Vintage Thunderbird Club International

I'll keep the original in storage on the off chance that I'll find a repair shop nearby one day. But the new aluminum one from the guy on eBay is scheduled for delivery on Monday! Affordable and quick delivery- can't beat that. Thanks for the recommendation fellas.

Thanks everyone. My original radiator has sprung a leak. I used to live close to a radiator repair shop and had radiators repaired in the past, but I've since moved and there no radiator repair shops anywhere near me.

Hi, I'm looking for recommendations on a new OEM style radiator for my '57. I searched the forum and the topics I found were all several years old. Thanks.

Yes, it's a good idea to "exercise" your telescoping steering column occasionally to keep it freed up!

The CCTI recently voted to include the '02-'05 retro 2 seater Birds.

Have the toe-in double checked. The alignment shop may have gotten it wrong. If the wheels are toed out a little bit it will cause it to wander.

Classic resistor failure. Either the resistor itself or loose connections as Joe Johnston suggests. Can anyone explain why a bad resistor would cause this? Is the resistor bypassed while the engine is cranking and only comes back into the circuit after the key is in the run position? Exactly! Gives...

ward 57 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 12:48 pm Classic resistor failure. Either the resistor itself or loose connections as Joe Johnston suggests.

Can anyone explain why a bad resistor would cause this? Is the resistor bypassed while the engine is cranking and only comes back into the circuit after the key is in the run position?

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a company-wide engineering P&P that could be traced back to Henry Ford himself. Henry had certain ideas of what constituted quality: forgings vs. castings, vanadium steel vs. mild steel. I'd bet Henry thought fine threads were a sign of quality so that's what ...

I had a situation when I first got my '57 when it would to loose power all of a sudden. I'd lift my foot of the gas pedal and the car would backfire and start running fine again. I traced it down to the primary wire in the distributor. The insulation had cracked and it was not installed correctly. O...

The manual calls for 475-500 rpm in neutral, 425-450 rpm for auto transmissions while in Drive. Why you ask? Any faster, and the carb fuel delivery starts to move from the idle circuit to the main jets.

The '57 312 has a 9.7:1 compression ratio. I found this chart from the dept of energy that gives octane requirements by compression ration. Now, this doesn't take individual engine design into consideration. For example, a hemi head is much more knock resistant than a wedge head. But based on this c...

IMO, the smaller wheel is just so out of place on the car. This is a car from the '50s when big steering wheels were what came in cars! I had the smaller wheel installed when I got the car, and hated its feel (it was like driving a go-cart) and look. Picked up an original wheel at Hershey, and haven...

I replaced the aftermarket smaller diameter wheel with an original wheel shortly after getting my car. Whoever put the aftermarket wheel on did not bother to line up the thicker spline on the shaft (that ensures the wheel slips on only one way) with the corresponding wider slot in the wheel hub. The...

Back when cars received face lifts every year, and major restyling ever 3 years or so, your car from a couple years back looked really old in no time. That's why something like this existed. Nowadays, when maybe the biggest change a manufacture makes from year to year is to change the name of the si...