A customer with a 1950 Chevy Fleetline Deluxe that had been restored in the 70's, shipped his car to us inoperable.

This car had been stored in his garage for a few years and needed its fuel system cleaned out and had a dead battery.

The proud owner also asked that we make his car more reliable as he was planning on driving it more often.

In addition to wanting a more reliable machine the customer also suggested that he would like it to stop blowing  rust out of the exhaust system as it would do after sitting for some time.

Our first observation was that this car had a 6 volt electrical system and 6 volt batteries are aggravating in a situation where you might need to crank on the starter; to clear a flooded engine for instance.

Our customer liked the look of his 6 volt tar top battery and really did not want to convert his car to a 12 volt system, as we had suggested for reliability.

To tackle the reliability issues associated with the electrical system we added an additional 6 volt battery in a parallel fashion on the driver's side to match the battery originally installed on the passenger side.

Although there are some more modern 6 volt batteries on the market, such as a 6 volt altima and 6 volt acid glass matt by synergy, we would be keeping the tar top batteries for ascetics.

Now that we had a 6 volt system that would crank longer we now needed to look at keeping it charged.

The original generator used a mechanical voltage regulator, very sensitive to moisture, and the original system was good for a 15 amp charge.

Don's Alternator shop in Washington State builds gen-a-nators.  This gen-a-nator is an old generator housing with an alternator built into the housing with an electronic voltage regulator.

The gen-a-nator produces a 50 amp charge and is considerably more reliable.

We kept the old voltage regulator with its internals removed and only a jumper wire inside the housing for current to pass through for ascetics.

Also to maintain our new dual battery system we installed a stepped charge battery charger in the glove box. 

We used apro-logix battery maintainer by Solar.

This charger is wired into the electrical system at the starter and has a 110 volt plug below the passenger side fender to plug the charger in while the vehicle is in storage.

The starter was the highest demand item in the electrical system and was dragging.

A new 6 volt starter was purchased, which had a solenoid too stiff to work with 6 volts.

A local starter shop tweaked a new solenoid to work flawlessly with 6 volts.

The ignition system was next on the list of areas that could be improved for reliability.

The key in a 1950 Chevrolet is on straight up and down and is turned off when tilted to the right.

This a-typical key positioning is a sure set up for someone to burn up a set of points by leaving the key on.

Points ignition systems are prone to failure by corroding over time as well.

In the quest for reliability we replaced the points and condenser with an electronic pickup module; which is immune to the problems associated with points.

The module installed in the old distributor and appears untouched.

We used an epoxy filled coil as the coil on these cars is mounted up side down and tend to leak.

The plug wires were replaced with a set that included boots on the plugs unlike the original.

We then tuned the carburetor, adjusted the valves and installed a completely stainless steel exhaust system including a stainless steel muffler from stainless works.

Our 50 Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe is now very much the same in appearance and much more reliable.