Taylormade

This is the brake flaring tool from Eastwood. It comes with dies from all the standard sized tubing and makes perfect double flares with ease. The nickel-copper lines look great and are easy to work with. These are the type of clips used to hold the lines on the frame on my car. The clips above hold the headlight wiring. Be sure you use grommets in all areas where the lines pass through the frame to prevent chafing and rubbing through the line.

Although Gunsmoke did a great job using steel lines, I strongly suggest using nickel-copper lines instead. They are not to be confused with copper lines which can become brittle and work hardened and should not be used as brake lines. The nickel-copper (sometimes called Cunifer which I believe is a brand name) has been used on high end cars for years. It is very easy to flare and bend, yet is extremely strong and corrosion resistant. It also has a pleasing coppery color that closely resembles the original copper lines. I used it on my 32 Dodge Brothers in conjunction with an Eastwood flaring tool with great results. I can’t recommend nickel-copper tubing and the Eastwood tool enough. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow.

This part of the restoration is about as interesting as watching paint dry - which is about all I did this morning. I'm getting ready to put the windows back in and the exciting job of cleaning up the metal glass channels fell to me. They were actually in pretty good shape, just some surface rust that came off with a wire brush and a little elbow grease. A close shot of the channel. Still some factory black paint left on the surface. About halfway through. The channel is cleaning up nicely. notice the Syracuse decal applied by PO Phil Kennedy back in the sixties. Fresh coat of black paint and they are ready to install. Pretty hard to get a decent picture of this - clear glass and black paint. The winding mechanisms are in really good shape. They just need a bit of cleaning. What would you use as light lubrication for these? White lithium grease?

My sending unit gears were brass. Even after I cleaned them up, the arm would not move. I finally gave up and sent mine to Bob’s Speedometer. Got it working and with a new float. I may have been able to figure it out, but I was afraid I’d ruin it.

Hard to say until you actually see it in person. I think the biggest problem is the difference in color and texture on various parts of the car. The doors and lower fenders look like they might even polish up a bit, but the crusty stuff on the hood is a problem. I guess you’ll have to decide what you can live with. She was just down the road from me in Illinois and I’m sorry to see her go, but I’m glad she found a new home. Enjoy!

Does anyone have a source for felt seals that can be bought individually? Looking for a seal that fits the driveshaft on a 32 Dodge Brothers DL. Everyone I can find on the net is either a manufacturer or a company in China. I found a few that are the wrong size, but the seller didn't seem to offer other choices. it seems they still make them, but I can't find where to buy them. Any help appreciated.

You’ll be fine. Chrysler products were famous for lots of headroom - corporate heads demanded that the driver had enough room to wear a hat while in the driver’s seat.

Don’t worry, the transmission still weeps a bit of oil and I’m just going to live with it. And thanks for your kind comments. I hope my trials and tribulations have helped you and others with their cars. Lord knows folks on this forum have helped me immensely.

Thanks! My 32 Dodge Brothers uses three cables with steel-wrapped cable housings for Throttle, Choke and Free Wheeling. This is just what I was looking for. And you didn’t write a novel, your explanation was clear and concise.

Where did you find the specialized paint for the cables? Is it MG exclusive or designed for general use?

I'm turning 74 in a few weeks. I feel your pain! I find I can get down okay, it's getting up that's the real difficulty. A knee replacement at the first of the year didn't help anything when it comes to this type of work.

And I’m sure you’re correct, I was ready to buy a can as soon as I saw your post. Why it’s four times as much here makes no sense. Thanks for the suggestion, though, I wasn’t brushing you off, I’m just too broke to try it! 😀

I liked the sound of the spray on Hylomar until I saw the price - sixty bucks for an aerosol can. I bought some Permatex Aviation Sealer for four bucks. The Hylomar overspray would have cost me that.

That was my thought, but if I have to take this u-joint off one more time I may run screaming down the street in frustration.

Taking a poll. I’m ready to put the gaskets on the u-joints and put the drivetrain together. The gaskets are 3/64 of an inch thick and rather soft and crushable. They are there to contain the grease in the u-joint, which is thick, but can weep fairly thin liquid if left standing for a period of time. Do I need to apply gasket cement to the gaskets, or do I just put them on dry? The cement always seems to make a total mess no matter how carefully I try to apply it, but safety is probably the best policy. What do you think?

Sometimes you get lucky, but what happened today was downright ridiculous. I went to the local parts store, where we are still welcome as long as we wear a mask, and bought some gasket material. I couldn't find anything that was quite as thin as I wanted, so I settled for something a little thicker - 3/64th of an inch. More about that later. Well, the sun was out and I've been inside for the last two weeks, so I decided to take a short ride out in the country and get some fresh air. We live in a tiny town in Central Illinois, so it takes about four minutes to get into the woods and cornfields. I took a narrow country road I'd never noticed before and was cruising along when I went over a rickety old bridge spanning a little creek. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a rusty something or other buried in the creek bed. It appeared to be automotive. I pulled over and walked back to see what was up. Sure enough there was the battered cowl of an early thirties car down there. i started to go back and get my phone so I could take a picture of it and realized I'd left it at home. i wasn't happy about that, but I went back and half walked, half slide down the creek bank to the wreckage. It turned out to be what was left of a Chrysler, barely identifiable by the firewall tag. There wasn't much left, the bottom having been submerged for years and totally rusted away. Nothing was salvageable - or so I thought. Then I took a closer look at the firewall and noticed something familiar poking through from inside. It was the ends of the firewall clips I had been searching for - these things... I couldn't believe it! How they had survived all this time is beyond me. I got the cowl turned over and managed to get six of the little buggers out, more than I needed. I'm going to go back and get a picture of the cowl when I get a chance - it still bugs me that I forgot my phone. Here are the little beauties - lots of surface rust, but they are still solid and perfectly usable once I clean them up. On a more mundane note, I was curious to see if my C and C machine would cut clean gaskets from the thicker material I brought home. No problem.

I’m sure Bob’s stands by their work. I did the boiling water test when they first sent it back and it was dead on. Thanks, it’s a good tip and an easy way to test the gauge.

Another example of the gaskets I cut with the C and C machine. This one was for the speedometer. My Rube Goldberg coil holder turned out great. It fits in the clamp behind the dash where the original coil was located. I drilled a hole for the wires to the ignition switch and slotted the sides for the clamp to hold the coil in. All the dash wiring is ready to go. As soon as I get firewall pad I can install the instrument cluster, the choke, throttle and Free Wheeling cables, the coil and the ignition switch and I'll be ready to start Daphne the way she was meant to be started.

Finally got around to finishing up the instrument cluster. Bob's Speedometer rebuilt the water gauge, calibrated the fuel gauge and rebuilt the tank sending unit. Based on what was left of the old gaskets, I used my previously mentioned method to cut new ones. I can't stress how accurately these things are cut, especially the round holes for the screws/bolts. They fit like a glove (unless you're O.J. Simpson). Everything went together very easily and now it's ready to install in the dash. The new face on the water gauge is indistinguishable from the other originals. They are all the same shade, it just doesn't show in this photo for some reason.

Make sure you have your brake shoes adjusted in as far as possible so they don’t hang up the drum. Put the puller on - with the axel nut loosely on, as gossip suggested - and pound the arm ends with a sledge hammer. Let it sit there for an hour or so, then bang on it again. Keep it on and continue, letting it sit in between. I had to leave mine on overnight. As I was working on something else in the garage, I heard what I thought was a gunshot. It was the brake drum letting go. It’s going to take patience, but it will finally let loose.

I've complained about this before, but I have the distinct impression that the Chrysler engineer who designed the Floating Power transmission mounting setup ended up on the breadline once the DL models went into production. I had the unfortunate experience of removing the front U-joint this morning (for at least the fifth or sixth time) and it doesn't get any easier. As I said above, I neglected to put gaskets on the surface between the U-joint and the parking brake drum. The problem is the way the bolts that hold it on are positioned. As you can see in this shot of the entire drivetrain assembled, the u-joint is held on by six bolts that extend through the parking brake drum and are held on by lock washers and nuts. If you look closely you can see the edge of the metal shield near the forward part of the drum. There are two shields, top and bottom held on by two bolts each - and, at least, these bolts attach to threaded mounts. They are designed to prevent crud getting up inside the drum. So after getting a wrench up into a nearly inaccessible area and removing the bolts and the shields, you finally have access to the inside of the brake drum and the six captive nuts for the u-joint bolts. HOWEVER, it is nearly impossible to get any kind of wrench in there to unscrew the nuts. The only way I could find was to use a socket wrench with a u-joint adapter. Even then, there is only one area where the socket will fit and reach the nut, and the socket u-joint has to be used at a sharp angle to work. It's a real nightmare. Here it is with the u-joint finally off. Even worse is putting it back on. You have to reach back inside the drum with two fingers and carefully get the lock washer on the bolt end. It has to be done entirely by touch. Then, using the same two finger method, you have to try and get the nut in there and get it threaded on the bolt. I'm usually successful about twenty-five percent of the time - on a good day. I'm printing out the gaskets today and steeling myself for reassembly tomorrow. The only good news is I discovered I had actually installed gaskets on the u-joint covers, so I don't have to take the u-joints apart - just install the gasket between the u-joint and the mounting flange on the brake drum. Once this is done, the driveshaft goes back on and I can install the new floors.

I was putting my driveshaft back in today and noticed some seepage around the edge of the front U-joint. I realized I hadn't put the gasket back in when I installed the u-joint. I also realized I don't have any gaskets - so I scanned the bottom plate of an extra u-joint base and made new gasket technical drawings that I can cut out using the method I described in an earlier post using the Cricut C and C machine. Here is the artwork. The bar at the top is exactly 5 inches so I can scale the drawing correctly in the Cricut software. Again, the advantage of this method is the gasket is perfectly flat after it's cut out, with no raised edges from punching holes and i get a perfect fit.

Fossil did put a smiley emoji after his comments. It’s strictly an opinion, but I, too, have never cared for the distinctive lights on the fenders approach that Pierce Arrow so dearly loved. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It seemed to be the "in" thing in the seventies, as you said. Brown fenders and trim, tan body, red wheels. I'm not sure where it came form or who started it. When I was restoring my 29 Plymouth in the seventies, many were appalled that I was going to paint it in the original colors - black fenders, blue body. Lots of folks urged me to paint it brown and tan or maroon and red. My current project, a 1932 Dodge Brothers DL sedan came form the factory black with pale yellow wire wheels. It's going back original, but my wife still wants to paint the body maroon. That was one of the original colors, but the trim on the body was not painted black or any other contrasting color, probably to save money at the depth of the depression. I'm not a fan of this approach and I'm glad mine was black back in 32. I've seen them with the trim painted, but it's not correct. It took me five seconds to find this incorrectly painted 32 on the web. Here is an original car with the actual paint scheme - black fenders, solid color body.

And the colors, oh, the colors.