My still-new-to-me '51 Commander Starlight appears to have no reverse and no park. Wondering if I can get some advice.
Purchased late last summer, I've been upgrading the car to later brakes w/dual master over the winter. I put a low bid on ebay and did not expect to buy it -- but here it is. What can I say, it looked nice in the pictures. There is no rust, and the wiring all appears replaced, if not connected to anything. The info on the car was sketchy -- the engine had been given hardened valve seats, and the transmission 'reworked'. I've figured out that it has a 1954 232 engine, but not sure what-year transmission . But it is a Borg-Warner DG unit.
I started the engine over the weekend and. I've got a nice even idle at about 800 RPM, tho' I might need to replace the vacuum advance.
What I noticed was that even in Park, the rear wheels were getting forward power. In Neutral, the same.... in fact all the ranges from Park to Reverse, the right passenger wheel was moving in the forward direction. If I applied some mild pressure with a wooden pole, I was able to stop the wheel, and block it. And then also block the other wheel. The engine bogged down a bit, but I think that's just an idle adjustment.
But I'm worried about no park and no reverse. The wheels were really locked on delivery -- they had to winch it off the trailer last summer. I freed up the wheels enough to drive the car down-hill to my driveway, but the dragging brakes prevented me from getting up the hill to my garage. I was able to maneuver the car back and forth in an attempt to build up speed to get up the hill and in the middle of all this, a terrible downpour occurred. But in trying to drive the car up the driveway, I did hear a screech, which I thought was a tire on the slick pavement, but I decided to stop and just use another vehicle to tow it the 1000 feet up the hill to my garage. Other than that, I've never driven it.
Aside from the locked brakes, every bolt on this car has been pretty loose. Even the lock-nuts on the rear axle, the distributor, the carburetor actuating rod, whatever I've touched, it's been loose. So wondering if this is an adjustment issue with the selector, or at the transmission ora fluid level issue (didn't have a chance to pull that side up. Or is it something more serious. I thought I had an Automatic-Drive supplement in my collection, but it turned out to be a '53 Power Steering supplement. Not so useful. Just thinking -- is there any wiring to the transmission that should be connected? The anti-creep switch at the firewall carb-inkage is not, and I was not planning on re-installing the anti-creep valve, given the dual circuits and the additional, un-needed complexity.
Sorry for the long tale. Thanks for any advice! I've never had an early automatic-drive car before, just a flash-o-matic in a Lark years ago -- any recommendations for a good shop for this transmission in the DC-Baltimore-York area? Bands and clutches are not my area of expertise!
Purchased late last summer, I've been upgrading the car to later brakes w/dual master over the winter. I put a low bid on ebay and did not expect to buy it -- but here it is. What can I say, it looked nice in the pictures. There is no rust, and the wiring all appears replaced, if not connected to anything. The info on the car was sketchy -- the engine had been given hardened valve seats, and the transmission 'reworked'. I've figured out that it has a 1954 232 engine, but not sure what-year transmission . But it is a Borg-Warner DG unit.
I started the engine over the weekend and. I've got a nice even idle at about 800 RPM, tho' I might need to replace the vacuum advance.
What I noticed was that even in Park, the rear wheels were getting forward power. In Neutral, the same.... in fact all the ranges from Park to Reverse, the right passenger wheel was moving in the forward direction. If I applied some mild pressure with a wooden pole, I was able to stop the wheel, and block it. And then also block the other wheel. The engine bogged down a bit, but I think that's just an idle adjustment.
But I'm worried about no park and no reverse. The wheels were really locked on delivery -- they had to winch it off the trailer last summer. I freed up the wheels enough to drive the car down-hill to my driveway, but the dragging brakes prevented me from getting up the hill to my garage. I was able to maneuver the car back and forth in an attempt to build up speed to get up the hill and in the middle of all this, a terrible downpour occurred. But in trying to drive the car up the driveway, I did hear a screech, which I thought was a tire on the slick pavement, but I decided to stop and just use another vehicle to tow it the 1000 feet up the hill to my garage. Other than that, I've never driven it.
Aside from the locked brakes, every bolt on this car has been pretty loose. Even the lock-nuts on the rear axle, the distributor, the carburetor actuating rod, whatever I've touched, it's been loose. So wondering if this is an adjustment issue with the selector, or at the transmission ora fluid level issue (didn't have a chance to pull that side up. Or is it something more serious. I thought I had an Automatic-Drive supplement in my collection, but it turned out to be a '53 Power Steering supplement. Not so useful. Just thinking -- is there any wiring to the transmission that should be connected? The anti-creep switch at the firewall carb-inkage is not, and I was not planning on re-installing the anti-creep valve, given the dual circuits and the additional, un-needed complexity.
Sorry for the long tale. Thanks for any advice! I've never had an early automatic-drive car before, just a flash-o-matic in a Lark years ago -- any recommendations for a good shop for this transmission in the DC-Baltimore-York area? Bands and clutches are not my area of expertise!
Comment