30. Think outside the gearbox

The coupe has eight forward speeds.

1st gear 2.20 to 1 x 3.70 rear = 8.14 to 1 final drive

1st OD 2.20 to 1 x .78 OD x 3.70 rear = 6.35 final drive

2nd gear 1.64 to 1 x 3.70 = 6.07 final drive

2nd OD 1.64 x .78 x 3.70 = 4.73 final drive

3rd gear 1.28 x 3.70 = 4. 74 final drive

3rd OD 1.28 x .78 x 3.70 = 3.69 final drive

4th gear 1.00 x 3.70 = 3.70 final drive

4th OD 1.00 x .78 x 3.70 = 2.89 final drive

Instead of using first, second, third and fourth gears, Julie can use first, first overdrive, third, and third overdrive, thereby using only shift positions which don’t interfere with the seat being all the way forward. 


This might take some practice because it's not natural for someone who is used to driving a four speed manual, but after she gets the hang of it, it should work fine as a temporary measure.



Also, Hurst’s website lists twenty replacement sticks (their term) for Competition Plus shifters including one which they call a replacement bench seat stick (Part number 5388620). Cost is just under $100.00.



I'm having trouble uploading a photo of the stick. It appears in the link

http://www.hurst-shifters.com/  

Products - Shifter Accessories- Shifter Sticks on the bottom of page 2.



A couple of bucket seats used in unchopped '35-'40 Ford sized vehicles featured in Street Rodder magazine in the past year have been:

Late model Honda Accord on Acura MDX pedestals and '06 Pontiac GP coupe. Either might be less expensive than Glide seats. Could be worth a trip to the bone yard.

# 29. A New Home.

Hello, I'm Mike. I'm Hotrod Cholly's son in law. So a bit about me... I have been with Hotrod Cholly's daughter for 20 years now, and although the car is now hers, I will be the one to maintain it and occasionally ask permission to drive it. I will also be updating the blog most likely, but I figure she may also have input on it as well. This first from me blog may be long to get some info in about me and the car. Unavoidable..

The car arrived to us in the Reno/Sparks area on July 18th of this year. It came via a covered transport company and had good company on the trip here. It rode with the Batmobile from the Michael Keaton era Batman, as well as K.I.T.T from Knight Rider fame. Oh ya, there were two Super Birds in there as well that were headed for an auction and I didn't dare even look their way due to the price the owner was hoping to get and feared breathing on them wrong.

The first weekend was spent detailing the '39 and getting to know it. I spent two days buffing out the exterior and cleaned up the oxidation on the paint. The rest of the time was spent going through it all from top to bottom cleaning it and learning about it. What better way to get to know a car then to detail the whole thing.

Since then a few things of note were figured out that will be changing on it. The main reason will be a safety reason, and you will see why in a moment. As we were driving it and learning the temperament of it, Julie, my wife and Hotrod Cholly's daughter, was unable to safely push the clutch all the way in with the seat moved all the way forward. We had moved the seat as far forward for her to reach while still allowing for the car to get into second and fourth gear.Even though this has been accomplished, she does not feel safe as she has to scoot all the way forward still to reach. So the seat will be changing down the road, maybe over winter. The thought currently is to replace the bench seat with two bucket seats that are specifically designed for this car. They would be coming from Glide Engineering, that specializes in custom seats for custom cars. We noticed a few other '39's around Hot August Nights and obtained the information from the owners of those cars.

But buckets are the way to go instead of re-doing the bench seat with an area in the center curved for the shifter to fit while the seat is moved forward. This way the passenger, aka me, wouldn't be kissing the dash while Julie is driving. So safer all the way around.

The only other thing of note, while recently cleaning the air filters with the K&M cleaner kit, and cleaning up the carbs, I noticed a rubber cap on one of the carbs to be split open. This is just plugging up a port for a line on the front carb on the front of it. So that will be replaced in the coming days. Other then that just detailing the engine and engine compartment to continue to get to know her. Oh ya, and keeping our oldest from stealing the AC unit and putting it in his 1968 Mustang that we built for him from the ground up.... In the past 5 years, we have rebuilt a few cars, for our 3  boys and for my wife. 3 VW bugs, and the Mustang just mentioned. Previous builds for me, prior to meeting my wife,  were a 1969 Firebird with the 400 in it, and a 1930 Ford Sedan street rod built years ago...So the car is not only staying in the family, but will be well cared for. That is all for now. 

28. The Panel.

The next problem was with the left side of the LED and switch panel. When the Fan Motor switch was turned on, the indicator lights for HVAC and Cruise Control both came on. With the fan still on, turning on the Cruise Control switch extinguished the HVAC light. If the Cruise Control switch was turned on by itself, The Cruise Control indicator came on. I disassembled the switch panel and traced the wires back, there were wiring errors in both the Left LED Molex plug and the LED Lights Connector. I corrected those errors and while I was at it I ran the connector from the Fan Motor switch C terminal to the Fan Mode Switch B terminal through the AC Mode switch connector and the AC fan connector to eliminate the direct link which complicated working on either AC switch. (I had to change the AC Mode switch connector to a six position Molex to do this.) As it turned out, that was the easy side.

Checkout of the right side of the panel proved to be excruciating. I could get the overdrive to shift or the indicators to function, but not both at the same time, I tried everything that I could think of over a three week period. Some moves helped, some blew a fuse. I blew more than one fuse per week, all of them the three amp overdrive supply fuse,

Two days ago, I remembered my Math Professor who always said “Simplify before you complicate.” And it struck me that this was advice which could cover much of the world outside of mathematics also. So I started to work back toward the factory wiring diagram, which was for an automatic transmission installation. The diagram showed an overdrive ready light which Gearvendors does not supply with a manual transmission application. I wanted to incorporate a light to indicate overdrive ready. If you ever had one of these babies shift without disengaging the clutch, you would understand why. It sounds like you ran over a Smart Car.

Since all the wiring was mummified, I needed to find an unused wire to activate the LED. Gearvendors uses 6 conductor phone cable for their control wiring. In a manual trans application there is no 20/40 M.P.H. Switch on the dash, just an On/Off switch. That frees up a white wire in the Dash Switch cable, but it terminates inside the control box, which I had no intention of opening. Instead I Made a 2” patch cord which connected the other 5 wires to the controller and ran the white wire outside to meet the white and black wires from the Hand Switch Harness. I had replaced the large and very ugly hand switch with an impulse relay which is located behind the seat next to the overdrive controller. Impulse relays are nice because a brief signal moves the contacts, The coil does not require constant voltage like a normal relay. The next signal shifts it back to the original contacts. While doing this, I made a mistake which turned out to cause all of my problems, including the blown fuses, overdrive shifting with the switch in the off position, and three weeks of work when I could have been driving the car.

One end of a 6 conductor phone cable requires assembly with the wires arranged Blue, Yellow, Green, Red, Black, White (L to R looking at the contact side of the plug) instead of the standard White, Black, Red, Green, Yellow Blue. Sure enough, I had connected the Blue Wire instead of the White. Once I made a new adaptor cord and installed it, the problem debris cleared away and the system operated like it should. The only remaining issue was that the red LED was on all the time.

I separated the ground wire and used the other side if the double pole On/Off switch to interrupt the current flow from the Red LED unless the overdrive was turned on. That's when I discovered that the indicator was only on when the Overdrive was off. The overdrive only worked when there was no signal. I moved the ground wire for the LED to the terminal which was powered when there was no signal to the overdrive. That did it.

It’s 10:15 AM, June 17, 2015.     Good to go to Reno.

27. Mea Culpa

When I wired the left side of the coupe, I didn't mummify the left harness as I did on the right side. I don't know why. That meant that I had to disconnect all of the wiring on the entire left side of the car and the control panel wires from the left harness, encapsulate them and reconnect them. And it was winter. Fortunately, there were plenty of days this past winter warm enough to work on the car in my unheated garage. By the early part of April, the wires were reconnected and I was ready to check out the car again. I had one wire which the label came off of, so I was expecting something not working. As luck would have it, there were two things that didn't work, the headlights and the thermostatically controlled cooling fan. Both are controlled by green wires. When I touched my unidentified green wire to a hot terminal, the fan came on. So I attached it to the proper terminal.

Since the taillights worked in both parking and headlight switch positions, there had to be a discontinuity in the wire from the headlight switch to the power panel. I checked the connections at the molex headlight switch connector and determined that the problem was between the molex plug and the panel. When I put the plug together, I broke the connector off of the taillight wire so I had to repair that first. Since the entire run where the problem occurred is mummified, I ran a substitute wire protected by clear spiral wrap alongside of the body harness. As before the headlights now operate only when the key is in the run position. I still have to secure the harness with Adel Clamps, another brand name that has become a generic description.

On the third checkout, everything was fine until I tried to bump the starter. It would not even click. I took it to my local O’Reillys where it failed the test. I ordered a rebuilt unit and installed it. This starter weighs nearly 25 pounds. It’s necessary to lift it while flat on your back on the creeper and maneuver it between the left exhaust pipe, the bellhousing and the engine block. I wasn’t sure I could accomplish all that without dropping the starter which could cause a bodily injury or worse. So I put an inverted Homer’s bucket under the car and lifted the starter onto it. After a suitable rest period I loosely connected the cable and wires to the solenoid then lifted the starter between the exhaust pipe and the block and rested it on the exhaust pipe. The third step was to lift the starter into position and start the upper mounting bolt. All things considered, it was easier than I thought it would be. The really difficult part was tightening the lower starter mounting bolt. There wasn’t enough room around the bolt head to get a socket, box wrench or tubing wrench on it. No matter which open end wrench I tried I couldn’t turn the bolt enough to flip the wrench over to use the other angle, so I couldn’t turn the bolt head a sixth of a turn to grab the next flat. I used a combination of hand turning and prying with a screwdriver to nudge the head enough to get the wrench on it again. Of course, GM used a fine thread bolt so that it required doing this 168 times to tighten the bolt one inch. It seemed to take forever. I’m glad I had the rebuilt starter tested before I installed it.

When I tapped the starter again, I heard the clicking sound that indicates a low battery. It wouldn’t take a charge from my charger or my battery tender. (Incidentally, I believe a battery tender is must have equipment if your vehicle is not driven often.) The battery in the car was An Autolite 65HD which lasted over 8 years. A Die hard 65 battery would not fit in the battery box because of the ledge on each side for the carry strap, so I bought a slightly smaller group 35. I bought a wet cell battery because I didn’t want to buy the special charger required by an AGM battery.

 

 

26. Peripheral Problems

During the checkout, two new glitches appeared which were not related to the rewiring.
 

The first was erratic operation of the hydraulic clutch. When the car was started in gear, the clutch either works fine or does not disengage. In the latter mode, it will creep with the brake applied hard and it cannot be shifted without shutting down the engine. Internet research indicated that these symptoms can be caused by air trapped in the clutch hydraulic system. I have tried to bleed the clutch before and had very little luck, so I took the car to Morrison Car Works. The clutch did not malfunction on the four mile drive to the shop or on the mechanic's test drive. He was dubious, but agreed to bleed the brakes using the GM method of applying 22" of vacuum to the master cylinder reservoir neck for 20 minutes, then replacing the fluid. The post bleeding test drive and the drive home were uneventful. So far, the clutch has not misbehaved since it was bled. Fingers crossed.

The second issue was that the CD changer suddenly quit. I bought another one on ebay. The listing said "Works Great". It didn't. I took the cartridge out and discovered eight CDs in the 12 disk player (one commercial CD of Birdman & Lil Wayne - Like Father, Like Son Disc 1; intact copies of Lil Wayne - Best; Lil Wayne - Currency; Millionaire 3 - Young  Money; John Cena,  and two cracked CDs and one with a pie shaped chunk missing.) I estimate that I'm 57 years too old to listen to this stuff. The missing piece was retreived from the player but it still registers "No Disc'.

Pioneer multi-CD players are shipped with four transport screws which should be retained for the next time the set is transported. I'd bet that not one in a thousand sellers/shippers does that. The only way to avoid the omission is to buy a new or factory reconditioned unit. For the time being I'm using the single CD player in the Tuner.
The Multi CD players compatable with the tuner are no longer made. Any changer with the model prefix CDX-P will be compatable. There are still plenty or them on Amazon and ebay. In the meantime I'm using the single disc player in the tuner.

 

25. On the Road Again

On October 3, 2014, I took the car on a test drive.
 
What works:

• The odometer, which I had repaired while I was wiring the car. They set the mileage at 3000 miles.
• The cruise control.

What's iffy:

• The speedometer shop said they didn't have parts to repair the trip odometer, but it appears that it might be OK. I didn't check the trip reading at the start of the drive.

What doesn't work:

• Overdrive


• The steering wheel is not tight. It won't come off, but it wiggles slightly.


• The headlight switch sometimes turns with the steering wheel, turning the headlights on or off. It didn't do that before I rewired the switch.


• Tach operation is erratic.


• HVAC and Cruise Control lights do not work.

NOTE:
 
The steering wheel & light problem may not be understood by those unfamiliar with pre-WW2 Fords. The light switch actuator is in the center of the steering wheel surrounding the horn button. It's connected to a hollow shaft which runs the length of the steering column and actuates the light switch at the other end of the column. The actuator should not turn with the steering wheel. The horn wire runs inside a rod inside of the hollow light switch shaft and is insulated from the rod and the hollow shaft. When the horn button is pressed, the uninsulated lower tip of the rod touches a ground contact in the light switch, blowing the horn. I decided to keep this Henry Ford (Rube Goldberg?) arrangement. I like it.

To solve the overdrive problem took two steps. Gearvender overdrives are supplied with six conductor telephone cables. They are identified by naming them with colors (The cables themselves are off-white.) To identify them, I put a band of colored electrical tape at each end corresponding to the cable name. The first step was to disconnect the white wire in the "red" cable at the controller end and attach it to the white and black wires in the "black" cable. The Overdrive then operated, but it was on in the off position and vice-versa. I solved that by turning the toggle switch 180°. The ready light and the on light worked normally.

The steering wheel and light switch problems were corrected by inserting two .005" shims between the steering wheel and the tapered shaft. 

The HVAC indicator light was fixed by moving the supply wire to the Mode Switch common terminal. 

The wires to the Cruise Control light were reversed. I swapped them at the molex plug. The light works but now the documentation is incorrect. 

After reading some information about erratic tach operation on the internet and tach and coil instructions, I realized that the problem stemmed from replacing the stock GM coil with a high voltage, low resistance coil. It was solved by placing a 1N4007 diode in the tach supply line. To eliminate a weak spot in the wire I soldered the diode like this:

Then shrink wrapped the assembly.  

When installed, at first the tach still didn't operate properly, but the next time I started the car, it did operate correctly. I don't know why. 

The dashboard, windshield trim, sun visors, and rear view mirror have been reinstalled.

24. Checkout

On August 23, 2014, I checked out the wiring completed up until that time. The following issues were discovered:

The right parking light did not illuminate when the switch was in the parking light position.

By design, the hazard flashers did not operate in the key off position.

The HV&AC fan ran at medium speed in the L position and low speed in the M position. H was high speed.

The electric choke did not operate.

The choke issue was solved by checking continuity of a loose red wire near the control panel with the choke positive terminal. The wire was continuous and I connected it to one of the panel terminals which is hot only when the key is in the run position.

Switching leads L and M at the fan switch corrected the fan speed problem.

I found a broken wire on the body side of the headlight switch connector. After repair the right parking light wire would not reach the plug, so I interchanged the left and right wires and corrected the documentation. All fixed. However during the parking light checkout, two new glitches showed up:

When the ignition key was turned on, the engine cooling fan ran.

The right high and low beam wires were switched.

When I wired the trinary switch, I thought it needed to be grounded to operate the fan. True as far as it went , but the cooling water temp switch grounds itself when the temperature warrents and operates the cooling fan without help from the trinary switch. I removed a jumper to ground I installed because the AC is not charged yet. The fan then operated correctly.

As a safety device, the emergency flashers should operate in all ignition key positions. It was a simple matter to move the flasher feed from E-18 (accessory position) to E-19 (all positions).

The leads for the headlights have polarized connections so they can't be connected wrong. That is, unless some idiot polarizes the low beam wire to the high beam and vice-versa. Yup, that's what I did. Corrected and checked OK.

Since the initial checkout was done, the right taillight and directional, the tag light and the horn have been wired and checked.

The radio and CD changer functions operate including the complex remote function mentioned in Post 13. I mounted the antenna higher in the back window and connected the antenna booster correctly. Radio reception is way better than before.

The next error showed up when I connected the cruise control ground wire. The cruise on LED was lit no matter what position the cruise on-off switch was in. I had connected the wrong terminal of the on-off switch to the set-resume switch. When I corrected that the light acted like it should. 

When I wired the dash, I forgot my own rule about making things easily removable. There are four LEDs that mount from behind the dash in an extremely inaccessible area. It was a real bear to remove the lights, switches and panel. Once that was done with minimal breakage, it was easy to add two Molex plugs polarized so the left and right LED pairs can't be misconnected. But that's what I thought about the headlights.

With checkout nearly complete, I buttoned things up enough to drive the car and check the cruise control and overdrive. I removed the ramps under the wheels to get the car back on the ground.

It wouldn't start. No spark at the plugs or coil. The coil covering was split and some of the windings were poking out. The PerTronix module was burned and fused with the magnet ring. In the Question & Answer section (!) on page 5 of 6 (!!) of the PerTronix instruction sheet, Question 7 of 10 (!!!) read:
Q What happens if I leave the ignition switch on when the engine is not running?
A This can cause your coil to overheat, which may cause permanent damage to the coil and Ignitor™.

I believe this information deserved a tad more emphasis. I would have put it in red caps on Page 1 in the section that started


If that had been done, I would have had a better chance to avoid a two hundred dollar mistake. (I replaced the singed cap and rotor too.)

I'm not sure if Ignitor II™ and Ignitor III™ modules have the same problem, but I would find out before I installed either one. At least one of the Buick websites does not recommend the "cheap PerTronix" (their term) in Buick distributors. This problem may be why. On the other hand, I have run this Ignitor™ for over ten years with out a problem before this.