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1951 Pontiac Chieftain


PhilA

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3 minutes ago, STUNO said:

Tuba Skinny is a bit more Louisiana than that Manto fella.  and Phil must have a wee bit of new Orleans in him by now .

Phil, your skills keep on surprising me. I wish that I had some.

I would've put on Trombone Shorty but I didn't have any on my old phone (that was playing music, this phone recording it).

 

Phil

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If you do decide to substitute a modern speaker (not necessarily a bad idea) do expect to have to tweak the tone correction circuitry as modern ones will have *way* higher top end frequency response. 

I fell into that trap with a Bush VHF71 I restored a while back as my main bedroom set.  It sounded horribly harsh until I'd subbed a few components around the tone control.  In that case I had way too much treble, way too much bass and nothing in the middle.  It sounded most peculiar!

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8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

If you do decide to substitute a modern speaker (not necessarily a bad idea) do expect to have to tweak the tone correction circuitry as modern ones will have *way* higher top end frequency response. 

I fell into that trap with a Bush VHF71 I restored a while back as my main bedroom set.  It sounded horribly harsh until I'd subbed a few components around the tone control.  In that case I had way too much treble, way too much bass and nothing in the middle.  It sounded most peculiar!

Already tried and the tone response coming out of the set is actually very flat. I think whoever designed this circuit also designed hi-fi. I hooked it up to a 2-way bookshelf speaker here in the office and that was pleasant on the ears for hours. It's not tiring to listen to.

 

--Phil

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Just ordered some parts for another radio so I ordered a .0068 1600V "Orange Drop" to replace the .0050 buffer cap that's in there right now. It's meant to be .0070 but .0068 is told to be close enough to stop the vibrator points from burning up.

 

Phil

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Part arrived and was duly fitted (orange piece). Changed the speaker for the 1956 one because it was in slightly better condition.

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Had this, which came with the parts radio. Was in two minds whether to fit it or not; discovered where it fits on the radio.

 

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Wired it up and fitted it after a bit of a clean. Tucks up under the dash neatly. It's not something to be used often, I don't think.

Next to see will be pull the crappy carpet off the rear shelf and see if there's space to fit a speaker in there.

 

Phil

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Ah yes, "Mischief". Nice design touches on the exterior, though they took one of the prettiest dashboards of the era and made a hash of it (Dakota Digital are proud of what they did. Big white space and two sweep arcs that don't match the space at all). V8 admittedly does bring the weight back behind the front wheels... Though popping the hood up does rather make it look like a Morris Minor- big engine bay with a "small" engine sat way down in the hole. Supercharger helps that look.

Big wheels and lowered with the rear spats gone really does emphasize what a big car it actually is. 

One thing that I'm surprised he didn't do is one of his usual touches- kill all screw holes on the front and have the pieces attach from behind. The front indicators retain the mounting screws! Kindig says he's all about the detail; I'll pick that to bits, but I'll grant them the amount of work that went into it.

 

I went prepped and painted the front of the radio yesterday. I had picked a nice dull military metallic gray at the hardware store, or so I thought.

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Cap denotes color. Not quite. Oh well. Remember those days when you hoped for bright shiny silver and got dull gray? We've come full circle.

 

Phil

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bought a length of 8ga. wire today for the alternator, to replace the 12ga. that's not really up to the task.

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Spent 2 hours cleaning up the garage. Found an old filing cabinet, cleaned it out and sorted all my receipts.

Binned all the old bits of car, mostly wiring crap. Vacuumed the car out a bit in readiness to do the alternator wiring. Thinking on the best way to add a shunt to the ammeter because at maximum deflection it reads about 40-45 amps (it's calibrated in D and C) and with everything switched on the current draw is about 35 amps. The dynamo was rated at 37 amps which would have been fine but the alternator can put out 63 amps and a fully discharged battery could easily suck that down and overheat the ammeter. I'm thinking I could put a diode across the terminals- discharge it would all flow through the ammeter (good) and charging it would flow through the ammeter and shunted by the diode to carry the additional current.

Thoughts?

 

Phil

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Just spent an hour of my life I'll never get back trying to figure how I'm going to tame this nonsense.

I hate flashlights that are unreliable. This one, if you tap it gently, will turn off. Also if you look at it funny. Plus the magnet will attach to anything apart from what you want to stick the bloody thing on, collects the sharpest metal filings and rust shards which then stick in your thumb as you frustratedly try to click the bloody switch back on again.

 

And I put my bloody back out again doing it all. 

Crap. It has shown though that I do need to run the new heavy gauge wire through first before looming it all up, coupled with getting the heater back in because the levers for that go past the wiring. I might call the guy I sent the valve to and see how he's getting on. He said 4 weeks, it's been a good while now.

 

Phil

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Found the screws and nuts for the valve and attached it to the heater box.

 

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The old gasket was no more good so I made a new one.

 

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Ditto where the air goes through the firewall.

 

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Remembered the big pipe that goes down from this heater matrix to the floor vents and cleaned it up with wire wheel.

 

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Painted it the same color as the firewall because I don't have any black left. It's going to look like old house plumbing...

 

Phil

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