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Good news and bad news. The good is that my homemade air cleaner assembly does the job. Car starts right up on one crank and maintains a good idle with temps staying right on the 3/4 mark on guage. Also cools down faster than before. I used it for 2 days of errands this week with no troubles and it even attracted it's first crowd (more than one person) Although they mostly wanted to know what year Buick it was...
Another good was that I've gotten the basic history of this car. There were 2 brothers in Old Forge who ran a trucking company. They also hated or feuded with each other. One of them used to deliver products from Proctor & Gamble to Canada. On one of his trips in the late 70's he bought this car and trailered it home. He restored it somewhat and antique plated it in the early 80's. Later on, he killed himself for some reason and the car sat since then. At least he didn't do it in the car.
The bad is that my longtime friend and pet parrot Beaky died Tuesday. He was 27

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Great to hear that you got all that history on your car -- its nice to see where its been and who once owned it --- i am also sorry to hear about Beaky, i am a animal person and i know how you feel for sure --

Chuck: What is the brand and model number of the air cleaner?
Will it work with the standard cover? Beautiful bird, by the way, sorry for your loss.
paul g

So sorry to hear about Beaky, my family has an Umbrella Cockatoo that is 14.

Sorry for your loss.

Some tips regarding thermostats, if the type of construction allows for it, I always "pop it's cherry" before installing it. What I mean by that is that I manually manipulate the thermostat so that it opens, then of course I release it back to it's normal closed state. Sure, you could boil it in a pot of water to make it do this but who has time for that? And I don't want to go into the story of how large the fire was the last time I tried to boil water.

Quite often thermostats don't initially open correctly and this eliminates that possibility.

Another trick concerns thermostats that need to be held in place inside the neck (and lack a locating groove on the head or intake manifold)...grab a piece of mechanic's wire (some sort of string will do) and fish it thru the 'stat and up thru the neck...this allows you to hold it in place while assembling Rube Goldberg's fine engineering masterpiece.

The air cleaner base is a stock wire/mesh base and I'm using a FRAM CA 3647 filter element. The diameters are near perfect but the height is a little tall. Top of filter would've been 1/4 to 3/8 above top of stud. I didn't have an original cover to try so I made one and just dished in the center with a large socket to reach the stud.Quote:

The parrot was a Severe McCaw. Technically, he should've outlived me but he had a hard life. He was a "rescue bird" that no one wanted anymore. That's how I got him. I like to think I gave him some good years at the end.

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I've always opened them manually first. More out of curiosity than otherwise. Funny, I never thought of using wire or string on thermostats even though I use it at work on embossing heaters! If I got a slippery one, I usually put a real light coat of silicone to hold it long enough. I had 2 choices of thermostats for this job: a later single-spring type and a double spring trap-door type. I'm currently using the trap-door unit.

There's a 55 Patrician for sale in local paper here for a few years. No price listed. Says it runs.

This week starts my "mothballing" of the fleet. I did the Edsel this week. The Buick in 2 weeks and my 2 70's Fords will get their annual oil change and lube. I'm going to retire the Packard last because I got to use it the least this year and since it will be kept outside for the next year or 2. I managed to sell my father's house and shop in Georgia finally. That will help out some with my plans here, or at the least free up some more time.
Also acquired a new friend who needed a home. Meet "Nuggets".

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Nuggets, meet Charlie, probably should be Charlene or Charlize because Charlie is a she.

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While the Packard is "down for the winter", I'm going to try registering it again with the DMV. My last attempt finally came back as denied. Should this final attempt fail, I'll just drive it how it is but only in my local 5 mile area. This time I'm going to try getting a different title and regular registration. I'd have to get an annual saftey inspection but the car will certainly pass that. One thing I've learned thus far is to never, ever buy another car that has antique or classic branding on the title again.