Tag Archives: Vehicle

Part and Parcel: State of the Swap

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http://www.oldcarsweekly.com

Each July the tiny town of Iola, Wis., is invaded by a sea of humanity and old iron. Many in attendance come strictly for the swap meet, which covers about 4,500 spaces.

Old car hobby doing well — at least ‘parts’ of it

By John Gunnell

“Don’t tell me there’s no recovery going on,” said Kurt Kelsey, an Iowa City-based vendor of new-old-stock Pontiac parts. According to Kelsey, his business this year is much better than it has been in a long time. “The phone has been ringing off the hook every day,” he said.

Kelsey’s observation about an up-tick in the market isn’t alone. Positive reports have come from other vendors, parts manufacturers and catalog retailers since late last fall. Despite an unsettled national economy and high unemployment, the old-car parts business seems to be in the midst of a boom.

During a Dynamat seminar at the Hot Rod & Restoration Show in March, company owner Scott Whitaker said one-day shipping of Dynamat automotive insulation products has been impossible to promise lately, because a large increase in orders has outpaced new hiring. “The bump in sales wasn’t expected and caught us off guard,” he said.

In early April, Bob Marx at Marx Parts in Arpin, Wis., came to visit us and he, too, was upbeat about his rising sales. Marx has been growing his inventory of vintage gaskets and rear main seals and is now rebuilding fuel pumps, but he said that new products do not explain all of the growth he is seeing. Like several other industry veterans, Marx pointed to the TV exposure of the Mecum and Barrett-Jackson auctions as a factor that’s helping the hobby grow. “New people are getting involved with old cars,” he said.

“After a winter of inactivity, old cars tend to leak or fail when they are put back on the road,” said Fred Kanter of Kanter Auto Products, who wonders if the business boom might be seasonal. “March, April, May every year, it’s the same thing — spring,” Kanter said. He pointed out that from spring through summer every year, his most popular items are fuel pumps and water pumps. “There’s a lot of factors that affect our business.”

You never know what you’ll see at big swap meets. You might come across a 1958 Edsel Pacer looking for a new home.

Al Suehring of Amherst Junction, Wis., specializes in ring gears and is another vendor who feels that the market is strong. We caught up with him at the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America dinner in Chilton, Wis., and he said that his business from the United States and abroad has been showing noticeable increases lately.

Ray Yager of Classic Industries said the level of growth of reproduction parts sales is “hard to keep up with.” His firm supplies MoPar, 1955-’57 Chevy, Camaro, Firebird, Nova, Impala and Chevy truck parts, and parts sales for these vehicles are moving in a positive direction. Yager thought the company’s 18-month-old MoPar parts catalog may account for some, but not all, of the huge increase in business he’s seeing. At least one vendor who solely deals in Chevrolets is likewise seeing increases in business.

“I’m having a really good year,” said Ron Kellogg of Chevy Tri-Power. “Rather amazing since I’m selling restored multi-carb setups in an era of $5-a-gallon gas prices. I’ve probably sold 25 Tri-Power units — normally a year’s worth — since November 2011.”

Kellogg’s increase proves that car collectors still want high-performance options on their classics.

In addition to new products, increased TV exposure of the hobby and added catalogs, parts suppliers said both the use of the Internet and increased advertising seem to be attracting more customers. Some big companies such as Mid America Motorworks and Eastwood have begun sending daily e-mails to thousands of potential customers. This takes time and money and employees with Internet skills, but their efforts are paying off with increased sales.

Many mom-and-pop operations that can’t afford daily e-marketing efforts are creating websites, Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts to reach the marketplace. Hobby events aimed at professionals — such as the Racing & Performance Expo, the British Motor Trade Association and the SEMA Show — all offer seminars on Internet marketing techniques to these businesses.

As their marketing efforts become more sophisticated, parts sellers are also discovering that they can use print media to drive customers to their websites. Companies that never ran a print ad before are discovering that a clean-looking space ad with the right design and not much text can generate strong client interaction. The right picture of a car can catch the potential customer’s attention and a simple e-mail address or website link is all that’s needed to bring business knocking. A good ad will pay for itself much faster these days.

While an increase in parts sales would suggest that restoration shops and collector car sales are both on the increase, growth in those parts of the hobby isn’t as clear-cut as it is when a part is “checked out” in an online catalog. Collector car dealers such as Colin Comer of Colin’s Classic Auto in Milwaukee and market players such as Joe Bortz are fairly universal in the belief that collector car prices are off 15-20 percent in today’s market. Some restoration shop owners say that they are busier than they’ve ever been, but others say the opposite.

From all of the indications we have seen and all the comments we’ve heard, it appears the old-car parts niche is improving for 2012 and this trend will presumably filter down to other parts of the hobby. The hobby is changing in many ways, and the wise businessmen in it are getting more sophisticated as the market grows.

Sources mentioned

Kurt Kelsey
NOS Pontiac parts
641-648-9086

Dynamat
automotive insulation products
www.dynamat.com
513-860-5094

Marx Parts
vintage gaskets
www.marxparts.com
715-652-2405

Kanter Auto Products
mechanical components
www.kanter.com
800-526-1096

Al Suehring
ring gears
715-677-3809

Classic Industries
restoration parts
www.classicindustries.com
714-847-6887

Ron Kellogg
most tri-power units
www.chevytripower.com

Joe Bortz
vintage vehicle sales
www.takeyourcartoauction.com
847-668-2004

Mid America Motorworks
Corvette and VW restoration parts
www.mamotorworks.com
866-350-4543

Eastwood
restoration equipment
www.eastwood.com
800-343-9353

Colin’s Classic Auto
vintage vehicle sales
www.colinsclassicauto.com
414-964-3747

Wrecked Radiator Part II

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The Funny Thing About Bent Fins…

Another common problem, especially among home mechanics (yours truly included) is the issue of bent fins. Radiator design hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years, save for switching the tanks from a top-to-bottom setup to a crossflow (side-to-side) setup. In all radiators, hot water from the engine flows into the radiator, and then passes through a number of narrow tubes with fins on either side. Air flows over these fins (either from forward motion or pulled through by the fan) which dramatically increases the ability of a radiator to shed heat, allowing the water inside to drop as much as 30 degrees before going back into the engine block.

As important as these fins are, they are also extremely delicate, and sometimes us home mechanics have the bad habit of banging and shoving parts like the radiator into place. This can bend and damage the fins, which is never a good thing. “Any time you bend that fin, it will prevent the air from going through the radiator,” says Jason. “This will in turn effect how it can cool. Small rocks can bend fins, or if you hit a bird or debris on the road. If you’re into driving off-road, mud or dirt can get into those fins too, blocking the air the same as a bent fin would.” Jason recommends giving your radiator the occasional blast of water to blow out debris that collects over time.

A close-up of what bent fins look like. While a few bent fins are nothing to worry about, anything larger than the size of a baseball could dramatically reduce the ability of a radiator to shed heat.

Our New AFCO Dual-Pass Radiator

To compliment our crate engine in our project car, we ripped out the stock radiator that was consistently failing us and outfitted it with a brand new dual-stage AFCO radiator. Beyond cooling though, what are the advantages of upgrading a radiator?

  • 100% TIG welded with no epoxy.
  • All Aluminum design allows us to take a little unneeded weight off the nose of the car.
  • The dual-pass allows water to stay in the radiator longer for additional cooling.
  • 100% pressure tested before it leaves the factory.

If you have bent fins though, don’t get too worried just yet; a few bent fins here or there isn’t the end of the world, or even your radiator. “If you have some decent-sized areas, like baseball-sized or larger, that could greatly affect the way the radiator cools,” says Jason. Even if you have a large area of bent fins, chances are your radiator can still be saved so long as the cooling tubes themselves aren’t pinched. “Most auto parts stores sell or loan what they call a radiator comb, which is used to straighten the fins back out. Unless the fins are broken, you should be able to straighten them out.Digging Deeper Into The Cooling System

Dirty and corrosive coolant, loose hoses, and bent fins are common causes of an overheating engine, but sometimes the problem is deeper than the radiator itself. In maintaining our “Fix the simple stuff first” theme, it’s time to start looking outside of the radiator for overheating issues. “You have to make sure that the water is flowing through the engine,” explains Jason. “Stuck thermostats will impede that flow, as well as a blockage a radiator hose. It could also be a sign of a broken water pump.”

“A lot of cars these days are equipped with electric fans. A pretty good sign that you have a fan problem is if your car overheats while you’re sitting on the grid or under caution, but while you’re moving the temperature stays down,” says Jason.

If you’ve gotten this far, but are still having cooling problems, the issue could be one of the most dreaded engine malfunctions known to mechanics the world over; a blown headgasket. For the average passenger car, a blown headgasket is a problem that can be ignored for a quite a while. For serious racers though a blown headgasket could mean a whole lot of damage to the engine, including the radiator.

Replacing a head gasket is a lot more involved than replacing a radiator, or thermostat, and so you want to be sure that that is really the problem. “If you do a pressure test on the radiator, and it doesn’t hold pressure, that could be a sign of a blown head gasket,” explains Jason. “If you’re losing coolant but don’t know where its going, you could have a blown head gasket. But you’re going to want to run further tests, like a cylinder leak down test first. If you’ve got coolant in your oil, it is a pretty good sign you have a head gasket.”

The Football Blowout Issue

But what if you check to ensure the radiator isn’t leaking, the thermostat and water pump is working, and you fix the broken head gasket, but the system is still not cooling right? That blown head gasket may have damaged your radiator more than you know. As Eric Saffell over at AFCO Racing explains to us, excessive internal pressure can be a very big problem. “The case I want to talk about is a racer who sent us back his radiator due to a cooling issue,” says Eric. “Naturally you want to make sure that the thermostat and water pump are working, and that the radiator itself isn’t leaking. This case that all checked out.”

The left side of this radiator is what a core should like; the right side has been “blown up” by excessive internal pressure caused by a leaking head gasket.

However, if an engine loses a head gasket, all of that compression (in the cylinders) has to go somewhere,” Eric explains. “If the engine is leaking on the compression stroke, that compression is leaking into the water cooling system. The capillary tubes, which are wide and very flat, can be deformed by this pressure, taking on an almost football shape, pointed on the ends by rather thick in the middle.”

“What happens,” says Eric. “Is that the pressure essentially crushes the fins, restricting airflow through the radiator. In that instance, you’ll have a particular section of the radiator, or in a worst-case scenario, almost the entire core of the radiator, and you’ll see all the fins look like they’ve been smashed. A quick check for this is to drain the radiator of all the fluids, take it out of the car, and hold it up to the light. If you can’t see look through the radiator, you want to do a more thorough visual inspection.”

“In this case though, you could see that the whole core itself was swollen in a football pattern. The common thinking is if a radiator isn’t leaking, it’s fine,” says Eric. “We’ve probably seen this more in circle track applications, but with power adders becoming more commonplace in drag racing we’re likely to see this happen more often there as well. You know when guys lift the head, they don’t think they’re damaging the radiator or cooling system, but in this case a lot of damage was done, and the only solution was to replace the radiator completely. If you had a pressure checker in the cooling system, you’d definitely see a spike in pressure in the cooling system in cars where this happened.”

Chemistry In Your Coolant

As of late, Eric has also seen the increasing use of cooling additives in the radiator. Back in the day, a lot of radiators were made from brass or copper, but today radiators are more and more made from aluminum. These metals all have different properties, and mixing and matching can be corrosive. “Sometimes you’ll have guys who find an old bottle of radiator additive and they’ll add it without thinking, causing a chemical reaction within the radiator that can eat away at the internals. It will eventually find a place to create a pinhole or a series of pinholes.” To avoid this, just make sure whatever stop leak or cooling additive you use is designed for an aluminum radiator (if that is what you’re using…which you probably are.)

Corrosion is a silent killer, and can be caused by anything from old, dirty coolant to improper additives, or even a poorly-grounded ignition system. Bent fins don’t help much either.

Another problem? Electrolysis. “When the ignition system isn’t properly grounded, the electrical current can run through the chassis and through the radiator,” says Eric. “Electrolysis can cause rapid corrosion through an electrochemical reaction in aluminum radiators. You can actually measure the electrical current in the chassis and the radiator.” The easiest way to check for electrolysis is to hook up a test light to your radiator while turning on the car and making sure you ground your ignition system properly.

For such a simple-yet-integral part of an engine, there seems to be a million and one things that can go wrong with them. But if you start off your diagnosis with the simple stuff, chances are you can save yourself a whole lot of time and frustration. Sometimes though a leaky radiator is a symptom, rather than a cause. This guide should help you get through some of the agony and irritation of fixing an overheating problem, and hopefully next time your radiator springs a leak you’ll be better prepared get it back to working order. And big thanks to Jason Danley and and Eric Saffell for helping us put this article together.

Barrett-Jackson and Karl Kustom Corvettes

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Not only is there a ton of beautiful cars at Barrett-Jackson auctions, there are also a lot of venders.  Anything from car care products, to engine builders to custom building shops.

One of those was Karl Kustom Corvettes located in Des Moines, Ia.  I had a chance to speak with Jim Hidy one of the reps for Karl Kustom at the auction this past January.

SWEET!!!!

 

Nice looking car, yes?  HELL YES.  But there some interesting things I didn’t know about these custom Vettes and how they are made.

I spoke with Jim at length and I have to tell you that how I thought these were made wasn’t even close and how they are made was pretty surprising to me.  Jim set me straight.

Great Creation

 

These are of course C6 machines with the look of the  60’s Vettes.  All the great handling and power of the C6 underpinning and classic looks.  I thought ‘how cool they manufacture a body that snaps on the C6 frame.  But that’s not how it’s done.

More coming up in Part 2.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

So What Did it bring at Barrett Jackson? – 1957 DeSoto Adventurer

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This fantastic car sold for  $225,500.00.  See pic and video blow.
Year: 1957
Make: DESOTO
Model: ADVENTURER
Style: CONVERTIBLE
VIN: 50417567
Exterior Color: GOLD
Interior Color:
Cylinders: 8
Engine Size: 345

The 345

 

 

Thanks for reading

Engine Line-Up: 1960 Edsel

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The Edsel.  Name sake for Henry’s son.  Touted as “ugly” and a failure.  I disagree.

I think they were great and I plan on own one at some point. ( I was pretty close earlier this  year – just missed one at an auction.)  There is just something about tooling around in one of those  large and long 4 door land yacht.  Anyway..one day I will, if I just borrow one for a week.

So in the last year of the Edsel what engines were available?

The car came in 4 configuration, body-wise.  A 2 door sedan, a 2 door convertible; a 4 door sedan and 5 door wagon, but only two engine options.

Your two choices were of the V8 and straight six variety.

Ford‘s 292 was the V8 power plant .  It sported overhead valves, an iron block and hydraulic lifters.  The compression was ratio 8.8:1 and with a bore and stroke of 3.75 x 3.60.  It came with a 2 barrel carb – model B9A9510-A.  Interesting the block and heads were painted black and the value covers and air cleaner were red.

There was the option inline (straight) 6 cylinder.  That too had overhead valves and an iron block.  Bore and stroke was 3.62 x 3.60 and compression ratio 8.4:1. It displayed 223 cubic inches with 145 horse power.  It was topped with a 1 barrel carb, model B9A9510F.   It had the same paint scheme as the V8 but was considered a “delete” option in the Rangers series.

223 Straight (Inline) 6 cylinder with the proper paint scheme

Add 2 more cylinder and buy an extra can of paint for additional valve cover and you'll have this 292 with the proper paint.

Thanks for reading.

Tim