Taylormade

I bought a set of bumpers for my 32 Dodge Brothers from him five years ago. He was quite a guy, a bit eccentric, but very nice. He threw in 3 hubcaps for free when we made the deal. I hope he gets some help.

If you’re using 85W-140 in your crankcase, you have a problem.

While certainly not anywhere near the quality or rarity of most of the cars on this thread, my 1932 Dodge Brothers DL sedan has a rather interesting story in the "where did they go" category. In 1965, I bought this car while a sophomore at Syracuse University. The picture below is the day I purchased it. It was owned by one of the professors at the school and came out of Maryland. Back then it was just an old car, 33 years old, but even then, prewar cars were a bit unusual and it always attracted a certain amount of attention around the campus. I always thought it was a particularly nice looking car, even though the Dodge Brothers eights had a slightly longer hood. Sadly, in 1967 I was forced to sell my beloved old heap and a fellow fraternity brother, Phil Kennedy, took possession of my car. Here's a photo Phil (now Editor of the Dodge Brothers Club Magazine) took soon after he acquired it. Not bad for a mid-priced car. After college, I lost track of Phil and my old car, often wondering if it had survived, who now owned it and where it was. I bought and restored other cars, but the Dodge was always in the back of my mind. Then, while reconnecting with another fraternity brother a few years ago, Phil's name came up and the discussion came around to the old Dodge. He said Phil still owned the car! I was stunned. In, fact, it could be seen in his driveway in the then current Goggle Earth photo of Phil's house. I managed to contact Phil and discovered the car had been slumbering in his grandmother's (now his) garage since 1970. He had since purchased another very original DL and told me he wasn't up for restoring my/his car - would I be interested in buying it back! I flew to Connecticut and laid eyes on my first car after 44 years. There it was, in the garage, just waiting for me. I'm almost done restoring her and hope to have her back on the road this summer.

I grew up in Detroit. I last visited the city in 2014 for the Dodge Brothers Club Centennial Meet. I doubt if I will ever go back. I know why your wife was crying. Everything I knew and loved in the city was disintegrating or gone. Urban blight was just a few blocks away from my maternal grandfather's wonderful Tudor-styled home, built in 1927. My dad was an executive with General Motors, working his way up from claims adjuster for the old Motors Insurance Corporation to regional vice president at GMAC. When we went to look at our first house (1950) it was a gutted, collapsing shell in what had once been a nice suburban neighborhood. My fraternal grandfather was the chief engineer in the design of the Chevy Stovebolt six, and designed the Chevy assembly plant in Brazil. He was also an engineer for Gar Wood Industries (Wood became a multi-millionaire after designing the hydraulic lift for dump trucks) and worked on one of the first rear-engined city bus designed. See his house was the only bright spot as it was out in Rochester, near Meadowbrook - the old Dodge estate, and was still in a nice area. What was once a thriving, energetic city is a run-down mess, it's architecture, history and very life slowly fading away. All I could think of was the ruins of ancient Rome.

Electric cars for everybody simply asks the question - are there enough natural resources to sustain such a thing. Currently, no. Lithium supplies, energy grid output and other factors will be a problem. As it usually does, civilization will solve the problems in unexpected and sometimes disturbing ways. Travel bans, edicts making people work out of their homes, restricting households to a finite number of jobs - many such unpleasant things may be coming down the road (or whatever travel means may be in effect at the time.) I'll be long gone and won't have to worry about it. When I graduated college the big thing was flying cars and colonies on Mars and the Moon by the year 2000. Never happened. Nobody saw the coming of portable computers, social media, cell phones, flat screen TVs and the changes in social attitudes. How many science-fiction films or books predicted same-sex marriages, universal abortions and all the other social mores we take for granted these days? Every generation comes up with their own doomsday scenario. They rarely get much of it right. My grandfather always told me he was amazed that he saw Haley's Comet, the Model T, and man land on the moon in his lifetime. When he was born, there were no cars on the roads, when he died, he had two nice Pontiacs in his garage. Things change and so do we.

What type of sewing machine are you using to do the top?

Good news. I assume your engine has the screw off cover (like a large domed acorn nut) that gives access to the relief valve. Did yours have a gasket? If not, did you get any leakage around the cover when you had the higher oil pressure. My car has the same problem and I got some noticeable leakage from the cover when I first started her up.

I’m organizing my remaining parts for final assembly this Spring. My wife and I gathered everything, boxed and labeled each part down to the last nut and bolt. We are about 2/3 of the way through and should finish up this coming week. I’m worried about several parts that don’t seem to be turning up so I’m asking in advance in case anyone can help me out. I’m missing one door latch striker and one of the headlight sockets for a headlight. This is the socket that plugs into the bottom of the headlight from the outside with the flexible wire conduit attached. l’ll post photos and dimensions tomorrow. I was relieved to find most everything else was safe and sound after five years and a move to a new house.

Unfortunately it all started with American Chopper, which began as a show about a small motorcycle shop building custom rides, but quickly evolved into a soap opera with father and son screaming at each other for an hour. The network quickly took notice of the show’s popularity and determined that the viewing audience wanted angst and hyper personalities over motorcycle building. For years this conflict/aggression/soap opera approach dominated car and bike shows, and still rears it’s ugly head at times today. CCC and Bitchn’ Rides have toned down the format, but the shows still use more gimmicks than actual restoration footage. Graveyard Cars has some good restoration information, but all the cars are similar and you can only show pieces on dashboard restoration (farmed out) and installing the k-member and motor from the bottom so many times before viewers nod off. So Mark Worman makes faces and annoys everyone in the shop and we are supposed to be amused. CCC bothers me because we always get to see what Wayne gets at the big money auctions, but never see what he initially paid for the car. It’s always him going off to negotiate with the seller, then he’s putting it in his trailer. Bitchn’ Rides is strictly for the resto-mod crowd. They do really nice work after they set up their Art Morrison chassis, but the “funny” bits are not all that funny. One thing producers finally learned is that viewers wanted to see a finished car at the end of the show. The bit about having to complete a car for some show or event in record time got old and actually comical. Now they shoot footage over a period of several years, then condense it down to a show or two. That’s why you see unfinished cars from last season in the background of some shots in current shows. I’m sure Phantom Works quit shooting a long time ago. They are just using the remainder of the footage already shot. We are basically a small group of restorers, affectonados and and enthusiasts. A nut and bolt show about cars and restoration, played totally straight, would not have a large enough audience to survive. I put together a long show on the 100th anniversary Dodge Brothers Meet in Detroit a few years ago ( I make videos for a living) that contained great shots of the cars, interviews with the owners, stories of their cars and restorations, the car parade at Meadowbrook Hall and visits to historic automobile sights in Detroit. When I show it to car folks they watch with rapt attention and want a copy. When I show it to friends and family they generally nod off. There just isn’t a big enough audience to support the type of show we would all like to see.

Oh, and thanks everyone for the help and generous offers.

Well, problem solved. As usual, my wife said, "Let me see that!" after listening to me grouse about the problem for an hour. She carefully unwound the wire (individual strands, not solid) and discovered the tip was actually a domed tack similar to the one in frank29u's photo. We still couldn't get the wires off the tack, but we could see the ends did not extend into the dome. So, they weren't molded in. I took the tack out to the garage, clamped it in the vise, hit it with a less than one second blast from my MAP torch and the wires just fell away. So, I'm thinking the pointed end of the tack was covered with a light coat of solder and then jammed into the end of the wire. You learn something every day. Behold the offending part.

Hmmm, looks like they changed things by 32. No copper tube on my setup. Since the wires run through the springs on my socket, I would be worried if there was no insulation right up to the contact end. I'm thinking of making a reverse mold in hi-temp silicon, chopping up some electrical solder into tiny pieces and putting it into the depression, heating it up with a torch and dipping the end of the wire into the solder.

Just the next time you get to the shop would be fine. If he's still around it would save me some time.

I would be interested.

No, we made the car noises at the upholstery shop. On the wiring, I wonder if they had a small mold they poured the hot solder in and then dipped the exposed wire into it while it was still liquid. There must have been a simple and quick way to produce these things at the factory.

Then maybe the wiring was original. I guess it must have mummified into what made me think it was plastic. So, now what?

As I said earlier I picked up my front seat from the upholstery shop. Looks good. The new wood base I made fits perfectly which was a relief. It was hard to get a straight on shot due to current storage in my living room corner and the parallax makes the top buttons look crooked - which they are not. I'm working on my headlight wiring which was in rough shape. This is the wiring section inside the headlight itself. The socket on the left is for the bulb, the one on the right fits into a receptacle in the headlight shell and connects to the wire that goes through a chrome conduit and through the fender. As you can see, the wires are totally shot. The plastic coated wires indicate that this has been rewired in the past. The wires run into the socket through the fiber spacers and one wire through each of the two springs inside. Everything, with the exception of the wires, just needed to be cleaned up and reassembled. I have a question concerning the replacement of the wiring. This setup has the usual wire running to the raised buds or bumps that are contact points. I would like to save the original parts if possible, or am I making a mistake and should I go with replacements at this point? I assume the wire is soldered into to these tips, but I'm amazed how clean the joint is. I see virtually no signs of solder anywhere. Is there a narrow post extending down from the tip the the end of the wire surrounds and then everything is soldered? Do I need to be careful when I loosen this joint? I don't want to melt the tip in the process. Any advice here would be welcome. I also noticed the the wire insulation covered everything right to the base of the tip. I can see pulling the insulation back when making the first solder, then pushing it back up when finished. But the second set would seem to be a problem as the wire is short and I doubt the stiffness of the insulation would allow me to pull it back enough to solder. Let me know what you think. As I've stated before, electrical wiring is not my strong point.

A really cool and interesting car. My only problem, and I say this with disappointment because this is a lovely car, is the seventies paint job. Who, why and when did restorers decide that beige bodies with chocolate fenders was the way to go? It’s not even mildly charming, like the old avocado green kitchen appliances - and that was the original color. I’m not sure what the original color/colors were on this car, but it had to be more attractive than the current paint job. Again, not denigrating the car, just someone’s past mistake in choosing those awful colors.

PM sent. Thanks.

Thanks, I may be able to make it work.

The shot is perfect, but the resolution is a bit too low. Is this off the net or one of your personal photos?

When I'm not working on restoring my 1932 Dodge Brothers Sedan, I often work on art projects or model building. I'm currently working on a three-dimensional shadow box featuring a scene from a Film Noir film - two detectives sitting in a period car. I have two of the three elements I need, a very sharp photo of the two actors in the car taken directly from the film, and a period background of a 40s Los Angeles street at night. What I don't have is a good shot of the car they are sitting in. Try as I might, I can find nothing on the internet that works. The photo below comes as close as I can get, but it is too small and lacks the necessary detail. The rainstorm doesn't help, either. So, I'm asking if someone out there with a forties sedan (or late thirties) could take a front shot of their car, as large as possible (the quality turned up high) that matches the shot above. It may be too large to post on the site, but if you send me a PM, I'll shoot you my email. The background doesn't matter - garage, outdoors - doesn't matter as long as the car is clear. I'll be removing the background and interior in Photoshop, so the car itself is the only thing that counts. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Hanging in there and trying to lose some weight before I have knee replacement surgery. I actually got my newly reupholstered front seat back a few weeks ago and I’ll post some pictures after the holidays. I’ve also completed all the wood floorboards and am waiting for a warm day to paint them. I’m also working inside, wiring my headlights and cowl lights. It’s very difficult to get around at the moment with bone on bone arthritis in my right knee, but I am making progress - mostly from a seated position.

If you’ve ever seen a two axle wagon (with the front axle able to turn) you’ll abandon that idea in a heartbeat. They use them around here to carry nitrogen tanks for fertilizing the farm fields. If you’ve ever been behind one of these rigs being pulled by a tractor, wobbling all over the road at fifteen miles an hour, you’ll never forget it. They appear to be constantly trying to steer themselves into a ditch no matter how straight the tractor is going.

It’s hard to tell from the photos, but I’m pretty sure that’s a later engine in this car. There are no exposed cylinder jackets on the lower part of the motor as there should be on a 32. I also don’t see a handbrake lever next to the gearshift lever which probably means the transmission has also been changed. In that shot under the dash there appears to be a later handbrake lever like the one on my 48 Plymouth cobbled onto the side panel. Add in the previously mentioned rust, improper door sills, poor paint and shabby appearance and I’d stay away from this one unless you’re planning an extensive restoration. Way overpriced.