You wrote:
> Totally nasty, and no drain holes in the trunk floor! I couldn't believe
that.
Don't bother believing it, either, because there are some there, and you'll
need them, too, if your car has the flite sweep trunk lid. That's the one
with the fake wheel cover, also known as the toilet seat. If your doesn't
have this feature, to a certain extent you are lucky, as it is a contraption
held on with a veritable forest of bolts, a significant number of which will
resist being sealed no matter what you do.
My trunk did not appear to have drain holes either. There was a kind of
petrified foam applied to the bottom of the trunk which began to flake off
and trap water. When I removed it, and what a lovely job it was, there were
the holes.
Oh, about the filter. It is on the passenger's side and is pobably best
accessed from below. Do be careful with this thing as once it begins to
leak you will rue the day you ever touched it. It is an old fashioned type
with a bolt that goes throgh a cylindrical filter. Therefore it can leak at
both ends. A design element significantly short of good. Do NOT over
tighten the bolt when you are re-installing it. Either I or soemone else
over tightened mine and it has been a nightamre ever since. You can access
the bolt from the top if you nimble and the engine isn't warm or you don't
mind scarring yourself for life on the exhaust manifolds. As the engine is
out of my car right now for a rebuild, you may bet the farm on whether or
not I am going to install a spin on filter. Accessing the bolts or whatever
they are that hold on the original filter recepticle is only possible with
the engine removed unless, like one clever person on this list, you create
an access panel that goes through the inner fender wall.
A couple of 'by the ways.' The engine has a mechanical pump. If yours
fails, you can go electric or use a readily available Dodge mechanical pump
and a clever little spacer that is available from a specialist company, the
name of which escapes me for the moment. The water pump is rebuildable and
thank goodness for that. Try finding one of those for an engine that hasn't
been built since 1958.
I got mine done through NAPA. The carburettor rebuild kit is also
available. There is a replacement carburettor available as well, but it's
kind of generic and may preclude the use of the air filter. The throat
measurement is a little atypical. Just about everything else can be rebuilt
fairly easily. I got my starter motor done for not much money at all.
Oh, get the biggest battery you can find for the thing. Turning over an
engine of this size needs a lot of cold cranking amps. Otherwise, I have
found the electricals on my car very sound indeed.
What condition is yours in, other than dirty? Is it all there? If you
still have the bullet point tail lights you are a lucky man. I still have
mine, too. One is a little faded. It was pointed out to me that I could
simply turn it around and have the bottom part on the top. I have yet to
perform this radical surgery!
E-mailing pictures to the list is not possible but if you have some snaps of
it I'd be delighted to see them. I hope you will soon enough allow your car
to be added to the 1958 page on the web site. There is always room for
more.
Hugh
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