David Marques of Brazil is working on a new site hosted by The Old Car Manual Project: brazil.tocmp.com
This is a fascinating and visually appealing site dealing with Brazilian cars, including the Brazilian-American makes that are just a little bit different from the US models.
Also check out David’s gallery of Brazilian car brochures at oldcarbrochures.com/brazil
Since starting out nearly seven years ago with a few dozen pages scanned from my collection of 1950’s Holley carburetor manuals, The Old Car Manual Project has grown to tens of thousands of user-contributed pages of manuals, brochures, pictures and advertisements.
Some of the new things that we’re doing with the site are adding self service areas where Old Car Guys can share their automotive literature with the world. The first of these is the newly revised oldcarbrochures.com. Registration is required, but if you’re a serious gearhead with a collection of literature that you would like to scan and share, this is the place. When I checked earlier today, there were about 15,000 pages on that site and growing. Fred has been looking after that collection in addition to his great work on maintaining our links page.
In the alpha testing stage is the Swap Meet, which is a classified advertising site for old car stuff. It’s not quite ready for prime time, but you’re welcome to look and to post a free ad if you wish.
Also coming soon is a gallery of old car ads (a zillion of them), a place for pictures of your rides, free pages for clubs and more. Your suggestions are appreciated - let me know what you think.
A lot of Rochester carburetors came originally equipped with a hot air choke, in which heated air from the exhaust or intake manifold is used to open the automatic choke as the engine warms up. There is a metal tube from the manifold leading into the carburetor choke housing. Inside the choke housing is the choke coil, which is a spiral bimetal strip that unwinds as it warms up. The strip engages a tang on the choke shaft, which turns the choke plate to the open position.
All this works just fine until the plumbing gets damaged or lost, typically during repairs or restoration. Also, if the exhaust doesn’t have a diverter valve to direct hot exhaust through the intake crossover, the system won’t heat up enough to work properly. Headers will give the same problem - not enough heat for the choke. Sometimes the tube will corrode, allowing raw exhaust to be sucked into the carb - not a good situation.
Fortunately, the problem is easy to fix. It’s a matter of replacing the old hot air choke cap with an electric choke thermostat. In GM vehicles, these are a one piece assembly in which an electrical heater element which takes place of the old hot air source. The choke thermostat is installed in place of the old one, but without a gasket, because the electrical ground is through the body of the carb. The power wire is connected to a source that is turned ‘on’ with the ignition. Often, the wiper motor feed is a good place to make this connection. From the factory, these are often wired through the oil pressure switch so that power is supplied when the engine is turning.
To adjust the choke, just turn it so that the choke plate closes at room temperature. In cold weather it will be tightly closed with the engine off and on a hot day it will be loose or partially open.
Once the install is done the old hot air tubing can be removed and the holes plugged or it can be left in place (if there are no leaks).
The choke coil shown above (part CC139 from The Carburetor Doctor) is an OEM-type GM choke thermostat which will service Quadrajets with the choke integral on the body (M4MC, M4ME, M4MED, E4MC, E4MC and 4MC) as well as DualJets. It will also work on some 2G carbs, though some 2G’s have the coil wound in the opposite direction.
A couple of weekends ago we went on a camper trip into the beautiful Kootenays of southern British Columbia. Packing up the trusty ‘76 GMC chassis C-class we ventured off in search of spectacular scenery and nifty old cars in hidden-away places.
As we usually do, we picked a random road to follow, heading north though a narrow valley between mountain ranges.
Late the second day our 5-ton home came screeching (well, not exactly screeching) to a halt when I came upon an amazing sight.
Right smack on the side of the road was a collection of half a dozen old trucks, all gracefully abandoned in the early eighties… all complete, unmolested, badges and everything else intact!
The REO caught my eye first. The grille is a bit mushed in, but entirely repairable. The REO globe emblem, Speedwagon script and interior appointments (radio and heater) are all there.
This Mercury COE is an amazing beast - Canada only production, it’s as rare as they get.
Also hiding out were an International KB5, a Dodge and more.
It’s often said that Chevrolet’s first V8 was Zora-Arkus Duntov’s 1955 small block, but in fact, Chevrolet had toyed with the design (and gotten it’s fingers burned) back in the teens. Chevrolet over-reached with the first V8 and most of them were replaced under warranty, having proven to be notorious duds. (Apparently, the shirts at GM aren’t required to study corporate history - look at the Oldsmobile 350 Diesel debacle, among others!)
Paul Stacey sent TOCMP a recent picture of the exceedingly rare 1918 Chevrolet V8, nicely positioned for comparison with it’s decades-later successor.
Have a look at the 1918 Chevrolet Brochure for more information.
I like to think that TOCMP has class, and that this blog has some nice pix, but for all-out 50’s style and graphic atom age beauty, plan59’s blog wins hands down.
I gather that this is where the folks from the now defunct ephemeranow have moved their considerable talents.
I’ve always liked Buicks, and I’ve had a few that I now regret having sold. So I couldn’t resist this one. It’s a little rough, needing a total restoration, but it’s got lots of chutzpah, due in large part to the Cherry Bomb exhaust and the ‘old school’ mags.
Plenty of Naugas died for this interior, not at all in vain, since 40 years later it still looks pretty good. Will today’s Naugas fair so well??
I plan to drive this until the end of the summer and start the restoration after that. The previous owner had spent a fair bit of time and money buying parts for this car, but seems to have lost heart at some point short of the steering box. As soon as that’s fixed, she should stay between the ditches reasonably well.
Lots of new and rebuilt parts on the car… the previous owner even re-ringed the engine: A classic mistake on a high mileage car with too much taper in the bores. Now that the rings have fatigued a bit, it’s an oil burner. Needless to say, we will be reboring this one.
Besides the steering box, the biggest flaw is the carburetor, which is severely worn in the throttle body. This is typical for carburetors with aluminum throttle bodies (like Quadrajets). The spring pressure on the throttle arm causes the steel shaft to wear the hole in the throttle body into an oval shape. This results in excess air being sucked past the shaft, unstable idle and, in extreme cases, binding of the throttle shaft.
The fix for this is to remove the shaft and ream the hole oversize so that a bronze bushing can be inserted. This will stop the air leakage problem. It’s something that I do nearly every day in my carburetor shop. I also sell a very high quality made-in-Canada tool that makes the repair easy to do. I think it’s a must-have if you’re rebuilding Quadrajets regularly.
More on the ‘67 Riviera from The Old Car Manual Project: ‘67 Buick Brochure (featuring Charles Heston) | ‘67 Riviera Press Photo | ‘67 Riviera Owner’s Manual
I’m working on a user-upload page for The Old Car Manual Project. It’s in the alpha-test stage, meaning I don’t know what I’m doing. Nonetheless, Fred (TOCMP’s intrepid links editor) and I are pounding away at it.
The idea is that Old Car Guys can register on the site and then upload their pictures, brochures, manuals and so on directly.
Have at a look at the new gallery test page and let me know what you think.
Mike, who manages the excellent site Route 66 Rambler has contributed some fine brochures, ads and illustrations to The Old Car Manual Project. We have recently added Mike’s 1958, 1964 and 1967 Rambler brochures to the site, as well as some more Nash pictures.
IMPORTANT
THE CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL AND ARE NOT TO BE TRANSMITTED TO ANY UNAUTHORIZED PERSON
This is from a 1939 edition of a Rolls Royce service manual, just posted on The Old Car Manual Project.
Not quite open source, I would say…
