1949plymouthdeluxe

I can't imagine 1000 miles in my car. 3 speed manual and no way I would drive it 1000 miles on the freeway. Its generally good for 55MPH and that's pushing it. If I did something like this the route would have to be quieter 2 lane roads.

My first indication that something might be up was that the lady behind me in a Subaru kept on backing away further and further. I figured maybe she was just worried that the weird old car would break down or something. It's only when I stopped at the stoplight and all the smoke caught up and blew into the windows that I realized that crap something was really not right. Drove it all around today and it seems like it's fine now. It's nice being able to know I can park places where it's not going to roll away now. It's very handy.

I almost decided not to post this because it is embarrassing. When I got my Plymouth the brake lining for the parking brake was completely gone. So I ordered a new shoe. It came in the mail about a week ago and yesterday I got around to putting it on. Shop manual really did not go into any sort of detail about how to install this. And I didn't really find any instructions or posts online about how to do it either so I was kind of shooting blind. And when you look at this thing it's not super straightforward looking. There's several springs, some cabling, and a number of adjustments. Anyway I get it on there. And it seems like the car is parking well and able to not roll away on a hill which is a good thing. I drive around the block once or twice and it seems like all is well. At this point I'm pretty confident in myself and I decided to go to the grocery store. I get maybe about a mile or so down the road and there is smoke now appearing under the car. Immediately pull over, it's clear that the emergency brake is dragging. Furthermore, when I looked under there there was teeny little flames popping out. That is when I get the fire extinguisher out. It was an older fire extinguisher that had shown full but after being in the car for 2 weeks to my surprise was showing it needed to be recharged. So I sat there looking at these little flames hoping they would go out so that I wouldn't have to see whether or not anything came out of the fire extinguisher. So the flames go out. I let it cool. And then I limped home. Long story short previous person didn't know what they were doing and had installed an additional bolt on the other side of the brake shoe which was not supposed to be there at all. I wasn't aware of that because again the shop manual didn't really show a lot of detail about how this thing was supposed to be installed. This was causing the brake shoe to bind tightly to the drum off of the transmission. Didn't really do any damage. Brake line looked a little bit discolored and that was about it. So anyway I'd get it installed on there correctly and all is well in the world. I guess the moral of the story is make sure that you've got a fire extinguisher and that it is fully charged. I'm going to get a brand new one today. And also, maybe not a bad idea to stay a little bit more local when you're testing out things like I was.

Thanks for all the recommendations. I've been meaning to do a compression check on the engine for a while anyway. In the meantime I've been driving it for a few days and not really seeing a change. So I'm probably just overreacting.

I've. been using Pertronix kits for years. But the key thing is that some people don't fully read the instructions. You HAVE to remove whatever ballast resistor or resistor wire is in the circuit. These also do not like having the ignition switch on with the engine not running. The coil also has to be 1.5 ohms. So if you leave stuff in the circuit that sticks additional resistance in the mix that can screw up the module.

I've had very good luck with these electronic ignition modules. They are VERY easy to install and work well. My Mercury instantly ran better after I added one to it years ago. The only sort of crappy thing is that the 6 volt, pos. ground version is more spendy. Any of you guys use these on your cars?

I've thought about that. I think the car sat for some time before I got it. I've been driving it regularly and a few things have loosened up a bit on occasion. Sort of like the other day I had to tighten a bolt on the fuel pump to get it to stop leaking. Prob do as you said- snug up the bolts a bit- and see if it stops. Its such a small amount of oil its not really worth it if it is indeed leaking. I'm being OCD...

The carb gets pulled after I overhaul the one that's on its way so I'll get a chance to see whats going on inside. If it doesn't get worse I'm going to leave it alone. Its not burning any oil and the spark plugs look fine. As an old friend of mine used to say- oil is cheap. I just wonder where its coming from.

I've owned this car for about 4 months now and it seems like it runs fine. I've always noticed this little dark area around the intake area. Didn't really pay that much attention to it until yesterday when I had a leak in my fuel pump and happened to be shining my flashlight around there a little bit more. That makes me think that there's a valve that is either sticky or not closing properly. Or something else that's worse. So.. if the car seems to run and drive fine should I just say screw it and keep driving it? I feel like my Mercury likes leaking things too. But I'm not as familiar with these engines. What do y'all think could be causing this?

This was years ago. But what I recall when I had the rad rebuilt in my Mercury was that the shape and form of the coolant channels was important. The radiator came back from the shop with brand-new coolant channels that had "waves" in them. The idea being that the coolant would take just a bit longer to travel through the channels and spend more time in front of the incoming cool air and fan. My old cars have always run a bit cool compared to modern cars. That's just how they are. I am running it seems around 175 degrees with the Plymouth. My Mercury runs cooler then that. Never had a problem.

I'm going to try to run the car out of gas or almost out if gas because there's some stuff I saw while I was under there that I did not like. One length of steel gas line looks kind of corroded. It's in the area that goes under the radiator which for years has had overflow coolant run all over it. So that probably explains the corrosion And then one length of the rubber tubing looks kind of ratty too. I'd like to replace those. But that's going to be awhile because this car gets surprisingly much better fuel economy than my other old car. Now that I think of it with it dripping a drop of gasoline every 45 seconds or so over the course of several days I wonder how many gallons of gasoline just evaporated in my garage? It's a good thing it's been hot and I've had the ventilation fan going 24 hours a day...

Well I feel like a dumbass. The reason it stank like gas was because it was indeed leaking gasoline. I jacked up the car a little bit this evening and looked a little closer and there was a little bit of gas occasionally dripping off of a bolt on the bottom of the fuel pump. So I just gave it a little bit of a snug with a wrench and it stopped. I'm guessing all the hot weather probably made stuff expand or contract. Anyway I just turned on the fans and now the garage smells regular again so yay. I'll go ahead and rebuild the carburetor that arrives. It'll be good to learn how to work on it. And then I'll have a spare if the other one craps out I was getting a little bit worried. My wife comes back in approximately 4 days. She would not be happy if the garage stank like raw gasoline.

Not a bad idea. Its pretty easy to get at the sender on this one. But it also doesn't really stink in the trunk. I've been rewiring the tail lights and its not really stinking in there. Don't you just love these old cars...

Went and checked and its not pressurized at all so no issue there. The plan is to overhaul both carbs and have one set aside. These don't to be much more than a glorified lawn mower carb. That way I'll also learn to familiarize with these carbs. I will check the rubber hoses attaching to the steel lines later. Years ago my Mercury started mysteriously losing gas and a short length of rubber hose was rotten and gas was slowly leaking and evaporating from it.

That would make sense. Makes me wonder if I should just unloosen the gas cap a smidge to release pressure. When I worked on tractors and small engines they too would sometimes do this, where the sun or heat would cause pressure to build up and if the needle wasn't seating and sealing right it would do that same thing- overflow. Anyway, I found a used carb on eBay. I will rebuild it and install as the one on it looks like its been "weeping" for awhile.