Its Alive, Its Aliiivve!

Unknown

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Monday, May 25 was Memorial Day, a national holiday here in the States.

We often celebrate that special day with parades, picnics or ceremonies of

remembrance. Many of us work on projects, a three day holiday making extra

time available to tackle the bigger ones.

As you might guess, I used the long weekend to plug away at my long term

project, the 1926 Hudson. It has a new motor and bit by bit, the parts taken

off long ago, go back on, inspected, reworked and with fresh paint, plating

or lube. Other bits had been changed out over seventy-five years of use and

had to be converted back to original spec. I started this project six years

ago, and have been collecting parts and information ever since.

My friend Neil Makin, having recently completely two 20s Studebakers

spent two afternoons installing a rebuilt and as original Stewart-Warner

vacuum tank and plumbing the system with fresh copper fuel and vacuum lines.

Some previous owner had installed an electric fuel pump and an incorrect

dummy vacuum tank. Now the fuel system is back to the factory setup, thanks

Neil!

Neil and I got the motor running, although it wouldn't run for very long.

After an hour or so fiddling around, the situation had become very confused.

We would prime the tank with a funnel through the vacuum windshield outlet on

the top of the tank and fill the floatbowl with fuel by removing the lid. The

motor would start and run happily for 10 or 20 seconds and then die like

somebody shot it. The motor loved to run when the float bowl was manually

filled, and this was done a dozen times or so hoping to draw gas out of the

main tank and sustain the effort. Pouring more fuel in through the vacuum

orifice only seemed to produce flooding at the carburetor.

It seemed at the time that we might be dealing with several problems. The

carb flooded so it must have some sort of fault, and as the flooding occurred

even with the petcock on the bottom of the tank was closed, that valve must

be bad also. The situation became even more confused when the carb flooded

even when the fuel line was disconnected! How could that possibly happen? How

could gas flood the carb with no fuel line?

Inspecting the carb showed that the flooding was coming out of the

throat, not out of the float bowl, which is mounted off to the side. If the

gas was pouring out of the throat, it must have come from directly from the

inlet manifold, and the inlet manifold was connected to the vacuum tank by .

. . the vacuum supply line which was connected to the gas filler funnel by a

piece of rubber tube! Ah ha!

After more head scratching, we decided to try filling the tank by

disconnecting the fuel inlet line and using the funnel and hose to fill the

tank as it would do in normal operation. Two beakers of fuel was poured in

and the motor started and ran steadily for ten minutes. All of our seemingly

disconnected problems now made sense and all that was left to do was to

reinstall the fuel supply line to the main tank.

With the motor still running, the fuel line was reinstalled and the motor

continued to run and run and run. Indeed, it continued to run for another

hour and a half when I shut it down by killing the spark. What sweet

wonderful music to my ears! After the first steady half an hour of reliable

running, I climbed in, and threw out the clutch - the transmission easily and

silently shifted into gear! Letting up slightly produced smooth tractive

effort - the old Hudson wanted to roll.

With no lights, no electrical system, no current registration sticker,

and no rear view mirrors, the car was hardly roadworthy in any legal sense,

but we had motor, we had clutch and we had brakes, how could we not try to

drive it? I am certainly not made of iron, and very rapidly succumbed to the

temptation to give'er a whirl.

The old Super Six did about five miles on back streets and offered no

problems at all. After six years, a major milestone has been reached. Much

more work remains to be done, but now the car is a driver, at least on a

limited scale. A pic is attached showing the motor running under it's own

steam.

My thanks to all that helped this project get this far. All that effort

now will begin to payoff.







Paul O'Neil, Hudson29@aol.com

Fullerton, California USA



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