Rusty_OToole

A few years ago I saw a 52 Ford pickup with a Deutz air cooled diesel in it at a cruise. The owner said he had had the engine in 4 different vehicles and it had over half a million miles on it.

My guess is 1940 Dodge sedan.

Are you saying the glass is broken? That could account for the jamming. All the glass in your car is plain flat glass. Any good auto glass shop can cut a new window for you by copying the old one. It will be laminated glass not tempered like the original but quite safe. If you can find a real old bald headed or white haired glass shop mechanic he may even know how to take your old glass out of the door.

You might have better luck in the Hudson board. Terraplane was made by Hudson.

Usually means something wrong with the mechanism inside the door. Such as, the window came loose from the levers that lift it up. When this happens the window can turn crossways and jam. To fix it long enough to close the window try holding the window up straight while slowly turning the crank. You can usually get them to open or close this way but the real repair involves removing the inside door panel then removing and repairing the window winder mechanism.

If you like the car and have room to keep it inside why not keep it around for laughs? The value right now is practically nil but who knows what the future will bring? It won't cost much to polish it up and hit a few cruise nights. You won't get into the old car hobby any easier and cheaper and you might have some fun.

By law every car from 1963 on had seat belt mounts welded in at the factory, front and rear. The seat belts themselves did not become mandatory for several more years, around 1966 or 67. So you should find the mountings under the seat or right behind the seat. This means you can safely install lap belts. When they started putting in the mounts for shoulder belts, I'm not sure. Feel around on the door posts for a bolt hole under the upholstery.

RIght off the bat your car has a 6 volt positive ground system (battery goes in "backwards") and the left hand wheels have left hand thread wheel bolts. These 2 things have stymied a lot of beginners. Your Plymouth is a well designed well made car. The best thing you can do is to buy a repair manual, it will be worth it a hundred times when you get into repairing things. The car is much simpler than today's cars and easy to fix, but you must know what you are doing. As far as gas and oil goes. Your car has a low compression ratio and can run perfectly well on 70 octane gas. Today's cheapest regular is 87 octane which is better than the "hi test" they had in 1946. Your engine came with hardened valve seat inserts and hard valves, it is made to run on low lead low octane fuel. 10W30 detergent oil was introduced not long after your car was made. Chances are that is all it has ever used. I have a 1951 owner's manual that recommends what they call the new oils and says they are much better for your engine than the old heavy oils. Your engine is practically the same as a 1951 model. You will need to go over the car and fix what is wrong. Give it an oil change and tune up then drive it. The 46 cars came with 16" tires but much skinnier than today's 16". New tires are available by special order. If you had 15" wheels you could use cheap Walmart Marshal tires 205R75/15. The cheapest R75 radials are the ticket because they are narrower than the expensive brands. Too wide a tire can rub on your steering mechanism or frame. 15" wheels off a newer Plymouth from the early 50s will fit. Good luck you shouldn't have too much trouble if you take it easy. Do not go tearing everything apart or getting ideas of your own. Get a factory manual and go by that. They published thousands of these manuals, one for every Plymouth dealer, and a lot of them are still around. From $20 for a condensed reprint to $40 or $50 for a good original.

Buick made 3 lines of cars, the Special, Super and Roadmaster. The Special and Super used the GM B body which they shared with Oldsmobile. The Roadmaster used the C body which they shared with Cadillac. Not many parts will interchange between the Roadmaster and the lesser models.

Roadmaster was Buick's top offering, equal to a Cadillac in some ways, and built using the same body as a Cadillac. The Roadmaster Riviera was a super deluxe Roadmaster on a 4 inch longer wheelbase frame. This was one of the biggest most luxurious cars you could buy in 1951 and one of the most expensive. They were famous for their soft pillowy ride and smooth action of the straight eight engine and Dynaflow transmission. But if you wanted speed, performance and fast cornering you looked elsewhere. To put it another way, there are boulevard cars and road cars, the Roadmaster Riviera was king of the boulevard cars.

Apparently Frank Maratta was a skilled body man trained in the old school of custom coachwork before the war. But it appears his personal taste was somewhat questionable.

Original equipment 1949 Chrysler radio made by Motorola for Chrysler Corp. The mello, voice, music knob is for the bass/treble adjustment. Mello means low, voice for high, music somewhere in the middle.

I have an old Motor Repair Manual in front of me. It has a diagram of the control system for your transmission. It does not show a control cable of any kind. It shows electrical wiring and a vacuum piston unit which seems to push directly on a lever in the transmission. The vacuum piston unit is controlled by a vacuum valve connected to the intake manifold. The vacuum valve, piston unit, governor, carburetor, relay and ignition coil are all wired together. I would inspect the wiring first and make sure it is all according to the factory wiring diagram. What you describe sounds more like the setup on the straight eight cars not the six cylinder Royal. Sixes and eights had completely different transmissions that year. The Eight was more like a manual trans plus overdrive. But the diagram for the eight cylinder trans does not show a cable either.

With 15" wheels you can use smaller diameter tires and keep the same overall size as original. The 1959 tires were probably bigger than anything you can get now anyway. Larger diameter tires will give a little more ground clearance, throw your speedo off (read low) by giving higher gearing. Good for mileage but not so good for acceleration. Look up Coker Tire web site, it will give you the dia of the original tires and help match up with new tires the same dia.

I wouldn't use 6 ply, too stiff. My preference would be 2 ply but if you plan on carrying heavy loads and don't plan on going over 60, 4 ply might last longer. Have you considered radials?

If you are concerned about safety have new webbing put in the belts, it loses its strength over the years and install rear belts. Given the size of the car, if you have an accident with a modern car you may not even notice. Lap belts should be all you need.

I think it is a "Fascination". http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/12/10/the-fascination-nebr.html

That is an expensive meter probably fitted to a luxury car when new. Looks like the green light showed to the front and sides, the thermometer faced the rear and the cap flipped back for filling. Some cars even had a little spotlight on the cowl, focused on the meter for night viewing.

Does anyone have a set of rocker panel chrome for a 66 Dodge Coronet sedan? They are about 80" long, triangular in section, about 1 " wide, stamped out of anodised aluminum? I recently bought a Coronet sedan and the only pieces missing are the rocker panel moldings. Youtube video of Coronet showing rocker panel moldings. Could also use a back bumper, mine is rusty.

Another site gives credit to Frank Maratta of Hartford Connecticut as the builder. It looks like his work to me, or some other postwar East Coast customizer. A real F&F body would be less crude, smoother in its lines. For comparison here is Maratta's Mercury his best known custom. If you want to weep, you should see the picture of all the "junk" he cut off and discarded in building this car. He started with a 1940 Mercury 4 door convertible. This started out as a 1940 Mercury customized by Frank Maratta of Hartford, Conn. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Antifreeze used to come in round gallon cans too. Looks like a display for retail sales at the gas pump or in the show room. Lower shelf could be for storage of "spares" so you could keep the top shelf full during the day. Drain holes for outside use so rain would not accumulate. When I worked in a garage years ago we did inventory and restocked the shelves once a day. With a display like you have we could have kept a full display of antifreeze stacked up using spares from the bottom shelf. From the style and construction I would date it to the forties or late 30s.

The old bias ply tires had a carcase that was built up out of layers of fabric. The most common for many years was 4 ply or 4 layers of fabric. In the sixties, new stronger fabrics meant most car tires went to 2 ply construction at least all the OEM tires I know of. Six ply tires were available for heavy cars, such as limousines and hearses.Eight ply, even ten ply tires were made for heavy trucks. The fewer plies, the more flexible and smoother riding the tire. The more plies, the stronger and more weight it would carry although, the thicker carcass meant more heat buildup at speed. The best plan is to use the least plies that will hold the weight of the car. You will have to consult the weight rating of the tires then calculate the max weight of the vehicle given its shipping weight plus gas, oil, passengers and luggage. Or find out what kind of tires the manufacturer put on and buy the same kind. My guess is your car originally came with 4 ply tires but modern 2 ply tires would be just as strong and less prone to blowouts at high speed.

Should have warned you, Chrysler products before 1970s have left hand threads on the left side. This has stymied a lot of people. The idea was, left hand threads would not work loose by the rotation of the wheel. It turns out, this only applies to the center hub nut not the wheel nuts. So they changed to all the same, left hand thread wheel nuts. PS you don't have to take the wheel off to take off the brake drum. It is easier to remove the wheel and hub as an assembly.

Somewhere between $200 and $25000. Give us some pictures and we can narrow it down.

What is new is that such cars are not being restored. In former years you would not have seen them in public until they got new paint and upholstery, and then they would be just another car.