keithb7

Thanks dpollo. At this point I assume it serves no purpose except join wires together, and hold them close to the fender. I could eliminate it by joining wires directly together. Correct?

Forgot to mention. I have the original manual. This box I am referencing is not shown in the wiring diagram. Thx.

Getting into wiring clean up in my ‘38 Plymouth. I decided to pull the original headlight harness. Needless to say it’s in horrendous condition. Crumbling away upon touching it. Lots of bare exposed wire. I’ll build a new harness from scratch. Wires from the headlight harness went to this 3 terminal box on the left fender well inside engine compartment. 2 wires go to this box. Appear to come from cab area possibly. I’ll dig in further with a multi-meter. I suspect the two wires come from the hi/low beam foot switch. The two wires connect to the outer pair of terminals on this box. Then the two head light harness wires connect to the same outer two terminals. The centre terminal on this box was unused. I’m wondering what the purpose this box is. Its not a relay as far as I can tell. Its not wired up as such. All it seems to be doing is offering a mechanical connection of the wires. Is it a type fusebox maybe? It’s plenty old for my eyes. I can’t recall seeing one before. Mind you I have not owned a car built before ‘92 since ‘92. I suspect an earlier owner custom repair. Someone changed out the headlights to sealed beam 6V type. The little auxiliary bulbs in the orignal headlights are gone. The wire is still there in the harness. Thanks.

So far brake shoes appear to be near new. I’ll be definitely digging in further. I see old crusty flex hoses. They’ll be replaced. I exposed the carb bowl today. Quite dirty. To be expected for a car that has seen so little use in decades. After some extensive internet research time, I learned this is a Carter BBS carburetor. Used from about 54 and up thru the 60's. This carb seems to align properly, age-wise with D54 engine SN on my block. I was able to locate a rebuild kit on the Carb Doctor web site. Carb is currently disassembled and soaking in Lacquer thinner. Every time I walk by I agitate it a little.

Flat black seems popular with the vintage hotrod guys around here. They add red & white custom pin striping it seems. I can understand how a home hobby hack type of guy, trying to stay in a budget, would consider flat black. Might be able to get away with a home paint job if he has no desire to show the car. Just get out and cruise. I may or may not fall into that catagory. ?

I like hearing these stories. I too love to talk about my best friend. They broke the mold after she was born. Many a man have asked me if my wife has a sister. She does haveva sister but they are nothing alike. I like to go on about all her amazing skills and work effort. I try to refrain but will list a top 5. Please excuse my boasting. She is the real deal: She personally, totally renovates our homes. No she does not hire contractors. She does stucco, hardi-plank or vinyl siding. She removes and installs new exterior windows. Tile and hardwood flooring. Hang doors. Builds cabinets. Custom builds and tiles showers. Drywall, including ceilings. Paint. Brickwork. Rips out and upgrades plumbing. Solders copper and electronics. Custom builds furniture from scratch. Has her own well eqipped wood shop in the basement. Does Electrical work. Amazing finish carpentry work. She picky as h e l l and does the work of mutiple men. She’ll drop whatever, when I ask her to help me install a transmission or push a dead car. She’ll shove her small hands in tight areas to get a bolt that I can’t access. This morning she pulled dead mice from our basement traps. She is dedicated to any projects she starts and gets them finished to a very high standard. Many a man have been humbled when they got in her way. She’d die to protect her sons who she poured the best of herself into. That was #1 in my list I’ll stop there. I am very fortunate. I gotta run, she needs a hand. She’s installing a new bathtub in her bathroom reno today.

An exciting day as I flashed my Plymouth up again finally. Fresh new 1/O battery cables. Good starter that I had serviced and a new clutch gear installed in. Thanks to @dpollo for a good starter. I am really enjoying this car very much. Tinkering away as time allows. Its kinda become like a go-cart for me. I crawl under it and smile at the simplicity of it all. I feel like little kid building my own go-cart when I work on it. Except now I have tools. And space! And money! LOL. Engine is not blowing any smoke that I can see. Radiator is doing it's job well it seems. I plan to warm it fully tomorrow and do a compression test. We'll see what we've got here. My latest blog video. Learn about Necker Knobs here: https://youtu.be/O3ZKXp0VWl0

This evening I was in my garage workin’ on my ‘38 Plymouth. My wife showed up with a sign that she saw in a store. She bought it and she even hung it for me. I’m grateful she supports my old car hobby. I’m very impressed that she even knows what Mopar means! I am a lucky man. 26+ years married so far. Not 1 hint of disapproval when I wanted to buy my 2nd old.Mopar She was smiling in the passenger seat of the musty old interior, right beside me when we jumped in to check it out for the first time. Anyone here as lucky? Let’s hear about it.

Lots of topics lately on here about brakes. If you search, there is a lot of great helpful responses here. Most folks ask the same questions. I too did the same when I started to tackle my brakes for the first time. Most of our brakes are all the same.

With these old cars, it is imperative that the master cylinder fluid be checked regularly in my opinion. A single reservoir master cylinder, and other old parts leaves little room for error. Maybe I am paranoid, but it is my life on the line. I check the master cylinder fluid level often. I look for signs of leakage at all the wheel cylinder and at all brake line connections. I pull my drums off at least a couple of times each cruising season to inspect my breaks. Make sure your parking break is well adjusted and functioning properly. If may be your last life line. It's your reserve chute.

You need to pull a tie end on the steering linkage, directly under the pan. Then turn wheels to a full stop one way. Then you can drop the oil pan. Its not a hard job. You’ll get messy. While you are under there scrape off 50 years of grease and road grime that is often all over everything. I did my ‘53 oil pan about year and a half ago. Was my first time. Not a difficult job. You can read all about it here: http://p15-d24.com/topic/45530-oil-pan-removal-engine-in-car-53-windsor-265/#comments

Assuming your rear brakes are stock, I can share my experience with my ‘53 rear brakes. Remove wheels and axle nut. Acquire larger 3 arm puller often mentioned on this site. Pull drums. Initial inspection may show signs of brake fuild leakage at the wheel cylinders. Depending what you find, you may want new shoes new return springs, hardware etc. Look at your shoe wear surfaces for signs of uneven wear. Indicating misaligned shoes. Look at your drums for grooves. Good drums are smooth across the wear surface. Measure drum internal area for total wear. Compare to spec. Brake fluid by nature absorbs moisture. Even humidity in the air eventually causes problems. This water/brake fluid mixture sits in enclosed areas such as wheel cylinders, master cylinder and brake likes. All winter or longer. Corrosion takes place when steel and water sits.Then the piston in the cylinder can rust, freezing in place. Best practice is to flush out all brake fluid with new, every 3-5 years. A Mity-Vac is a wonderful tool I recommend for this job. You can elect to simply replace the wheel cylinders. Or clean and hone your originals, possibly. Depending on how bad the pitting is, general cylinder condition and if measured within spec. All new piston seals and dust boots and you could be good to go. Be prepared for rusty original brake lines. They can strip or break off when you attempt to remove them from the rear of the cylinder. Personally, I bought new straight steel lines and hand bent them to shape and fit. I sourced tooling and practiced flaring. I made my own double inverted flare ends. I am comfortable with my work in that I put my life on the line driving the car regularly. All went well with new brake lines. Brakes will need to be bled after all this work. While you are accessing the master cylinder to top up, pull the cap and clean the tiny air breather hole. This is important. Best tool I ever used on my Windsor is the homemade tool I made. Pic if it is below, showing front wheel application. I use it to accurately set the shoes concentric to the axle centre. Some type of tool or method to get this right is pretty much mandatory. Otherwise you’ll struggle to get the brake performance you’ll expect. Reinstall your drums and set your minor adjustment. This is easily done. Rear brake assy shown for reference. -Keith

What year Windsor? Original Lockheed brakes?

Another of the interior. Maybe it has had some work? I can’t confirm. Owner said it was all original. Here’s another shot.

Reviewing the data printed in my Chrysler book this morning I find: The Chrysler 77 featured hydraulic internal brakes, 4-speed tranny, double drop frame, parking lamps front upper corner pillars. Pennon typer hood louvers were used on early production units, while later cars featured vertical louver design. 77 Royal Sedan (owner's info board claimed it was a Royal Sedan) 5 passenger. Price was $1495. Weight 3,755 lbs. Production total 7,211units. Interesting is the 3.375 bore x 5" stroke engine. Must be some decent torque here compared other 1930 cars. It seems the 1930 77 Town Sedan saw only 436 production units. Seems to be some discrepancy here. It happens. Nice car. I'd be smitten with it if it were mine.

Today I was at the finish line of the 2019 Hemmings Great Race. It was at the LeMay museum in Tacoma Washington. There was also an open car show for any makes and models. I saw an awesome car at the show n’ shine that I thoroughly enjoyed. The owner let me get a real good close look. I sat in the front seat, and crawled around the rear seat area too. Taking everything in. The car was an original, 100% stock, 1930 Chrysler model 77 fourdoor sedan. The car is a true survivor that has never been restored. The interior was in amazing, stock condition. The car has around 20,000 original miles. The car has been stored for countless years in a garage I assume. I was informed only 436 of this car were built in 1930. 4 speed. Hydraulic brakes. The owner and I were unsure exactly how much of the frame was wood. I know I saw some wood. He’s only owned it for a short time. A younger fellow. He is truly fortunate to find and secure this car in it’s current state. The owner and I spoke for a while. I went back again later to see the car once again and talk further. For now, I’ll limit sharing more knowledge about the car here. I’m going to invite him here. Hopefully he’ll register and introduce himself and his car here. A sneak peak of limited pics I have. Maybe owner will post more we’ll see. - Keith

My brakes were so very poor before I made this tool. Right or wrong, using it to centre the shoes made a huge improvement in my braking. I chose 1 point and adjusted 1 cam to touch the drum. I backed it off again a tiny bit so I could get my drum off. Then I set my tool to measure and reference this point of the shoe. I spun the tool around and set the distance equally around the shoes. Making sure the arrows on major cams were pointing away from each other. Put it all back together. I Set up my minor adjustments and wow. Huge improvement. Sure worked well. I had little luck getting much improvement without this tool.

Fantastic car. Great to see another one at it finest.

Powertrain rebuild followed by a clearcoat...Done.

What does your bore measure? 3 3/8? Possibly a 4 1/4” stroke? You may have the 228 engine. What is the SN info stamped in the block casting. Upper left side, near front of the block.

This was a reply I got on another forum about the topic. “The Canadian branch of the Chrysler corporation got their own engine foundry in 1938. It made one engine only, the 25" long block used in American DeSoto and Chrysler cars. To get engines suitable for Plymouth and Dodge they reduce the bore to 3 3/8 from 3 7/16 and juggled the bore and stroke to get the displacement they wanted. They made crankshafts from 4 1/16 to 4 3/4 stroke. Each crankshaft had its own connecting rods of suitable length, the pistons were all the same. In other words if your engine has a 3 3/8 bore it uses the same piston as any other 3 3/8 bore engine, regardless of stroke. Likewise for the 3 7/16 bore. This means you can bore your 3 3/8 engine 1/16 oversize and use stock DeSoto/Chrysler pistons. Your engine with 3 7/16 bore and 4 1/2 stroke is equal to a 251 engine used in Chrysler, DeSoto, and Dodge trucks. The only larger option would be a 4 3/4 stroke crank which would give a 265 engine but these crankshafts are rather rare. Distributors alike and interchangeable but they changed the design every few years so points and cap don't interchange across the board. Distributors had specific part numbers for specific engines, so they probably tailored the advance curve for each engine. Model of distributor appears in the serial number plate rivetted to the distributor, good to know when ordering parts. Especially if someone swapped in a junkyard distributor years ago. Same engine used in Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler cars, Dodge trucks, industrial and marine applications 1938 - 1972. Dodge Power Wagon Canadian military vehicles used the 251 engine up to 1972 and so did some heavy Dodge trucks to 1962. A lot of them were used in Massey combines and tractors, so if you see an old combine rotting away in a fence row check it out.”

I took my pan off and resealed it. I sanded it smooth too and repainted it. There was a fair amount of sludge in the bottom which I cleaned out. Also in the valve/tappet area as mentioned. Since then I have been running modern detergent motor oil. I considered replacing the rear seal too but opted not to. My engine rear end is still leaking a fair amount. More than drips. My engine however shares oil with the torque converter. I could be leaking oil at the seals between the block and torque. I can't tell for sure yet. So, I decided not to pull things apart yet and nurse it along. It's inevitable the engine will come out. At that time I will decide how for to go with it. At a minimum rear crank seal, oil passage to torque o-rings, valve guides, oil pan again, front crank seal and timing chain cover gasket, head gasket...Sounding more like a full rebuild every time I plan it out. While I had the pan off I took a cap off and had a good look at a bearing. It looked quite good. Little wear.

Congrats. Seven years of work and it looks fantastic. That’s commendable. Another great car back on the road for you to enjoy, and everyone can see it as it would have been new.

Re engine size: A good start is by measuring the engine stroke. There is small threaded plug in the cylinder head over cylinder #6. You can insert a small diameter rod, like a wood dowel and measure the full engine stroke.