Projects Mild custom '51 Pontiac Chieftain

Pictures were awesome! Looks great!

 

Haven't really been doing much but driving the car lately. Did look at the screen defog because the passenger side wasn't working. Turns out the trim was bent and it was blocking the air. Bent the trim back, got air.
And yes, down here, in a 95 degree rainstorm you do need to put the heater on full and cook yourself to be able to see outside...


Tonight I was amused. At the end of the street I rolled over 070707 on the odometer.

Oil change up soon. Been working mostly on the OT project.

 

Your light bulb condoms sure improve the gauge lighting.... I like it!

 

What a tremendous read and epic journey - found your thread last night! I rode my bike and pushed/drove a Volkswagon Van through the Bayou 38 years ago, New Orleans Expo trip actually. Southern hospitality sticks with me today any time I read of events in that area. Reactions to my Canadian accent was amusing so when I read the accent in your posts I chuckle to myself. By the way, all through the Southern US when I would say my name is Will they would reply - Phil? Awesome car - forge on!

 

@WhitewallWill Having been to your neck of the woods and out to the islands, I can vouch for similar hospitality there!

Just went to the store, walking back through the parking lot I had to smile.


A blob of color in a sea of monochromatic porridge.

Phil

 

Hi Phil, Nice old Pontiac you have ! I have a '41 Pontiac coupe with a '46 straight 8, bored out .125 to fit standard 268 pistons, a 1950s Crane cam , HEI, Muncie 4 speed ,two Holley/Weber carbs, and dual bank headers. I've been driving it every summer for 50 years. I've been skipping through your posts on your '51 and you've done some nice work. on it.....the old cars were sooo repairable back then and the Pontiac engines were as dependable as a rock! I also had a '51 2 door for about a year long ago. You dont need to worry about your crank unless the mains are loose. I drive mine at 70+ mph all the time at 3200 rpm with 3:63 gears. I've driven it to eight Street Rod Nationals and the only failure was an electric fuel pump!

 

It's got a real gentle hocka hocka hocka when it's hot so yeah, I keep the speed down...

 

Been busy with other (non hamb) projects lately, but I did manage to make one thing about the Poncho fast.

A 6V lighter in a 12V socket!

Fixed that, not that I'll ever use it...

 

What is it about the dashboards and gauges on the old cars? I've always wondered why people change them out and put aftermarket gauges or (**GASP**) digital gauges. There was so much chrome on them, the lettering and numerals of the gauges and their layout, the shape of the dash--it all seemed perfect. Maybe even magical. Those were the days!
Great car @PhilA! I've enjoyed following along on your thread! E

 

These gauges are pre-permanent magnet devices. So, they're balanced with one coil across battery and another at right angles which is modulated by the sending unit.

Issue 1, the temperature sensor is a small range device by today's standards, modern ones having teens of thousands of ohms cold and a few thousand hot. This one was about a thousand cold and several tens hot. They were unreliable.
Issue two, the fuel gauge works "upside-down", across a very small range of value. Full tank the father reads full from about 5 Ohms. Empty, it reads from about 30 Ohms. Modern senders work usually in the range of several hundred Ohms empty, fifty or so full. It's easy to short the sender out and burn it out on these.
Issue three, 35-0-35 amp ammeter.

Once those three gauges are inoperable, they're often junked because it's too much hard work to make them work right.

I like the way they look so repaired them. Don't know many Chiftains with fully working dashboards...!

 

Updates? Not really.

Just been driving about a bunch. Weather had been quite dry and modestly cool (90 during the day, 80 at night).

The car was looking a little downtrodden.

Started cleaning the car up but ran out of daylight yesterday, so made a start on it before the sun came up over the trees this morning.

Still more to go. Detail work and the chrome needs cleaning again.

The paint is tired but still comes up to a nice gloss, at least. Need to finish up cleaning it, then give it another coat of wax; it got to be too hot to work with the paint, and plus I ended up looking like a Smurf because the blue gets everywhere.
Bought a couple new tires, going to get those fitted but I need to remedy the cause of having to change them, namely the front end needs rebuilding, the bushes are tired.

 

Phil,
2 months between posts on this thread……we need to ban you from off topic projects…
It was good good to see a post on the ole 51!!!
Greg

 

Yeah, the '66 has been taking up a fair bit of my attention lately. Fixing the engine, door hinges, dashboard and gauges, starting work again on rust repair now.
That is documented elsewhere, check my profile.

 

Phil, good to see your car back on the road, and to read your new postings. I think that your car is pretty set where it's at, looks wise. The stance is right, the whitewalls are certainly an upgrade, and you're keeping the car looking sharp. Just being a '51 Pontiac makes it special and when other people see it, I'm sure that it brings a smile to their face.

 

Took two wheels and the tires to a local shop tonight.
They called to say I should take one rim back and clean it as the bead edge was rusty and they weren't confident it would seal without being cleaned.
Scrubbed it down with the old Cheek-Poker 4000 and brought it back. A lot of what looked like rust was actually chunks of the tire stuck to the rim.

Hopefully tomorrow I get those back. They gave me $20 off because I brought them the wheels without them having to pull them off the car and find space in their workshop.

Giving the tires a more critical look, the alignment isn't actually that bad, just the tire pressure was a bit low on the front. The shoulders have worn almost evenly. The front tires were a bit worn when I got them, so with a few more pounds in the new ones should last.
Still need a front end rebuild and a full realignment, though.

 

Radials Phil? If you have an issue with old rims leaking, you could always install radial tubes. Don't forget the talcum powder when installing them.

 

No, bias ply tubeless. The rim cleaned up okay, I'll see what the tire place has to say about it today. I got the rim back to them before the office closed but the workshop had gone home.

 

Two new whitewall tires, now with 100% more tread!

Bolted on and scrubbed up pretty.

To top it off a brand new safety inspection sticker. That'll work.

 

WOW! Aren't you all fancy-schmancy with your new whitewall tahrs! Looks good!

 

Let's just say I got my money's worth, plus some out of the last ones.

These new ones are rather pliant, the road holding and ride is a lot better than the old ones, which had gone a bit hard.

 

Looks great Phil!!!
In 2018 my 53 Pontiac had tires on it from the 50’s. The whole car wobbled horribly like what you would see in a cartoon. They had most of the tread on them too. I put 4 new tires on it and you could put a glass of wine on the dash and drive it. I took the old tires to the Pontiac Nationals with a sign that said “ vintage tire swings from the 50’s - $10 each”. I sold every one of them the first day of the swap meet .

 

Yesterday I finally managed to get the torus drain plug out. Dropped all the oil out of the gearbox.

With that empty, I dropped the pan; not overly dirty which was nice.

A few errant metal shavings that must've been stuck in oilways from before rebuild. Cleaned that all down.

$115 of shiny new oil. Cold, it's a lot more delicate on this oil- hardly perceptible changes. Hot, it's still doing the sticky gears thing so I'm going to pull the valve block again. I think I know what might be causing it.

 

Dropped the block and cleaned it up.

There's one piston whose bore is worn enough it's being caught on the fluid channel inside, gets hung up and then doesn't change gear right.

Only resolution for that really is a replacement valve block.

But, it works better when it's cold now.

 

Having a think on testing what part of the valve body is failing when it gets hot.

This is the (oversimplified) basic gist of the transmission's decision-making system.
On the left, variable pressure, which increases as road speed increases.
On the right, variable pressure, which increases the more the gas pedal is pressed.
There are 3 valves between, each with a progressively heavier spring. As the road speed pressure increases, it overcomes the weakest spring, forcing a gear change from 1 to 2.
Then again at higher speed, and again into top gear.
The gas pedal pressure acts on pistons which assist the springs. That causes the gear changes to occur at a higher road speed the harder you accelerate.

I'm thinking the gas pedal pistons are getting stuck (one is particularly worn). They live in a separate casting that screws to the side of the main valve body. If I sandwich a thin plate between them, that'll eliminate the throttle valves from interacting with the gear change. If it then changes gear correctly at all times (based solely upon road speed) then I know where the fault lays.

 

Phil, I have three flat pan hydros that I will probably just part out. If any have the valve body you need, maybe I can help. They are down in LA at my other house so I don’t have immediate access to them, but if you’re not in a hurry….

 

Here’s what I have…. No idea about the condition.

 

Thanks. I'll have to make some cross references but I'm pretty sure the guts of those in terms of the majority of the valve block are either the same or close to the same as mine.
I forget what the C51 variant is, might be the 6 cyl version of mine.

I'll check and let you know. Thanks for putting the dataplates.

 

I was told C51 is a ‘51 Cadillac.

 

I had that thought after the fact last night.

If that's the case, C51 and D51 are almost the same transmission, and have the same valve block. C51 differs by having stronger clutch packs to accept the higher torque output of Cadillac's V8.

 

My guess would be that Detroit Transmission made the passenger car hard parts pretty much the same, varying the springs and clutches for different power levels and to smooth out the shifts in the Cadillac version.
I have a question about idle speed on your Pontiac. What rpm does it normally idle at? And at what rpm does the coupling cause the car to creep forward against the brakes. I’m about to mate my Olds engine to my hydro and I’ll need to decide whether to use the stock Olds torus wheels or try the smaller Chevy wheels that came with the transmission. The engines in that period seemed to idle at 450-550 rpm, I don’t think my Olds, with its small performance cam will want to idle that slow.