TodFitch

Sounds like your vehicle was equipped with "Silent U" spring shackles. Basically a threaded bushing that threads both the shackle and the eye of the spring leaf together. You should be able to find information about installation and removal searching these forums. And a quick web search tells me that Rare Parts makes them for at least a number of years of models.

Just noticed the copyright information on the bottom of each page of the forum shows 2018-1998 I hadn't realized the forum has been around that long. Pretty impressive!

I know nothing about a metal cup there, but the rubberized cork gasket in the photo looks like the one used between the block and my distributor.

When did having synchronizers on first gear become standard? Certainly some time after the '63 Plymouth I learned to drive on was built. . . In any case, it was pretty common to either wait a while between when you stepped on the clutch to try to engage 1st. Or so as Don suggests, move the gear lever to one of the synchronized speeds (2nd or high) to stop things spinning in the transmission then move the lever to first. So second nature to me that I forget that people born/raised/learned to drive in a more recent era wouldn't know to do that.

Sounds similar to a Netgear WiFi camera system my sister put in. Not a bad idea. There seems to be a number of options out there over a big range of prices. How did you decide on the D-Link unit?

The "Operator's Manual" for my 1933 Plymouth lists ethylene glycol as an antifreeze in addition to alcohol. That leads me to believe that any use of alcohol after the 1930s was simply because the car's owners were behind the times. Or maybe the alcohol was so cheap compared to ethylene glycol that it was worth the hassle of continuously adding/adjusting the solution each week during winter (many people felt that you had to switch to plain water only during summer).

One nice thing about having ported our home number to voice over internet (VoIP) a while ago: Our provider has "call treatments" where I can eally customize how incoming calls are handled. We moved since we got our home number and since most of these scammers try to look local by using your phone's area code they are easy to identify (unknown caller from old area code). I simply send all those calls directly to voice mail. Our phone never rings when those scammers try to call and they almost never leave a message. In fact, I can't recall any of them ever leaving a message. I wish I could deal with the scammers who call my cell phone the same way but the cell phone company is brain dead with regards to advanced call handling.

You might be over thinking this. In my case, my local hardware store only had one grit available for the sandpaper they sold in sticky back rolls so that is what I used. I think you can go with a very course grit as you are doing shaping, not finishing.

Since about 2012 Prius cars have had a whiny noise maker installed behind the grill that makes speed dependent noise up to about 20 MPH. It is to warn pedestrians of your approach. I've read that the Feds will be requiring something like that on all electric vehicles starting sometime in the near future.

And make sure your shoes have been ground/sanded to match the drum's diameter. Based on your area code I assume you are in northern or central Louisiana. Maybe there is a member near there who has either a Miller or Ammco tool and can pipe up.

I believe you can still get a copy of the build card from Chrysler Historical. The one for my '33 Plymouth shows the serial number, engine number and body number. Turns out that my car is "numbers matching". But I don't think that any judged event by AACA or Plymouth Owners Club, etc. care about that prior to the muscle car era. They only care if the engine is the correct year for the car.

Maybe in your own garage. I ended up getting a roll of sticky back sand paper from my local hardware store. For each drum I cut a length of paper long enough to fit around the inside diameter and stuck it to the inside of the drum. Then I took the shoes for that drum, marked them up with a felt tip marker so I could see progress and rubbed them against the sandpaper until the marks were sanded off and the shoe(s) fit the drum. Made a big improvement on the feel of the brake pedal and the stopping distance. After that I got access to a shoe arcing machine but haven't bothered to use that as the hand sanded fit has been adequate even though the thickness of the sanding paper was more than the spec for matching the drum diameter so the fit was not as good as a machine could have done.

FWIW, a pipe wrench will have one jaw that can rock slightly and both jaws will have serrated teeth to grip the pipe. The wrench shown in usually called a “monkey wrench” and is designed to be used on nuts and bolts. There were a number of push type oilers that were used to add oil to various fittings on old mechanical devices including early cars. A lot of those fittings look a lot like grease fittings (oil fittings usually don't have a check ball in them). And later shade tree mechanics often clogged up their spring shackles, etc. by trying to grease them instead of using a tool like in your photo to oil them. Often the grease would clog the passage and the shackle or whatever then ran with no lubrication until if failed. The oiler in your photo is smaller than the ones I've seen, so it might have been designed for use on something other than an early car. I think it is the even rarer ambidextrous type. “Stilson” or “monkey wrench” here in the States. . . But I can’t see one of those, or even a photo of one, without being reminded about a sentence from The Restoration of Antique & Classic Cars by a couple of British gents first published in the late 1950s. With respect to wrenches: “American-type adjustable spanner”. I'd normally call that a “Crescent Wrench” but recall being burned by that on the first job out of school where I was sent to the tool crib to get a Crescent wrench and the fellow behind the counter, in on the joke, went through a great show of pulling out the various adjustable wrenches they stocked, looking carefully at each and saying, “No, this is a Snap-On“,. . . “No, this is a Proto”, . . .etc. ending, finally, with “we don't have any Crescent wrenches, will one of these other brands be okay?”

I have a Rare Parts drag link on my '33 Plymouth. Quality is great. The original was made with thin walled tubing, Rare Part's replacement uses a heavier material and looks like it should be "better than original" as far as service life, etc. Of course the drag link on my '33 is a totally different design than on your trunk so your mileage may vary.

You could probably could find a "dual action" fuel pump, like the one on your old 65 Rambler, to provide vacuum to the wiper.

You just need to drive the truck more to get the muscle memory working. Over the years I've gone between vehicles "3 on the tree", various four and five speed floor mounted manual transmissions and, of course, automatic transmission vehicles. (the automatics even varied: Early Mopar push button, column mounted lever, center console control and even ones with a knob on the dash.) Seems like going back and forth hasn't been an issue in the vehicles I drive enough. Only times I've had the "oops, wrong gear" syndrome has been in rental cars where I didn't have enough road time to become familiar with it. Seems like just getting in the a car that I am familiar with automatically flips a switch with respect to my "muscle memory" and the shifts just happen. Going into my '33 that includes automatically double clutching without thinking about it. I suspect that I am not much different from others with regard to how just getting into the driver's seat of a vehicle I'm familiar with gets my mind and reactions working for that vehicle. Location of ignition, location of transmission control/shifter, windshield wiper control, etc. So just get out and drive it more.

Braking is probably the most scary thing for me on a SoCal freeway. Tiny drums without power assist, and with a small tire contact patch on the pavement, don't compete well with four wheel power assisted anti-lock discs with a large rubber contact area on the pavement. My trick on that is to find a 18 wheeler and follow it: A loaded 18 wheeler has about the same acceleration and braking as my car, in California they are limited to 55 MPH which means they typically go about 64 MPH which my car can do, and it is big so people see it. There is at least one other person in SoCal with a 41 Plymouth that takes theirs on the freeway. I posted this in another thread a few weeks ago. I have no idea how stock the running gear is but based on the tires fitted it hasn't be updated a huge amount.

Yes, politics are banned. I guess my warning earlier in the thread was not taken to heart by everyone. I've now deleted the posts that led to the warning and will be ready with the delete key for any new political postings.

Ficken Wiper Service seems to be the one most people mention. My understanding is that it is now run by the son of the founder, not sure if that affects the speed, cost or quality of the service. I've run across a reference to another fellow who rebuilds wiper motors based on the west coast, I think out of Oregon. But I don't have the contact information for him at hand.

My local hardware store has a selection of grommets, might have one as large as 1 1/2". Have you checked your local hardware stores?

Getting off topic here, but I have that same issue. The coordinate grid system we use in my area for search and rescue is UTM and the measurements are in meters. So I've trained myself to start using meters and kilometers when hiking. But elevation above sea level in meters just does not work in my head even if I can "kinda sorta" convert 30m of elevation difference into about 100ft in my head.

Sounds like it is almost too good to be true. Congratulations!

Don't know how to do it, but the manual says you bend the linkage between the Bourdon tube and the indicating needle. Don't try to bend the Bourdon tube itself.

It is my understanding that during much of the 1930s Plymouth was a couple dollars more than the comparable Ford or Chevy. I think they thought that having a "Chrysler engineered" car made it desirable enough to price a bit higher. Apparently Plymouths had higher resale values than Ford or Chevy perhaps for the same reason.

Agree this is getting political. I'm leaving these posts in for now but any further posts along this line will be deleted (along with the three I am leaving for now).