 And good afternoon again. This is Susan from Learning Times, and I'd like to welcome you to our Connecting to Collections webinar today. If you have not already, please introduce yourself in the chat area over to the left. Go ahead and tell us who you are and maybe what institution you're affiliated with. This seminar webinar is being recorded, so you'll be able to review it later on. But right now, I am going to turn it over to Elsa Huxley from Heritage Preservation to walk you through what's going to happen. Thanks, Susan. Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm Elsa Huxley from Heritage Preservation, and we're so glad you're joining us today. Heritage Preservation is moderating the Connecting to Collections online community in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library is designed and produced by Learning Times. The goal of this online community is to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and network with their colleagues. In developing the community, we have drawn on many resources that were developed for the Connecting to Collections initiative, including the bookshelf, the raising of our workshops, and previous webinars and links to all of those resources are filed under the topics menu on the site. We'll also file a recording of today's webinar there and include some of the resources that we discussed in these presentations. About once a month, the Connecting to Collections online community features a particularly helpful preservation resource, and we host one of these webinars related to it. The resources we posted for today's webinar can be accessed by clicking this photo on our web page. That's www.connectingtocollections.org. So today, we want to welcome Mary Fahey, who is the chief editor at the Henry Ford Museum and Derek Moore, curator of transportation at the Western Reserve Society. Mary and Derek, thank you so much for joining us today. Could you tell us a little bit about you? Mary, do you want to go first? Sure. I'm a graduate of the State University of Buffalo, where I received my bachelor's degree in fine art with a minor in chemistry, and then I went on to complete my bachelor's program at the State University College at Buffalo in the art conservation program that was known as the Cooperstown Program. I spent some time in between undergraduate school and graduate school working at the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum in Rochester, New York. And after I graduated, I began working here at the Henry Ford. And I've been here for, I think, over 20 years at this point. Here, our collection is, if anybody's been here, very large and very diverse. I'm an object conservator by training. And after having worked here for a little while, spent some time working on at least the sculptural aspects of the vehicles. So I'll be talking a little bit about that today, whereas Derek will address the mechanical aspects of maintaining vehicles. Thanks, Mary Derek. Well, I'm Derek Moore. I'm the Crawford Curator of Transportation at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio. I studied at Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University for my bachelor's degree in history, museum studies, and technology studies. And I am currently studying for my master's degree in technology studies as well at Eastern Michigan University. I've also done coursework in automotive restoration at Washington Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And I did an internship at the Alfred P. Sloan Museum in their automotive restoration facility that they have at the museum there, as well as spent the last seven years at the Henry Ford Museum. Six of those were in the conservation department working under Mary Fahey, and also working for a short time under our objects conservator, Malcolm Colm, and did most of the, I was the conservation specialist for transportation collections and maintained the automotive collections at the Henry Ford for the last six years. Just recently have accepted the position of the curator of transportation here at the Western Reserve. And we have about 160 automobiles in the collection, and all of which I am familiarizing myself in these first few years of being here. OK, that's great. We have some poll questions that we could maybe pull over now. We do. You want to start with the types of vehicles that may be in your collection? Sure, does that sound good, Mary and Derek? Certainly. OK. Sure. Polling us or? No, we're pulling the audience. So the audience is telling us. And in fact, we of course want to know then if they're operational. Yes. And maybe what decade they're from? That would be helpful. So audience, you'll see three different polls there on your screen. Wide span of time. A lot of pre-1900s. Yeah. Wow. That's an excellent collection. Interesting. OK. And we had a question about how many vehicles that might be also useful for Mary and Derek to know. Sorry, I didn't see that one buried down there. All right, so tell us your total numbers here. How many vehicles do you have? Wow, more than 15. What other kind of vehicles might there be? This is also, I'm just curious, besides automobiles, trucks, fans, tractors that are common in these kinds of collections? Well, I'm wondering, and maybe if people out there can type it into the Q&A box or something based on how you guys want, if there might not be some folks out there that are checking the other box due to possible boat collections or aircraft collections? Oh, wow. Yeah, that would be great if our participants could type that in, so we knew. And for the participants who haven't said hello yet in that chat window that's over to the left, please tell us where you're coming from. I see quite a few people from Dearborn, Detroit. That doesn't surprise me, given the topic. But we'd love to hear from you. Tell us who you are. Thank you. And anybody that chose other on that question about vehicle type? Oh, there we go, OK. Horse drawn. Oh, horse drawn, OK. Great. OK, I'll move the poles away. And shall we begin with Mary? Sure. OK, in full size for you, Mary. My mouse is working slowly today. There we go. OK. All right. Well, the care of vehicles can be one of the most complicated types of collection to care for. On the first slide are some examples of vehicles from the collections of the Henry Ford from a variety of dates. All of the vehicles consist of composite materials. What I mean by that is they have paint, and fabric, and rubber, and metal, and leather, and all sorts of vinyl, at least on the Mustang. And their care requires a little bit of an understanding of these variety of types of materials. It's important to know when you're caring for vehicles and deciding on an approach, certainly for conservation treatment, or if one should decide to launch a full restoration. It's really important to know the provenance of your vehicle, and to be aware of any original materials and parts on your vehicle. The three vehicles that are featured on this page, the Bugatti Royale, the Mustang, and the Locomobile, are vehicles from our collection that have significant provenance and significant, just historically, they are very unique vehicles. The Bugatti underwent a restoration sometime. I believe, Derek, correct me if I'm wrong, in the 1950s, where its color was completely changed, and a lot of the mechanical aspects of the vehicle were also changed. At this point, we're debating whether we want to leave it its current color, which is white and green, or take it back to its original color, which was a black and sort of a yellowish color. The Locomobile on the bottom has a lot of its original paint, and a lot of its original leather, and much of the wood and the metal is original. So it was very important for us to maintain those original aspects of that vehicle. And so you have to sort of work with your curator or conservator. You have to work together and decide if you're going to undertake conservation or restoration. Is it important to conserve the original materials, or do you want to restore it to a particular time period that's significant for your organization? And this is a little bit more of what I talked about. It's important to look at your vehicles and to actually research, even in your own files or in acquisition files from dating way back to sort of find out what has happened to the vehicle and what has been modified about it. You also need to consider where the vehicle is ultimately going to be displayed and how it's going to be used in exhibitions. Most of, well, actually almost all of our vehicles are displayed indoors, and we're very fortunate that our museum has climate control. Oftentimes museums do not have climate control. So this will have an impact on the approach that conservators are taking to conserving or caring for vehicles. It also should have an impact on sort of what you do to prep your vehicles for storage and for long-term display. Because if the conditions are not conducive to long-term preservation, you may have to go a little further in terms of protecting metals and protecting fabrics and pay a little more attention to sort of what's going on with your collections if you don't have climate control in your museum. The picture that you see here of our Bugatti Royale is when it was on display, obviously outdoors. Vehicles are often sent to displays off-site. And from a conservation aspect, this has an impact on the sort of adhesives we use and in some sense, the lackers we use on vehicles. Because if they're displayed outdoors, there are certain materials that hold up well in that kind of environment and certain materials that do not hold up so well. Mary, could I interrupt for just a second? We have a question from Jeremy in Nebraska about what is if you could give us your definition of provenance. Oh, provenance is knowing the history of an artifact. Is it linked to people or historic events? Like if you know who owned that vehicle and if the slide that's up right now is our Lotus 38, we know that that vehicle was in an Indianapolis race and it was a winning car. So provenance is the information you have about the vehicle that links it either to people or to important events or things like that, rather than just a Model T that you know nothing about the history of that particular Model T or something like that. OK, I have a context. Yes, yes. So those of you who have vehicles may have vehicles that are operational and that you drive occasionally or that your institution drives often, we have at the Henry Ford have a mixture of vehicles. We actually have a whole fleet of Model T's and Model A's that are driven in Greenfield Village on a daily basis. These are vehicles that we purchased with the intent of giving rides to visitors with these vehicles. Now, all these vehicles do not have significant provenance. They're not. The vehicle in itself is not linked to a famous person or a famous event. And oftentimes, the ones that we purchase for that have been heavily restored. So there's very little original paint, very little original upholstery, or anything like that. So for us, that's an appropriate choice for operational vehicles. On the other hand, we have significant vehicles like the Lotus 38. And a few years ago, we decided to conserve it to operational condition for a few selected runs. And then once it was driven, those few times, we would prepare it just to go on permanent display. Our intention is that it won't be driven again any time in the near future. So it was important to us that this car had been restored a number of times. The exterior, at least, had been repainted. But we did find evidence of original materials. The engine itself turned out to be original from the 1965 race, which is very amazing for race cars, because usually, the engines are swapped out and replaced. And we also found evidence of original paint in the cockpit where the driver was sitting. The seats were also original. So when we discussed our approach to conserving this vehicle, all the factors, including its condition, the cost of the conservation project, the historical significance, the risk of driving it, the need for insurance to cover any catastrophes, and the choice of a driver for this particular car was very important to us. Race cars have a tendency to want to be driven quickly, and it's very hard to drive them slowly. So we wanted to choose a driver that would be conservative and respect the fact that this was a one-of-a-kind car. We didn't want anybody who was going to get in the car and try to go as fast as possible. So there were two drivers who we chose for this particular car, but it required a lot of discussion before we actually decided who was going to drive it. During conservation and restoration, it's important to keep detailed records of all the work and to keep all of the parts that come off the vehicle, whether you're using them or not, because that's all a part of the original history of vehicles. Some examples of conservation treatment have to do with cleaning. All of our approaches to cleaning tend to be very conservative. We tend to use traditional conservation material. On the Henry Ford's website, you can find some of our caring for artifact sheets. We use simple soap materials, especially on painted surfaces. The soap that we use most often is called Orvis. We try, whenever possible, to consolidate original paint much in the same way that painting conservators take original paint. They wick adhesive underneath it and adhere the paint back down in place rather than strip it off. Some of the pictures you see here, one is of our white steamer car, 1907 vehicle, which has much of its original paint on it. The photograph that you see at the center shows the poor condition that the paint was in when we started working on it. It was actually flaking off the surface. We actually went through and set down all the paint and retained that original material. And then we went in and touched the areas where the paint was missing with the green paint. The cockpit that you see from our Lotus is another area in the vehicle where there was a large amount of original paint. So we decided that even though some areas had been overpainted over the years, we decided not to strip the paint because we knew that there was original paint underneath. If we wanted to at a later date, we could go back and remove the overpaint and reveal the original surfaces on that particular car. Another approach that I just basically touched on is restoration. Sometimes museums will decide to approach the care of a vehicle or the display of a vehicle and restore the paint. These conversations, these decisions must involve a lot of conversations between editorial staff, museum leadership, and conservation staff. The vehicle that you see here is what we call the Rosa Parks bus. It's the vehicle that Rosa Parks was on when she took a stance on discrimination. We obtained this vehicle, and it was in the condition that you see in the upper right image. And we made a choice to return the vehicle to the way that it looked on the road that Rosa Parks would have been riding that vehicle. We did meticulously document the layers of paint, and we were able to see evidence that this actually was the original Rosa Parks bus during our thorough examination of the paint surfaces on the vehicle. Another thing that's important to consider when conserving vehicles is how the metal on different vehicles should look. This is true for carriages as well for older cars and modern cars. Many finishes were originally lacquered, and others were meant to be bright at all times, like chrome finishes, some brand-new S-finishes like you see here. What we are careful about, though, is to make sure that if there's an original lacquer that has an overall sort of old, tiny look that actually matches the look of the paint on a vehicle, we try not to polish it to a bright finish, because it sort of isn't in keeping. There isn't sort of a cohesive look to a vehicle. If parts are polished, then the other parts look sort of old-time patinated. An example of this is the fire engine you see in the upper right corner. The brass on that has a nice, stable, brownish color. There's no active corrosion on it, so we decided not to pursue polishing it since it was stable. The vehicle you see in the lower right, we decided that we were going to polish it to a real high polish, which is how it would have looked when someone was actually using the vehicle. The paint was in very good condition, and I believe that it had been repainted. And Derek, you can correct me if I'm wrong on that. So we decided to polish that brass, and then we always apply a clear lacquer coating. We do this because if you lacquer it, then, first of all, you don't have to polish it again for a long time, and it also protects it from fingerprints and from mold, and just allows it to be in good condition for a longer period of time. Repeated polishing tends to wear on the metal, and it actually wears it away. So you can overdo polishing if it's too often. We also are careful to make sure that when we polish something, we remove all of the polished residue. You can see the image on the lower left, the whitish material that you see is polished residue that actually spilled onto the wooden areas, which can cause damage and staining to the wood. Also, if the polish is left on the surface, it can just corrode the metal, and you can end up seeing sort of green corrosion on brass products. So we try to make sure that we clean off any kind of polish that we use. The polishes that we tend to use tend to be very conservative polishes. We don't use Brasso. We don't use things with a lot of ammonia in them, because the ammonia in some of those polishes can actually damage the metal. We will often mix up our own polish formulations just with alcohol and water and abrasives mixed together with a little bit of soap. Or the one commercial polish that we do use is called autosol. It has a little bit of ammonia in it, but not enough to actually damage the copper metal that it's used on. Tires and rubber. Most vehicles have rubber tires. And rubber itself is a pretty unstable material. It becomes brittle with time. Ozone in the air causes it to degrade. Sunlight and ultraviolet light causes it to degrade. So it's one of those things that you really can't preserve forever. At the Henry Ford, we actually have a cold storage room that we use to store materials like rubber and plastic, which slows down the degradation process, but it doesn't actually prevent it from happening. It just slows it down a bit. There are a number of companies, and I think some of the references are listed in our materials, that will produce custom tires. Coker tire is one of the companies. But if you're looking for a tire that's not already in production, setup costs for having a custom tire made are very, very high, like in the $20,000 range. So at times, we've ended up making shake tires. These images are an example of a tire that we made for one of our vehicles out of pool noodles that your children use as floaty devices in the pool. We actually applied a number of different coatings on them and a rubber paint material to make them look like old-fashioned white tires. We also use, you can also foam fill tires if they don't hold air anymore. That's another approach to take. And we also try to, Jack stands on many of our vehicles. Actually, it allows the vehicle to look like it's sitting on the ground, but the wheels and tires aren't actually touching. This prevents them from developing flat spots on the tire where it's actually sitting on the ground. And if you have tires that aren't holding air, very well, if they're up on Jack stands, it actually helps them to hold air a little bit longer. Apostry, whether you're dealing with carriages or cars, you're going to be faced with dealing with a number of different problems. The older upholstery is often made out of wool. These are for cars around the turn of the century and the same with carriages. They're often made out of wool. And many times, they're stuffed with horsehair stuffing. The problem with these kind of materials is that both the wool and the horsehair stuffing attract a whole variety of insects, including carpet beetles, webbing clothes moths, and case-making clothes moths. The important thing to do with these types of vehicles is at least once a year and possibly twice a year. Someone has to go inside and use a vacuum attachment to vacuum out the interior. This allows you to keep it clean, and it also deters insects from settling into the upholstery because they can demolish a vehicle in terms of its upholstery if it's not inspected and cleaned on any kind of regular basis. Other materials like leather become brittle with time. Leather like rubber is one of those materials that self-destructs with time, and it's very difficult to preserve it long-term. What we do with our leather is basic cleaning, like dusting or cleaning with a vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment. Or we'll wipe it down with a damp cloth, not too porous. We do not use saddle soaps or leather for their dressing or any of those kind of materials. What I have found through the years is these materials attract dust. Some of them become moldy with time, and the build-up of all sorts of polishes and coatings with time makes it difficult to actually repair the leather if you need to use adhesive because they actually become kind of slimy with time. And the photo that you see here in the lower right is an example of what we call spewing, which is a leather dressing sort of coming back out onto the surface of a leather seat. We do, if we want to use some sort of polish, use Renaissance wax, which is a microcrystalline wax that's available from conservation suppliers. This can be tinted with dry pigments or things like that if you really want to sort of even out the sheen of leather. And it can also easily be removed with mineral spirits. The other type of upholstery that can be challenging to maintain is vinyl. Vinyl as a plastic tends to become brittle with time. And this is because the plasticizers within the vinyl actually leach out onto the surface of the vinyl, making them almost sticky. When this occurs, there are two approaches to dealing with the vinyl. You can either sometimes you can just wipe it off the surface with a dry rag, or other times if it's really sticky, you can take a little bit of mineral spirits on a rag and wipe off the plasticizer. You do have to bear in mind, though, that with time, vinyl just becomes more and more brittle. And long-term preservation is truly a challenge. And I think it's at the end of mine. I think it might be. I think it is. So what I'm hearing there is that overpolishing or overcleaning can be critical errors to make. Is that correct to say? OK, other common mistakes you think we should mention today to the participants in terms of taking care of the body of the car? Mary, one thing that you might want to talk about is some of the problems with maybe more in-depth on like leather treatments, like Neat's Foot and things like that? Yes, and those are Neat's Foot Oil and Lanolin and Saddle Soap are definitely things that, well, we don't use here at the Henry Front, because as I mentioned, they sort of interfere conservation work down the road. So they might look good for the moment. Down the road, it could be detrimental, especially if the leather seams start to fall apart or if you do have any rips or things like that. It doesn't hold it together. Other common mistakes, basically just not, to me, not monitoring and not cleaning the insides of vehicles is a big mistake. Because we learned ourselves years ago, we had some old carriages that were not, nobody cleaned the inside because you assumed that it sealed tightly. And we went into this one carriage and insects had basically trashed the upholstery. And we ended up getting an IMLS grant to help us conserve it. And that was something that occurred when it was on display and it was before there was a conservation presence. And it's just something that you don't think about, because you think the doors are closed. It's fine. So you can't always assume that that is true. Other than that, just having a sense of, for exteriors of your vehicles, it's very important to know whether you have original paint or not. And make a decision about whether you want to keep that or not. Because once it's stripped and repainted, historical information could be gone. So it's important to do your research, take a good look at your artifacts. Oftentimes we find out there's an old layer of paint underneath newer layers. And sometimes it'll go so far as to remove the upper layers. And it will be surprised sometimes it reveals beautiful detail and painting. But it's important to know what you have before you jump in and strip paint off and repaint something. So I think that's a critical thing to avoid as well. I just wanted to mention also the list you gave me of vehicle references. I have it. I'll pull it over later. But I'll also be posting it online on the page that provides access to the recording of this webinar. So everybody will be able to pull those things out and print them later if they like. OK. OK. Thank you. Yeah. So Derek, should we go through your presentation? Does anybody have any other questions for Mary? I mean, you're welcome to ask them later as well, but I already have a few of them that you're thinking about. Go ahead then, Derek, if you want to start going through yours. Not a problem. As you just talked about kind of the exterior surfaces of the vehicles, I'm going to look at more of the mechanical end of having motorized vehicles in your collection, be it automobiles, engines. These techniques and methods can be used in aircraft engines, boat engines, anything of that sort. So we're just going to go over some of the key systems within those motorized vehicles and discuss some of the issues that occur within them. And basically, I like to start at the front of the vehicle whenever I work on one and just work my way through it. So that's kind of how I set up this PowerPoint presentation. So the first thing to look at and always concern yourself with is the cooling systems within vehicles. And in cooling systems, typically, discuss water cooled engines. Air cooled doesn't have too many problems. But I also want to look at this in two different aspects. The display and storage techniques and operational techniques. So you'll see as we go through the slides, display and storage is usually always at the top. Then the operational discussion is on the bottom. For displaying and storing vehicles when they're in your collection, especially the engines that have a water cooled system, you always want to make sure that whenever the vehicle either comes into your collection or if you've never worked on it and it's in your collection and you pull it out of storage, you make sure that the cooling system is completely dried out. And a full flush of the system is always good to do. Pouring water through it again, I usually use a warm one to try to help break up any loose corrosion product or anything like that to get a good flush. And just like a garden hose run through the system gives a good flow of water through it to help push anything out that might be stuck in it. And then once you get a clear water coming out, the technique that has been developed is to fill the system, close the system all back up, fill it with a mixture of water and water pump lube anti-corrosion product of the emulsified oil type. The one that I prefer to use is produced by Sotter Seal, Gunk Company. And it's basically called water pump lube and anti-corrosion. To drain the system completely after this, what this does is it allows the emulsified oil to mix with the water flow through the system. And then when you drain it, the thin layer of the emulsified oil will stay behind the cooling system on the walls of the cooling system, therefore creating a barrier from oxidation within the system and protecting it from any corrosion that might occur in the long term. And then you always want to leave the drain petcocks and like the other radiator hose disconnected so that as the engine is sitting either in storage or on display, and you get the evaporation of any moisture that is left behind in the system, it's actually allowed to escape from the system rather than being trapped in the system and doing a kind of circulation of evaporating and condensing and evaporating, which will lead to corrosion issues. From an operational standpoint, if you are going to operate any of your vehicles in your collection, it's highly recommended to not use any glycol-based anti-freeze type products, namely because these vehicles aren't being used, number one, in a way, a manner that would necessarily need any type of anti-freeze type situation. But also because glycol does have effects in the long term once the additive packages break down and can actually lead to corrosion within the system. Typically, what is used is just a mixture of the water and water pump lube that I just discussed of the emulsified oil type. If you're running the car very infrequently, say once, twice a year at maybe a show or here or there, it's always a good idea to use a fresh bottle of the fluid every time or fresh couple bottles depending on the size of the system, and to fully drain it after every operation. Now, if you're running them more frequently once, twice a month, something like that, you would just want to come up with a policy where you would change the fluid on certain a case and or in the case of at the Henry Ford when we were dealing with the vehicles that ran in the village almost year. Around, basically the entire time the village is open and through the holiday nights, those type of vehicles do use a water antifreeze mixture, but that is due to the situation that they are put in where they need to have extra cooling capacity as well as extra antifreeze capacity. So it really oftentimes depends on how your operation of your vehicles is going to be handled, and that's true for every slide that we will go. Power steering systems, obviously if equipped, I notice we had a good chunk of vehicles that were prior to the power steering era, but in a power steering system for display and storage, you typically want to leave the fluid in the vehicle. It's power steering systems, hydraulic, and the seals and everything that are hydraulic systems are very dependent upon the fluid being in there so they don't dry out and start leaking or at least dry out and shrink, and then if you ever wanted to use the system again, you would have problems with fluids leaking by as you were trying to use the system. If the system has already been drained by the time it comes into the collection or by the time you actually have the opportunity to work on the vehicle and actually go through it, that tends to be more challenging. As I said, you may have seals that are bad. If you try to refill it, you may have problems with fluid leaking out of the system. And really, if you find a vehicle that has the power steering fluid dried out, that's a time to sit back and make a decision on the future use of that vehicle and whether or not it should become an operational vehicle and really how much work it's going to take. And if there's going to be too many alterations to an original power steering system, that maybe needs to be preserved. If you move into the thought of operating a vehicle, typically if your current fluid seems to be good and is full or you top it off and test it, hydraulic systems are usually pretty good. You don't wind up with a lot of moisture in them. And the fluid is a good fluid that doesn't tend to break down or degrade quickly. It takes a very long time. If the current fluid is bad or it's dry and you need to replace it, you'd want to do a system flush and refill. And then as you're filling it, you'd check for any problems. One of the big things to keep in mind would be that there are power steering systems that have been made over the years that once they've gone dry, it is very difficult to refill them and make them operate again properly. Some power steering fluid systems, I believe it was Ford Motor Company for a while and maybe even Chrysler, had systems where they would actually have to be filled with high pressure systems to actually blow all of the air out and occasionally would be, if needed to be serviced, they would actually be filled in a vat of hydraulic fluid, power steering fluid, because that would allow no air to get into the system. So there are some systems that can be very tricky and you always want to make sure you fully understand the system that you're getting into before doing too much to it. In the lubrication system, and lubrication system being the oiling system of a vehicle, this is one of the major areas where you can have significant problems occur in your collections. The lubrication systems, believe it or not, should always be kept dry, drained, flushed, and dried out well on display or in storage. You can flush the system with mineral spirits to get rid of any residual oil that was left over, oftentimes removing the oil pan if that is easily done, some cars it's not. You can wipe the pan out, wipe the inside of the crankcase out of the engine block, and make sure everything, all the old oils are out. One of the problems of leaving any type of used oil in a lubrication system is that if the oil was in there and the vehicle had operated with that oil in the system, you have blow-by of the fuel past the cylinders that is being compressed in the top end of the engine. And the hydrocarbons in fuel are actually hygroscopic and will attract moisture. So once you infuse those with the oil, you have created basically an irreversible attraction of moisture into the engine. And there's been a number of times in collectibles where I've pulled oil out that hadn't been drained, and it had a quarter inch of water sitting on top of it because you have a constant condensation and evaporation cycle occurring, and it just sits on top of the oil. And then there's also oil degradation. Oil, over time, will begin to thicken and eventually will actually turn into almost a dirt-like product. It somewhat reverses into a dirt. And there's a number of vehicles that I've seen that maybe the engine pan was drained properly, but someone forgot to drain another transmission case or something like that. And it's just then had to be pulled down and actually broken the thick matter, be broken out of it, and cleaned out to get that out and stop any corrosion that had started occurring. If you're going to make a vehicle operational, a lot of thought has to go into it as Mary was talking about. You always want to think about the vehicle that you are getting ready to operate from originality standpoint, finishes on the vehicle, but then also mechanical issues with the vehicle. Typically, it is highly recommended that modern synthetic oils are used in the vehicles in an engine that is being run. Synthetic oils carry their viscosity rating better over heat range. So on cold startup to full temperature, a synthetic oil does not thin out as much as a mineral oil will. And they also have a good additive package. Mineral oils have good additive packages as well, but the added benefit is the viscosity rating staying better over the heat range of operation. You also want to make sure that you choose your proper viscosity, typically in a splash system, which Model T is many early cars. I know there was a good chunk of people listening today that had early vehicles in their collection. Typically have splash systems. You want to use a thinner oil, 5W30, 10W30, somewhere in that rating. It allows the oil to move around easier, be splashed around the engine easier, and actually, in a way, wick into the areas that it needs to flow into much easier. In a full pressure system, something like a 20W50 works well. If you have a good pressurized system, it will build pressure quickly. And when you shut down and do things like that, it will also stay behind and stick a little better than some of the thinner viscosity. So it's a better fuel, a better oil, to use in a full pressure system. The next thing to worry about is the actual cylinders of the engine when you're displaying and storing. Again, due to the fact that this is one of the areas that, along with the oil pan and the crankcase area, you can have a lot of corrosion occurring. You have metal touching metal. And engines tend to see as if they aren't properly taken care of and lubricated and maintained. So one of the tricks is that when you're getting ready to display or store your vehicle, you should always remove spark plugs and add approximately a tablespoon of a synthetic gear oil into the cylinders. 75W90, 140 are good viscosities. The reason for that is they tend to stick to the cylinder walls and not run down as quickly as a motor oil, a 10W or a 10W30 or a 20W50. So the oil will actually last a little longer on the cylinder. Once you've done that and you let it sit in there for a minute and flow out, if you turn the engine over for about 30 seconds, it'll coat the cylinder walls. And it'll also coat any of the piston rings, which is an area where you can get a lot of corrosion built up. And that is one of the main reasons engines tend to seize is that the piston rings will actually seize to the cylinder wall due to corrosion. So you want to get a good oxidation barrier between those two surfaces. Now, turning the engine over for 30 seconds, if you're fortunate and you have a very early collection of vehicles, you can easily put the hand crank in and turn the engine over by hand. If you have a vehicle that can only be turned over, say by the starter, that gets a little trickier. Sometimes on the crank pulley on the front of the engine, they're usually locked on by a large nut. And you can occasionally get a socket and a breaker bar down in there and be able to turn the engine over. But if that's not possible, you would want to hook a battery up. Obviously, check your electrical system all over well from the battery to the starter and make sure you weren't going to have any problems. And remove the coil wire from the coil to the distributor for the spark plugs. That way, you don't actually have any spark plugs firing. And you're not also putting any electricity through the distributor and all the electrical components that are there that could have a chance of shorting out. And then turn the engine over just on the starter for about 30 seconds, rolling it over and allowing it to coat the cylinder walls. If you're going to make a vehicle operational, the main thing you want to focus on with the engine cylinders is to test the compression and leak down of the cylinders to make sure you don't have any major problems inside the engine. And if you've already done a display or a storage treatment like what we just discussed, you'll have a little bit of oil still in the cylinder. And it will be expected that that will burn off on the first test run. So don't be alarmed if you get a little bit of exhaust smoke from oil burning. That is typical. And you've done a proper technique to preserve the engine while it was sitting. Transmissions. Transmissions tend to be a difficult area in the idea of conservation of vehicles. For display and storage on manual transmissions, it's always a good idea to drain the fluid that is extant and flush the transmission with mineral spirits to remove any of the old oil. And then refill it with a fresh synthetic gear oil. Again, 75W90, 140, something of that grade. And actually turn the transmission through all of its gears. That will allow all the gears to be coated with a fresh coat of oil. Again, an oxidation barrier. And then drain the case completely, just allowing the oil that is stuck to the gears to remain. And then in automatic transmissions, again, you're in a hydraulic system. You want to leave the fluid in if it's still there and is fresh. If it seems to be degraded, if there's moisture in the transmission fluid or it smells burnt, you would want to drain and refill the system so you have good, fresh automatic transmission fluid in the transmission. And one of the keys with that, as well as in the operational step, which we'll talk about next, is to make sure that you always use the proper transmission fluid in that space. Operationally, manual is very simple. Gear oil, proper gear oil in there. Early cars for the people with early cars. A thicker oil may be needed, such as, like, lubricate number eight. And synthetic gear oils are always good. Automatic transmission, drain the fluid of any unknown condition and refill it with the proper transmission fluid for production. Rear differential, very much like a manual transmission, you would want to drain it, flush it, and refill it with a synthetic gear oil, rotate, and then drain the system. Operationally, you just want to make sure you have the proper gear oil rating in there, viscosity rating. Again, synthetics are recommended. And early vehicles, again, you may require a thicker gear oil, something like a lubricate number eight. Fuel systems should always be kept dry. On display or in storage, you would want to drain the tank completely. You can use air to blow it out and try to evaporate the fuel. Fuel lines can be blown dry with compressed air or sucked dry by a vacuum, somewhat like a vacuum pump for breaks. Carburetors should be blown dry with compressed air. And a water-displacing oil like WD-40 could be sprayed through the carburetor to coat the surfaces of it. If you're going to make a vehicle operational, you want to make sure the tank is flushed and checked for any debris. Use an inline fuel filter on your first runs to make sure you don't get any debris from the tank to the carburetor. Carburetors should usually be rebuilt that way to ensure that you're not going to have any fuel leaks that eventually could cause an engine fire. And fuel lines should be inspected and replaced if necessary, especially any rubber lines. Brakes, it's always a good idea with mechanical brakes on early vehicles to lubricate all of the mechanical joints within it with a synthetic gear oil and work the brakes to make sure they're fully lubricated for display or storage. Hydraulic systems should be completely drained of any non-synthetic fluid. A .5 synthetic should be put in. Non-synthetic brake fluids are hygroscopic and will attract moisture. .5 synthetics will not. So you should fully drain your system, flush it with ethanol, let the ethanol fully evaporate, and refill it with .5. You may need to replace seals, if possible, if they are bad or if there seems to be a problem with the synthetic and the seals. In one of the vehicles at the Henry Ford, I was unable to replace the seals and had to use the originals and just cleaned them very well with mineral spirits. Operationally and mechanical, you want to have proper adjustment and lubricate the entire system so that you know that you're not going to have any binding or hanging up in the system. On a hydraulic, you should again have the .5 being used, ensure that the brakes are bled properly so you have even braking and adjust your brakes properly. And the chassis, you would want to do a full chassis lubrication, whether you're displaying, storing, or operating, and use a synthetic grease. I typically use a grease known as Allison. It is produced by a company in Indianapolis, Indiana. And it does not break down as quickly as some of the other greases that are on the market. And then we have a list of some of the products that I mentioned in the presentation. That's great. I can post this list of products towards the whole presentation possibly later on the same page as the recording. We should have that up in about a day or two. Is that the end of the presentation, Derek? Yeah, oh, I'm sorry. And that's the end of that. OK, OK. That was really interesting. I'm very informative. Does anybody have any questions about the mechanical preservation of automobiles in your collection? Also, if you think of something later, those questions can be posted in the group discussion on connectingtocollections.org. I might mention for the audience, too, if they click on those links, like gunk.ca, it will open in a browser in the background. So you may not be seeing it immediately, but you could go ahead and click on each of those three links and have them open and then save it however you want to later. Susan, if I pull over this list from Mary as well, will they be able to click on that? Yeah, they should be able to. Well, let's try it. All right, let's try. I don't want to cover up Derek's at the same time, so let me see what I can do here. And I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention the evaluation that we asked participants to fill out. It just takes a couple minutes, about six questions. But it helps us in guiding us to build future presentations. So I'll post that link up there. You know what? I don't know that the vehicle references are working, but I can share that PDF and people can download it right now if you'd like me to. You know, the first URL there is something I built that has this document. So if they just even copy that down. And again, I'll have to post it next to the recording later if it just saves you copying and pasting it in. Now, will a link work that's been posted in the Q&A box? No, OK. If it were open chat, it could. Yeah, I'm, well, I'll make it all available afterwards. OK. But it is, I'm afraid, time for us to wrap up. If anybody has any last questions, now is the perfect opportunity to type them into that Q&A box. But I don't see any, so I think that maybe we'll sign off. OK, evaluation link. Let's put that up there. Oh, great. I don't know if that's clickable. It's in the Q&A box. You know, but they could copy and paste. You know what? Let's do this. There's the link for the evaluation. Just click on that, and it'll open in a separate browser window. Oh, thank you. And now, Kristen, if you, let's do this, or Elsa, I'm sorry. OK, so there are two links in that chat window. Or are they the same thing? They're both the evaluation, I see. OK, if you want to copy and paste the link for the page for the vehicle's references, you can put it there. OK, I'll just put that up. I just want to mention now, on November 9th is going to be our next live chat. And that's going to be about flag rolling and storage with Ann Ennis, who's a textile conservator at the Harper's Ferry Center at the National Park Service. So I hope that maybe some of these topics will overlap. And we'll have some of you online for that one as well. Great. OK, thank you, audience, for joining us. Thank you, Mary and Derek. You're welcome. Thank you. And we'll hang out for a minute, so if you want to still ask Mary or Derek a question, feel free to do that in the chat area.