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1953 Dodge 'coupe' truck project


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  • 1 month later...

There has been plenty going on since my last post, but I find that I have now run into trouble.

 

I have been searching for engine components for my 3 & 3/8 bore 218 T143 engine but am finding it particularly difficult to find 20 thou big end bearings. It looks like I may be going with EGGE pistons, but it appears that even they are struggling to find 20 thou big end bearings for me.

 

I don't feel that posting this information in the classifieds section would get me anywhere, so I am asking here that if you have any leads to a supplier who might be able to assist would you please message me their details.

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Looking good Davin. Major shed envy too! I've had a setback. Long story but I now don't have my off-site storage down the coast which means my 1/2 tonner Fargo and all my Holden parts are now jammed in my garage at home, along with my project FC. I can't even get to the back of my garage at the moment. The result is I'll be having a big cleanup and selling or giving away a lot of stuff, and it looks like the big Fargo at my mates will be getting sold as soon as it's registered. Not happy. When I've got a minute I'll start a thread on my two. Martyn

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:P 

Looking good Davin. Major shed envy too! I've had a setback. Long story but I now don't have my off-site storage down the coast which means my 1/2 tonner Fargo and all my Holden parts are now jammed in my garage at home, along with my project FC. I can't even get to the back of my garage at the moment. The result is I'll be having a big cleanup and selling or giving away a lot of stuff, and it looks like the big Fargo at my mates will be getting sold as soon as it's registered. Not happy. When I've got a minute I'll start a thread on my two. Martyn

 

"Selling or giving stuff away" :eek:

 

Martyn, my son has just moved from Bendigo Vic to Wollongong to work with the City of Wollongong.

 

And 'whereis" tells me Shell Harbour is not too far away...looks like I might be making a trip to visit him sooner than later... :P

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I had the task today of going through the radiators which I have at my shed readying one for the 'Pop' coupe truck build.

The chore would have been all the more exciting had I not have also had to search for one for the 52 truck as well after its fan went into the radiator yesterday! Seems that the fella who rebuild the waterpump for me did not fit the pin through the pulley/impeller shaft but decided that a tack-weld would suffice. Unfortunately the end result of his work a few years back will now cost me plenty! 

It would appear that fan verses radiator battles are quite the common thing judging by the radiators which I had at my shed...

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Edited by Desotodav
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It would appear that fan verses radiator battles are quite the common thing judging by the radiators which I had at my shed...

 

I have seen lots of rads like that. Even did one myself years ago pushing my running, partly assembled car back into the garage......actually it was my idiot brother. :P He pushed on the rad which made a loud racket when it hit the fan. We were both rather merry at the time and had been driving around in the car with no doghouse, doors, glass. brakes, etc.  We were both young and stupid. Now, nearly 40 years later, we are old and stupid. The car has aged much better than us! :P

 

Used that radiator for over 30 years until it finally gave up the ghost.

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Saw this beautiful Desoto on the weekend at a local show. These are not really my thing but this truck is outstanding. Is it one and the same?

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Edited by plodge
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Saw this beautiful Desoto on the weekend at a local show. These are not really my thing but this truck is outstanding. Is it one and the same?

 

It is. I was at the show at Caboolture on Saturday with my mate in his gold colored 29 dodge delivery. Quite a good turn out there with many quality vehicles. My poor old blue truck might be off the road for a week or so until I get another radiator in it.

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Yep I saw them both, I was going to take my old dodge, but I bummed a lift with my brother in his newly acquired blue EH wagon, thought that he deserved 2 minutes of fame. Should've gone in mine looking back. The truck is a credit to you. I recently redone my radiator in my dodge, problem was the radiator that was in it was a brand new unit some years ago, with the original style core, but sitting around did it no favours, and after 12 months on the road was weeping everywhere. So had the boys at the radiator shop build me a new one. They used my tanks and side straps but used a new core for a hiace, they had to make new header plates though and I think he told me there was something like 240 solders to do. so its back in the car and going well, would want to for over $400. I don't want to tell you what to do, but keep in mind these old style radiators were not made for the pressures we run today, so a 14 pound cap might put a bit too much pressure on it, so a lower pressure cap, like a 7-10pound cap might be a good idea.  That's what I'm running in my dodge.

Edited by plodge
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Yep I saw them both, I was going to take my old dodge, but I bummed a lift with my brother in his newly acquired blue EH wagon, thought that he deserved 2 minutes of fame. Should've gone in mine looking back. The truck is a credit to you.

 

Thanks for the compliment. I received quite a few encouraging comments at the show. My mate with the 29 delivery took out the 'Presidents Choice' award.

The 53 coupe truck which I am presently building will be of similar quality to my 52.

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Yep I saw them both, I was going to take my old dodge, but I bummed a lift with my brother in his newly acquired blue EH wagon, thought that he deserved 2 minutes of fame. Should've gone in mine looking back. The truck is a credit to you. I recently redone my radiator in my dodge, problem was the radiator that was in it was a brand new unit some years ago, with the original style core, but sitting around did it no favours, and after 12 months on the road was weeping everywhere. So had the boys at the radiator shop build me a new one. They used my tanks and side straps but used a new core for a hiace, they had to make new header plates though and I think he told me there was something like 240 solders to do. so its back in the car and going well, would want to for over $400. I don't want to tell you what to do, but keep in mind these old style radiators were not made for the pressures we run today, so a 14 pound cap might put a bit too much pressure on it, so a lower pressure cap, like a 7-10pound cap might be a good idea.  That's what I'm running in my dodge.

 

What you really want is a zero pressure cap. It doesn't take much to overheat the radiator and cause the tank to pressurize and swell the tank and open seams.

 

Hank  :o

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  • 3 weeks later...

I picked up the truck body from the sandblaster last week and found no surprises. There is rust in all of the usual places, but no more than I expected.

I have all of the panels blasted and primer-painted now, so I can start moving forward inch by inch towards my completion goal!

There's been plenty other small achievements going on behind the scenes - more on them soon...

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The cab needs plenty of repair work that doesn't show up in the photos, but it is better than I expected it to be. I'm hoping to get some photos off to my Panel-beater soon and we can work out a plan of attack. I am fortunate to have located this 53 coupe truck around 4 hours inland from the east coast as there is much less moisture out that way.

 

I've been playing around with the 'Pop' truck seat over the past couple of days. The seat frame itself is in good condition, but the slide rails (for seat adjustment) under the seat needed some work. I managed to strip the required parts out of one of my other coupe trucks, so I should have a well-operating set of seat slides soon.

 

I just keep chipping away at the project and expect that one day the overall goal will be achieved!

 

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What seat slides? What luxury. My 52 doesn't get that. Oh hang on - you've got the "delux" coupe. so makes sense its got more luxury features.

 

Good to hear from you Ian. Bit of snow down on your old farm in the last couple of days hey. Bet you're glad you're not down that way at present!

 

I'm not sure why this truck has seat slides. I have a mate with a coupe truck of similar year and it appears to have a seat like mine also. Maybe that's just how they were  built here? I did a bit of panel-beating on the seat frame today and pieced together the final set of seat slides. All was going well til wifey wanted me to look at her BMW seats also!... lucky my old truck doesn't have fancy things like 2 gas struts in each seat to help them go up and down!

Edited by Desotodav
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I read a previous post of tony-westoz which showed a coupe with the crome stainless centre bar (windscreen) on a deluxe so likely did get sliders as well.

Was down at tbe ski fields these school holidays -> only man made snow, it came to late for me, bugger. Ive seen some impressive snow photos of mums place. And my niece's playing in snow at 1 am. It doesn't snow in QLD that often.

Edited by IanT_Qld
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I am sure that most here would agree that it is exciting when valuable parts required complete a project start rolling in.

I received a quantity of engine components during the week and now just await the final parts order (pistons, rings, bearings etc) from Egge USA.

I managed to find the old-style timing chain cover seal and pressed it in to the cover at our workshop the other day.

I dropped in to see my Chromer and he will be zinc-plating the seat slides and other adjusting mechanisms for me. He already has plenty of things for chroming for me - mainly grille bars and hood emblems.

I have been tinkering around with removing bolts from panels (floor panels pictured) and tapping out the threads again in readiness for panel beating and then reconstruction. Here's hoping that it goes together easier than it came apart!!!

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Edited by Desotodav
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  • 3 months later...

I haven't posted an update here for a while, but major things have been happening to my coupe truck over the past week so I guess that it is timely to provide an update.

 

I delivered the coupe truck body to my Panel Beater (Richard) a couple of weeks back and he has moved ahead in leaps and bounds over the past couple of days. The body is not too bad for it's age, but it does have some significant rust in areas which require a fair deal of work. There was some discussion between the 2 Panel Beater's (Richard and Bill) whom I have asked to complete the truck body and panel restoration for me and it was decided that the best method to attack the project was to remove the rear panel sections (most of our trucks here Oz are somewhat different to those cab + bed trucks seen in USA) so that internal pieces could be better reached and repaired. I have attached a few photos which Richard was kind enough to post on his website to show some progress to date.

 

I also recently spoke with my painter friend Graeme (who painted my blue 52 truck when it was fully restored a few years back) and we decided that the 53 coupe truck would be painted white. I will possibly look to paint it an original MOPAR shade of off-white which is correct for that era.

 

A couple of days ago, I delivered most of the other body panels to Bill (the other Panel Beater) as he will repair the minor imperfections to all panels and attend to the overall finishing work of the whole project. I suspect that I will have a few more photos of repair work to add within the coming weeks.

 

On another note, I also collected the rebuilt 'long block' 218 engine from the Engine Builder this afternoon and will start reassembling the final pieces soon. The engine was in good condition but the piston walls were badly scored for some reason (bore walls were good though), so I replaced them with 30 thou over Egge pistons from USA. The camshaft bearings are standard and the big-end/main bearings are 20 thou. I had all of the moving parts to this engine balanced whilst they were at the engine builder's as I believe this will make for smoother running. I will post up engine pictures at a later date.

 

More to come soon.

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Hi Davin,

It's funny, I was thinking it was about time I got in touch with you and here's a post! Wow, that's some serious bodyworking! I'd hate to see it ever happen to a good original cab but doesn't that stripped down cab lend itself to some interesting ideas for a one-off custom body. I love the idea of the white. I reckon it'll look great. I'll flick you an email soon. 

 

Regards,

 

Martyn

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I had a couple of hours to spare today so I went down to the shed to play with my engine.

I got the rebuilt engine back about a week or so ago, so I decided to paint it the other day. It was while I was painting the engine that I noticed that the engine builder had installed the flywheel bolts in the wrong way and there was no easy way to remove them, so I cut them out this afternoon... taking care not to cause too much heat which could cause damage to the freshly installed rear seal. Lucky I had a spare set of flywheel bolts at the shed hey!

I had the refurbished flywheel held on with a couple of bolts, and then I realized that all 8 of the bolt holes didn't line up... so I needed to remove the bolts I had already tightened and then rotate the flywheel to the correct position. It turns out that this would have been quite a simple process had I initially seen the punch marks which someone had already made!

I then installed the clutch pressure plate, but am yet to install the clutch plate as I need to borrow a clutch plate alignment tool from my mechanic friend.

I hope to have the engine sump and bell-housing on soon so that I can install the engine back into the chassis. Mechanics is certainly not my strong point, but I am learning quickly as I go !!!

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