TodFitch

Yikes! Glad to hear that you aren't seriously hurt.

The knock downs were all the pieces of the car (or at least most, I think sometimes the interior was not included) boxed up for export to be assembled at the destination country.

To fix the float you need to do two things: 1) find the hole(s) and 2) get the gas out. The way I've done that in the past is to immerse the float in hot water (don't use a gas stove!). The heat will evaporate the gas and pressurize the float. You should see bubbles of gas vapor coming out of the hole(s). Mark them. And remove the float from the hot water when the bubble slow down (gas is gone). Don't let it cool in the water as you don't want it to suck water back into through the hole. Now solder up the hole(s) marked. Check it again for leaks in hot water. Repeat as required until no more leaks.

Yes Bill, I would like a copy of the Excel file. You can click on my email address at the top of any page at http://www.ply33.com/ (I have it encoded in Javascript in a way that I think will keep spammers from harvesting it and I don't know of a way to do that here other than the private message stuff.) Thanks! Tod

Been going on since the 1950s. Reputed to be the largest antique parts flea market in the world. It the AACA's national fall meet always sponsored by the Hershey Region. For a history see http://hersheyaaca.org/meethistory.html Only time I was there was when I lived on the East Coast in the 1973-77 time frame. I guess I might have bumped into you back then.

Lots of good information here. Did the PDF come from Chrysler Historical or did someone else take the data from Chrysler Historical and key it in?

I've heard that it is due to ultraviolet light. My almost 9 year old "daily driver" show more problems with this than my wife's almost 12 year old car. Hers is garaged while mine is in the driveway so the old Plymouth can be in the garage. Same brand car, so I am guessing that the materials in the plastic are similar so the main difference is how many hours of exposure to the sun they've had.

Ditto RobertKB on being careful with the pressure when checking the radiator. It might not ruin the radiator but it could leave you looking for a shop that can repair the damage done by the first shop's "testing". Been there, done that. Fortunately the second shop I found was skilled enough the get the tanks back to the correct shape.

Just remember that the pistons travel in pairs (#1 and #6 together, #2 and #5 together, #3 and #4 together). So where ever #1 is in the sequence, #6 will be in the same position on the crank and 180° out on the cam/ignition order. That means that it will be in the same position in the second half of the firing order where its partner was in the first half:: 1-?-?-6-?-?. Same for 2,5 and 3,4. So you only have to figure out the first half of the sequence and the other half just follows. So what is the one to fire after #1? If you want to alternate between the front of the engine and the rear so things are balanced it can only be #4 or #5. Don't know why you'd pick 5 over 4 but it seems that most 6 cylinder engines did. Everything else is now fixed and you have to have 1-5-3-6-2-4, no other choice is possible from the physical configuration of the crank and the four cycle nature of the motor. It is probably my twisted brain, but visualizing the crank and how the pistons move is easier for me than remembering some "too young, too old, just right" nmemonic.

Depends on the year: The filter was standard on my car. If you aren't going to have the filter on the car it would be better to plug the holes in the block than to run a straight piece of tubing from the oil gallery to the pan drain. On your "newer" (post mid-to-late '33) engines the pressure relief valve should block the flow but just in case you might want to avoid a potential failure mode.

The ones on the similar year Plymouth cars are available at NAPA. Do you know the original Chrysler part number that you are looking for? Might be the same as one of the car ones.

Yep. 2v drop across a junction with the 10 or 15 or so amps your headlights are drawing is a lot of heat. Very likely a fire waiting (but not for long) to happen. And badly cooking whatever it is before actually igniting it.

Part number doesn't match up with those in Group 20 for the pre-WW2 Plymouths (neither cars nor trucks). But that is a great site and a bunch of the parts look like ones that could be appropriate for early Plymouths. Thanks for posting the link!

It doesn't even need to be a hacked account. If I spent a few minutes digging to get your email address I could send out spam to a million addresses and list your email as the return address. How'd you like to get a million legitimate bounce messages? The bounce messages would be from different senders, probably none of them on spam black lists so there is a very good chance that your ISP would deliver them to you...

Please don't do that! The return (reply to) address is one of the three: 1) Non-existent so you'll get a non-deliverable response to your bounce. 2) Some poor bloke who's email has been discovered who will be inundated by bounced mail. Actually this is sometimes done intentionally to overload the poor bloke's mailbox. 3) The return address is actually the spammer. Very small chance of that but I guess it is possible. This is the only case where your reaction might do some good, but it is a very, very, very rare case.

Chrysler engineering codes were letter based back in that era. Samples: M-> 1927-28 Chrysler "62" P -> 1928-29 Chrysler "65" Q -> 1928 Chrysler-Plymouth R -> 1928-29 Chrysler "75" U -> 1929 Plymouth V -> 1929-31 Chrysler "70" W -> 1929-30 Chrysler "77" Starting (at least on Plymouth) in 1931 they prefixed the engineering code with the line (P for Plymouth, D for Dodge, C for Chrysler, T for truck, I for industrial, S for DeSoto). These were initially letter codes (1931 Plymouth is a PA, '32 is a PB, '33 has PC and PD, '34 has PE, PF and PG) with a switch to numbers in 1937 (P1 & P2). The Plymouth four cylinder engine came out of the earlier Chrysler four cylinder line that Plymouth replaced. And that, in turn, was derived from the Maxwell four cylinder engine. It was radically updated in 1930 (Plymouth engineering code 30-U) to have a water pump and a mechanical fuel pump. The four cylinder was replaced by the L-6 engine in 1933. It is reputed that the '33 Plymouth six engine was derived from an earlier DeSoto engine but I haven't seen definitive proof of that and the Plymouth advertising of the era claims everything was new. The '33 and '34 Plymouth six visibly differs from later one by not having the full length water jackets and is a narrower block so it takes a different head gasket than later Plymouths.

First car being the family car when I learned to drive (except ours was tan and there were no where as many children in our family): Or the first car I bought on my own back in 1973:

Looking great!

I don't have personal experience with -20°C or -30°C with any car, so I can't answer first hand but a quick web search turns up a number of comments on Prius forums from Canadians who say they work just fine. Not sure where your every 10 miles for a city or town comes into play: I get generally get 350 to 400 miles on a tank before the low fuel warning light tells me I should put in 7 or 8 gallons of gas. On the highway it can be up to 500 miles before the low fuel indicator starts to blink. Usually I have to stop before that to deal with my bladder. If you need to drive on unplowed roads the Prius is no good. Not due to the hybrid drive train but because of the low ground clearance. For a thin layer of ice or snow its okay, I take mine to the mountains for skiing most weekends in winter so I have some experience there. But if there is more than 4 or so inches of unplowed snow you're going to need more ground clearance than you've got. There are now hybrid SUVs now that would deal with that. I agree. I wonder about that too and don't see how the still spinning conventional drivetrain is going to be doing anything good. Aren't some automatics setup where the lubricating pumps are off the input shaft? Seems like having the engine off and spinning the drive shaft could be bad.

Not trying to start an argument. And I am sure your experience is valid. It just tells me there is something going on there that I don't understand.

I don't understand this sentence. What are you advocating here? Tell that to the people who've been driving dependable hybrid cars for over a decade now. Not sure when the Honda Insight came on the market but I know that Toyota was delivering Prius cars in the fall of 2000. Do we need them to be old enough to qualify for antique license plates before we call the technology proven?

Not to doubt you (too much) but I don't understand the physics you are describing. As long as the lines are not ballooning out under pressure it doesn't seem like it should matter what the diameter is as long as it is enough to carry the volume of fluid needed to extend the wheel cylinder pistons without too much back pressure. I can imagine that smaller diameter lines would be easier to bleed. But once properly bled I don't see why there should be a difference.

Not sure where you found that but searching I came up with this: http://abcnewsradioonline.com/business-news/this-could-be-big-turn-any-car-into-a-hybrid.html Sounds like "almost any car" would be one with rear disc brakes with enough clearance between the brake mechanism and the wheel.

Don't know about your later truck, but on my older Plymouth there is a banjo fitting that is bolted to the rear cylinders and the brake line goes into that. Maybe your truck is that way too.