Vintage Car Thread - Discussion and Parts Requests

[rjb1]

Bacon? Bacon? Do they work on the barter system in Maine?
Actually, I had a vague notion of a diagnose-the-problem lottery/contest. You make your choice of what part is broken and get in the game by putting up a moderate amount of cash. The only difference is that Lizzie keeps all the money and you get the information (and the honor and glory) if you get it right.
Not really feasible, but it does emphasize that this is an interesting "what-done-it".

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'll be happy to pass the hubcap for donations once we get a diagnosis. Something tells me this won't be cheap.

The tow truck has just been here and gone, and the drive shaft clearly was turning as the Plodge was hoisted onto the trailer. And there is clearly no evidence of any fractures, cracks, leaks, or distortion on or around the housing of the pumpkin. I had both the rear hubcaps off this morning, and nothing looks out of place there -- they used new cotter pins after taking the wheels apart to fix the brakes, and those are both intact, and nothing looks oozy or disturbed around the hubs. I am betting whatever broke broke on the end where the gear is.

But we shall see -- the mechanic tells me he'll take it apart as soon as it gets there, and should be in touch with a diagnosis before I have to go to work this afternoon. Maybe it's gremlins.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Ahh -- I did have both rear brake cylinders replaced last winter, and I had the shoes adjusted just last week.

So if the axle breaks at the key, it turns but the wheel doesn't. If I pop off the hubcaps tomorrow, will I see incriminating evidence?

With the hubcaps off you won't necessarily see anything amiss. But if someone starts the car and puts it in gear you will see the end of the axle, or nut, turning while the hub and brake drums stay still.

If this happens it may not be too bad. Unless the end of the shaft and hub get scored you can put it back together with a new key, tighten securely and be as good as new.

The other possibility is a broken axle. This is rare on Chrysler products. The only ones I have seen, have been where the driver had the habit of shifting from reverse to forward without coming to a complete stop. After many years this can fatigue the axle shaft. Either that, or abusive drag racing type use.

If you do need a new rear axle I know where there are 2 1938s in a junkyard. I can check on the weekend if they are still there and have their axles.


A loose rear hub can still be tight enough to turn the axle when you move the car but not tight enough to transmit power without slipping. If your mechanic removes the hub nuts he will see instantly if the hubs are loose.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I did try it this morning and didn't see any motion in the hubs when I had it in gear, so it looks like we can eliminate that possibility. It's got to be something inside the pumpkin, one way or another.

I'm a careful shifter myself, but I can't speak for the past five owners. The car was an everyday driver for its original owner for over twenty years, so I doubt he was any kind of a hot-rodney, and the subsequent owners were pretty sober types too, judging from their paperwork. I do kind of wish I could have seen some kid trying to lay a patch with such a lumpen four-door sedan, though.

I was pricing axles last night, and while they weren't backbreaking expensive, neither were they cheap. I expect labor to be the killer on this job, so if it's possible to get them inexpensively, I'm all ears.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, the verdict's in -- one of the axle shafts snapped right in half. Not just a clean snap, either, it was *twisted* in half. The mechanic said he's never seen anything like this in twenty years of working on cars, and went on to criticize my obvious Dukes-of-Hazard-like driving habits.

Otherwise, he's at a loss to explain how this could have happened to an inch-and-a-quarter solid steel rod, but that seems to be the extent of the damage. So the differential doesn't need to be rebuilt, and it shouldn't take more than an hour and a half or so to put it back together. He thinks he has an axle lying around that will fit, so we could be back on the road in a week or so.

Gremlins, I tell you. Gremlins.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I want pics of the pretzeled shaft!

 

[1mach1]

1971 Mustang Mach 1. Far cry from the '30s and '40s rides, but she is a blast to drive.

 

[rjb1]

Until such time as Lizzie can take pictures of the real thing, here is a good bit of theory and some photos of the "twisted" nature of a torsional failure. It looks like at first glance that the material is literally twisted, as with a piece of taffy (soft), but it's really because the primary stresses are at an angle to the axis of the shaft.
They are not unheard of, but are rare enough that it's reasonable that the mechanic has not seen one. I've been working on cars longer than he has and I have only seen one myself, and that was a failure of a torsion bar in a suspension, not an axle shaft. Other than that I have only seen them in textbooks (and now the Internet).
http://eng.sut.ac.th/metal/images/stories/pdf/10_Torsion_test.pdf
Especially check out slides 12 and 13.

Lizzie - Are your Gremlins from the Kremlin?
Warner Brothers cartoon: "Russian Rhapsody" (1944)
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/83003891/

 

[rjb1]

Here's a *much* better print of "Russian Rhapsody":
http://vimeo.com/52096337

 

[jamespowers]

1971 Mustang Mach 1. Far cry from the '30s and '40s rides, but she is a blast to drive. View attachment 2817 View attachment 2818 View attachment 2819 View attachment 2820

Nice one! I have a 1973 Mach 1.

 

[jamespowers]

Here's a *much* better print of "Russian Rhapsody":
http://vimeo.com/52096337

I always think of this when I think Gremlins:[video=youtube_share;dUFHjk0i2L4]http://youtu.be/dUFHjk0i2L4[/video]

 

[rjb1]

I had forgotten about that one. I did remember "Gremlins From the Kremlin" in the first one. A fair amount of overlap for those two.
The book Bugs is reading, "Victory Through Hare Power", is taken from "Victory Through Air Power" written by Major Alexander P. de Seversky. (Disney did an animated propaganda cartoon based on that book.) The reason I mention it is that I met Major de Seversky back in the '70's.

 

[jamespowers]

I had forgotten about that one. I did remember "Gremlins From the Kremlin" in the first one. A fair amount of overlap for those two.
The book Bugs is reading, "Victory Through Hare Power", is taken from "Victory Through Air Power" written by Major Alexander P. de Seversky. (Disney did an animated propaganda cartoon based on that book.) The reason I mention it is that I met Major de Seversky back in the '70's.

Yes, Victory Through Air Power was the original title. Must have been interesting meeting Seversky.

 

[1mach1]

Nice one! I have a 1973 Mach 1.

Excellent! Would love to see some pics when you get a chance.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Until such time as Lizzie can take pictures of the real thing, here is a good bit of theory and some photos of the "twisted" nature of a torsional failure. It looks like at first glance that the material is literally twisted, as with a piece of taffy (soft), but it's really because the primary stresses are at an angle to the axis of the shaft.
They are not unheard of, but are rare enough that it's reasonable that the mechanic has not seen one. I've been working on cars longer than he has and I have only seen one myself, and that was a failure of a torsion bar in a suspension, not an axle shaft. Other than that I have only seen them in textbooks (and now the Internet).
http://eng.sut.ac.th/metal/images/stories/pdf/10_Torsion_test.pdf
Especially check out slides 12 and 13.

Lizzie - Are your Gremlins from the Kremlin?
Warner Brothers cartoon: "Russian Rhapsody" (1944)
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/83003891/

This type of failure is also associated with back - and - forth twisting as when the driver shifts from reverse to low without coming to a complete stop. In other words instead of using the brakes he shifts and releases the clutch while the car is still in motion.

Incidentally this is why you should always use a second hand axle shaft on the same side as the car it came out of, even if both sides are alike and interchangeable.

 

[rjb1]

At that time Major de Seversky had gotten out of the aviation business completely and was designing and selling air pollution control equipment (of all things!).
He came by our office to do a sales pitch for his equipment and when I saw his name I knew exactly who he was. As you would probably expect, no one else there had ever heard of him. I didn't get to talk to him about aviation history to the extent I would have liked, but anything was better than nothing. He's not as famous as Donald Douglas or Kelly Johnson, but he was "somebody" in the world of aviation at one time. The fact that his book made it into a WWII Bugs Bunny cartoon is proof of that.

Back to Lizzie's axle, that (bad) technique of shifting into low while rolling backward that Stanley mentioned is a good way to break something.

It also reminds me of a high-school friend who had a huge 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. It had a 430 Lincoln engine but only a 2:56 (approx.) rear gear ratio for optimum high speed cruising (on a Turnpike, I guess). All of us in our hot rod Chevys could spin the rear tires as much as we wanted whenever we wanted. The only way he could get the Turnpike Cruiser to spin the tires at all was to get it rolling backward and then punch "Drive" (push-button automatic like a Mopar). He would risk the drivetrain to get a puny little squeak out of it.
(We were stupid teenagers in those days...)

 

[LizzieMaine]

The demise of my grandmother's Ford -- a 1974 Galaxie, to be specific -- came about because I got it stuck in a snowbank one particularly dismal night and tried to free it by rocking it out. The front u-joint snapped and the driveshaft fell off exactly a week later. On the coldest night of the year, of course.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I can't picture you driving anything that new!

The demise of my grandmother's Ford -- a 1974 Galaxie, to be specific -- came about because I got it stuck in a snowbank one particularly dismal night and tried to free it by rocking it out. The front u-joint snapped and the driveshaft fell off exactly a week later. On the coldest night of the year, of course.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can't picture you driving anything that new!

It was an inheritance -- I drove it for about four years until the Fatal Snowbank and then traded it in for a '69 VW.

My grandparents had always been Chevy owners -- they had a '36 for over twenty years -- but toward the ends of their lives they moved to Ford. I think the local Chevy dealer owed my grandfather some money and welshed on the deal, and that was enough to push them across the street.

I'm the only member of my family ever to defect to Mopar. We've had a bunch of Fords and Chevies, a Nash, a Renault, a couple of Volkswagens, and a Toyota, but never a Chrysler product until the Plodge.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

A VW seems even harder to believe! lol

My Grandparents on my Dad's side are Chevy folks and on Mom's are Ford folks.

We have lots of different cars and have had many over the years. The only imports were a Renault, which was garbage, and a Toyota pickup that ran great, but rusted away. Currently, we have between my folks, my siblings, and I: a 1952 Ford Pickup, a 1992 Silverado, a 2000 Silverado, a 2002 Trailblazer, a 1973 Roadrunner, a 1970 Dart, a 1971 Harley-Davidson, a 1989 Ram, a 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood, a 1987 Caprice Wagon, and a 1999 Olds Alero.

I think we've got the big three pretty well covered at our house lol

How was the Nash? My Grandpa's first car was a Nash he bought new in 1949.

It was an inheritance -- I drove it for about four years until the Fatal Snowbank and then traded it in for a '69 VW.

My grandparents had always been Chevy owners -- they had a '36 for over twenty years -- but toward the ends of their lives they moved to Ford. I think the local Chevy dealer owed my grandfather some money and welshed on the deal, and that was enough to push them across the street.

I'm the only member of my family ever to defect to Mopar. We've had a bunch of Fords and Chevies, a Nash, a Renault, a couple of Volkswagens, and a Toyota, but never a Chrysler product until the Plodge.