austinsailor

Truth is, he could probably put it on the bay and get his price, maybe more, from someone who only saw the pictures. Then the buyer will put $1000 in shipping to send it across the country. That guy will likely mess with it for a year, then put it back on the bay when he gets bored with it, trying to get his $4500 back, along with his $1000 plus whatever he spent. That will repeat until it hits the top rail. That is what we are competing with.

You can easily check if voltage is going through the dimmer switch with a cheap volt meter. Check the input to make sure voltage is getting to the switch, if it is then check the outputs. You could also pull the wires off and bypass the switch to see if the lights come on. I agree it's the most likely problem. If it is the switch, get some spray electrical contact cleaner and spray it in the switch. Keep spraying and working the switch (much easier if you remove it from the car) until it works ok.

It'll need tires -$600 to $800 Battery -$50 probably brakes and cylinders all around - $200 - $500 fuel system cleaned - ??? If I bought it I would expect to put at least $1500 in it before it could go on the road, then see how it drove. This doesn't include any upholstery, steering or other things you can't see. Still not a bad start. You could put half the asking price in a rusty one just getting dents and floor pans in good shape. Then the rest in the drive train making it usable. Then still have all the above to do.

Little behind the power curve, wasn't I?!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200632075862?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%3A80%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_from%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dm570.l2736%26_nkw%3D200632075862%26_fvi%3D1&_rdc=1 ebay item 200632075862

If I'm worried about mileage, I drive my 2006 Insight, gets 60 MPG, more if I dog it. If I want to have fun, I drive one of my 2 old mopars.

Don, a 63B20 was a company level wheeled vehicle mechanic. They would replace components only, like generators, carbs and starters, as well as pack the wheel bearings. they would not replace motors or tear into them. A 63b30 would be a higher rank, with more supervisor duties, like spec 5. A 63C20 would be a similar track mechanic. I was both. Tank guy would remove motors as a unit, but that was a stage of the maintanance. They also would not be able to tear a motor down. The guys who would do that would be at the depot level, I don't know their mos code, but in reality all the guys doing this peacetime would be civilians. Part of the confusion may come from the prefix of your serial # as a soldier. A draftee started with US, as in US 55869xxx ( You don't need to know my whole #!), and a guy who enlisted started with RA. For regular Army, I think. Sometime after I got out in 1967 and went back in in 1971 they went entirely to your ssan.

Sure. is this just for pictures, or do you have usable floorboards to sell? And no, I haven't tried the plymouth dr, I'll have to have a look. Thanks.

Mackster, were these the same seller? I gather they were. I see buyer after buyer leaving great feedback, but looking at the pictures, assuming they are supposed to be the actual parts, they do not look the same as the floors in my car by far. And you are right, they do not have holes for pedals. Guess I'll be making my own. Thanks, Gene

I've had good luck cleaning up rings with sea foam. Take a spray can with that little tube, snake it in the spark plug hole and into the cylinder, squirt a bunch in. Do it every day or two for as long as you like. Sea Foam will soften the carbon and dissolve varnish. I've used it on my 53 I am working on and it has cleaned it up to where it has 110 lbs on each cylinder and no smoke at all. I have taken pistons out of old (80 years old) outboards that didn't even appear to have rings, looked like just a solid piece of metal, and after soaking for a couple weeks ended up with clean pistons and rings I could reuse. It won't help replace wear, but it can help clean up the crap that makes the rings stick and not seal up.

She's been on Leno several times. Quite interesting, as opposed to the nerds always hawking movies about to come out.

I need to replace some floor parts in my 53 Plymouth. I'm considering buying them from vendor classicparts4u on ebay, item #140735786029 and item # 200738255640 Has anyone used their parts or do you have any feedback for me? Do they fit well, are the similar to the original floors? Thanks

Just to give you an idea how much oil will pass through a small hole I'll tell you a little story. Back in '71 I bought the 65 ford station wagon with a 289 V-8 that had been the fire chief's car. I'd worked at the station where they had it serviced and I was the one who serviced it, changing the oil regularly. They traded it in and I needed a car to move to New Jersey, having re-joined the army. I took it for a test drive and drove by the chief's house. He told me it had been a fine car and they'd had no trouble with it. At 60,000 miles I figured I had a good one. I bought it. About 3000 miles later it lost power and almost wouldn't pull itself down the road. I figured out it was a timing problem, the timing chain had slipped. I tore it down and found a mess. The short version was, it had never been driven long enough at any time to warm it up completely. The chief would drive a few blocks to a building, park, and inspect it. Then drive a couple blocks to lunch. Then a couple blocks to the fire station. Even with 3000 mile oil changes, the entire inside was just solid crud. Pull off a valve cover and you had a black shape of a valve cover looking at you. It took a drill to get into the oil passages. They hot tanked it for about a week, took .010 off the journals, .010 over pistons, put it back together. Ran well, but the oil, which should go through the lifters and up the pushrods, didn't. Took lifters apart, never could figure out why. But it wouldn't last long with no oil on the top end, and I got tired getting out and pouring oil on them. So, redneck engineering kicked in. I took the oil sending unit out, plumbed in T and a very small copper line, then ran it through the valve covers and drilled a tiny (1/16", I think) hole over each rocker. Should work, right? Started it up, and before I could hardly figure out what was going on, it had pumped the entire crankcase of oil into the valve covers and it was spewing out the fill and breather! By the time I could reach around and shut off the key all the oil had been pumped out of the crankcase. This was maybe 10 or 15 seconds. So, don't underestimate how much oil can go though a small hole. And this was cold! Oh, you're probably wondering how I recovered from that. I soldered up the fitting solid, took that 1/16" drill and made a tiny hole in the fitting to meter it. It worked, the valves got oiled and I drove it another 30k miles. Took it to Germany and drove it all over Europe, sold it to another guy who put some more miles on it.

I'm strong, but not that strong. It followed me home as soon as I could find a friend to haul it. http://www.austinsailor.net/47_dodge/47dodge.html

That is far shorter than a 128". This is a 128".

You're a better man than me. I got it out, but nowtwithout removing the floor panel. I'd removed most of the shifting rods, twisted the thing all around and finally figured I'd better just go at it from the top. Wasn't too bad after removing the panel in the floor.

here are some real time costs I've seen recently. Engine rebuild at a local machine shop - new pistons, crank grind etc, assembled $1600 clutch, pressure plate rebuild $80, flywheel resurface $30 brakes all around, all new cylinders, lines and shoes $500 all new seals in rear axle (5) about $100 (no labor)

They don't drive on the roads I do!

Please get the number of the seal for us. Recently I posted that a $5 seal would solve this problem and I got some flack for it.

thanks. Something just came up and I won't be able to look at it again until Friday night or Saturday, but at least I know what should move and what shouldn't.

So is there another e-clip on the other side I can't see for the clutch? Remove it and slide the clutch pedal to the left? And below the brake pedal swivel point is the rod into the master cylinder. I've got to clean it up some more, but I assume it has a keeper of some sort and it gets freed to allow the brake pedal to slide to the right to come free? Or can I remove it completely before removing the pedal as your description sounds? Not a lot of working room there - wish the engineers had to work on this stuff!

I'm trying to get it off to put on a new one. I guess this is the time a factory service manual would come in real handy, but I haven't found one yet. The pedals rotate on a shaft through the forward end of the master cylinder. The right side has an E-clip,I had hoped the shaft would just push through leaving the pedals and all the hardware behind. It hasn't worked. Is my shaft just stuck, is there more to it, is there a secrete way to do this? Removing the top of the pedals doesn't help, the arms are too long for it to go down and remove as an assembly. Any pointers?

I'm not sure how close a 47 is, but here are pictures of fixing mine. There were 3 layers of cab metal that overlapped where the cab mount bolt goes through. I cut back on each layer until I had good metal, then pieced in the replacement a layer at a time. If you look close you can see the cab mount hole in the metal. http://www.austinsailor.net/47_dodge/page8.html

Got to mess with it a little more late this evening. Got the front stripped and ready for new brakes. Of more interest, I changed the fluid in the rear end. I've drained a few dozen really old rear ends over the years. They were all filled with really black heavy oil with that old smell. This one had the old smell, but the oil was close to new looking. I think that is another sign the mileage shown is real. I'm going to change the transmission fluid as well, but I'm not sure what you should put in an overdrive. A search brings up a link to a page from a Borg Warner manual that says straight mineral oil, between 40 and 50 weight, or transmission oil of 80 or 90 weight, depending on driving conditions. That was written many years ago and "straight 40 weight mineral oil" might not have the same meaning today. Would this include any non multi grade engine oil, like 40 wt, not 15-40, for example? Old fashioned 90 weight gear oil? Detergent or non detergent motor oil? The only thing real clear is not to use a hypoid gear oil. I have a couple ODs and it would probably be in my best interest to find out what it really should have in it.

Go to a good bearing supplier with the old one, or your parts. They should be able to find it after measuring it. NAPA has found several for me.