| Re: 1955 Chrysler Restoration
Magraham:
Those are nice cars. I had one for about three years in the late-'80s as my daily driver. I put about 20,000 miles on it.
There's something I really, really hope you do before you run that car. Remove the oil pan from the engine, and clean it out thoroughly. There will be a couple of pounds of 1950s sludge in there. If you throw modern detergent oil in there, it will loosen that sludge, send it through the engine, clog something, and wipe out the engine for you. I'm serious. I watched a friend of mine wipe out her '55 DeSoto exactly that way.
It's not that hard of a job. While you're in there, you can install a new rear main seal. I'm sure you can still get the pan gaskets from NAPA Auto Parts, but if they're cork, only use them as patters to cut out gaskets from modern gaskets material. The best modern gasket material is Victolex, part number JV-102 at NAPA.
Then do a vew oil changes to catch the garbage that washes into the oil filter from other places in the engine.
When you get it running, be prepare to immediately to a cooling system flush with a powerful chemical. There are two cooling system drains on either side of the engine block, and there's one on the radiator, of course. Don't be surprised if you need to have a new core installed in the radiator.
The rear axle ratio is stamped on the bottom of the rear end on a raised boss that faces the ground at an angle on the passengers side of the differential. You'll probably find this car has a rear axle ratio of 3.73 which was ridiculously low for that nice V-8, but the roads of the time kind of foced it. Consider installing a rear end from later in the 1950s or early-'60s that will drop the RPM 15% or so. This will feel like you rebuilt the whole car, and it's a great step toward preserving the car by drasitcally reducing the number of times the engine rotates. It's inexpensive and a rather easy job.
You'll also have to service the transmission. You might be able to have a good transmission shop take care of that one for you because I don't think the Poweflite is all that unusual in the world of automatic transmissions and shouldn't throw the shop any curves.
There are things you'll need to know before you do a big brake job, but we can get into that later.
This might all sound like a lot of work, but each of these jobs only takes a day or so. Really, if you're prepared, you're only a week from being able to drive that car all you want, provided there are no serious mechanical flaws.
JON | 
December 24th, 2004
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