flaming Duesenbergs

Metal crafters makes fenders. I know several people here and one in Seattle that can make metal fenders. Would have to have a pattern. There are people all over that build Duesenberg bodies. Some are good, and some are gooder.

I'll find out who makes this Sharps. There are some really cool replicas coming down the line. Dennis Adler, photographer and author of a couple of Duesenberg books, makes some fabulous cap and ball pistols, civil war era.

Bill,
I heard the Borchardt was being reproduced but never found out who was doing it. Years ago,Colt made some but the cost scared everyone away with the exception of the very rich.Many thanks for telling me about this.I made a long range folding tang sight for one of the old ones years ago.It had the base intact but the sight was gone so I copied it from an old picture which really isn't the best way but it was A way and it didn't look bad.
Davide Pedersoli in Italy is making some fine Sharps 1874 copies.I had one of the heavier ones in 45-70 and it shot with anything and everything.His shops could certainly make the Borchardt again or anything else from the mid to late 1800's.
Would YOU happen to know who makes fenders for the "J" when someone wants to recapture the classic.original look of these cars? In this case,a feeble mind wants to know.

I don't know if that old car is still around or not, Bob, he had it a very short time. I get the feeling he made the guy buy it back.

Back to an earlier from you, Bob, the gun store where I trade just got in a modern replica of a Creedmore Sharps, in .45-70.

At least one "Boat" engine ended up in one of the Billing's Touresters. It was one of the last cars. I believe that Leo Gephart came up with it.

Bill.
Is that car still around? In years past,we had some in fo service that had seen better days but that was mostly honest wear and age altho when looking back,when I was working with them,a Duesenberg "J" was just a weird used car. The Brunn CS-J528 was but 20 years old and that beautiful MCC of Melvin Clemans was only 23 years old with about 15,000 miles on it.

Chris,
Trying to look back after nearly 57 years is difficult at times.That "engine" may have come from John Troka.All I remember is that we moved it from the 420 12th Street shop to the much larger shop that became Irwin's Tire Service and the upstairs are we made into storage for new tires,oil filters etc. and I didn't think too much about it until I got that crazy idea about maybe getting it going again and stuffing it into the Packard. I can't pin point any true source and don't remember ever seeing it in the Harveytown shop. J551 was there and I brought it to the 1120 3rd ave, shop.It was left in the Harveytown garage along with J467 until the lease ran out. J551 had another engine in it,unsupercharged but it started and ran OK and was very easy to drive.As you know,we,mostly me parted out J467.

As I said, NOone was looking at numbers then and it was years after my final association with Duesnebergs that I ever knew about the "J"number or crankshaft numbers. I didn't care then and still don't.

Yep that's pretty much the way I remember it also.

Steve

That's a new engine to me, Bob. I'm going to try to match it up with a car.

Jerry Moore had an old LaGrande duaol cowl phaeton type that he got about the same time he aquired a Murphy convertible victoria. It was an awful car, wrong frame, body panels didn't fit. He had a chance to sell it if it ran, so I spent, all told, a month getting it to start. What with ordering parts, making parts and assembling, I spent a month getting that thing to run out to a truck.

Chris,
We had that engine or the remains stored in the tire loft at 1120 3rd avenue,Irwins'Tire Service. Ed Wellman was a master machinist and was going to put sleeves in it to make the block useful. As I said,it was mostly there but in bad condition. I don't remember if the head was bad or not but it was intact. I have no idea what happend to the rods and pistons but they were available from Clemans or Merkes or Troka so no concern there. I was thinking about trying to make it go again and put it in the 1935 Packard convertible coupe I had then. It was a "Super"8 and there was room under the hood for the "J" engine.
Irwin's Tire Service bit the dust and all of our Duesenberg activities came to a halt along with the MG-Morris_Riley,Hillman and Jaguar service. This was the late summer of 1953.
I THINK the "J" engine had been painted blue or at least that is how I remember it. I don't know where it went afterward and thought maybe Clemans might have got it.As I said, NOone was looking at numbers then and it was years after my final association with Duesnebergs that I ever knew about the "J"number or crankshaft numbers. I didn't care then and still don't.

Bob, where did you see that engine? That's a story of yours I haven't heard before.

Bill.
What was the most worn out or decrepit engine you have ever seen in a "J"? For me,it was not in a car and of course I have NO idea about the crankshaft number or bell housing number. It was badly rusted behind the water plates to the point that there were holes into the cylinders. We had a head but I don't remember if it was from that block or not. A corrosion expert for the gas company said he would bet money thatit had been in a boat and had had a lot of salt water pumped thru for a long period if time.The rods and pistons had been removed before we ever got it.

Bob, the counter clerk that I encountered did not have a very flexible mind. I went into a fast food restaurant and saw that instead of the 20 oz, 16 oz, and 12 oz that they used to have they only had the 20 oz and the 16 0z. I asked for a small drink, and was told they didn't got no small, they only had large and medium. I told her that when you only had two you had a large and a small, and I chose a small. I stopped having fun, and ordered a medium, when I realized that they were never going grasp what I was talking about. I was in a McDonalds the other day where I told the clerk, after a couple of frustrating tries to order a sandwich, that english as a first language would be a real asset in her job. The manager heard me say that and told me the girl understood me. I asked, "If that is true, why does she get my order wrong, every time?"

Anyway, enough fast food rant.

Chris reminded me that the old yellow and black Derham Tourster was a car that I had seen more recently than I remembered. When Sterling had it he spent whatever money was required to get it running.

You do not have to drive a car to kill it. JJM had an old Derham tourster, yellow with black fenders, supercharged. I was not there when he bought the car, and when they unloaded it they tried to start it. They flooded it, wshing all the oil off the cylinder walls, and caught it on fire with starting fluid, and just parked it, for six years with tap water in the cooling system. I was looking at it for something one day and found water leaking through all the water jackets, and the neck had rotted off the water pump. No driving, just sitting.

The engine would not turn cause the rings had flash rusted to the dry cylinder walls. It took me almost three days to get it to rotate without fear of breaking something. Had to older all the aluminum pieces from Randy Ema and have them polished. The water pump we just sculpted from scratch almost at a heli-arc shop.

I don't know whatever happened to that car. I don't remember the J-number

You may ask how I could let that happen. When you're trying to care for almost 200 cars, by yourself, the wheel has to be squeaking really loud or it gets ignored.

Sure they could. They were running a ten mile circle track, which was determined to be the minimum diameter for the track to not have a centrifugal effect on the car at speed. There's no reason they could not have changed the oil at a pit stop.

At the Indy 500, toward the end of the roadster era, they were changing four tires, refueling, giving the driver a drink, and any other allowable service in about nine and a half seconds.

But, I don't imagine they changed the oil. They oil can beocme very thin and still lubricate as long as you have enough pump to maintain pressure.

Usually we didn't drive a car far enough or fast enough for oil to be a factor. When I changed oil I used about what was available when the car was new. I went to seven-eleven and bought re--refined Golden State oil in a 40 wt. It used to upset the "modern/magic oil" enthusiasts, but it was my oil change, so I used what I wanted.

From cars on fire and nutty old women,let me raise a question. As I understand it,the record run by Ab Jenkins in the Duesenberg Special in 1935 was a promotional idea for ACD cars,Firestone tires and Mobil oil. The oil is what I am wondering about. Just What kind of oil did Mobil or Socony Vacuum have in 1935 that could hold any kind of viscosity during that 3000+ mile run in very hot weather in a very hot engine with a heavy crankshaft beating it into kerosene.
The owners manual on the "J" as I recall recommended changeing oil around every 700 miles.Maybe someone with an owners manual can verify this. We changed oil in J396 and put in 12 or so quarts of Esso 60 weight and about 50 miles later the oil prssure dropped a lot so we shut it off and had a tow truck bring it back to the garage so we could try to figure out what happened. I thought that perhaps the oil pump had failed on this very high mileage car so I drained the oil into a large catch pan and it was thin as 3 in 1 oil, I don't know if this was a bad batch or if the heat from the engine did it in but we had to do somehing about oil. We ended up using 7 quarts of Harley Davidson 70 weight and 5 quarts of Harley Davidson 50 weight and then had no further trouble with thinning oils in a hot engine.
One BIG advantage today is high quality motor oils with a high film strength that did not exist when these cars were new. Back then,if someone had said the day will come when you will use a 5W30 oil in your car we would have had them commited to a state hospital.
Anyhow,I would like to know what the "Special" used because I know they couldn't have changed oil and maintained that high average speed over 24 hours.

I used to laugh at Jay Leno's "JayWalking" til I asked him about it and he told me the reactions were real. You'll notice I didn't say answer, cause his questions very seldom produced an answer, just a reaction.......

When I used to travel quite a bit I liked to occasionally have a bowl of chili and half a dozen flour tortillas. I would use the tortillas as a spoon to eat the chili. The girl at the window said, "What's one of them?" I said, "What's one of what?" She said, ":What's one of what you said?"

I asked her how it was that she worked in a Mexican restaurant and didn't know what a tortilla was. She just didn't, that's all. I told her it was the white thing you wrap around the burrito. Her face lit up. The light from her face lit up the whole Taco-whatever where she worked.

She yelled back over her shoulder, "Marveena, gimme six of them burritos without no burrito in them.?

This was in Lake Charles, La. Sometimes the adventure is the trip.

Bill,
These knuckleheads also vote and they reproduce.Just this past week I got a note from a friend of ours who was in a Wal-Mart in Lebanon,Tn. She went to the line to check out with her few items and puts a divider between hers and the items belonging to a woman in front of her. When her purchase was moved on the belt,the cashier picked up the divider and tried to SCAN it for a price and got no results after several attempts.She said she would get a manager to find out the price and our friend told her she had changed her mind and to scan the rest of the things.Later,she went to a burger joint and asked for a couple of hamburgers and a small drink The person behind the counter didn't or couldn't comprehend the term "a couple of"so again our friend said it means "two".
Is this part of the dumbing down of America? If so,it has been a success..

Sometimes the trip was the adventure:

We were on our way to Meadowbrook, and hd stopped in Gary, Ind, at a Flying J to spend the night. I was driving the Blue Thunder semi and the two guys rinning with me were in a one ton Chevy with a forty four foot trailer. They didn't waannntt to spend the night in a truck stop, whine-whine. I told them to go out the front gate, turn left, cross the freeway, turn left, go one exit west, and there were some motels and they should pick me up in the morning on their way east.

Nest morning I wait. nine am, no truck, ten am no truck, damn. About eleven thirty I called the office in Houston and Jerry Moore is about to have a stroke. Our guys had been arrested by federal marshalls, and I had to go there right away. He gave me the marshall's phone number, and after the marshall gave me directions I realized what had happened.

Re-read my directions to them. After those careful instructions what they did was; went out the gate, turned left(okay so far), but turned right at the freeway drove east a few miles, turned right again on I65, drove to Valpraisio, Ind. In that town on the right are dozens of motels so naturally they turned left into an industrial area. While making all those tight turns with the three axle trailer they snapped the left front hub and parked against a building to spend the night.

They awoke the following morning surrounded by federal marshalls with drawn guns and tapping on the windows with their badges. The building they had parked against was an IRS investigation building staffed by federal marshalls.

In a few minutes the marshalls realized they had a couple of idiots and not terrorists and relaxed. An hispanic (from Central America) and a black guy in an unmarked truck which was obviously loaded, and which had no signage.

What made this exciting to the marshalls was this was August, just after the Oklahoma City bombing.

I used to help a guy mine mercury in northern Nevada. At the time it sold for $76.00 a flask. A flask is roughly a quart in volume. The navy uses, or did use, tons of mercury. We used to play with it when I was a kid. It acted kind of like a liquid slinky.

Liquid mercury is a hevvy metal used for keeping floating kidneys in place.Other than that,it isn't much good for anything.
On the serious side,has one of these ever sprung a leak in a running engine? The mercury would play "H" with babbit bearings.

Chris, I have one of the crankshaft counterweights if you want it. You got to promise not to drink the mercury.

Bob's craftsmanship is excellent, and the shop is a great place to spend a few hours jawing about Duesenbergs.

I have one of his Model J spring shackle bolts. Makes a great-looking paperweight.

These too are my favorites as well as the English made long range muzzle loaders. I owned and shot a presentation grade Whitworth muzzle loader for 11 years and am capable of duplicating the fine locks used on such rifles.I have built a good relica of an Alex Henry long range muzzle loader and still have a Remington rolling block I built that fires a 40 caliber cartridge with a 3 inch long brass case.The Sharps model 1877 is my all time favorite breech loader and I think that any of the top of the line English and American muzzle loaders will suffice.
You're right about the machine work and outstanding craftsmanship.The Sharps had a stunning level of interchageability and sporting rifle finishes even on the ones used in the Civil War. I bought two unfired Sharps rifles in 1960 at a gun show in Dodge City,Ks. Paid $125 for both of them. I would like to see if I can make up a Sharps 1877 before I get so old and decrepit that I would forget why I built it.I have a small bore muzzle loader in the starting stage now,Really fine walnut is very costly now but it gives me an incentive to pre plan the rifle and be very careful with every cut. Chris Summers has seen my shop and knows the detail I put into this stuff.
I vaguely remember "Blazing Saddles"and only remember a scene when WW2 German soldiers fought off an Indian attack with an MG42 light machine gun.
Gotta go,more mail to answer.

If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad.

I think you guys have had enough of the beans....

Mongo just pawn in game of life.

Pleased that others still remember "Blazing Saddles".

Custom rifles. You got my attention. A friend of mine collects single shot rifles from the mid eighteen hundreds and I'll tell you what, the machine work on those rifles and pistols will challenge the quality of any machine work done today. Mongo is impressed.

My wife had a Nash Metro right before we got married 41 years ago and it was running poorly. A "mechanic" told her to take it out on I-64 and wind it up in second all the way to the limit and "blow the carbon"out of it. The limit came quickly when it threw a rod and that was the final "decarbonization"of the Metro.After that,her step father gave her a 1962 T-Bird Landau with a 390 and 4 barrel carb. THAT car was scary.It had hyper light steering that felt like it wasn't connected to anything.I sold that one and the very next day,the water pump and power steering pump both quit.
I am a semi-retired machinist and still have a small shop where I make on a custom basis,locks and triggers for fancy muzzle loading target rifles and pistols and occasionally,bushings for obsolete transmissions and other odd little parts for old cars like shackle bolts,nuts and small screws.I replicated all of the fasteners and shackle bolts,nuts and bushings on Ted McPhail's SWB Willoughby sedan that he regretably did not live to see finished. I also helped Raydon Thompson over the years with his garage called European Motors where we specialized in Mercedes,BMW,Volvo,SAAB,Alfa Romeo,and reluctantly,some Japanese cars. I made myself available when the work load got heavier than he and his sons could handle.I recall pullng an engine from a wrecked XK140 Jaguar and while it was hanging from the chain hoist I made the comment that it was "cute"but not as impressive as a Model "J" engine.The reply was,"The ceiling doesn't sag as much either". Raydon "DON"Thompson was the one who introduced me to all of this marvelous insanity and started me on a life path that has served us very well over the years.We miss him a lot. There is more to the story and I will tell it later.

This is such a FUN thread!

I've jumped many 6v cars with 12v jumpers with no problem. Just make sure the battery polarity is the same. Turn the radio, if it has one, off. It doesen't matter what the car polarity is, the batteries have be pos to pos and neg to neg. dis-connect the 12v jumper as soon as the car starts.

On a different note we had a Nash Metroolitan that would not start because of a bad starter. A guy showed up wanting to buy it, but only if he could hear it run. It was trapped by a bunch of cars and couldn't be taken out and push started. The solution was to jack the right rear tire off the ground a couple of inches, put the transmission in high gear, turn on the ignition, and get down down by the right rear tire and spin start it by hand. Freaked the guy out. He'd never considered the possibility of grabbing a tire and flip starting a car. It doesn't work with posi-tracs.

They can be made from starter or generator brushes with a little carving. Also small electric motor brushes.
CORDially Mike

I couple of friends have been building a streetable 32 for two or three year. He recently had some distributor caps and other plastic cast. I will see what all they had done.

Bill,
I hadn't thought of these cars in the light you presented.
For a long time,I have thought they are merely "chips" in a high stakes game of some kind. One thing is certain, I will never own one unless I hit a lottery and I don't play them so that fouls me up a bit. Another thing is certain,if I ever do own one,it will be driven and enjoyed as it was intended to be by whoever made it new.
You do more work on classics than I ever will and I have a friend that has a 1932 Cadillac V12 that needs a rotor button.Do you have any idea where one can be found and bought or are they being reproduced?
Dr.Quick sent me a few but none would work so I gave them back to him.
Getting back to jump starting,I have heard both Yea and Nay about jumping a 6 volt car with a 12 volt battery.I did this to J542 at Auburn some years ago with no apparent ill effects. I would like your input on this. The car is a French bodied DeVille,I think Fernandez and Darrin with metric instruments.Good looking .

You would have to know Jerry Moore's patience factor. Driving to the museum to get proper tools was not an option. So, it was either the improvised jump or push the Duesenberg with the brand new Rolls.

If there is a single blanket rule with old cars at a show or an auction, it is this; These old cars will embarass you every time, usually.

The thing no one has mentioned, also, is that there is a world of difference between a car restored for private use, like a Jay Leno car, and a car that has been hammered together to run good enough to get across an auction block. Like it or not, basically these peope are used car salesmen. When OQuinn bought the Otis Chandler cars I told him he was learning to buy cars, the Otis Chandler cars were restored were done for private use, and I went on to give him the used car rule. He said he didn't want to be know as a used car buyer and I told him he already was, and we were changing tha public perception of him.

Several times Goldberg's ghost was redeemed while I was with Moore.

Bill,'We used to have a radio DJ here that would say that he had been to three county fairs,a public hangng and a goat roping contest but had never heard anything like whatever it was that amused/amazed him and I can say the same thing with that Rolls/Duesenberg battery jump start with a jack handle etc.
The ghost of Rube Goldberg must have been redeemed that day.

I have more miles in a Duesenberg than most people, but not nearly as much as some. I've had one up to about 95mph and shut it down cause it started acting twitchy.

You can really have fun taking a Derham Tourster through a drive in window at McDonalds. One day a cop made a U-turn to come back to see what we were doing. I had a Rolls Royce Corniche conv backed up against the front bumper of a Murphy conv cpe, for a ground. From the open trunk of the Rolls I had a jack handle, a jack and a lug wrench going to the positive post of the Duesenberg battery. As soon as I got them jammed in solid I had Jerry Moore start the Duesenberg. After it was running he got back in the Rolls and I drove the Duesenberg home.

Looking back, some of those adventures were funny.

Gentleman, let me say that it sure is nice to "hear" some real nuts and bolts Duesenberg talk here. Don't even hear all that much of it in Auburn anymore.

As they change hands, actually driving the cars seems to be a foreign subject to more and more car owners every year.

After the clear vision was put back together we took it one of the Kruse Concours events and shortly after that it was sold at auction, I don't remember to whom. I haven't heard about the car since. People argued that the brown sugar thing was impossible, but I created the exact substance in a loaf pan.

A few of the owners keep the cars as they should be, but not many.

I've seen lots of carburetor fires and it almost always envolved prime gas or ether. The second most common is the up-draft carb with people who don't understand how the up-draft works.

Bill,
I had an old uncle that used to say he was busier that "a one armed paper hanger" Chris Summers told me about the zoo you were working in for Mr.O'Quinn.
We never had that many Duesenbergs at one time because back in the 50's,there were few collectors but quite a number of drivers and the cars then were just considered as odd and unusual used cars that appealed to few. We probably serviced 45-50 over a 3 year time frame.I wasn't paying any attention to the bell housing numbers back then and it wasn't until years later I ever knew the "J"numbers of the cars I remembered. The rest were only thought of by body styles and most work wasn't as involved as J528 with the engine warm up and the overdrive transmission. Harry Schulzinger must have pushed it hard and often because a mechanic that rebuilt it for a subsequent owner said it was worn out.I don't remember if it was Noel Thompson or Rick Carrol he worked for at the time.
I had heard of Jerry Moore's propensity to over load one with ether and wondered why he did it if the car was working as it should. Back when Melvin Clemens had the derelict J214,he used a bit of ether to get it started and I remember it smoked like a volcano from being completely worn out due to abusive wear from being used as a water well drill in Ohio years before.It has been restored now and may be in a Canadian museum.
I don't recall of any of these cars catching on fire from a backfire thru the carburetor but then that WAS 50+ years ago when a number of the cars hadn't ever had the head off or very little done to them. NONE of them would be considered as a show car by today's ridiculous standards. Melvin Clemans MCC was supposed to have caught fire once but I wasn't there so I can't say for sure.
It is J357 and now resides in Florida.
What became of the sedan,J187 I think, that was sabotaged with brown sugar?I remeber you sent some pictures and #8 piston was on TDC with what looked like a quarter inch of cake icing on it.
Got to go,have a good day.

Aside from fresh spark plugs, and I believe one electric fuel pump, not much. It was never takedn to shows so it mostly just sat.

Bill,

Curious if you wrenched much on J-420 and what were your impressions of that car's mechanical condition?
PM me if you don't want to put the reply on the forum.

Thanks very much,

Steve Derus

I have ben envolved with 67 Duesenbergs over the years, plus a couple of dozen that I have started for other people who didn't know how. I have started these cars hundreds of times without a problem. But, there is always a but, no engine will start in cold, damp weather, without choke, and with the timing too far advanced without popping and backfiring a little. If the top of the carb is floating in gas or the air cleaner is soaked in starting ether, one of those little sparks will cause a big fire.

I agree with you, it should not happen, but it does. One time we had to take 65 cars to a birthday party. We had about week to get the cars ready and moved whick gave us no time to give proper attention to each car.

At Oquinn's we were caring for about 800 cars and when I was with Jerry More about 200 cars, by myself. Nothing is harder on a car than an ignorant mechanic and a can of starting fluid (or an ignorant car owner who thinks he knows), Unless it's that guy who has heard somewhere that pure oxegyn from a torch in the carb is a good way to go.

I'm not trying to argue with sound mechanical theory, but when you're one or two guys trying to make a collection of hundreds of cars go it's like MASH's meatball suegery.

When the piston is coming up on the compression stroke,there can be NO open valves and if there are,the engine has to be out of time.Out of time on the intake camshaft might create this problem if the ignition occurs while vaporized fuel is being pushed up and OUT thru the intake manifold. Slow closing intake valves can be a source on even a properly timed engine and this can be caused by weak valve springs or valve stems trying to stick in the guides.The manipulation of the spark advance/retard lever should have no bearing on a properly timed engine as far as backfiring thru the carburetor is concerned. I am
speaking here of the DOHC arrangement of the Model J.
One thing about this type of cam system is that it is adjustable whereas a cam in block isn't and what change can be made must be done thru the distributor adjustment.
On SJ528,the cam timing was this: Number one piston was 6 degrees from top dead center with the intake valves wide open and the exhaust valves JUST closed.
We got this from J396 which was an exceptionally good running engine.
Here is a test. Make a guide with a thread to match the spark plug with a 3/8" hole thru it and install it in the spark plug hole. Cut a brass rod that will reach to the top of the piston when it is at the bottom of the INTAKE stroke.Be SURE the rod is long enough to stick up 3 or 4 inches out of the spark plug hole. As the piston comes up on the compression stroke,look at all 4 valves.The exhaust side MUST be closed and so should the INTAKE side.ANY compression of the fuel/air mix with open intakes or even partly open intakes can put a back pressure into the intake manifold which means OUT OF TIME. The rod will tell you the very instant the piston starts up so it is easy to see what the cams are doing. I strongly suspect the possble sticky valves or weak springs and these engines use two springs per valve to hopefully assure postive action,

No matter how perfectly an engine is tuned. No matter how well it was built, a spark advance lever moved at the wrong time can cause a problem. An air cleaner pumped full of ether can compound the problem. As Chris said, Jerry was a starting fluid fanatic. There are three or four cars in the Moore collection that burst into when they should not have, and usually with no fire extenguisher close by. We were lucky we didn't lose half a dozen cars, or the building with all the cars.

Cars that come to mind are a '66 427 Cobra, an Hispano Suiza, the two Duesenbergs mentioned above, two Duesenbergs I was not around to see, and a sixteen cylinder Cadillac.

At OQuinn's one of the guys ws starting an eight liter Bentley. Most of the old vacuum fuel pumps have had an electric primer pump installed to fill the resevoir. He turned this electric pump on and forgot to turn it of. When it filled it started spraying out the vent hole in a fine mist. This vent hole was directly above the Magnetos on this engine. When the gas ignited the explosion blew both hood panel open, and a raging fire was coming out of all the louvers. It was a flash fire and no paint damage resulted, only a couple of plug wires and lots of carbon smudge.

On about any gasoline engine,a carburetor backfire is usually caused by leaky or slow closing intake valves.
Dr.Richard Quick and I are friends and he had this trouble with J251,the one and only Weymann fabric bodied "J" surviving. Leaky intake valves are the ONLY source of fire in an intake manifold,plain and simple.
Dr.Quick.at my urging pulled the intake cam cover off and checked valve clearances and found at least one with a negative clearance which was most likely the culprit.
He wanted to know if I would come to St.Louis to repair it and I declined but referred him to Brian Joseph who did do a fine job on the fix. It appeared that some of the valves were installed years ago by someone who knew nothing about what they were doing and didn't bother to notice the intake and exhaust valves are two different diameters so the leak was guaranteed to happen. I suspect that some of these cars today have been worked on by incompetents or people that wanted to take advantage of a well to do owner. If I had one that persisted in backfiring thru the carburetor,I would pull intake cam cover and use the feeler gauge to find out what is going on. I believe Dr.Quick also did a compression check and found one cylinder with very low compression. There is no good reason not to have this problem checked and fixed.These engines are big and simple and fairly easy to trouble shoot. There are many less expensive things to gamble with than a Model "J".

Don't forget the wreck of the ex Bill Buddig Duesenberg, ten minutes after it was bought, and other Duesenberg tragedies.

I would love to hear all the stories like this that you guys care to subject me to.

Steve