ply33

None of the catches on my 1933 Plymouth have any material between them and the door frame. But I can’t say that they have always been that way. I have a vague recollection that on my car the catches screw into a plate in the door frame that has some slop or movement possible. I think to allow the catch to be adjusted as needed. Is that true on yours? Maybe during painting or other work they got stuck and are no longer adjustable. Or maybe my car is different in that respect to yours. Or maybe my memory is failing.

That search turns up these for me:

The earliest torque specifications I have seen for any Chrysler product is from the mid to late 1930s. I’m pretty sure that even professional mechanics didn’t have access to torque wrenches in the late 1920s. I have a collection of late 20s and 30s automotive trade magazines filled with ads for tools and I can’t remember seeing mention of torque wrenches in either the ads or the editorial content. So I agree, look up the torque specs in a modern machinist handbook based on the diameter, thread pitch, and grade of the fasteners. And it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the bolts on a car built before the late 1930s were ungraded so don’t assume grade 5.

Does your current dash unit look okay? How handy are you? If the answers are “yes" and “reasonably” then you may want to consider https://www.ply33.com/Repair/tempgauge

Along the same reply theme as @AB-Buff here is what I did for my headlights: https://www.ply33.com/Repair/lights That is a bit dated. I have experimented with a couple of LED replacement “bulbs” but none that I have tried focus properly so they all performed worse than the quartz-halogen bulbs I have in there now.

From the number on the door tag as decoded by by tool at https://www.ply33.com/Misc/vin VIN 6113183098 Year 1961 Make DeSoto Plant Jefferson (Detroit) Sequence# 83098 built at Jefferson (Detroit) I am far from an expert on the early VIN numbers. I have documented my understanding of that era's format at https://www.ply33.com/Misc/vin#vin1959 It looks like the information on the body tag you also list might be of more interest. Someplace on the web you can probably find what the trim (TRM) and paint (PNT) codes were for that year.

Since you are in the UK I guess it is unlikely you can just pop on down to your local NAPA, CarQuest, or AutoZone and match it up. I am away from home and my reference books. Do you have the original Chrysler part number for your car? If so I can see if it matches up with any that were used by Plymouth. For my 1933 Plymouth I found that the thermostat was the same dimensions as used in the 1960s Plymouth 318. I believe the original for my car was a 170°F which does not seem to be available nowadays but a 160°F or a 180°F will work.

Congress mandated that all the toll road systems had to interoperate by 2016 but did not provide funding or penalties. There is a fairly good article about it at https://www.lx.com/politics/why-are-34-states-ignoring-a-law-designed-to-make-your-road-trip-easier/37399/

Washington State is not listed on the EZ-Pass group’s website: https://e-zpassiag.com/get-e-zpass

Just lurking on this topic but this caught my eye. California has to do things its own way so we have Fastrak which is only good in the state. One thing though is that you can add as many cars as you want to one account/transponder, simply log into your account and add the license plate numbers, and if I recall correctly, a vehicle description for all your vehicles. There are cameras at each toll location with license plate recognition that will bill based on the license plate if the transponder is missing or broken. Turns out our transponder died and we did not know about it for about two years as the plate recognition was very reliable. I have my old car's license number on my account and, in theory, my account should be billed correctly if I ever decide to drive it on one of the expressways around here. When I was in the SF Bay Area there were rumors that the license plate readers had trouble with some YOM plates and I know one fellow who said he was never billed for is trips across the Golden Gate Bridge. That was some years ago and I bet glitches like that have been addressed. Anyway, there is no need here to get separate transponders for each vehicle in this state. Probably not much need of a transponder at all if you have your cars added to your Fastrak account. Main reason for a transponder would be to set the switch to the number of people in the car so you get free or discounted charges if you are carpooling. At least for the Bay Area and I think LA. Seems like the toll roads in Orange County don’t discount for carpooling.

To the best of my knowledge, 1959 was the last year for a North American car to get the L-6 engine. The '66 Dodge truck factory service manual I once had included a section on the L-6 engine (not sure if the shorter 23" block or the longer 25" block) in the WM600 military portion of the manual. I believe the L-6 engines were available for industrial applications into the early 1970s.

Some 1930s Chrysler products used a Yale key that looks similar to those in the photo.

Most (all?) of the stock was purchased by a vendor in, I think, the Fresno area. Sorry, no name or contact info and the last I heard about it was maybe ten years ago.

That was missing on my car so the one you see is what I purchased from Steele Rubber several decades ago and may not be correct. Oddly, I don't seem to have put that into my parts database so I don’t have the Steele cross reference or what I thought the original Chrysler part number was. And, at present, I am several states away from my home so I have access to neither my reference materials nor my car. I will be back at the end of the week and will try to find the cross reference information and can make some measurements at that time.

When I got my '33 Plymouth way back when there was a very similar Dodge ram radiator cap on it so that looks okay to me. But those bumpers? What were they thinking! Paint looks shiny and the body looks straight so not too badly abused at the time of the photo other a missing crank hole cover and than that bumper.

The check arm is 0.5 inches wide and 0.135" thick. There is a slight bend in it and the portion exposed between the pivot/attaching point and the door is roughly 4" when the door is fully open.

The 1928-33 Plymouth Master Parts list calls it a "door check arm" with part number 348478 used on both the coupe and on the two door sedan (I did not check the list for other body styles they are probably the same). The arm is slightly curved. On the side in the door there is a cap holding a rubber washer attached which softens things a bit when the door reaches the fully opened position. I will try to get out to the garage today to get a photo and some measurements off my car.

Serial Number 6502343 Found in range 6500001 to 6520171 Serial 2343 of 20171 Year 1930-31 Make Chrysler Model Name Six Model Code CJ Plant Detroit Engine 6 cylinder 195.6 cu.in. L-head Wheelbase 109 inches

Tom at Then & Now (a.k.a Antique Parts Cellar) is definitely a good one to contact. I went through my Plymouth parts books to see what might use the same springs. Since Dodge and Plymouth used a lot of the same mechanical parts in the 1933-34 period the results might be applicable for your car. I have summarized it on my vanity web site at https://www.ply33.com/Parts/group2#2-02-8 From 1930 through 1938 Plymouth (and Plymouth trucks to 1941) used one part number 318748 for the springs. Exception being 1934 but I since the seats for 1934 have the same part number I strongly suspect the 1934 springs are interchangeable with the others. There was a drag link service package that contained the springs, new seats, cups (also called bearings), etc. with a part number of 980509 that is listed in the 1936-48 parts book which will likely work for you if you can find one.

You may want to check with Rare Parts in Stockton, California. I don't see the drag link or internal parts on their site for 1934 Dodge but your springs look the same as for the drag link on my 1933 Plymouth and they make a replacement drag link for my car so they might have the springs.

I wonder what they used to rectify the AC into DC. Looks pre-solid state diodes, I am guessing a vacuum tube design of some sort but probably pretty simple. If comfortable with electronics and electrical stuff it would not be too hard to open it up and look to see what is in there and what condition it is in. For myself, if it looked in pretty good shape, I'd replace any old electrolyte capacitors and deteriorated wiring and try it out. Using a properly protected switched AC outlet of course.

The last longer trip I took in my old car ended on the way home when the passenger side rear tire’s tube failed. Getting decent tubes is getting to be a problem nowadays. I hope that this is the only automotive issue you have on this trip.

Reseting a password that you have forgotten is a pretty good time to get yourself a password manager. There might be one built into your operating system or web browser already. Or you can use any number of independent password managers. Why do you need a password manager? Because every log in you have needs to have a unique and long password which will be impossible for you to remember. Why do you need unique passwords for every login? Because some the places you log into will get hacked. You won't know which one(s). And you won't know when. At least you won't know about it until long after the damage is done. There are laws and rules saying that corporations need to notify users if their information has been compromised but it turns out they often don't report it until some research calls them on it or until a fairly long time has gone by. You have no way to control how your password was stored in the hacked server so your only assumption is that your email and password are now in the hands of some bad actors. And those bad actors will try that password and email combination on just about every site in the world, especially banking and other financial sites. If you use one password, just a few passwords, or variations on a few passwords you are in the position to have some real problems including losing your money. I am partial to KeePass because it is open source and as a retired software engineer I can read the code to assure that I trust it. If you aren't a software type you can take comfort in knowing that at least a few software savvy people will have looked it over and will have raised a ruckus if they had found a weakness. KeePass is cross platform and does not store your passwords in someone else's cloud so you are in total control (there have been some cloud based password managers which have been hacked).

The photos are not all that great, fairly high acid content paper, not a high end photo publication and small image sizes. But here are some images from the October 1931 issue of Motor Maintenance regarding using top dressing to spruce up a car for sale. I think you can see that the final result is pretty shiny. More obvious on the trunk than the top but it is definitely shiny when finished. In the text of the article there is mention that the particular top dressing brand was picked because “it shines like new — it’s almost the same as new fabric.” Before: During: After: The trunk: I scanned all six pages of the article and would upload it but apparently PDFs are not allows on these posts.

Someplace in one of my late 1920s or early 1930s automotive trade magazines there was an article on how to apply dressing to the tops of enclosed cars. Two items from memory, first was to clean the top to remove any loose material. You did that. The second was that the photos of the finished result showed a pretty shiny surface. Maybe that old top dressing would lose its shine rapidly, but I bet your result doesn’t look much different than a what would have been achieved way back when. I think they applied with a good brush rather than a roller though. Now I will have to go thought those non-catalogued, poorly indexed magazines and see if I can find the article to see how good my memory is.