Vintage Car Thread - Discussion and Parts Requests

[Stearmen]

The part that stinks is that in 1954 Cadillac and GM had the ability to make a small Cadillac supercar that could well have killed all comers. Put the Cadillac V-8 in the Corvette body, call it a Cadillac and they would have killed them.

Like Allard?

 

[jamespowers]

Like Allard?

Sort of like him. I had a chance to buy one of those years ago for about 5 grand. I just though the front end was just too ugly. Of course they did change from year to year.

 

[David Conwill]

Donald Healey tried to convince Cadillac to do the same thing, fitting Cadillac V8s into Healey Silverstone chassis, but they sent him packing. On his way back to the UK he encountered a fellow photography enthusiast aboard ship named George Mason. Mister Mason was more receptive to Mr. Healey's ideas and happened to be president of Nash Motors. This was the result:

That would've been a good car fitted with a Cadillac, eh?

 

[rjb1]

Probably something that worked against the "Cadivette" in 1954 was that the small-block-Chevy/Corvette was only a few months away. Not that a Cadivette wouldn't have been a nice, fun car, but GM just couldn't do something that radical in those days. (Aside from GM management, I don't know if Zora Arkus Duntov would have allowed it.)

 

[Talbot]

I always think of the '57 El Morocco....

 

[jamespowers]

I always think of the '57 El Morocco....

lol lol That was an aftermarket conversion though. Those things are worth decent money now though!

 

[Stanley Doble]

Before you laugh at the Nash-Healey with its six cylinder Nash engine, one finished in the money at Le Mans in 1952 - third behind 2 factory entered Mercedes 300SLs. A Ferrari came 4th.

Their Le Mans record:

1950. 66 cars started the race, only 29 finished. Nash - Healey ran 4th

1951. 4th in class and 6th overall, behind a Jaguar, 2 Talbot - Lagos and 2 Aston Martins, ahead of 2 Ferraris and another Aston.

1952.58 cars started the race, only 17 finished. Nash - Healey 3d as noted above.

1953. 11th overall, but they finished ahead of 2 of the new Austin - Healey 100s.

Notice that in the 24 hour grind, it was common for half the cars to break down and drop out. Nash - Healey had the staying power to finished every race and usually put up a good account of itself. Especially when you consider they were running a six cylinder car engine from Kenosha against the best sports cars the world had to offer, on their home ground, against well prepared factory teams.

 

[David Conwill]

Who's laughing? I think they're great.

 

[jamespowers]

Who's laughing? I think they're great.

And the fact that they kill Ferraris is even better.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Notice that in the 24 hour grind, it was common for half the cars to break down and drop out. Nash - Healey had the staying power to finished every race and usually put up a good account of itself. Especially when you consider they were running a six cylinder car engine from Kenosha against the best sports cars the world had to offer, on their home ground, against well prepared factory teams.

Only champion race car ever built with a fold-down bed?

 

[jamespowers]

Only champion race car ever built with a fold-down bed?

:rofl: The Makeout Racer.

 

[Stearmen]

My favorite ALLARD J2R, owned by General Curtis E. LeMay and raced at the 1953 LeMans by hand picked drivers. He would have Strategic Air Command giant C-124 Globemasters fly parts from Detroit to Europe. Today, he would be sacked, (pun intended) for that!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, the Broken Axle has been repaired, and I have it sitting in my trunk. I don't have a digital camera at the moment, so no pix yet, but I'll get one of the kids to snap a couple when I get a chance. But the shaft broke right in the middle, and it's a clean, straight break -- it looks like it was cut. The surface didn't look twisted, but the inside faces of the metal did have a twisty pattern. The mechanic thought it looked like a combination of metal fatigue and metallurgical flaws -- a 100 to 1 shot in my favor, alas.

Then, when I was driving home, I started to smell burning brake shoes after about twenty miles -- pulled over and the brakes locked up tight, with the brake light stuck on. Pedal was high and tight and wouldn't budge at all. A passing Shriner called Triple-A for me and gave me a ride the rest of the way home (not in a go-cart, he had a proper car) and the Plodge is back at the garage with a note advising the mechanic to not set the brakes quite so tight this time.

Gremlins, I tell you.

 

[Stanley Doble]

It could be the brake pedal rod does not have enough clearance in the master cylinder. There is a little hole to release the pressure off the brakes but the master cylinder piston has to retract all the way to open it.

There should be 1/2 inch or so of free play on the brake pedal before it engages the master cylinder.

Or it could be the mechanic adjusted the brakes too tight.

Not to be a pest, but Chrysler brakes have 2 adjustments. When replacing brake shoes you have to do a major adjustment to align them to the drums. After that, periodic minor adjustments take up wear. This is different from the loose leaf arrangement in lesser cars and one reason Chrysler products stopped better than the others.

If the mechanic had the brakes apart he may need to do a major adjustment. But there is no reason he should, just to change an axle shaft.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The break you describe sounds like metal fatigue possibly caused by the stop and start routine described earlier.

I hope that is not going to happen every 73 years

 

[jamespowers]

The surface didn't look twisted, but the inside faces of the metal did have a twisty pattern. The mechanic thought it looked like a combination of metal fatigue and metallurgical flaws -- a 100 to 1 shot in my favor, alas.

I would go with what he said as a reason for the break. It probably did have a flaw in it from the factory but a flaw that will endure this long is not much of a flaw to me. It reminds me of the case when I had my heater core replaced a few years ago. The mechanic saved the part for me. It was the heater core that came with the car in 1957---over fifty years of service! When they said built to last they were not kidding.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Probably something that worked against the "Cadivette" in 1954 was that the small-block-Chevy/Corvette was only a few months away. Not that a Cadivette wouldn't have been a nice, fun car, but GM just couldn't do something that radical in those days. (Aside from GM management, I don't know if Zora Arkus Duntov would have allowed it.)

The '54 Corvette came standard with a 235 inline six and two-speed Powerglide; the small block 265 V-8 wasn't an option until 1955. Or maybe that's what you meant?

 

[rjb1]

If you want to do a little "fun with science/engineering" have a look at the break with a magnifying glass. If the patterns have not been scrubbed off by the axle continuing to turn after the break, you may be able to see the progression of the probable fatigue failure. If you can see different regions, there may be a small slightly-coarser/darker region where the initial defect was located. There will be a smoother textured region, that is often lighter, where the crack propagated over the decades. There will be a third region where the final break occurred. This will likely be coarser than either of the other two.
The high localized stresses causing the crack to propagate are much higher than the average stress and the part won't break as long as the average strength is sufficient. When the area remaining gets small enough the average stress gets high enough to cause sudden catastrophic failure. It was that final region snapping that caused the noise and shock.

The initial defect can be either metallurgical or mechanical (crack or dent). Anything that causes a discontinuity will result in a stress concentration which can lead to a fatigue failure. Parts like this last a long time since it's considered good design practice to allow for one million stress cycles at a minimum.

Remember that this was what brought down the DeHavilland Comets back in the fifties.

 

[rjb1]

I'm assuming that we're talking about mid-1954. Since new models were introduced in the fall of the preceding year, 1955's in late 1954, that's how I came up with "a few months away".

 

[Guttersnipe]

I'm assuming that we're talking about mid-1954. Since new models were introduced in the fall of the preceding year, 1955's in late 1954, that's how I came up with "a few months away".

Now I understand what you mean.

It's interesting that, even with the introduction of the 265 in 1955, the Corvette still wasn't a true sports car; the automatic Powerglide was mandatory equipment until October, '55, when GM began offering an three-speed option.

Most people don't realize that the Corvette was kind of a dog its first three model years . . .