New member intro and parts questions

The rear bumper braclet to body rubber seals are available from Stan Gilliand in Wellington Kansas. Sorry I did not answer this a few days ago.Stan has a catalog on parts he either reproduces inhouse of has others do it for him. He also has orignal pieces of some car parts. He does not have inside or outside door or window handles nor any trunk latches.


Gary Parsons

Hi Gary,

Unfortunately, the original drive train had already been sold off when Stan purchased the car and replacing them was greatly over his budget.

I'll be sure to check out those two suppliers, hopefully I can find the right parts to get the Cord back on the road (at night, that is). I very much appreciate the leads.

I plan on doing some wiring on the car this weekend so I'll check for the parts you need, although I do recall that none of the levers on the central panel seem to be connected, which leads me to believe the switch you need has probably gone missing. If by chance it is still there, I'll be happy to ask the owner if she would be willing to part with it assuming it's not in use which I believe is the case.

Regards,
Larry Wheeler

Sad to learn the car is rear wheel drive but we do what we want when its our car. Was the engine and trans saved as spare parts? If so it will be a great source of ready cash if you sell it.
A location in Wellington Kansas called Cord Parts has many new or replacement head light parts. Stan Gilliand is the owner. Also in Broken Arrow Oklahoma has many parts for the Cord or Auburn cars. Its called Auburn Cord Parts. Doug Prey is the owner.
Under the dash you have behind the center dash quadrant the throttle, head light, choke and dash instrument dimmer switch. If you wont be using the dimmer switch back there I'm interested in purchasing it.It is the rheostat type rotating switch. It has a metal linkage kind of designed into it. If you look back to the last two weeks of my posts on this forum you can see exactly the piece I need. Terry Cockrell from Australia posted the pictures of it.


Gary Parsons

Thanks Gary, I appreciate the reply. The car does have sealed beam headlights but they have been very poorly installed with rudimentary mounting brackets and no adjustment. I'd like to find some mounting rings that will fit in the small space as well as allow for a small amount of adjustment for aiming them.

Unfortunately, Stan bought the car from someone who had planned to make it into a hotrod so the original drivetrain was not available. Sadly (but perhaps understandably), he has installed a small block Chevy with an automatic transmission and converted it to rear wheel drive.

The headlight switch has been bypassed and an aftermarket switch was mounted under the dash (which was challenging to find). At some point I might try to reuse the original switch but my first goal is to get them working. Stan's wife tells me that when they were able to use the headlights it drained the battery fairly quickly, most likely due to the undersized wiring he installed.

Welcome to the club and forum. Parts are available from several locations and many club members have spares too.Many owners have converted the head lights to sealed beam because they are a brighter light. Some have experimented with modern LED and other such new lights too.My car has the sealed beam head lights and I'm happy with that. They are a safety item just like seat belts and no deductions for judging the cars. If you can remove the under dash head light switch and send it to me I can open it up to tell you what may or may not be wrong. I have found the fuse connection rivets are made poorly and become loose. Being a 36 car you will have no issues finding most of the parts. Does this car retain the original Flathead Lycombing V8 engine? If so it will have the 4 speed vacuum electric shift too. They can be devils to figure out too.. Complete wiring harness are available too if you need any piece of that. Rhode Island is the top of the line for any harness but expensive. I have been buying pieces as I need them. My car is spread out all over my shop but coming together slowly. Some call me slow but... I refer to myself as VERY Through... You can search my posts and see what I do with the head light switches this past month or so.


Gary Parsons

Hi all, just joined and first I want to introduce myself. Larry from Hillsboro, Oregon and I'm the de facto caretaker of a beautiful 1936 Cord 810. The car was owned and restored by my good friend Stan Rowe who sadly passed away at Christmas time a year and a half ago at the too young age of 92.

Since then I've been helping his wife care for the car, having already taken it in for her to get the shoddy transmission work redone and now I'm tackling the headlights which haven't worked for some time.

Stan was not into originality and tended to use 'shade tree' fixes on things, making working on the car interesting to say the least. He installed electric window motors in place of the wind up cables, which while fairly ingenious ended up being quite problematic as his wiring skills seemed to be rudimentary at best.

Now the questions. First, can anyone advise me where I can purchase the headlight assemblies? The buckets that are on there have only the shell and some scrap metal pieces holding the headlight in. I'm fine installing after-market or substitute parts (I considered looking for motorcycle headlights) since they won't normally be seen, but they need to be small enough to fit in the small space.

Secondly, Stan seems to have grabbed an ill-fitting piece of rubber to install in place of the rear bumper grommets, does anyone know if those are available anywhere? I'm tempted to just remove them since they're so out of place but would prefer to have something that actually fits to put in their place.

Thanks to all, happy motoring!