Taylormade

Much appreciated!

Not much. They are nice cars, but they are a dime a dozen and the cost of redoing this one to even driver standards would be twice what's it's worth. You can find solid, driving examples of this car for a reasonable price. That being said, there might be someone out there looking for a project.

You'll need a puller to get the rear drums off. Lots of threads on the site about that. Sometimes it's easy. Most of the time it's a real pain. Find the correct puller - it will save you a lot of time and grief. I found this monster in the Buy and Sell section of the forum. A hundred bucks with shipping. Worth twice that in minimizing frustration. If you can find an old one, buy it - the new ones are cheap, made-in-China junk. You can use it as a three, four or five arm puller. Attach the arms to the studs/bolts on the drum. Leave the nut loosely on the axle. Tighten the center screw on the end of the axle. Give the wishbone at the end of the threaded shaft a couple of good solid hits with a sledgehammer. At this point the drum may come off. Probably not. Give the wishbone another series of blows. If nothing happens, let it sit for awhile. If it still hasn't moved, try a few more blows with the hammer. When the drum does come off it will probably make the sound of a gun going off. If you don't keep the bolt loose on the end of the axle, the drum may come off the axle and fly across the garage doing much mayhem and damage to both animate and inanimate objects. Patience is the key. Bang the wishbone, then let it sit. I had a drum come off in the middle of the might one time and I though someone had fired a shotgun in my garage. Sometimes you have to use heat, but be careful - you are near seals and bearings. If your hubs are like those on my 32 DL, the inside of the brake hub fits into the axle seal - you can see that raised area on the inside center of my brake drum.. Heat up the drum and the seal is toast. Have fun!

I found the brake fittings. Thanks everyone for the help.

Bingo! Thanks, Dave.

JD is correct, the movie on the marquee "Man With Nine Lives" came out in 1940.

I had to pull the steering wheel and didn't have the correct puller to handle the job. The only puller I had was purchased to use on my 48 Plymouth and 50 Dodge. It had threaded bolts that screwed into threads on the wheel. Daphne has no such threaded holes so I had to improvise. I made this puller out of my old puller plus some leftover oak scrap I had from my seat construction project and two long threaded bolts.. Once I had everything bolted together, I wound down the threaded shaft, hoping the wood wouldn't break. After a few turns, there was a loud bang. I thought the wood had gone, but it was the sound of the steering wheel popping loose after 84 years. No damage to the wheel. Occasionally my hair-brained ideas actually work!

Sent you an email. Thanks.

Thanks, Ian.

1/4 inch OD with 7/16th inch fittings.

I just discovered one of my rear brake fittings is cracked. If anyone out there has one, please let me know. Off the rear brakes of a 1932 Dodge DL, but I suspect other Mopar products used them. Attaches the brake line to the brake cylinder. 1/2 inch hole diameter. Any help appreciated!

I just discovered one of my rear brake fittings is cracked. If anyone out there has one, please let me know. Off the rear brakes of a 1932 Dodge DL, but I suspect other Mopar products used them. Attaches the brake line to the brake cylinder. 1/2 inch hole diameter. Any help appreciated!

I just discovered one of my rear brake fittings is cracked. If anyone out there has one, please let me know. Off the rear brakes of a 1932 Dodge DL, but I suspect other Mopar products used them. Attaches the brake line to the brake cylinder. 1/2 inch hole diameter. Any help appreciated!

Just when things were going good... I just discovered one of my rear brake fittings is cracked. If anyone out there has one, please let me know. Off the rear brakes of a 1932 Dodge DL, but I suspect other Mopar products used them. Attaches the brake line to the brake cylinder. 1/2 inch hole diameter. Any help appreciated!

The problem here was the groove worn into the shaft by the old seal. Not a pretty sight. To address this situation I also bought a Speedi-Sleeve from the bearing house. This one was designed to work on a 1.750 shaft. The sleeve comes with an installation tool. The sleeve simply fits over the shaft and provides a new surface for the seal. You slip the installation tool over the sleeve and drive it onto the worn shaft. The groove in the shaft was deep enough that I used a small amount of epoxy filler to fill it in. Drive the sleeve on before the filler dries. Once the sleeve was in place, I removed the lip used by the installation tool to drive it home as it wasn't all the way down on the shaft. If the sleeve is long enough and seats, you can leave the lip in place.. Parts finished and ready for paint.

Still working on the frame as I now have the body back off. I'm getting ready to paint the motor and get it back in the frame and I decided to finish the differential before that major task. The major problem - wear on the tailpiece shaft and a shot seal for the shaft. First I tackled the seal. Early Mopars used these huge seals on the differential and the rear axles. You can find them on EBay, usually at an exorbitant price, and being new old stock, they have a tendency to be dried out or warped. The seals are rawhide and are "permanently" attached to the large metal piece that bolts in place. Well, not so permanently I discovered. After drilling through most of the top of the actual seal, being careful not to damage the housing, I managed to pry the old seal out. It was totally destroyed in the process. There was no number or any ID on the seal. The felt seal at the top center was sandwiched between the seal and the housing and was in pretty good shape. i believe it was mostly to keep dirt out of the housing and I put it back in place before installing the new seal. After I cleaned up the housing, I measured in inside diameter of the area where the seal used to live. It came out to 2.750 The shaft diameter of the tailpiece was 1.750. I found a Timken seal, number 473447, by going through their applications charts online. This seal measures 2.758 OD and takes a 1.750 shaft. The interference fit seemed about right so I ordered a seal for my local bearing house. I drove it into place with my cheapo Harbor Freight bearing race driver. It seated nicely and I was ready to work on the tailpiece.

Looking great! Who did the chrome work? Just wondering - did your car have rubber grommets where the brake lines come through the frame? My DL had the hardened remains of grommets, but my holes in the frame look larger than yours.

You're correct, the Tryon shackles were also used by Chevrolet. I know lots of Chrysler products shared parts and engineering, but your shackles are an obvious exception. I love these architectural explorations as I always learn something I didn't know or find out I was dead wrong in my original assumption. Let me know if I can help with anything else.

I'm afraid my expertise, such as it is, lies in the Dodge brand and they went with all steel bodies early on. I suspect the wood in the DC8 roadster comes from the fact that Dodge may have shared bodies with Chrysler on their open cars. My sedan is all steel. My 29 Plymouth had a wood frame and the two floor sills were large pieces of Ash wood, maybe an inch and an half thick that ran the entire length of the body. They attached to the body with cast brackets at the front and rear of the door and at the cowl. There were three cross members of the same wood and thickness at the rear, right behind the doors and in front of the toe boards. Plywood floors were then screwed into the open spaces. Hopefully, someone with a car like yours can chime in.

Chrysler may be an exception, but all Chrysler products from this era that I have examined have Tryon spring shackles, a rather distinctive shackle to say the least. They use a circular spring/washer to maintain correct spacing. I found some at Hershey a few years ago, but it turned out the shackles on my car were in excellent shape and I just used the new hardware off the NOS kits that I bought. The rear axle mounts with the standard U-brackets and bottom plate - also drilled out for a shock arm mount. My original U-brackets snapped when I removed them, but I got new ones made up for only 19 bucks including bolts and washers. The bargain of the restoration. The only disappointment was that no one makes the original, flat-topped brackets as originally found on the car. So I had to sacrifice a bit of originality in order to be able to drive the car. maybe I'll find a set someday. I hope some of this helped.

This is based on my 32 Dodge, but most Chrysler products seem to have a similar setup. My 29 Plymouth was like my Dodge, minus the shock absorbers. These are the parts to attach the front axle - The spring pads, the bottom plates and the U-brackets (in this case the square brackets). You can see the extra hole for the shock mount on the plates. The bottom plates don't really do anything but provide a mount for the shock arm. They mount to the front of the spring and the front of the brackets. The base of the front springs has a slight curve to the smallest leaf, but the axle and the bottom plate flatten that out when everything is bolted together. You can see the curve in this shot of the disassembled springs - it's supposed to be there. With the spring assembled, it tends to flatten out a bit, but there is still a curve to it. This is the assembled front end. The combination of the bottom plate and the U-brackets pull everything together. The spring bumper pads are sandwiched between the brackets and the top of the spring. As to the brackets sliding, there should be a hole in the top of the axle where the head of the center bolt in the spring drops into. This keeps the spring from sliding on the axle. As to the rear springs, getting those bolts out was one of the most difficult things I've gone through during my restoration. One came out with a bit of gentle persuasion, but the other refused to budge no matter what I tried. I was initially afraid that the bushings would not be available and was worried heating them would destroy them. To further complicate matters, the section of the bolt that needs whacking faces in toward the frame and there is no room to get leverage or swing a hammer. I quickly learned that once these bolts rust to the inner metal sleeve of the bushing, you are not going to get them out. I finally used a small cut-off wheel to cut the bolt on each side so I could remove the spring. I had to make the cuts inside since grinding off the head of the bolt and the protruding opposite side would still have left the remainder of the bolt hung up in the housing. It was a tricky job since I didn't want to damage the frame housing. Use a small wheel and exercise a lot of patience. When I took the springs to a local spring shop to have them checked out, I was pleasantly surprised that they had the correct bushings in stock and I had them remove the old bushings and press the new ones in for a nominal charge. They also had new bolts. These bushings are apparently still used on some trucks.

It's a 1932 Dodge DL (six cylinder) frame - nice and beefy. It's a sedan and the body has no cross supports between the doors as the frame is stiff enough to keep the body square. The body also is channeled down over ther frame rather than sitting on top of the frame rails as in earlier models. I suspect the very flexible ladder frames proved too filmsy for the Chrysler rubber mounted engine system and the X-frame design was introduced to remedy the situation.

Let me echo Ian's comments. Let's put this issue to rest, Dave. I enjoyed meeting and talking to you at the Centennial meet. You have your business to run and I should have kept my big mouth shut.

I certainly wasn't trying to be disrespectful, just stating my opinion, as were you. I hope you get in the neighborhood of what you're asking, but based on the recent sales of similar offerings on EBay, I don't think so. Then again, I'm very often wrong. Oh, and the day I have $100,000 plus in my restoration is the day my loving wife suffocates me in my sleep.

Looks like you have a good handle on the situation. Sorry for my rather long-winded descriptions. My Dodge is a six and the vibration problems were obviously not as problematic as with the eight cylinder cars. It also has the X-frame and boxed front rails (from the factory) which makes for a much stiffer frame and the opportunity to mount the motor differently. Let us know how your installation progresses.