valve, the problem is that the only front brake kit that I found that fits on my Pontiac appears to have been designed in Disney's animation studio. It is superior to the factory drums in that I can step on the brake with out the car diving one way or the other, but the stopping power is less than the drums. I would like to have a balanced system that comes from the same supplier, probably Wilwood as they are local to me if I find that I need something. They make a rear brake kit for the 9.3 drop out so if they have a front rotor that will fit my spindles or a hat that will fit the hubs that are in the front drums that came off and a gm style single piston caliper to match the performance of their rear kit I will make brackets to fit. I was just hoping against hope that someone had found a spindle that would work with an existing kit and save me a couple of weeks of R&D. Now if I can just find a spindle to bolt to my work bench for the mock up I can still drive my car while I build the new system. I will supply pictures and measurements to document the system.

Had a few minutes waiting to leave for a doctors appointment so did a quick google search on solar/wind vs nuclear. It takes about 2000 wind turbines to equal one nuclear power plant which requires about 350 square miles of land. Its reliability is at best 35% because the wind is not always blowing. A solar installation would require 75 miles of land and only has a slightly greater reliability because at any given time half the earth is pointing away from the sun and the sun does not always shine. Today in So Cal the sun is hidden behind the clouds. Nuclear on the other hand has a 98% reliability, only requires 1 1/3 miles of land. Further one uranium fuel pellet—about the size of a gummy bear—creates as much energy as one ton of coal, 149 gallons of oil or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. A single nuclear power reactor generates enough electricity on average to power 755,000 homes without emitting any greenhouse gases—that’s more than enough to power a city the size of Philadelphia. In fact, America’s 94 nuclear plants produce enough electricity to power 75 million homes. Don't know about anywhere else in the world but you mention constructing a nuclear power plant here and the environmentalists would raise a cry that could be heard halfway across the state. Why is that? because as has been observed many times in this discussion they have been fed a strict diet of that which falls from the north end of a south bound bull. I went from total ignorance of the subject to having this much information in a 20 minute Google search. There is no way that any politician can claim ignorance of the subject. I can only ask how many dollars wind up in the pocket of some politician for every solar panel or wind generator that goes up. So what is the alternative to nuclear? That subject has been discussed from every angle so far in this thread and I can not add anything to what has been said other than the politicians have no objection to powering the navy that is protecting their worthless butts with nuclear energy.

It would be interesting to find out in volume and cost what the difference is to dispose of the waste from a nuclear power plant generating the same amount of power over the same length of time.

Has anyone out there managed to put together a disc brake system for a '63 full size or similar chassis that uses either Wilwood or Classic Performance disc brake parts on the front, both supply brakes for the 9.3 Olds Pontiac rear end but nothing for the front. I purchased the only front disc brake system I could find and put it on. It does have the advantage of stopping straight, something I could never get the drum brakes to do but it is not a very efficient system it requires excessive pedal pressure to stop and as a result the rears lock up anytime the streets are wet. The proportioning valve that came with it is non adjustable and there are ways that I could reduce the rear brake efficiency but it makes a lot more sense to just build a matched brake system. There is no line of thinking that makes sense to have that much time and money in a car and a brake system that came out of Disney's animation studio. If no one has done it I will figure it out and will post pictures but it is a lot easier if someone else has figured it out and can tell me what I need. Thanks

Not dream, nightmare. There is a movement afoot to recall our moron governor. If successful we can only hope that we get someone in there that has more than 12 functioning brain cells. Not likely with all the idiot voters we have on the far left coast but we can hope.

Frosty, I absolutely acquis to your superior logic. Government stupidity is a subset of human stupidity Unfortunately it seems to be the biggest and most dangerous of all the subsets. Re: electric/ co2's, back near the beginning of this discussion I stated that electric cars are not pollution free. They just move the pollution from the car to whatever is producing the electricity. If your power is being supplied 100% by hydroelectric, wind or solar then yes your electric car is pollution free. If however you are charging your battery off an old coal fired electric generating plant you might as well be driving a Hummer. Obviously the two extremes but the fact is that whatever is generating your electricity is where the pollution is being created. Since almost none of the population is being supplied 100% by one or more of the pollution free means of generating electricity electric cars DO PRODUCE EMISSIONS. The idiot politicians in California have decreed that by 2035? no piston driven vehicles can be sold in the state. The current electric grid has to rotate blackouts every summer when A/C usage is at its peak so what happens when even 10% of the population is charging the battery in their electric on that grid. They won't let you buy anything but an electric but I have seen no effort to upgrade the system to meet the demand that they have to know is coming, and if they started today they would not have the necessary means of generating let alone transporting enough electrons to meet the projected demand. Lets look at that in realistic terms. California has a population of 40,000,000. For talking purposes lets say that 25% of the population has a car and a license. That is 10,000,000 people that drive. The charger on an electric car requires a 75 amp circuit which is about 3X the circuit size on a central A/C. So 3X 10.000.000 equals another 30,000,000 A/C units on a grid that is already overloaded. This is going to work how? As Last Indian so eloquently put it WE ARE SCREWED Human stupidity at its best. legislate demands without the slightest thought of the consequences. When is the average voter going to wake up and stop electing every schmuck that promises the next hand out?

Frosty, You need to change bullet point 1 to Never underestimate the power of governmental stupidity. Just A6, In my lifetime I have seen government make countless decisions based upon unfounded ideas that are lately coming from uninformed environmentalists. All of this stupidity to switch to electricity comes from the unfounded idea that we are changing the worlds climate with pollution. My early school years were i the 40's and 50's. There were days that we were not allowed on the playground because the pollution was so bad that it would make your lungs burn and so thick that you could not see all the way across the playground. Surely if pollution were responsible for climate change it would have happened then. Refrigerants are supposedly responsible for ozone depletion but anyone that has ever worked on any refrigeration system knows that refrigerants are heavier than air. So how is a substance that is heaver than air getting up to the top of the atmosphere? It is my considered opinion that it is all driven by dollars. Business dollars that are driving politicians to make stupid decisions and give them the power that they want. My guess is that you could not find 1 in 10 politicians that are not driven by a power trip. And unfortunately they all believe that they know what we need better than we do. They are all knowing and we are children. The reality is if anyone cares to look that private enterprise is far better at curing problems than government will ever be. If anyone wants to argue about that just look at space X. They are under contract to NASA to put things in space because they can do it cheaper and more efficiently. How many countries are capable of putting something in space and who alone is capable of retrieving a booster and putting it on the pad it took off from? With regard to your post on electric cars how long is it going to take the general public to realize all the drawbacks of driving electric and start buying a used gas driven car? The next big business opportunity will be to buy a wrecking yard and start rebuilding all the wrecks while parts are still available. I will be driving my '63 Pontiac and my wife will probably still be driving her Lexus hybrid. The idea of the electric infrastructure being overloaded is already happening without electric cars. Tract house developments that were built in the 40's and 50's when A/C was not even considered are now experiencing brown outs on hot days because A/C has been added to most of the houses. So likewise when everyone is plugging in their car it obviously will overload even the newest neighborhood. Decisions made without the slightest hint of reality. Government at its best.

The real problem is that an increasing number of politicians world wide believe that government is the answer. The world was a lot better off when the prevailing wisdom was that government is the problem. I believe it was Will Rodgers, but I might be mistaken, who stated diapers and politicians should be changed often and for the same reason.

I have been so busy helping my friend with his shop that I have not kept up with the Pontiac news. The '65 build is amazing. I have the utmost respect for someone with the patience necessary to complete a project of this kind. I have the patience of a flash bulb and my idea of a complete build is that it looks good from 30 feet and is reliable enough for a daily driver. My definition of reliability is that I can jump into it at any time and head off for a road trip without worry. As already stated the detail is off anyone's chart, my hat is off to the builder. I can only say GREAT JOB

In my opinion it is a way of forcing new technology on the general public that they do not want or really need. All of this is a result of "global warming" which I for one do not accept. If you go back to the beginning of recorded temperatures and compare them to present temperatures you will find that for the first half of the last century the "chicken little" headlines would change every 10 to 15 years from "we are going to freeze to we are going to boil" and so on. To make the point look at the previous record every time a new temperature record is set. It is generally 50 to 100 years old. Which means that 50 to a hundred years ago it was just as hot as it is today. So now what is the point of the new emission standards? They all require new industries of some kind. If an automobile runs on electrons those electrons need to be generated by some means. Electric vehicles do not eliminate emissions they just move them. If you drive a plug in anything that is connected to a coal fired generating plant you might as well be driving a Hummer! So now all the generating plants need to be upgraded to some other means of generating electricity which means new businesses of some kind whether it is electrons, hydrogen or rats in a wheel. Those new industries are all TAXED and who collects the TAXES? I will leave it there and let everyone form their own opinions, put my soap box back into my shed and go on with life. P.S. to all who wish to convince me of the error of my ways save your time. I have watched politicians manipulate the general public for 76 years and all the "facts" you may wish to spout are not going to change my opinion of what is really going on.

Finally took the time to watch the program on the WS6. I would invite you all to watch the first part of it again only ignore Jay and the car and look at the surroundings. The first part is shot in the warehouse that houses his collection and then it moves across the parking lot to the warehouse that houses his shop. As I recall all the artwork on the walls was painted by set makers it is not posters. and the shop is immaculately clean. Larry is talking about taking another trip over there and if he does I will tag along and see if they will allow me to take pictures. If so I will post them.

The guy I work for part time used to do all of Leno's engine work. He got me into Jays warehouse full of his collection. It is something to see, including the 55 or 56 Buick that he drove to California. Larry told me never to get in a discussion about cars with Jay because it is about 90% that you will lose. Did not get an opportunity to meet Jay but it is my understanding that he is as nice a guy as you can meet.

Been working my tail off trying to help a friend get his performance engine shop back up to speed and have not has a chance to respond to any of the last months posts. The super bird and the iron block and heads GTO are both two thumbs up. I have spent enough time building old cars to know how much time and devotion goes into them. Regarding the accomplishment of the GTO my mind goes back to the time when Larry Dixon senior had the worlds fastest Chevy powered dragster and Don Garlits said that it was a shame he didn't have a Chrysler in it that it would probably be the worlds fastest dragster. While I am not trying to diminish in any way what either one of them accomplished and am duly impressed with the power created by a stock block Indian, like Don my mind goes to what could have been accomplished with a newer platform. Just the way my mind works. On the other side I would be more than willing to have it parked in my garage! As for the Demon on wagon wheels and the GM whatever with the aluminum version of the wagon wheels on the front, what insanity people do with their cars still amazes me. Proof positive that there is still an abundance of people in this world with a lot more money than brains. I was on my way back into town from a trip years ago and actually saw a 60's vintage Ford Galaxie with very similar aluminum wheels on all 4 corners. It was similarly jacked up in the front and rear to clear everything and the front suspension geometry was so screwed up that at about 50 mph it was dancing around so bad in the far right lane that I could not get past it fast enough. I did not want to be behind it when the inevitable accident occurred. I cannot imagine someone actually driving something so dangerous on the street. If they don't care about themselves what about the innocent people around them. I will say don't park it in front of my house or it will get ugly. Hoping that everyone is doing fine and staying healthy.

You don't mention the year so I will be generic. You obviously have not pulled the control head out and physically inspected it. Unfortunately that would be the first place to start. When you push the button down there is some kind of catch that holds the button down. When you push another button it releases that catch and the catch on the button pushed activates. Not knowing the year I can not speculate as to whether or not your control head is plastic, if it is there is probably no way to fix it. If it is metal usually it is possible to repair but what repair will dep[end on the inspection. It may be that something is bent and a pair of needle nose pliers will fix it. If it is a wear problem some precision welding can build up the wear area and a little detail work with a Dremel will fix it. This however generally requires some level of disassembly. This is a pretty generic answer but over the years I have fixed a lot of controls for various systems using some variation of the above outline. This is the "fun?" part of old cars. Good Luck

When I put the Sniper on my 63 I used the Holley frame mounted pump I never really heard the pump. I did however find another problem. When I had less than about 5 gal left in the tank it would slosh the fuel away from the pickup on a hard turn and the engine would instantly die. With regards to the O2 sensor either pipe is fine it just needs to read the exhaust so you want it within about 9-10 inches of the exhaust manifold. No welding is necessary it comes with a clamp on bung you just need to be able to drill the hole. Ideally you want it within about 25 degrees either side of the top line of the down pipe. I know of no way to add a second sensor. With regard to tuning, Yes you can interface with a laptop. There is a Holley approved shop within about 40 miles of my house and that is how they tune them. No I do not know the procedure, I never made it out there the 389 launched a rod before I ever set up an appointment. What I do know about the Holley tune, you want to lean out the cold enrichment. If you are doing a lot of short trips particularly in cold weather you can watch the gas gauge drop. Stone cold with the air cleaner off there was a fuel fog about 6 inches above the unit. If you held a flashlight behind it it was clearly visible. Driveabillity with the auto tune was a vast improvement over the 2bbl rochester but there were things that I believe could have been fine tuned out of it. I think for the driving I do I would have been better off with a C series AFB but mine was an early 389 with the 6 bolt intake manifold and after a year of searching I never got close to finding a 4 bbl manifold. I am an old school guy and I understand tuning the Carter carb I don't know anything about tuning a fuel injection of any kind and that is a good part of the reason for my preference of a carburetur.