Restoring Ham's '48 Willys 2WD; Bureaucrats, Armatures and Diaphragms
Bureaucrats: I went to a different license branch and it turns out that you only have to go to Court if the vehicle is valued at over $5,000 by the NADA manual - whatever that is. The clerk and supervisor decided that '48 Willys pickups weren't listed, so no court appearance is needed. I still have a 10-page set of papers and a police inspection to get done, but one less thing on the list.
Armatures: One task this week was trying to set the timing. Of course you crank the engine over with the starter, which had come back from the electric shop with a clean bill of health after rebuild. Well, the starter motor developed problems, so out it came. It would run about a quarter revolution, then stall. Back to the electric guy, diagnosed as a bad armature. But, the good news - the electric shop guy had a 6-volt armature on the shelf. As he said "That's been up there since Moses walked across the Red Sea". Starter issues looks like it will get fixed promptly.
But ...
Diaphragms: The distributor was laying on the fender, so I picked it up and sucked on the vacuum advance fitting. If I remember correctly, the diaphragm in the assembly should move the distributor innards and then hold a vacuum when you block the hole with your tongue. It moves the innards slightly, but won't hold a vacuum. I have this feeling that I need a new vacuum advance assembly - and it won't be an Auto Zone part either. Willys, Kaiser, American Motors and all of the Jeep people used the same distributor on 4-cylinder engines from '46 to '71; at least there aren't a lot of different units to have to figure out just which one I need.
The good news for the week is that the instrument cluster came back from the instrument shop. It looks very nice - he cleaned up the faces, repainted the housing, cleaned terminals, put on new hardware and rebuilt the speedometer innards. The odometer is set to 49,687.0 miles (or about there) because I believe the truck has about 250K miles on it and that's as good a place to set it as any.
Restoring Ham's '48 Willys 2WD Truck: I FOUND THE TITLE!!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
amyb
hi larrbeard,
i'm glad it will be a little less hassle to title your truck. The dmv has to be the absolute worst thing about owning and restoring vintage vehicles. There seems to be no simple straightforward way to do things and the rules vary by where you live. I understand your frustration! My cj-5 was a nightmare to title.
Today I found the title and even the original application for title!!!
And, a bonus!
On the original application for title, back in 1969, the original DMV clerk had typed in, then overstruck, a Mfrs Identification No. that I can still make out as "2T2190x". That narrows the serial number to a block of 10 vehicles and gives a very good estimate of manufacturing date.
