My Vintage Car Aquisition Odyssey

[Tony in Tarzana]

An excellent article on the GM Hydramatic transmission can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydramatic

 

[Forgotten Man]

God help me if it goes wrong as my mechanic took one look and said no thank you......

Well, I'm sure if you have the shop manual; it would help break things down for your wrench turner! These old cars are designed to be pretty straight forward.

Cracks me up that so many mechanics today are so used to these computerized clunks, and when they see a strictly mechanical contraption from 60 years ago, you see the classic 1000 yard stare and the hands fly up and then before you know it you're looking in the phone book for someone who can!

 

[Mr. 'H']

my 48 chrysler new yorker has the fluid drive transmission ,i must say ,i love it!! It is the only automatic that puts the driver in charge,I can choose when to change or ,if feeling lazy ,let the fluid drive take the chore.Not only that,the never ending thrill of the car changing gear by itself!!!God help me if it goes wrong as my mechanic took one look and said no thank you......

Let's see a picture Norman!

 

[mrfish]

Lovely thread, Sir, and a lovely car to boot. Thanks for putting her up here.

mrfish

 

[Mr. 'H']

Lovely thread, Sir, and a lovely car to boot. Thanks for putting her up here.

mrfish

How kind. You're very welcome, Sir.

 

[Flivver]

I would love to know how this was done. I have a tube radio in my Falcon that needs an auxiliary jack so I can plug in my iPhone (and get rid of the ugly ‘90s am/fm/cassette under the dash).

My brother the electronics engineer says it’s just a matter of hooking into the amplifier - as if I knew how to do that!

-Dave

It's really not too hard to do if you have the schematic diagram for your Falcon radio. You need to tap in with an RCA jack and a small capacitor between the plate of the second detector tube and the input grid of the first audio tube of your radio.

Armed with the schematic, I'm sure your brother could do it for you quite easily.

 

[Flivver]

And that's what's amazing about the '41 Olds... it really was a true automatic... and '41 was the last full production year before the war.

Wonder why the others didn't try and develop a full automatic in '41?

The development of a workable automatic transmission was no easy task ca. 1940. GM had been working on automatic transmissions since the late 1920s and gained important field experience with the semi-automatic "Safety Transmission" used on Buick and Olds in 1937-38. The Ford Liqua-Matic was an example of a hastily designed automatic at this time.

GM also gained considerable experience during the war with Hydra-Matics in tanks. The postwar Hydra-Matic was a much improved product because of this.

Because automatic transmissions were so expensive to develop, it took competitors quite a while to respond to Hydra-Matic. In fact, most of the independants (and even Ford, for its Lincoln brand) simply bought Hydra-Matics from GM.

GM's Buick Division introduced the stepless Torque-Converter Dynaflow Drive on the 1948 Roadmaster. GM's Chevrolet Division pioneered automatic drive in the low priced field with their 1950 introduction of PowerGlide. Ford followed later in 1950 with Ford-O-Matic and Merc-O-Matic, but these were built for Ford by Borg-Warner. Packard introduced its troublesome Ultramatic in 1951.

Chrysler did not offer a true automatic transmission until mid-1954 with the introduction of PowerFlite. This was quickly followed in 1957 with the excellent 3-speed Chrysler TorqueFlite, the pattern for all modern automatic transmissions.

 

[Mr. 'H']

It's really not too hard to do if you have the schematic diagram for your Falcon radio. You need to tap in with an RCA jack and a small capacitor between the plate of the second detector tube and the input grid of the first audio tube of your radio.

Armed with the schematic, I'm sure your brother could do it for you quite easily.

And I guarantee you that it works perfectly if done right. I plan to take a little video clip to show you it on my car soon and post the video right here.

 

[David Conwill]

It's really not too hard to do if you have the schematic diagram for your Falcon radio. You need to tap in with an RCA jack and a small capacitor between the plate of the second detector tube and the input grid of the first audio tube of your radio.

Armed with the schematic, I'm sure your brother could do it for you quite easily.

I think my shop manual has the schematic. First step will be to make sure the old radio works at all. It lights up when switched on, but the add-on radio is hooked into the speaker and antenna, so I’ve no way of knowing right at the moment.

Mr. H (and I can’t wait for that video) mentions a switch wired in there somewhere. Is that necessary? I would think otherwise I’d be fighting my AM stations or static to hear the music on my phone.

-Dave

 

[Flivver]

That's right...I forgot about the switch!

An SPST switch between the plate of the second detector tube and the tap-in will interrupt the signal from the radio tuner when radio is not desired.

 

[David Conwill]

Thanks so much, Flivver. I can't wait to give it a try. Perhaps I'll pull out the radio and take it with me when I go home for the holidays. There's a truly excellent Radio Shack in Muskegon, too.

I take it you've done this before?

-Dave

 

[David Conwill]

my 48 chrysler new yorker has the fluid drive transmission ,i must say ,i love it!! It is the only automatic that puts the driver in charge,I can choose when to change or ,if feeling lazy ,let the fluid drive take the chore.Not only that,the never ending thrill of the car changing gear by itself!!!God help me if it goes wrong as my mechanic took one look and said no thank you......

I wonder if you could just eliminate the fluid coupling and run it as a standard trans.

-Dave

 

[normanpitkin]

here it is!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45684500@N03/4195629552/in/photostream/

 

[David Conwill]

Great looking coupe, Norman. I love the green and the whitewalls. Is she a six or an eight?

-Dave

 

[normanpitkin]

hi dave ,
thank you,its a straight eight, fluid drive, the whitewalls are cokers,cost me a fortune and a nightmare to keep clean.Without them, the car looks terrible though.... actually it's black ,still the original paint ,interior ,engine ,in fact almost everthing except rubber items like hoses and tyres. I bought it with 15000 miles on the clock ,it was locked in a garage by the widow of the original owner who died in 1949.Basically they drove the car from Oklahoma city to los angeles on route 66 and parked it for 50 odd years!!!

 

[David Conwill]

Ah, I see that in the second pic. The sepia tone in the first pic had me fooled. Straight eights make me weak in the knees. Great car, and a great story to go with it. I'm glad you got her and not a street rodder, she's a real time capsule from the sounds of it.

-Dave