leadheavy52

Plymouthy, these are the 18" wheels off my car. I am quite fond of them and want to utilize them so I can keep my spare mount in the rear in use. I would hate to cut it off ?. Thank you for the heads up on the clearances of the tie rod ends. I will keep it at a 0 offset for widening purposes, but do you think a 7"wide wheel would pose a problem? I'll play around with the measuring tape when I get home. Thanks

This is what was more leaning towards. I've look at a few examples and it is cleaner looking and reversible. I'll follow the advice from Plymouthy about measuring for offset and such. I feel more confident in radials and with my other plans, this would be a large step towards creating a safe family ride. Thanks.

Hello all, I am making slow, but steady, progress on my Suburban. Since the old tires were all but old and crusty, I removed them from the wheels. Originally, I was going to replace them with OE-style Bias Ply tires, but at $250 a pop plus mounting and tubes, I am looking at near $1800 just to get rubber back on. The severe limiting factors are the size of the wheels (18 x 3.5"). This makes tire selection hard to come by. Now, I am open to running bias ply tires, but have had another through creep into my head. I know some of you run radials on the stock wheels for the 15" and 16" set ups. Unfortunately, they do not make radials in this size, unless it is a temporary for a spare only. The only way to put radials on this safely, would be to widen these rims to 7" or 8". This way, I could utilize a wide variety of tires. I am committed to keeping these wheels with the car, but am stuck at tire options. My question: Should I eat the cost of the bias ply and stick with an original look, or spend the money to widen the wheels to 7" or 8" and enjoy the benefits of radials? Here are a few shots of the wheels sans tires.

John, the more I look at your car, the more I can’t stop looking at it. That stance is just right too. Any chance you could post a pic of the Fatman shock mount? Thanks in advance.

Incredible build and incredible inspiration. Here is where I sit with mine. She’s a ‘52 Suburban. I have bookmarked this thread for its shear awesomeness! -Austin

Got some more progress finished over the weekend. After a good cleaning, I began restoring the interior panels with color-matched interior paint/primer from PPG. Very durable stuff. It dried less blue than it looked when it was wet and is pretty darn close. All in all, a $25 restore. I also was able to get the car up un jack stands to remove the wheels and start on the brakes. After measuring, I realized the car will sit about 2" lower than it sits on jack stands with the 18" wheels. Still up pretty high, for a car, er wagon. Lastly, I was able to get my rear fender welting back in shape after sitting in a box all twisted up for who know how long. I left it sit in the sun for about an hour before reworking it back to shape. The welting at the top is what it looked like before I started and the one below is just about ready to be placed back in the garage. Overall, I am pretty happy with the paint job. No brush stokes and a pretty durable, at least more durable than before. Very much enjoying learning about this car. Still a bit to do to get her back on the road, but slowly ticking away at it. My goal is to have it driving and stopping by next summer for the car show season. - Austin

I was just wondering this myself. I am in the process of fixing up the interior on the '52 Suburban i recently acquired. It has fiberboard panels painted to match the interior color and a few are in need of repair or total replacement.

Turn the wheels lock to lock and check for binding or the steering gear to contact the frame anywhere. Check the welds on the frame where the Dakota sub matches up. Diamond shaped reinforcement plates where the joint is would be reassuring that the job was done right. Check distances from wheelbases on both sides for squareness. Even 0.10” off could mean a wonky install. Uneven tire wear on the front too. Good luck!

John, what an incredible find there you have! I love the old pre-War cars. I’m aiming to make my next project of that vintage!

She runs! A little work to reroute the fuel line from the tank to the pump to get it to a fresh can of gas. She sounds good. I didn’t want to run her for too long because the water pump is seized, or at least the fan isn’t turning and I have ruptured oil line (the top one to the oil filter housing). More work to get her to stay cool and not lose oil. How exciting and humbling to hear this engine run for the first time in 47 years. Yes, the headlights are Autolite Bullseye headlights and they both still work. I will take your advice and take extra good care of them! I didn’t realize they were worth anything. Thank you guys again! Heres a link to the car running: -Austin

Sweet! Just got all the work done on my ‘52 Suburban to fire it up. Ran it with fuel in the carb and a few sprits of starter fluid. I’ll rig up a makeshift gas tank and see if the pump still works. Hopefully it’ll be running by the afternoon. Good luck! -Austin

LOL. I checked that whole field for anything that may have fallen off. LOL - I fortunately have the gas cap and filler neck in the garage as we speak. Good looking out, brother! -Austin

Well, I got the grille on and mostly set up. I have about 95% of the parts to put her back together. I need two hubcaps, the pass tail light housing and lens, All the fender trim for the passenger side and both pieces of rocker trim. Other than that, she's complete. I hat to sort through a coffee can of old bolts and screws to come up with the proper mounting pieces. I hope I've done it right. Any chance I could get one of you fine gentler (or ladies), or both nowadays, to take a picture of the top part of the grille where the hood latch mechanism is? I think I have it mostly right, but I am afraid that I may have the bolts in the wrong spot, or mixed up a bit. Thank you in advance. On the same note, I have been unsuccessful in removing the wing nut from the spare tire cubby cover. I am afraid of putting too much force on it for fear that I may shear it off and never get it replace properly. What does this threaded rod look like inside the spare tire cover where it mounts to the body? If it is easily replaceable, I may just twist it off and deal with it later. If it's one that is rare as hen's teeth, then I shall hit it with even more PB Blaster and cross my heart a few dozen times more. Also, I realized what grounded this car was an incomplete transmission install. It has a 4-speed dodge truck transmission that has never been hooked up that I can tell. Fortunately too, the Texaco oil drum center hump is only caulked into place and not welded. I originally wanted to keep this in place, but after seeing that it's not hooked up and would be fairly easy to replace, I think I will go back with the three-on-the-tree with OD (if I can ever manage to find one). I am going to spend some time this weekend trying to get her to crank over and possibly start. Drained the oil, which after so many years did not look terrible, but not he greatest, unlike the oil in the air filter that looks brand new. I will keep a fire extinguisher handy just in case it goes haywire. All in all, I am very much enjoying the car so far. Going to get some seat covers for it, mostly so I don't have to be sliding around on the seat filled with old foam and straw matting for much longer. There is still a ton of work ahead of me, but I feel that I have the right direction to go in. I also ordered the original build sheet from Chrysler and will be waiting on that to arrive to see if this had the high-clearance option from the factory. It has the 9-spring rear and after closer inspection, the spare tire mount is most definitely factory. I haven't seen another like it anywhere. I have greatly been enjoying this forum and thank you all for the advice, encouragement and inspiration to bring this car back to glory. -Austin

For what it's worth, I like the '53. The flat black used to be my cup-o-tea, and I can still find some appeal to the paint job (or lack thereof, I suppose), but I am leery of buying others previous mods. Be it paint, bodywork, engine/tranny swaps or any other modifications that I wasn't there to witness the quality of. I have seen a wide array of quality to not-so-quality "upgrades". I've heard horror stories about frames splitting and engines falling out due to someone else's interpretation of safety. If I were to invest money into a car, I would want to find something as close to stock as possible. Anything I were to do to it afterwards would be on me. It's a sharp looking ride and I'm sure someone out there will pay the asking price without trouble. -Austin

Here she is in the garage. Took out all the trim pieces that are loose in the interior. Vacuumed and began to hit the bolts with penetrating oil. Lubricating the door handles, hinges, window regulators, wing vents, and all others that I could hit yesterday. Today, ore of the same. Going to focus on the engine and start cleaning some of the crap around the plugs and intake so I don't get sand or muck in the cylinders when I have the plugs out. The more time I spend in this thing, the more I want to get it out on the road. Just a cool-as-heck car. I can't imagine trying to find some of these parts if they were missing (handles to drop the rear tailgate, or the latches that lock the sliding side windows). I am also going to take inventory of what I have and what I need. Fortunately, we are coming into swap-meet season here in NM and they are usually full of misc. parts that no-one can remember what they go to. Here is another shot of it in my garage and how full it is now. I had a full-sized Montero in there until Saturday. This dwarfs that easily. I can't wait to get into it further. Check out the grease pen marking on the firewall. I found another with the same number on the back of the ashtray. I suppose this is some sort of line inspector or make-ready inspector at the final stages of manufacture. Nonetheless, it's cool to see it there and try to track down the remaining marks. Cheers! -Austin

The motor turns easy enough by hand. I agree with the valves sticking. Going to compression test this week before anything else. Honestly, the plans to rebuild the motor are already set. I would love to hear it run first though. The interior is all there, just dismantled. All the door skins need replacing as does all the headliner and most anything that isn’t hard rubber or metal. Surprisingly, all the dash knobs, radio buttons, and climate controls are all there. A few are sticky, but that’s to be expected. More than anything though, I’m dreading coming up with the 6.00 - 18 tires that this cane with originally. That’ll be close to $1500 for all 5 tires. Yikes!

WOW! Awesome car! I love the flowing still of those mid-30's cars. Chryslers were way ahead of their game!

Got her all loaded up and in the garage. All in all, it was a 13-hour ordeal with driving, loading and unloading (which was the sketchiest affair). She's in the garage now so I will begin the planning and prepping stage. I am going to spend a little time getting the motor to start and possible run. I was going to squirt som MM oil down each cylinder and let it sit overnight, pull the gas line from the pump to the tank and stick in in a can of fresh gas. Check the oil to make sure its there and not thick like molasses and slap a new 6-volt on it. Aside from that, is there anything else I should look at before cranking it over for the first time in 40+ years? -Austin

The guy I got it from said it was able to keep up with the 4x4s in its heyday. I believe it based on the off-road type tires it had in the rear.

I like the worn look of the patina on some cars, and if the paint and primer weren't so far gone, I might lean toward keeping it as it sits, but as it is, I think I am going to put it back to an original paint job. Nothing metallic, or wild. Stock paint and color. Also, because of the high-clearance package and tranny it has, I'm leading towards mocking it up to be an ex-National Park Service or Forest Service wagon of the period. Maybe something from the Los Alamos area, given that it's now a New Mexico car and will have NM plates when finished. I liked the idea of making it a Mesa Verde Park service vehicle with its wheels, spare carrier and hitch. It would be fitting based on where it spent it's life, less than 100 yards from the park. I have some period correct (WW2) era shovel and pickaxe. I'm kind of digging this idea with the Los Alamos theme. As best I can tell, the paint color is Cortez Gray, but I cannot confirm until I can research it further. Either way, I'm picking her up tomorrow and am excited to begin the relationship between man and automobile that I have been craving lately. Working on and driving modern vehicles just doesn't have that same flair as these oldies. -Austin

Wow! Awesome video! It's incredible to see this type of historic footage. I wonder what ever happened to the 40' plymouth that made this journey?

Not at all, my man! Matter of fact, I plan to leave the oil drum flooring. Carpet or rubber mat right over it! It's part of the car now.

Thanks for the responses. This also has a few military-type tires on it too. Interestingly enough too, the spare doesn't fit in the spare holder in the trunk and instead has its own mounting point. Here is a picture. I am looking forward to being able to go through it with more time. It's hard to be able to give a full look in 100 degree weather in full sun. I saw enough to know I wanted it though. I'm kind of digging the idea of restoring it as I found it. Keeping all the original equipment. I'd like to rebuild the engine and trans, with possibly hopping up this of flathead. The odometer reads 45,xxx miles, but no way to verify that it hasn't rolled, though I suspect that it hasn't based on the completeness of the car and the fact that it was parked in the late 60's and only used for work around the property. 40 acres near Mesa Verde. The couple I bought it from were friends with the person who owned it before and they drove it through high school in 1962. Very cool couple and I have fallen for this car. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated when I can get a better look at the bits and bobs. Specifically the transmission. And another picture from the front. The FJ40 was already gone by the time I got there to a very happy buyer, I'm sure! Also, behind the passenger door was a '66 Galaxie that looked to be pretty complete, but alas, it was gone too.

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