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**Silver Hawk 59** · 12-03-2023, 03:18 PM

What a great car, and it's fantastic that another "retired" Studey comes out of hibernation! A lot of flaws were pointed out... who cares about that, I thought we were going to see some road action. Oh well, hope you enjoy the good things and drive it as much as you can! Congratulations!!

**Skip Lackie** · 12-04-2023, 07:03 AM

Your comment about having to weatherstrips makes me remember the problems I've been having with the rear-of-door weather strips, that actually glue onto the rear fender. i believe they are unique to the 64 hardtops, and I think the old Packard Farm was the only manufacturer. Every vendor is still using them up. They are too thick at the top, and don't allow the doors to close without slamming. Would be interested to hear of your experience with them.

**Skip Lackie** · 12-04-2023, 07:06 AM

No edit function: "about still having to install weatherstrips . . . ."

**r1lark** · 12-09-2023, 06:31 AM

Fairly cold and windy the last couple of days in NC, but any weather is Studebaker wrenching weather, right?

Swapped out the suspect 3.31:1 Twin Traction rear axle, and put in the 3.54:1 Twin Traction that came out of my '64 R1 GT package car. (Pulled the 3.54 out a number of years ago to run a 3.07 for long trips.) This is just temporary, because the 3.54 is going back into the Hawk next year. I know this is a good rear axle, plus it's a little lower ratio; the 3.31 just doesn't seem 'fun' enough with the 4 speed so want to see how the 3.54 does. If I like it, maybe the 3.31 will get rebuilt as a 3.54.

Embarrassing find while swapping the rear axle. When driving the Daytona, on large bumps I could hear and feel something banging hard in the rear of the car. Thought it was something in the trunk, so took everything out......no change. Kept looking at everything underneath as the axle swap was going on, but nothing jumped out at me. This thing has NOS police car springs on the back, so I knew it wasn't weak springs. So, once everything was bolted back up I remembered that I had a new pinion snubber rubber block to replace the missing one (these were fitted to all ’62-’64 Lark 4-speed cars according to the parts manual). When I started to unbolt the small attachment piece for the rubber part of the snubber, I noticed an odd shiny spot on the big snubber bracket, and realized that the high point of the rear sway bar must have been banging on it. At this point, I had the rear axle hanging down on the springs, with jackstands under the frame just in front of the forward spring attachment points -- so there was plenty of clearance between the bracket and the sway bar. Jacked up the rear axle so it was at ride height, and sure enough on a big bump that raised part of the sway bar would contact the large pinion snubber bracket. How could that be?? I used all the factory parts to put the sway bar on. Finally realized that I had installed the spacer blocks on backwards. These spacer blocks are only used on the Larks with rear sway bar (the Hawks with rear sway bars didn’t use them) and bolt to the frame, then the ‘U’ shaped bracket with the sway bar rubber insulator bolts to the spacer. The spacer has the holes offsite so depending on which way you bolt it to the frame, they move the sway bar either forward or rearward. Had always wondered why these were used on the Lark – maybe this is why, to eliminate the interference with the pinion snubber bracket on 4-speed cars? Anyway, I had the spacers installed so the sway bar would be pushed some. Turned the spacers around to move the bar rearward, and the sway bar won’t contact the pinion snubber bracket any more. But it does put the sway bar closer to the exhaust and to the rear flexible brake hose, will have to keep an eye on those to make sure nothing is hitting.

Picture below of the sway bar setup showing what I call the spacers (parts manual calls them ‘adapters’) circled in red. These actually have four tapped thru holes in them, not two as shown in the parts manual representation – two to bolt to the frame, and two for the ‘U’ shaped rubber insulator bracket.

Will report back after the road testing today

.

**Noxnabaker** · 12-09-2023, 02:08 PM

Snubber & rubber, gives me MoPar vibes, are the axel mounted a bit forward too?

**r1lark** · 12-10-2023, 05:34 AM

Road test report....................

I really like the 3.54 ratio axle, as far as driving with the 4-speed. But that feeling that I'm driving in 3rd at speed instead of 4th is even more pronounced. I'm so used to driving 3 speed overdrive cars with a fairly high final drive ratio in overdrive that having the engine rpms up so much on the highway is foreign to me. Some of this may be just the higher noise level of noise due to literally no interior except for the front seats; hopefully once the Kilmat, rear seat, and carpet is in the car, and the door weatherstrips installed, the noise will be greatly reduced. Also, I'm planning on using taller tires in the rear than the 21575R15 that are in the back now, so that will slightly raise the final drive ratio.

Definitely understand a lot better why folks are swapping in 5 speeds, best of both worlds. For a car that's going to be driven more than just to town for a cruise in, that sure would be nice.

Still have a weird noise for a couple of seconds when I floor it in 4th gear at around 40mph, hard to describe, almost sounds like some sort of resonance in the exhaust system. Still trying to figure that one out.

Thinking that the next step is to put the Kilmat down on the floor, and put the (temporary) blue rear seat bottom and back into the car, and install the door weatherstrip, and see how that impacts the noise levels inside the car.

**Noxnabaker** · 12-10-2023, 12:14 PM

I don't know what strange noices you have, but thinking of small block Chevy & MoPar I've had, my experiance is that about 70km/h there's a resonating sound if you don't put the mufflers as far up front as possible, so that's what I always have done & it cures it for me.

**r1lark** · 03-28-2024, 01:40 PM

Have only worked on the Daytona a little bit over the last 3 months, due to focusing on the '62 GT Hawk. But I have been fighting an issue on the Daytona, a periodic 'stumble' (for lack of a better term), actually more like its only running on 4 or 6 cylinders for an extended period of time, so when the weather was nice I would make changes and drive it to see if the 'fix' cured it.

At first it seemed like maybe a fuel starvation issue, so I drained the fuel tank and used my borescope camera to look inside the tank. Tank was very clean, just a little bit of fine particles settled into one rib when it was drained, plus an odd looking 'disc' of something. Fished it out, and it was a piece of duct tape. Ah hah, maybe it was getting sucked up onto the end of the pickup tube and the car was starving for fuel. And, sometimes when the 'stumble' would happen, stopping the car and then driving off would 'cure' it........maybe that would dislodge the piece of duct tape. Great, found it! But, no, after driving, the 'stumble' was still there.

Replaced the metal Wix fuel filter with a clear plastic Wix filter to see if the filter was stopped up, or if the fuel flow was being interrupted. Nope, still there, and the filter was always full of fuel. (By the way, the fuel pump is an original Carter that was rebuilt with a Then and Now ethanol-resistant kit.)

Pulled the top off the carb, looked inside, float adjustment was ok, no really bad stuff in the carb's fuel bowl.

Thought about it being an electrical issue. Tweaked the dwell adjustment (it was within the correct range). Pulled the cap off the distributor, everything looked good with the rotor and cap, but noticed some oil (probably from too much cam lube on the distributor cam when I changed the points). Yanked out the distributor and cleaned the points set, and filed the contacts, and reinstalled and adjusted the dwell and timing. Nope, no change, still had the stumble.

Since the stumble didn't usually happen until a couple of miles of driving, decided to change the coil with a known good coil (even though everything tested ok with it). No change.

Did some tests on the pink resistance wire but voltage seemed about right. Decided to bypass the resistance wire totally just to make sure. Installed an external 1.8 ohm resistor, and ran temporary wiring to bypass the pink wire. Still no change.

Even though the carb seemed fine (idled very smoothly, good vacuum, didn't leak, etc), decided to pull the 2 barrel Stromberg 6-132 apart and put a kit in it. And I found something -- a small ball of some hard substance (a little smaller than a BB) in one of the main jet wells. Here is a picture of the substance next to the jet:

So, could this ball of 'whatever' be periodically sucked up by the jet, and block this jet so the engine is only running off 1/2 of the fuel, and cause the extended stumbling? Hard to believe, but except for a couple of the choke adjustments, there was nothing else wrong with the carb.

Got the carb back on yesterday afternoon, adjusted the idle speed and the idle mixture (actually, the idle mixture was almost perfect at the recommended 1-1/4 turns from closed).............and finished up in the rain. Decided to wait until today when the weather cleared off to drive it. Drove it twice today for extended periods of time, and no stumble! Will drive it more over the next few days before I call it 'fixed', but I've got my fingers crossed.

**StudeRich** · 03-28-2024, 06:51 PM

Sounds very logical to me as the reason, it's always the Last of half dozen or more "Fixes" that does it.

As always, it's the simple stuff that'll bite you!

I am glad you approached this Scientifically, and only did One at a time though.

**Noxnabaker** · 03-29-2024, 12:14 AM

Cool! Seems you're luckier than me thou; I've been having the same problem with Yolandi (off topic brand from 1956) & done everything, as in even replacing all(!) ignition parts + taking appart & cleaning the carb but still no cure, tank is going down now...

**jackb** · 03-29-2024, 12:25 PM

Good find. I had a similar experience this past week with a WW 127. Would not idle earlier last week, then was OK. Went 200 miles north for the weekend and found the car wouldn't run under 30 mph without stalling after reaching destination. Won't bore you with the foot-plus snowstorm I had to negotiate, but, in the end a new kit to the carb fixed everything. Found a few of the idle passages clogged up. Performing fine now.

**r1lark** · 04-02-2024, 05:42 PM

Started installing the Kilmat sound deadener material. Right now just doing the rear half so we can get the rear seat installed. Here is a video:

**Noxnabaker** · 04-03-2024, 01:06 AM

My thought, might be wrong at least a bit, is that where the front of the seat goes there's a steel frame & that might be hard to get the seat down enough to connect it to the "holders" or whatever one might call the pieces that holds the seat down if there's material on the drive shaft tunnel..?

**r1lark** · 04-03-2024, 05:49 AM

Originally posted by Noxnabaker View Post

My thought, might be wrong at least a bit, is that where the front of the seat goes there's a steel frame & that might be hard to get the seat down enough to connect it to the "holders" or whatever one might call the pieces that holds the seat down if there's material on the drive shaft tunnel..?

I hope not nox, this sound deadener is not super thick, plus I think the carpet is supposed to extend a little bit under the seat. Hopefully there will be room, if not it will get a little trim.

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1964 Daytona Hardtop Rescue Effort

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