The Ressurection of Daphne - a 1932 DL

Nice job Mr Taylor- because of you, I'm going to attempt to do a set on a 55 Buick. Thanks for the detailed info. We use the same shaft repair kit on Semi rear axle seals. Works real good.

A thoroughly enjoyable tutorial, Taylormade. This standard of presentation elevates the DB forum to a new level.

Thank you for posting it.

Ray.

Excellent work and presentation. I too, used the Speedi-Seal shaft repair on the torque convertor hub shaft on the Dynaflow transmission off of my '56 Buick. The shocks on the rear of my '41 Buick are still original, and this gives me some courage to attempt to do them myself.

Thanks.

Keith

Thanks for the compliments everybody. Part Three coming soon.

Pictures like this keep me moving ahead on the restoration. Photos previous owner (and Dodge Brothers Club Magazine Editor) Phil Kennedy sent me awhile ago. This is how I remember her - minus the sealed beams and the missing sidemounted spare.

This is how I remember her - minus the sealed beams...

I realized today that it was fifty years ago that I first bought Daphne. Now I'm more determined than ever to get her on the road this year as an anniversary present to myself. Here she is on the front lawn of the Delt House in 1965. For some reason I had temporarily taken the front bumper off - I have no recollection why.

Still looks pretty nice without the bumper.

Ain't that just like a Delt to take the bumper off a car for no reason! Zeke (old KA)

The sixties - I lost a lot of perfectly good brain cells during that decade!

Wow, fancy graphics and pictures on an already excellent thread...this restoration process just keeps getting better!

No doubt. I'm speechless (which is rare for my loud mouth).....

Excellent thread and work Taylormade

You're outdoing yourself...this is great!

The sixties - I lost a lot of perfectly good brain cells during that decade!

I think I may have as well, don't remember.

For some reason I had temporarily taken the front bumper off - I have no recollection why.

HAH! I, too, took her bumper off at one point. But I still retain the neural connections that remind me why.

It was November 1967 and I was getting hitched the next month so I stored her away for the winter in a friend's barn...that was just too short for her to fit in with her bumper on.

Look at the built-up crud underneath that protected all those parts for you!

On another thread in this forum they are discussing a Dodge Brothers commercial currently running - the one with the two Dodge brothers quitting working for Ford and going out on their own to produce the Dodge Brothers automobile. This brought back memories of one of "the" stories in my family's history.

My great-grandfather, Charles Carolin, was a self-made man who came to Detroit from Windsor, Canada in the late nineteenth century. He became a prominent and very successful businessman in the then burgeoning Motor City, and owned one of the largest foundry and metal working plants in the city. He's the rather imposing gentleman in the center of this family portrait taken around 1908. That's my grandmother in the lower left, his favorite whom he always called Baby.



Charles was a rich, stubborn, no nonsense guy. I'm sure he'd be an avid watcher of Bill O'Reilly if he was alive today. He was most upset when local ordinances forced him to give up his horses, and he absolutely refused to buy one of the newfangled automobiles, preferring to walk to work. One day a gentleman arrived at the foundry with a proposition: if my great-grandfather would mass produce certain parts for his new enterprise, he would offer Charles ten percent of his company. My great-grandfather viewed this offer with much skepticism - this skinny entrepreneur was making his third or forth try at starting a (gasp) automobile company; he had no money, thus the ten percent offer; his credit was not just bad - it was terrible, and it's said that Charles Carolin did not particularly care for the looks of this eager young man. Charles turned down the offer - cash only was the only way he would deal.

Thus the young man, whom I'm sure you've guessed by now was Henry Ford, eventually went to the Dodge Brothers for his parts and my great-grandfather gave up what would have been a massive family fortune. True story, but since the Dodge brothers designed many of Ford's parts and loaned him money to get things rolling, I doubt that any relationship between Charles and Henry would have been productive. In fact, I believe it would have led to another failure for Ford and much satisfaction for Charles Carolin.

Later, Charles - who was also a ardent pacifist - refused to manufacture munitions for the government during World War One. There went another couple of hundred-millions. It's the reason I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to afford the chrome plating on Daphne rather than bidding on a Duesenberg at the latest Scottsdale auction. Thanks Grandpa Carolin!

WOW we could have been driving Carolin Brothers Cars

Great story, talk about 20-20 hindsight!

Keith

WOW we could have been driving Carolin Brothers Cars

You might be right! I found this old photo of the famous Carolin Steam Carriage circa 1899 with my Great-grandfather at the wheel. unfortunately, the vehicle burned to the ground a few minutes after this was taken.



It's too cold in the garage to do any work on Daphne so I did a little 3D modelling and Photoshop to kill the time.

Very nice. The effect is subtle, but effective. I've used Photoshop a lot, as I used to be in the photo business, but never did any 3D.

I guess they didn't build another??

Keith

SWEEEET! Thanks for all of the effort of sharing this process with us. I will certainly be using this process on my '31 DH6s.

I used to be about two hours away from my sheetmetal/body guy, Ed Thomas in Columbia, Missouri. Since my wife and I retired and moved, we are now about 3-1/2 hours away. Ed kindly sent me pictures of our current project - a new battery box, new tailpipe bracket and new tool box. He is working on my new running boards today, and I hope to have a picture of those soon.

Ed had patterns for the battery box and tool box, there was still enough left of the old ones to see how they were made. Here is a shot of two new battery boxes, two new tailpipe hangers, the new tool box and the remains of the old one behind it.



Ed explained how he made the bottom of the battery box:

The battery box form works like sandwich with the sheet of metal in between the two pieces of wood. The lower has a 1 3/8 slot milled to receive the metal downward. The upper one has a 3/4 inch slot center-lined with the lower one so that the upper piece of 3/4 inch tooling with the proper radius for the center of the X bead, can be fed down by the Pullmax to form the X in the bottom of the battery box.



This stuff is way beyond my pay grade, but, thanks to Ed, Daphne will look about as original as I can make her.

COOL! Here's how that exhaust pipe hanger will fit that rubber-damped bracket on the frame that was an earlier mystery.

COOL! Here's how that exhaust pipe hanger will fit that rubber-damped bracket on the frame that was an earlier mystery.

Hi ,where did you to?Bll

Hi ,where did you to?Bll

If so, my second photo is a Photoshop combination of one of the brackets from Dick's picture and the first photo of the underside of my car without a bracket. Of course, mounting hardware and a clamp would be needed as well.

This is a picture of the plates that the shocks mount to in the rear. They are more like a washer and are on the outside of the frame. They are .125 thick 1/8inch. If the picture is to confusing I can copy on poster board and mail. PM wouldn't let me copy a pic.

The front shocks also have a plate washer but it is rectangular. It will be harder to get to.

I used to be about two hours away from my sheetmetal/body guy, Ed Thomas in Columbia, Missouri. Since my wife and I retired and moved, we are now about 3-1/2 hours away. Ed kindly sent me pictures of our current project - a new battery box, new tailpipe bracket and new tool box. He is working on my new running boards today, and I hope to have a picture of those soon.

Very Nice!!!

For those in the dark about 32bizcoupe's post above, I have managed to misplace the shock plates off my DL. how the heck I could lose something that big and heavy is beyond me, but I've been searching for the last week, laying out all the frame parts that still need to be restored, and they have not shown up. Since they are flat 11 gauge steel they will be easy to make and 32bizcoupe kindly provided a photo and dimensions after I sent him a PM. I'm sure as soon as I finish making them, the originals will turn up - as they always seem to in situations like this.

This all coincided with an embarrassing incident with my rebuilt engine. With the weather finally warming up, I got ready to clean the block and prep it for paint. I figured I'd give it a spin or two with the hand crank to make sure nothing had happened to my fresh engine over the winter. I found it was locked solid. Naturally panic ensued. Nothing would make that newly turned crank move. Ready to march into the house and have a heated discussion with my rebuilder over the phone, I calmed down enough to check out things one more time. That was when I noticed the unsecured bolts that hold on the flywheel had moved when I rolled the engine into the sunshine on my hand-built cart. They'd moved just enough to jam against a ridge on the block. I popped the bolts back into place and she turned over just fine.

Auto restoration by yours truly, the amateur. Ain't it grand!

I always like the easy answer!

Keith

Since I don't usually rely on someone else doing the work me and something like this would have happened, I would have probably just stomped around like Herman Munster yelling, "darn!, darn!, darn!"

My restoration of Daphne has suddenly gone high tech! I just got these photos from my metal guy Ed Thomas as he and a friend figured out how to make the running broads for the old DL. They were originally made from one piece of metal folded multiple times into the running board. Ed discovered this was no easy task to reproduce. He went over to his buddy Jimmy Hervatin's shop in Warrenton, Missouri and they hauled out the CNC equipment and ended up making custom designed brakes to form the boards.

Here's Jimmy at the computer getting things set up to make the end pieces.




Here's the laser cutter at work cutting various end pieces and supports.



Once the small stuff was out of the way Ed said they " used four different breaks, a beadroller, and a Pullmax machine with new custom tooling to final crimp the seams. Over 30 operations to finish one flat panel not counting all the brace work and mounting tabs. You might say this is a little bit of an advanced metal break project."







Here's Jimmy with the almost finished piece - one more bend to go..



I'm picking the running boards, battery boxes, tool box and exhaust brace on Monday.

Those are going to look GREAT! Don't forget that the edge of the running board is sort of shaped like the outer trim piece....

It's slightly different on the 32, but very close. The repo trim I purchased comes with clips that mount the front trim piece using the slots you can see in your photos.

Nothing very exciting going on at the moment. The bottom of the front seat was in pretty bad shape, with the wood dried out and rather brittle and an area that was badly singed by the heat of the muffler.



So, the old woodworking skills were put to the test. It turned out to be a simple job, with all the corner joints simple half laps and a mortise and tenon set up on the cross piece. This shows two corners glued and the center piece just sitting on top. I just need to remember to put the center piece in before I glue the other two corners! I used oak. I was surprised at how crude the workmanship was on the old piece - the joints were not even and the tenons were very rough. I guess they figured it was all covered by the seat cushion, so who cared. I'll rough cut the shape and then, using the original piece as a pattern, use a router with a guide bit to cut it to the final dimensions.



I made new shock absorber backing plates. Somehow, I have misplaced the originals. I'm sure they will show up as soon as I mount the shocks. Oh well, it was nice to paint something smooth, without having to grind off all the rust and pitting.



My replacement carb arrived and it looks real nice.






Next up - clean the rebuilt engine and get a coat of gray paint on it.

Drove to Thomas Restorations in Columbia, Missouri to pick up a load of sheet metal. This was sitting in the shop as I walked in. It's not a Dodge, but it sure is nice - all original except for paint, although the jams and engine compartment are original finish and it's hard to tell the difference. It's getting a new manifold - a rare item since it's a flathead six rather than a V-8.



My running boards are finished and they look great!





Old vs new.





Really nice workmanship on Ed's part.











Some of the laser cut parts that went into the construction.







The new boards weigh almost twice as much as the old ones, although the metal is the same thickness. Over half the metal rusted away in the old boards.

Tomorrow I'll check the fit and then they are off to the powdercoaters for a semi-gloss black finish.

I also picked up my new tool box, which sits in the V of the X-frame. Just a little nicer than the original.






Same for the battery box.









New exhaust bracket for the tailpipe.





They are all also headed to the powdercoater.

Ed also showed me his new project - a 36 Plymouth that had been sitting in a local shed for 40 years. Love that rare fastback! Original motor with 88,000 miles. It will be done all original with a black paint job. With Ed's metal working skills, this body should be straight as a arrow. It doesn't look too bad right now, with the only damage to the lower rear.

As always, I enjoy seeing the nice, nice work that is being done on your car! The other cars are pretty neat too.

Keith

Those running boards are beautiful. I made a set like that with a buddy for my '31 years ago, but I got hard up for cash and sold them. There is still my own footprint on my rear end for selling them.

Again you are maintaining a very high standard with this rebuild. I love seeing the attention to detail.

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