Any members near Hershey PA that can look at a car for me. It's in Halifax PA

[8E45E]

8 minutes ago, 58L-Y8 said:

Congratulations!   It looks like a fine example.  But I have to ask, like Edward Trumbull did, did you "Look at All Three"?

Shows how early General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were already known as the "Big Three"

 

Craig

[58L-Y8]

1 minute ago, 8E45E said:

Shows how early General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were already known as the "Big Three"

 

Craig

Craig,

 

In the context of these early Plymouth advertisement, Walter Chrysler in the advertisement himself posed the sporting proposition to prospective low-priced car buyers to "Look at All Three" before purchasing their next new car.  Ford and Chevrolet were the accepted main 'low-priced two'. Walter Chrysler was asking buyers to add his Plymouth to their primary choices before making their selection.  Apparently, the appeal was quite successful by Plymouth sales volumes.

 

Steve

[auburnseeker]

A friend stopped by today to check it out.  I even messed with him.  Told him I was getting a new car but wouldn't tell him what it was.  On his weekly visit.  We were chatting and he said so when is your car going to arrive.  (this was half way through his visit). I said oh it's in the garage.  His reply was what you weren't even going to tell me it arrived?  

 

Anyways he looked it all over and got his paint gauge out.  All the surfaces only have between 4 and 4.5 mil of paint.  I don't know maybe it is factory paint and the things i noticed were actually factory marks under the finish. 

 

I know I had a 48 Chevy aerosedan before and it had original paint for sure.  You could clearly see sanding and grinding marks under the finish in very prominent places where they leaded the seams and such.  

 

I actually never checked in the trunk until we were looking it over and I thought it would look nice with a steel spare tire cover.  Low and behold there was one in the trunk.  It's going to need to be painted to match the car but a nice find.  Still haven't had any time to actually do anything to it.  Hopefully this weekend as it's suppose to be rainy so I won't be able to do any outside work.  

[auburnseeker]

Small update.  I dropped the pan,  cleaned it and the pickup, painted it and the flywheel cover while it was out as well as all the splash shields.  Would have preferred to not paint everything,  but by the time I got all the grease scraped off,  much of the paint was lost and there was some surface rust in places from years of use.  Everything is all bolted back in place with fresh oil.  Now I have it up to do the brakes. 

 

Got my kit out of the boxes yesterday, only to discover they sent me the wrong Master Cylinder, so that sucks.  I messaged the seller but of course I discovered this at about 5:05 on Friday.  No word back.  Looks like atleast the Wheel cylinders are correct.   I disassembled and painted them with cast gray,  then reassembled everything. 

 

I pulled all the wheels and drums as well as disconnected the front cylinders,  so I could verify they were correct.  Now I'm sort of stuck until I get the new Master.

The new tires don't appear all that new up close,  though seems pretty good shape.   The inside of the fenders still have original paint on much of them.  As did the brake drums.  

 

Here she is after a quick polish and a little more in depth wet sanding and buffing on a few panels.  I'll eventually do the whole car to clean it up. 

 

Found one surprise.  The Right rear wheel only had 2 lugs holding it on.  Glad I didn't just go driving it around.  Fortunately I had some on the shelf and the holes are fine.  Not sure why they were missing and why they didn't take one off each wheel instead of all off the one. 

 

[wayne sheldon]

31 minutes ago, auburnseeker said:

Not sure why they were missing and why they didn't take one off each wheel instead of all off the one.

 

You just know there is a story behind that! Silly things people do planning to get back to it later.

Nice looking car! I have been wondering how it was coming along.

[auburnseeker]

Unfortunately progress has been slow as I have a mountain of outside work to do,  so this was for those rainy days super hot ones as the shop is nice and cool.  Well we never got rain and had several nice cool outside work days. 

It has finally heated up outside so I can get to work on it.  Thus the Master cylinder issue is really frustrating as it will be time to go back outside before the correct one arrives. 

Still no word from the seller.   

I bought it off ebay.  Even if you only run business 5 days a week,  you should correspond with customers on the other 2.   With all the ebay glitches I don't even know if he got my message. 

[auburnseeker]

So with most of my outside tasks done I have been able to devote a fair amount of time to her lately. 

 

The master cylinder seller got back to me Monday morning and apologized.  He couldn't believe the mistake that was made,  as he had an employee that pulled the order.  He sent another right out and I just got an early delivery update so it should be here tomorrow.  In the meantime I pulled everything out and flushed all the lines then blew them out. 

 

Found all new crush washers,  thankfully I have some of those boxes of old random crap from old garages so it's just a matter of hunting to come up with enough stuff.  They send 4 but it actually takes 10 if you replace them all. 

 

I figured no big deal,  now I'll just put the new wheel cylinders in.  I put the first bolt in and can't for the life of me get the second started. I get a light and look in the hole,  the hole is off by about an 1/8 or so of an inch.  WTH.  I'm thinking maybe they aren't direct replacement.  Then I think wait let me double check the backs.  Now all 4 cylinders sitting next to each other on the bench look identical.   All stepped, with 2 for the right side and 2 for the left.  Then I lay the bolt area on top of the other and yup there are front and rears with the only difference being that 1/8 of an inch in bolt spacing.  

 

Ironically if I had tried the one on the right front it would have fit,  as that's the way they were laid out,  coincidentally.    So anyone doing a similar era Mopar ,  keep a watch for this. 

 

Well that made a huge difference and 3 bolted right up.  I get to the last and I can't get the bolts to not start on that with it in place in the hole.  out at a slight angle and it starts just fine,  but you can't rock it up into place as the protruding flange at the top hits. I filed the top of the cylinder some,  but that still wasn't enough.  I finally had to file the bolt holes just a little along with the mounting hole that the flange fits in,  then it finally went together. 

 

Crazy.  Does anyone else have these type of problems?

 

I've done a bunch of brake jobs with all new cylinders and never had such trouble.  They always just bolt right in. 

 

I also did some looking around and found the battery ground cable had been swapped out with a small gauge one,  so I found a correct 1 gauge one in the right length and ordered that in.  Figured I might as well fix the years of keep it going repairs (fortunately not too many) with the right stuff while I'm waiting on the master.  Ne plugs and wires are on the list for today.  I'll take a look at the rest of the ignition while I'm at it.  I probably have all the parts on the shelf if i I need to replace any of that. 

 

 

[pkhammer]

5 minutes ago, auburnseeker said:

Crazy.  Does anyone else have these type of problems?

  Yes, all the time with at least half of the new parts I order. I ordered a kit to rebuild the spring shackles on my '51 Ford. Had to modify nearly everything to make fit properly. I even re-used some of the good original parts because it was easier to clean them up than it was to modify the new stuff.

   We must realize that a lot of these replacement parts are foreign made and unfortunately sometimes quality control isn't the best. Two of the "hardened" pins on my shackle kit the threads stripped right off while tightening using very little effort. 🤬

[auburnseeker]

I will say one improvement on the wheel cylinders is they atelast have SAE bleeders.  The older repops used to have metric bleeders,  which always blew my mind.  You tool the cylinder up for SAE hold down bolts,  then thread it with metric bleeders.  Who in the future is going to think to whip out their metric wrenches on a 30's car. 

[edinmass]

I'm still waiting for a ride in the Auburn. Hope it happens before Auburn want's to use it for her prom!

[auburnseeker]

5 hours ago, edinmass said:

I'm still waiting for a ride in the Auburn. Hope it happens before Auburn want's to use it for her prom!

Hey don't laugh,  I just got a message from a friend that's my age, nearing 50, and he has finally decided to sell his 55 Ford pickup truck project that he was going to drive to the prom,  because it's all apart and he's never going to get it done.   Time has a way of creeping up on us. 

[3macboys]

2 hours ago, auburnseeker said:

Hey don't laugh,  I just got a message from a friend that's my age, nearing 50, and he has finally decided to sell his 55 Ford pickup truck project that he was going to drive to the prom,  because it's all apart and he's never going to get it done.   Time has a way of creeping up on us. 

Does that mean that he has given up on making his Prom too?

[auburnseeker]

No he made the prom and got married in the meantime.  I told him he should finish it for his 50th high school reunion.  That might be an obtainable goal.   I speak from experience. 

[Steve_Mack_CT]

HS pal flailed away at his 68 GTA 390 Mustang off and on in hopes of driving it to his 35th (82).  After that date passed he wrote the big check to a Mustang resto shop and it looks great.  I think this year, his 40th, he can drive it but is afraid it might get a scratch... 😁

 

I hope I get to drive it again, last time was in 81 or 82.

[auburnseeker]

Finally some real progress on the Plymouth.  

 

She finally is running and I got her outside for some pics.  I put all new ignition parts in while I had it laid up as everything was shot.  I hand cranked the engine over until I got oil pressure then tried to start it.  It would pop,  but wouldn't run.  I finally gave up when the battery wore down,  which was quite a job getting the sticky seat tracks freed up, so I could move the seat far enough ahead to get the battery out. 

 

I tried hand cranking the engine to see if i could get fuel out of the pump and nothing,  So i took the pump off.  Seems someone replaced the gasket on the fuel bowl with another but never cleaned the remnant of the old one out so it was sucking air,  with the little suction it had.  I decided I would just replace it. 

 

Of course the new pump is oriented differently so I had to make a new steel fuel line from the pump to the carb.  It has a bunch of sharp bends so it was a pain to make,  but I got it done and in.  All good no leaks.  I hand cranked the engine more until I had fuel up at the carb and the carb is filled. 

 

Primed it with a quick shot and it fired right up. 

I got it out of the garage finally and let it run outside a while. Puked a little antifreeze but it was really full so I think it was just finding it's happy spot.  

I got the noncontact thermometer out and checked all over.  Radiator seems to be properly cooling.  Good thing since it's the original Honeycomb core in it. 

 

Even after running a while at temperature she seems to have almost 25-30 lbs of pressure on the gauge at idle.  Some valve train noise ,  which I expect but pretty smooth and quite other wise.

Seems to start well hot.  The new cable really gives it juice and zings it over.

 

It did stall a couple of times just randomly.  Some choke and it fired right up,  so some small random fuel issue,  but driving it around the yard and up the hill in my drive she seems to have good power.  

 

Will have to run it some more,  but it's a nice feeling to get it running finally. 

 

 

[auburnseeker]

One thing I need help with.  Seems the Freewheeling is stuck on?  When I started down my driveway the first time it took off.  I was expecting some hold back so it was a bit of a shock.

It's got a kind of unusual unit.  Does anyone have a picture of a unit with the free wheel disengaged.   Then I have a baseline to see if something is stuck or if everything is right and i have a different problem. 

It has a few rods and cables, I'm trying to figure out where they are suppose to be when it's off.  

Edited July 16, 2022 by auburnseeker (see edit history)

[Paul Dobbin]

On 5/23/2022 at 3:41 PM, pkhammer said:

You can buy a coupe with just one door.

   A friend had one like that.   He took a heavy set  neighbor lady for a ride in it one day.   The seat springs

  grounded out on the battery beneath seat and set the car on fire!  Anyway, it was fun while it lasted.