ratbailey

Love the chop! The downward slope of the roofline gives it a nice fastback look. I see twin carbs, would love to see more pics when you get time...

Last year, I cobbled together an oxy acetylene kit---tanks, Harbor Freight table, Smith Airline torch, gas saver valve, big old Oxweld handle and cutting torch. What a game changer...the usefulness of my shop increased 300%. I won't post pics, because you guys all know what a torch looks like, but here's a thing I made: Panel beater, or, as Trev on Trev's Blog calls it, a "smacky smoover." Made it out of an old furrier's rasp, for filing down horse hooves. Took a bit more of the temper out of the beater part that I would've liked, but it should be fine for what I'll be doing.

52b3b Joe used 225/75/15 on his '48 DeSoto. He didn't say what size rims he used, though I'd assume 5.5 wides, and didn't mention rubbing issues. I have 5.5 rims on my '48, and was planning to go that route, but fate dumped 5 barely used B.F. Goodrich Silvertown white wall bias plys on me, cheap. If you have time before you have to move it, keep checking FB Marketplace...

Here's what I got, 18 bucks from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081PN3C1D/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 There was no way a socket plus wrench was going to fit in that tiny space between the rad support thing and the damper on my '48, and I didn't have a 3/4" drive wrench anyway. So, I hacked off the end of the socket to the bare minimum and welded on a hunk of 1/4" flat stock for a handle. My damper and pulley are two seperate pieces, and there's a ring of six hex head bolts around the big crankshaft nut, the socket is a tight fit.

Thanks! Great...good to know I can squeeze that size into my DeSoto. Trying hard to stifle the 13-year-old in my brain that tells me to put bias plys under there 'cause they look rad.

What a fantastic job you did on this car! I'm going to be doing much of the same on my '48...looks good from 500 ft., but close up, the bad bodywork and paint drives me nuts. Curious to know, what size radials you went with?

I decided to put the clevis back in there because the because the bolt looked to be wearing out the hole in the yoke lever. My guess is that the bolt was slightly harder material than the yoke lever, and the clevis is probably plain unhardened steel, or at least softer. 98 cents for a Pebble Beach point ain't too bad

Don't know if you addressed the mechanical issues yet. Here's a photo of the starter as it came out of my car, you can see what the bracket to the plunger is supposed to look like. Just like yours, the clevis pin and cotter was replaced with a random bolt and nut. You're gonna need to bash one of your stamped plunger bracket pieces back into shape to look like the other one. Also, that square headed thing embedded in the plunger is threaded for adjustment. I believe the info for proper adjustment is in the shop manual. The yoke shoes need to go back in with the rounded part of the shoe pointing toward the gear. I'm still hunting for a suitable boot. I bought one for a '55 Chev that looked like it might work, but it was too small and ripped immediately. For lube, I put a light amount of white lithium on the plunger and other parts...no idea if this is recommended, but figured it can't be worse than what you see in the first photo.

Hey All, I picked up some NOS brake shoes to rivet onto my '48 DeSoto's shoes. However, the majority of them have four big holes drilled at one end of each shoe, right in an area where I need to place two rivets, like the one on the right in this picture: Curious to know...why? Thanks, Art

You can check resistors in the circuit. I think it's worth doing---I'm not a pro, but in my experience with consumer grade electronic stuff that's 60+ years old, carbon comp resistors will sometimes drift higher. Hopefully, the schematic will tell you the tolerances of each resistor, and you can make a call based on that. I've also seen cases where some tech put in a completely wrong value resistor, and I'm glad I put my eyeballs and ohm meter on each resistor and caught it.

The electronics version of "ran when parked" Forgive me if you know this already, but check carbon composite resistors for their value, or better yet, assume they've drifted and just replace them. They're cheap.

Dig it! Love the fastback body style. Are you rebuilding the radio you found? Keep us posted with details on repairs, rebuilds and stuff...

You can do it. I get the feeling you really want to, anyway The trunk is a great place to make mistakes...no one will see it, and you can slather it with undercoating. What everyone already said about videos. CWM just posted a video where he makes a tape template, which is great for getting the contours in something like a floor pan, and figuring out where the shrinks go. Add Make It Custom to your video channel list---Karl is a master, and has lots of tips and tricks for working on a budget. Trev's Blog is another favorite. And Carter Auto Restyling...not only does that guy have serious skills, he manages to do it with something like $200 worth of tools. I'm in the same boat as you, rust wise. The worst of it in my project is right up by the hump, under the X brace, and around the trunk lock area, though I suspect there's plenty lurking under the stainless rocker panel trim. It's driving me nuts to not be able to put the new gas tank in. I got an OA set-up around September, and I've been practicing welding instead of wrenching all winter, when the temperature has been mild enough. I'm no master and never will be, but the results are getting to be predictable, almost to the point where I'm ready to have at it. I also got a front fender from a '62 Buick that I'm going to be practicing metal bumping on...don't want to practice on my project. When it comes time to make the trunk floor, I plan to bash in the ribs by placing the sheet metal over some flat stock, and persuading it with a BFH. I might get fancy and make a hammer form, like Karl shows in one of his videos. Keep us posted!

Nice! Reminds me of Paul Strand's machinery photos. Are you contact printing from large negatives? I'm dying to get back into photography, now that I have space in my new place for a darkroom...

Welcome to the boards! I have the same year and model DeSoto, and though I haven't updated it in awhile, I have a tinkering thread documenting the Incredible Progress I've made in the 3 years it's been sitting in my garage (ha). It's a marathon, not a race, as I keep telling myself. Looks like you have a good starting point there! If I ever reach the point where I need to rebuild the 237, I'd probably look for an industrial block for a few more cubes...they're around, and not too expensive. Have fun with the car, and enjoy your stay here...lots of great info not found elsewhere, and lots of fine, highly knowledgeable folks here! Best, Art

Isn't it funny how a simple job spirals into 9 or 10 simple jobs?

I know, I used your blog for reference when I was doing mine! If I could remember how long I cooked it for (if I remember correctly, I forgot and left it on overnight), or if I had diluted the Simple Green, my opinion on ultrasonic cleaning would be less knee jerk reaction and more scientific, but alas... I have a 70s Carter non B+B carb that I was going to dink with and see if I could get it to work on my DeSoto, maybe I'll dunk it in the ultrasonic for a specific, reasonable amount of time with undiluted Simple Green and see if I get different results.

I let it cook a good long time. I can't honestly say whether it was the ultrasonic, or the Simple Green, or the time in the pot that did it, but from now on, I'm sticking with nasty skin removing chemicals.

I'm guessing that a lot of water either got in there at some point, or a well meaning PO tried to clean it using soap and water. In the 1948 Mopar repair brochure "The Story of the Carburetor," there's a paragraph that states "when water enters the carburetor, it may corrode the zinc parts and form an oatmeal-like mush which may clog the jets." I ruined a carb body by dunking it in an ultrasonic cleaner using Simple Green (degreaser sold in the States, I can't remember if I diluted it or not, no idea what's in it), which came out looking like yours, and seemed to be exactly what was described in the brochure. I tried to pretend it didn't happen, assembled it, and couldn't ever get it to run consistently. I tried scrubbing that junk off, but there's just too many impossible to reach areas, it always came back, so I just gave up. My wreck came with another carb, so I ended up using that one, which is still problematic, and I'm currently working on carb #3, an ebay find that looks like it never saw much use. The inside has some kind of coppery looking finish, like it was anodized. I know a lot of folks swear by the ultrasonic cleaner, but I have a feeling that if any of that original finish was left on my ruined carb before it was ruined, I may have blown it off with the ultrasonic. White vinegar is 90% water, so personally, I'd stick to mineral spirits, Berryman's, Gumout, etc.

Nice numbers, even if oil or carbon might be boosting them a bit! She'll run. Congrats on the starter--I remember how ragged it looked, they must know their business. One of my favorite things is seeing a flathead cough and sputter back to life, so I hope you keep us posted with videos!

Thanks for the kind words, Keith! I'm jealous that you're finding junker parts! If I could've harvested a bunch locally, I would've done that...it's pretty dry around here. Yeah, my kids are going to have a big dumpster party when I'm gone---"...what the hell is this thing? Dad was such a nut..."

I've been eyeing that styIe of hold down, too, wondering if it'd work. The oem hold down seems to have been made out of stamped steel which didn't fare well against battery corrosion, and when you find one on ebay, it's like $75 for a mostly rotted out piece of garbage.

Hey all. While undoing some pretty sketchy repairs on the '48 DeSoto rear axle, I found myself in need of some shims. Someone tried to compensate for a spun bearing by getting rid of all but one shim on one side, and I was afraid I wouldn't have enough to do the job correctly. One single shim on the open market today is about $10. Being the cheap bastid that I am, I set about figuring out how to make my own, and probably spent 4x the amount that would have gotten me the few shims I needed on raw materials. But, I picked up some new skills, dusted off some geometry that was probably taught to me back in HS but I was too busy making eyes at Trish L_______, cut my finger only once, and now I'm swimming in shims and shim sheet stock. Anyhow, first step was to order some shim stock from McMasters-Carr. Got some packages of .007, .010, .012, and .015. A pack of 5 is around 20 bucks, I got two shims to a sheet, so that's about 2 bucks a shim. Or actually, even less than that, considering how much left over shim material there was on each sheet. After cutting out my shim stock into squares, I sandwiched them between two pieces of pine, thusly: Next step was to figure out how to lay out 5 holes on a circle, evenly spaced. I was pretty sure I'd need some of that geometry stuff. This guy explains it well: Next, I traced the shim I had onto paper, and took a lot of measurements with a vernier caliper. At this point, you're probably thinking, "why not just trace it out on paper and use that as a template?" I've done that many times, and the results are never very good, or as good as I'd like. This time, I wanted to see if I could make something that fit pretty close to perfect right away. I also wanted to see if I could bang out 8 or 10 in one shot. So, as you can see in the drawing, I found the center of the big hole, which is pretty close to 3" diameter. Taking lots of other measurements and doing some simple calculations that I won't get into, I found the center of the topmost hole, and the diameter of the larger circle created by the smaller holes that runs through the center of all of them. I could've done all this in a cad program, too, but I don't know how to use one. Baby steps. Next, I had to figure out where exactly to put the other holes. As the guy in the video says, if you know the diameter of your circle, consult the table on pg. 75 of "Machinery's Handbook." I happened to have a copy of "Machinery's Handbook", so I consulted page 75... . 5 holes for a 1" diameter circle is approximately a .588 chord. Multiply that number by the diameter of my particular 5 hole circle, 3.75, and you get 2.205. Set your compass to 2.205, and you should be able to pace off 5 evenly spaced holes. I figured it'd be better to use a piece of shim stock on top of the wood for more accurate layout, so I went ahead and did that. Lacking layout fluid, I scribbled all over it with a sharpie. It might be hard to see, but the Xs on the circle show the exact center of each hole to be drilled. I paced these off with a compass, then center punched each one. To the drill press... Badaboom. Took apart the sandwich, traced the outline of the old shim onto each new shim, snipped with aviator snips. Mine is on the left, the old one on the right. How do they fit? Well, I got sloppy with the drilling. But that said, it only took some minor tweaking of two holes with a round file for each one to fit perfectly. In the past, with the old trace and drill with a hand drill method, I would've made a mess out of everything. Hope this helps someone out.

Cool. I'm pleasantly surprised to have wider rims, which opens up the options for radials on my heap, but on the other hand, I had gone ahead and bought a rim from French Lake to use as a spare, not thinking I had anything other than stock '48 rims on my car, so now I'm stuck with a useless rim. My heirs are going to have a hell of a yard sale, if there's even a market for my junk when I croak. The Kelsey Hayes are a bit better in that they aren't made in two halves, like the stock rim, creating a seam up the center of the rim, which I imagine might leak if used without a liner when going tubeless.

Hey y'all. Took the wheels to the tire shop to have them pry off the crusty 30 year old radials on my '48 DeSoto. I was surprised to not see the DDCP logo or the Mopar part number inside the rim, but "Kelsey Hayes" etched into them. They're 5.5", according to the parts manual, they switched to that size from 4.5 sometime late in production. So, I'm wondering, did these originally come with the car, or are they aftermarket? They have the hubcap clips. Thanks, Art