Well,
You may recall the picture of the 58 Provincial wagon I posted a month or so ago. I bought the car from fellow forum member, Dick Steinkamp and HE had just bought it out of a garage in Livermore, California - where it had been resting since the mid-90s.
Dick knew of my fondness for the mid-50s sedan offerings from Stude and maybe even a bit more bias towards the finny fifty-eights.[
] So after saying "NO!" at first, I succumbed to the call of this fairly rare example of a '58 Stude.
While only 300 miles from me, it was cheaper - in the long run - to have it delivered to me than for me to go and retrieve it. While it did run and was somewhat driveable, I wasn't gonna be foolish enough to try and drive it 300 miles after it had set idle for so long.
Anyway, I actualy had it deliverd to a local muffler shop where they replaced the existing, totally rotted, dual exhaust system with nice, new 2&1/4" pipes and "turbo" mufflers. Sounds VERY authoritative!
When they were done with the exhausts, I carefully drove it the 6 miles to our place and lodged it in a bay in my shop.
As time allowed, I went about replacing ALL the hydraulic parts of the brakes (shoes and drums were too good to redo for the time being), added new shocks, lubed and checked over everything I could see underneath and lastly, dropped the gas tank - which had proven to have a plugged pickup tube. This had prompted Dick to run the car with a temporary gas line and a 2-gallon gas can as a makeshift "tank".
The gas tank was actualy spotless inside - save for one tiny pebble that had lodged itself in the very end of the pickup tube. I could SEE the plug by looking in with a flashlight. It proved to be pretty darned stubborn about giving up it's seat until I applied some compressed air for a half minute or so. Then, sounding like a BB gun, it shot out and rattled around in the tank.
With a bit of shaking of the tank, I managed to tease the pebble out and with a mirror and flashlight, concluded that the tank was as good as new inside! Such a deal! [^]
And along with the gas tank, I decided to see if I could get the tank sender and the gas gage work in harmony. Even tho there'd been about 5 gallons of gas in the tank when I got the car, the gage didn't show anything. So I figured I'd find out which component was the culprit and replace it.[}
]
As it turned out, both the gage and the sender WERE functional when tested with power or an ohmeter independently - they just didn't wanna colaborate to say how much gas there was. And having several new and used units around, I started trying senders and gages to see if I could come up with a winning partnership. I couldn't[xx(]
Now, I've taken the sender units apart before and had limited success at massaging them back to health. But the sender from the car was in good shape according to what my meter was showing, so that left the gage to try and deal with. This was something I'd never attempted in the past but I was certain that some sort of adjustment could be affected if I looked inside of a gage to see how it worked.
So I ground off one of the tiny rivets that holds the gage face in place and carefully swung the face aside by rotating it on the other rivet. Aha! there's actualy a high end - low end adjustment as I'd heard in the dim, dark past. Consequently, I took some jumper wires and hooked my good gas tank sender to the gage and powered them off the car's battery. It took a bit of trial and error but I finally got the empty mark of the gage to match the low point of the sender and the full mark to match the high swing of the sender. Worked Great!
Not happy with that tho, I installed the sender in the empty tank and again to the gage and tried flipping the tank upright or upside down to simulate full and empty. Gage was spot on in it's registry! Too cool![] A gas gage that's fairly accurate in my Studebaker. A rarity for me![:I]
I then reinstall the tank, hook up the sender wire and even take the extra precaution of ADDING a ground wire from one of the sender
You may recall the picture of the 58 Provincial wagon I posted a month or so ago. I bought the car from fellow forum member, Dick Steinkamp and HE had just bought it out of a garage in Livermore, California - where it had been resting since the mid-90s.
Dick knew of my fondness for the mid-50s sedan offerings from Stude and maybe even a bit more bias towards the finny fifty-eights.[
] So after saying "NO!" at first, I succumbed to the call of this fairly rare example of a '58 Stude.While only 300 miles from me, it was cheaper - in the long run - to have it delivered to me than for me to go and retrieve it. While it did run and was somewhat driveable, I wasn't gonna be foolish enough to try and drive it 300 miles after it had set idle for so long.
Anyway, I actualy had it deliverd to a local muffler shop where they replaced the existing, totally rotted, dual exhaust system with nice, new 2&1/4" pipes and "turbo" mufflers. Sounds VERY authoritative!
When they were done with the exhausts, I carefully drove it the 6 miles to our place and lodged it in a bay in my shop.
As time allowed, I went about replacing ALL the hydraulic parts of the brakes (shoes and drums were too good to redo for the time being), added new shocks, lubed and checked over everything I could see underneath and lastly, dropped the gas tank - which had proven to have a plugged pickup tube. This had prompted Dick to run the car with a temporary gas line and a 2-gallon gas can as a makeshift "tank".
The gas tank was actualy spotless inside - save for one tiny pebble that had lodged itself in the very end of the pickup tube. I could SEE the plug by looking in with a flashlight. It proved to be pretty darned stubborn about giving up it's seat until I applied some compressed air for a half minute or so. Then, sounding like a BB gun, it shot out and rattled around in the tank.
With a bit of shaking of the tank, I managed to tease the pebble out and with a mirror and flashlight, concluded that the tank was as good as new inside! Such a deal! [^]
And along with the gas tank, I decided to see if I could get the tank sender and the gas gage work in harmony. Even tho there'd been about 5 gallons of gas in the tank when I got the car, the gage didn't show anything. So I figured I'd find out which component was the culprit and replace it.[}
]As it turned out, both the gage and the sender WERE functional when tested with power or an ohmeter independently - they just didn't wanna colaborate to say how much gas there was. And having several new and used units around, I started trying senders and gages to see if I could come up with a winning partnership. I couldn't[xx(]
Now, I've taken the sender units apart before and had limited success at massaging them back to health. But the sender from the car was in good shape according to what my meter was showing, so that left the gage to try and deal with. This was something I'd never attempted in the past but I was certain that some sort of adjustment could be affected if I looked inside of a gage to see how it worked.
So I ground off one of the tiny rivets that holds the gage face in place and carefully swung the face aside by rotating it on the other rivet. Aha! there's actualy a high end - low end adjustment as I'd heard in the dim, dark past. Consequently, I took some jumper wires and hooked my good gas tank sender to the gage and powered them off the car's battery. It took a bit of trial and error but I finally got the empty mark of the gage to match the low point of the sender and the full mark to match the high swing of the sender. Worked Great!
Not happy with that tho, I installed the sender in the empty tank and again to the gage and tried flipping the tank upright or upside down to simulate full and empty. Gage was spot on in it's registry! Too cool![
] A gas gage that's fairly accurate in my Studebaker. A rarity for me![:I]I then reinstall the tank, hook up the sender wire and even take the extra precaution of ADDING a ground wire from one of the sender
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