Carb Fuel Line

Changed out the old steel fuel line from the pump to the carb. It had been cut and a clear plastic fuel filter spliced in right where the power steering pump is going to need to go. New stainless line from In Line Tube (via CPR) and a new repro glass bowl fuel filter made it all better.

The line needed a bit of trimming and on the carb end I *almost* trimmed too much. But it worked out great.

Hood Blanket

The reproduction hood blanket kit went in today. My car did not have one when I got it and the kit came in two packages with one coming from CPR and one from (?) a drop ship. I had no clue as to how the thing was supposed to go in. I assumed, incorrectly, that the blanket itself, which took the longest to arrive, would have some instructions. In the end, I think I've got it, with the help of Todd Crews, POCI # 016432, 1957 Tech Advisor and Pontiac-1950s Yahoo Group member. He sent me this little bit of ASCII art  and description:

Thanks Todd!!! 

I found a way that works better for me, and no fussing with clips. OK, so it's not factory. ;-)

The rods just slip under the cross braces. At the front of the hood, I just tuck them under following the curve down. Easy in, easy out. I lost one of the donut holes punched out for the clips though.

Spin!

Took the Chief out for about 1/2 hour or more, just driving around locally not too far from the house. This is the first ride after replacing the distributor. The car does seem to have noticeably more power now, I have to admit. That was not really my goal, but the original arrangement seemed a bit sluggish to me. I know these engines were fairly peppy so I'm glad to see that this one is now living up to the expectation.

The underhood light is in place now. I tested it and it works fine, just need to wire it up permanently.

Plug Wires

Put the new 8mm plug wires on today, and tried to time the advance. I could not find any timing marks at all on that damper. The spare damper I have from the power steering parts does have a pair of timing marks, but not the 3 marks the manual shows. Interesting. I timed it by ear. I think I want to re-curve the mechanical advance away from the "performance" settings it came from the manufacturer with. I got a full set of springs and weights to experiment with included with the distrib. Changed out the negative battery cable with a fresh on from CPR as the terminal itself was getting bad.

Distributor

Put the new billet distrib in tonight, along with the fancy 60KV coil. I don't like the coil much. And I can't say I'm super impressed overall yet, but I still have the old plug wires on there, which are not bad, but only standard wires. Also the plugs are at standard gap, so I need to pull, check and regap. I'll get a better feel for the difference in starting and running when I get a chance to corretly time the engine and get the rest of the stuff on.

Ignition Re-think

I gave the whole electronic ignition thing a new line of thinking this week. I decided I don't like the Pertronix Ignitor arrangement at all. I mean the original Ignitor, or Ignitor I. Maybe I just feel a certain amount of distrust due to being stranded when the ignition went dead awhile back. (Even though I blame myself for it.) But I know the newer Ignitor II and III are far superior in performance and fuel savings... not that this car is a daily driver or anything. I am now going with a replacement distributor. I compared prices of going with a later model factory distributor and adding a module vs buying a complete billet distrib from Pertronix and found it was about the same money and the billet is more flexible. So I'm going to get one of those. I also am going with the hottest coil they offer, the Flame Thrower HC with 60K volt output. Going to need 8mm wires to go with that, so I'll do a clean sweep, re-gapping the plugs along the way. The main delay is in getting the distributor, as it is apparently not as popular as the Chevy model. Go figure!

Odometer Check/Overflow

[27176] Insurance company likes to know if I'm staying within my mileage limits.

Added a coolant overflow tank. Nothing fancy, just a local auto parts store plastic setup. Does the job.

Repaired the bad wire on the ignition module, swapped it back in to the Chief and presto! Starts and runs good. I decided to try my run to the bank again and this time I made it there and back with no problems. Well at least I'll have a spare module if it's ever needed.

Stranded!

Well, the oddest thing happened tonight... I was going to drive over to the bank and deposit a couple of checks. I got about halfway there, and just as I was going over a speed bump, the car lost power and died. I was in a quiet residential area, and it was easy to coast over to the side of the road with room for a tow truck (convenient, no?) and call AAA on my cell. I had minimal tools with me and it was getting dark. But I could see fuel in the filter so figured it was loss of power to the ignition from the speed bump. The tow dropped us off alongside Laurie's house next to us, and after grabbing some tools, I checked for power to the coil and distrib, which we had. Hmmm... I was sure there wouldn't be. But I went ahead and checked for spark at the coil. No spark, as I figured. So the electronic ignition module was looking suspect. I checked the Pertronix catalog and the '49 Cad takes the same part number.*** A quick cannibalization and I thought I was ready to go. But still no start. What I didn't get initially was, with the Cad part 1183, the point cam requires a sleeve which I failed to transfer at first. I was grabbing the coil off the '49er to try that when I realized the sleeve issue. With that moved over to the Pontiac, it fired right up. So I was able to move the car to the garage. Whew!

After getting something to eat and settling down, I went and ordered a replacement module (a Crane unit this time). But I started looking at the failed module and found that the problem was actually my fault! (Installer error!) Apparently the red wire to the module had gotten pulled too tight on installation, and it rubbed against the point cam. Eventually wore itself through and the wire broke. It wasn't visible until I took the module out of the distributor, and since it was dark, I didn't see it until I looked at it at my desk. I think it can be repaired and I know I for sure want to triple-check my installations for this now. At least the tow was free and the driver was nice. It wasn't a bad experience at all except for when I thought I had the answer and it still didn't fire up because of that sleeve. No harm done and I learned a few lessons.

***NOTE: The Pontiac distributor can accept either the 1183 Cadillac part, or the 1187LS lobe sensor part. However, the Cadillac can't use the 1187LS because the screw hole is slightly off.

Hood Hinges:
Mine have been a little slack and I assumed it was due to weak springs. The car has low miles but the springs are still 55 years old, after all. Most of it's life those springs were in the stretched position while the hood was closed. But, posing the question to the Pontiac list got only one response and that was directions to a place that rebuilds the whole hinge. Too expensive and overkill, since these hinges feel tight but the hood doesn't stay put all the time. So I took a chance on Eckler's Classic Chevy and a pair of '55 Chevy hood springs. Reasonably priced, the measurements seemed close. Just put them on today and, not only are they a perfect fit, the hood is now quite happy to stay up on it's own. Awesome!

Blinkers:
I'm a big fan of LED signal/park/tail lighting on cars. Brighter, faster and more eye-catching also means safer. Used to be you had to fabricate your own. Then big trucks got to using them and you could buy units made for trucks and adapt them. I did that for a couple of cars. Along the way, some replacement 1156 and 1157 LED bulbs came along, and generally they were pretty poor. So I stuck to fabbing up my own out of truck lights. But then SuperBrightLEDs started selling some stuff that looked promising. I gave some of them a try and they are as bright as what I've been making myself, a bit less expensive, and a whole lot easier to deal with. Just pop the old bulb out and pop the LED replacement in. Amber, red and white are available. But, there are some catches. As I had already found out, LED lighting doesn't draw enough power to make a normal signal flasher work, since they work off of heat generated by the current draw of the light bulb. So you have to get a LED-compatible flasher. They are around at the auto parts stores and SuperBrightLEDs has them too. Be sure to get the right one. But even with that, I found that on this particular car, the blinkers still didn't blink right with the minuscule load the LEDs were putting on the circuit. Probably 55 year old wiring and connections are coming into play here. So I added to load resistors to the front circuit. They just wire in parallel to the blinker wire, but none are needed for the parking light wire. The resistors get hot, so they need to stay clear of anything heat-sensitive. like wiring and grommets, etc. So now I have LED lights on the front and rear, and on the hood ornament too. I had already converted the dome and courtesy lights over to LED.