1941 Studebaker Champion

Valve adjustment and new starter cable

Posted on January 15, 2023 by nvonadaJanuary 21, 2023

It has been more than 11 years since the last valve adjustment on the Studebaker and it is high time. Last time the engine was out of the car, this time I am not so lucky.

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Rear brake was falling off!

Posted on October 1, 2022 by nvonadaDecember 17, 2023

I realize I have not been doing a lot of Studebaker work this year. Working on the new shop has sucked up a lot of time and even more $$$ but it is basically done now.

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Replaced the fuel line

Posted on July 30, 2022 by nvonadaJuly 30, 2022

There has not been a lot of Studebaker work this summer because I have been working on this: We build a new 40’x26′ shop with a BendPak lift. It is going to rock but has sucked up all of my … Continue reading →

Oil change time

Posted on December 4, 2021 by nvonadaDecember 4, 2021

I have wanted to do this for a couple of months now so when I got a sunny warm day to work with I jumped on it

Everything is ready. The oil drain plug is 1″ on this car and I had to go into my packed-away tools to find a wrench that big.

This is the oil I have settled on. VR-1 10W-30. It has the ZDDP content good for flat-tappet engines and it is a good viscosity range for this engine. It can take almost 6 quarts with the filter.

This is the worst part of the job. The oil does not drain out of the filter housing so I have to pump it out. It is the better part of a quart.

Finally I have to wipe this sludge out of here. Some people say the partial-flow oil filter does not do much. They should wipe this mess up. After this it is just putting in the new filter and filling up the oil.

Oldest picture yet of the Studebaker

Posted on November 27, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 27, 2021

My mom has a box of my Grandfather’s pictures and letters. We started organizing it on Thanksgiving and we found a picture of the Studebaker dated 8/26/1952. The car was parked in 1953 for 30 years but it was still a daily driver at this point.

The car at this point looks pretty much like it did when my father started working on it. The 51 Stude bumpers are already on it. It is probably painted the same dark green but the paint is a LOT shinier. When we started working on the car the rear fender in the picture above was scraped and dented, that obviously happened after August, 1952. I have the trim rings still and two of the hubcaps that were on it then. The trim rings are stainless and in good shape but the hubcaps are pretty beat up.

The rear tires look just like the spare tire in the car (which is VERY old). I suspect that the same tires were on the car in 1984-85 when the picture below was taken and that one of them was used as the spare when new tires were put on.

I will have to keep looking for earlier pictures of the car. There is a family story about my grandfather trying to teach my grandmother to drive and her hitting a policeman. She never did get a driver’s license. I wonder if that triggered the replacement of the bumpers?

Wrapped up the wiring

Posted on November 15, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 15, 2021

After work I went out to troubleshoot my issues from yesterday.

I started testing the driver’s side headlight bucket with a meter and could not figure out where the problem was so I pulled the entire bucket out. I cleaned the screws and the metal around the screws to ensure I have a good ground.

I installed the headlight bucket at tested it with jumper wires. Everything worked so I wired it back into the terminal block.

Success! Probably a bad ground. On to the brake lights.

I used my jumper to short out the brake light switch and they worked perfectly.

Spotlight works too! Last thing to check is the gas gauge.

Well this might be the problem! Stupid. I remember wanting to check the connections for the gas gauge. I must have gotten distracted and I never actually connected the wires. Easy fix though. Gas gauge works now!

Time to start the car….

She lives! Don’t worry about the stumble. It is pretty cold and I did not let it warm up at all. So the ignition, regulator, and generator are all wired correctly. So everything works! I let the car warm up while I cleaned up a little.

Last thing to do on the car tonight is to install the remaining harness clips.

So I was thinking about turn signals and it occurred to me that my old fog lights might be ideal. These are pretty ratty but new ones are actually not that expensive.

Yeah, that will work. I am out of time tonight but something like this could work.

Completed the wiring (maybe)

Posted on November 14, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 14, 2021

I only had a couple hours today to work on the car but I got into testing. Of course there are problems…

First thing to do was the driver’s side headlight. There was some surface rust in here so I painted it last night. That might be causing me problems now but more on that later.

Yesterday I was surprised that I had not taken any pictures of the headlight harness. So here is one. The wires are in a rubber conduit to protect from rocks and water in the fender. The striped wire grounds to a screw in the back of the bucket. You can also see the green bare wire that gets fed though the parking light socket and soldered to the contact button.

The repro wiring is insulated wire with the fabric woven over it. So the wires are a little thicker than the factory wires. Most of the time that does not matter, but for some reason the parking light socket was a lot tighter on this side than the passenger side. So I had to trim off the cotton to get the wire to feed into the socket. No biggie, nobody will see this. The contact button is all soldered up here too.

And installed! Next I hooked up the wires inside the fender. For some reason I don’t have a pic of that.

I connected the horn relay too. Not a lot of extra wire here.

Well lookit that! Main chassis harness is complete! Whohoo!

One last wire to install! Actually that is not true, I did not install the new horn wire or the new gas tank harness. And I have to rewire stuff like the heater/defroster motors and the spotlight. But those are projects for later.

Here is where that wire goes. Connects the coil to the points.

Here we go! So all the wires are run. At least I think they are. Time to test.

Here is the pile of wiring I took out of the car. Keep in mind this is a *simple* electrical system. After one last look-over I turned on the battery. No smoke! I pressed the horn and it honked. So first test down.

Parking lights work too. Instrument lights and the ammeter moved correctly. So 4 for 4 so far.

Passenger headlight works! High and low beam.

But we have a fail on the driver’s side. It is just glowing in both high and low beam. When I see something like this I assume a bad ground. Since the parking light is working fine the most likely place for the bad ground is the striped wire that ties the headlight bulb to the bucket.

When I unplugged the bulb this happened. That is the common terminal so I assumed this was the problem. I got out my soldering gun and soldered the terminal back on. Then I tested the bulb and it works fine. I also verified I have battery voltage at the lamp socket. But when I plugged it in it still does not work. I decided to move on.

The next step was to turn on the ignition. No smoke there either. So I started testing.

Turn signals work! Gas gauge does not move so I probably got those wires backwards in spite of my best efforts. And for some reason the passenger brake light does not work. Since the turn signal does work that is a bit of a mystery. However the Climatizer and defroster fans work. I am out of time but I will troubleshoot this and then try to start the car.

More harness work and started on headlights

Posted on November 13, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 13, 2021

I have been less than thrilled by the quality of the 1-1 connectors that came with the new harness. One of the original factory connectors was broken so I took it apart. The brass insert is much thicker and better shaped than the reproduction connector. And it is plated with tin or maybe even silver. I decided to use the original connectors if I could.

The connectors from inside the car were not bad, but the ones from under the car were pretty nasty. I soaked them in solvent, scraped off the undercoating and paint overspray, then blasted them out with brake cleaner and compressed air. Finally I soaked them in vinegar to try and clean the tarnish off the contacts.

The results were impressive. I can use these no problem.

The first thing to do is get the main chassis harness positioned. To do that I need to join it to the rear chassis harness. So after carefully routing the wires I was ready to connect. The triple-connector here contains the gas gauge and tail-light wires.

That went well so I hooked up the rest of the rear chassis harness. I pull-tested each connector, they all held very wll. The ugly wire up top is the blower motor wire. That needs replaced but I will do that later. All these connectors will tuck up into the frame rail.

Next I hooked up the brake light switch. Those little clips that hold the bullets in are VERY weak springs. Every time I take them off I have to squeeze them tight again to get them to hold.

Once the connections were all made I tucked the harness up in the frame rail and installed the clips to hold it in . You can see one hooked over the frame there. I installed all the clips from the front to the rear axle.

Back on the firewall I positioned the harness vertically and held it there with one of the clamps. That let me hook up the high beam switch and the voltage regulator.

Moving forward the generator harness goes in.

Making progress. As each end of each wire is connected I double-check the location and wire color then check it off on the wire list.

Time for the headlights. Driver’s side first.

After removing the trim and the headlight bulb the bucket is exposed.

Then I fed the wires out through the hole in the inner fender

4 screws and the bucket is out. I have to take that apart now.

To get the headlight mount out the two springs are removed. Then the headlight mount can be wiggled off the adjusting screws.

The parking light socket is built into the bucket so once again I have to fish a bare wire thorough then solder on the contact button.

One rebuilt headlight bucket with a new harness.

Here is how the harness from the bucket is routed though the fender.

To complete the headlight the wires just get connected at the terminal block on the inner fender. Almost done but I am out of time for today.

Main harness is out!

Posted on November 11, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 11, 2021

This is the first free time I have had this week so I went out to work on the car for an hour or so. The goal is to get the old main chassis harness out.

First I disconnected harness from the starter switch. This is also where the negative battery cable connects, so here is where the entire harness connects to the battery.

Next the high-beam switch. This is really buried down there. I jacked up the car and came up from the bottom.

Next I disconnected the wiring from the headlight terminal blocks.

Generator wires are in super rough shape. Disconnected those and the horn wire. I will have to decide soon if I want to replace the horn wire. It runs though the steering box, up the column to the horn contact under the wheel. Nothing about it looks easy, on the other hand it is probably as bad as the rest of the wiring.

Back under the car I disconnected the brake light switch and this connection for the Climatizer fan.

These two clips are the last things holding the harness to the car. Some quick screwdriver work and off they came.

Now I have to snake the new harness into position. I had to get it behind the hood-release cable and under the emergency brake cable. My big worry here is getting everything hooked up and finding that I put something over where it should be under or behind where it should be in front. So I am comparing to the pictures I took every step of the way.

In this picture I have the harness more-or-less where it will go. I highlighted it in the picture to make it clearer. More work to be done here but I am running out of time.

Studebaker Champion Switches

Posted on November 11, 2021 by nvonadaNovember 11, 2021

For my future reference and maybe to help others this post will have the terminals on all the switches on the car. I have taken thousands of pictures of this car so you would think I would have better ones than some of these. But they are good enough.