Antique Vehicles and Antifreeze

Antique Vehicles and Antifreeze

Found this article extremely relevant!

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Antique Cars and Antifreeze

From Welcome to First Capital AACA

So what’s cooling your antique car …IAT or OAT type antifreeze?  What’s the difference, you ask?  To be honest, I didn’t realize there were different types of antifreeze compounds.  I just shopped for brands and price.  I figure it’s all the same stuff just different colors.  Well, there IS a difference and it DOES matter to all of us that have water cooled antiques.

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Reinventing the Wheel

Reinventing the Wheel

As long as the truck was up on blocks over the winter and early spring, I had decided to remove and restore the steering wheel – as you can see from the first photo, it needed it.

Steering Wheel Prior to Restoration - Lots of Fine Cracks Everywhere

Steering Wheel Prior to Restoration – Lots of Fine Cracks Everywhere

Removal was actually pretty straightforward – you cannot use a conventional steering wheel puller, but a bearing puller works very well. Perhaps I was lucky, but it popped off with relative ease.

To guide me through the restoration process, I had purchased the Steering Wheel Restoration Kit by Eastwood. The kit includes an excellent guide, PC-7 epoxy, adhesion promoter and pre-painting prep. The kit is reasonably priced at $50 (as of the posting of this article).

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Time for a Brake

Time for a Brake

Over the course of the winter storage of Cornelius, I noted that a wet spot had started to appear on the back side of the driver’s side backing plate. Once it got warm enough, I pulled the tire and the drum to have a look. Sure enough, the wheel cylinder had developed a leak and was dripping brake fluid into the bearings and thinning the grease as well. Time for some brake work.

Front Driver's Side Brakes Prior to Repair

Front Driver’s Side Brakes Prior to Repair

First item was to clean things up, which took a while – there was quite a lot of grease and gunk covering everything. I ordered and received a replacement brake cylinder and some replacement brake springs (see the “Parts” page for part numbers). Fortunately, the brake shoes seem to have been recently replaced and are in excellent condition. The wheel bearings were also in excellent condition and only needed a thorough cleaning and repacking.

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Fine Tuning Your Carburetor

Fine Tuning Your Carburetor

Although I have tuned countless carburetors over the years by “ear”, I decided I wanted to make sure I had tuned my trucks new carburetor to be as efficient as possible. Especially since my hearing is NOTHING like it used to be!

Tuning Carburetor With Vacuum Gauge

Tuning Carburetor With Vacuum Gauge

The next step in carburetor tuning is via a halfway decent vacuum gauge. You connect the gauge to a vacuum source – in this case I connected to the line right off the intake manifold that runs to the vacuum advance unit on the distributor. I immediately saw a wobbly reading of approximately 16.5 inches of vacuum. After adjusting the mixture, it rose to a little over 18 (you want to see between 18-20 or so) and was pretty steady. Also, the periodic “puff” in the exhaust decreased, which was good.

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Taking a Powder

Taking a Powder

Even though the truck is stored for the winter, I am fortunate in that I have enough room to continue working on it. So over the past few weeks, I have cleaned up a United partial flow oil filter and an original AC oil bath air cleaner. I then had them powder coated semi-gloss black. Thanks to Jay at Apex Powder Coating in Middleton, WI, they turned out amazing. The air filter media was difficult to clean prior to powder coating, and although I did my best, it still caused quite a bit of smoke at the powder coaters!

Air Cleaner Assembly Prior to Powder Coating

Air Cleaner Assembly Prior to Powder Coating

The air filter is pretty much ready to go now as is. I only wish I could find an original clamp for it. It had a regular hose clamp on it with a thin strip of rubber on it between the clamp and the filter. I will be doing pretty much the same thing for the time being.

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