Ulu

Hey there Paul, Since my wife broke her knee she couldn't chase me on the bike, so I've only been riding when the grandkids come over for birthdays. Except for the youngest two, they're all driving and starting college now, so their interest in skating has vanished. Mine is improving again, however I have put on some 15 lbs and will be fighting to loose it. So is the Plymouth wagon roadworthy now? It's probably been 4 years since I saw it in the garage. The pickup was almost together....

Hey You guys... It's been over two years since I logged in here last, and lots has happened. Unfortunately, exactly nothing has happened to the P15 except new rust. Well, I did push it around on its cart, but not one wrench has been turned in this time. So I can't recall where I left off in my ranting and pontificating, but my mom passed away, wife broke her knee, my wife and I have both retired, traveled a bit, and started working on the house. I had quit flying but then had eye surgery. I see OK now and am a crack shot at 200 yds. I was going to resume flying, but my flying partner lost his medical so I never have. Instead I resumed target shooting. A lot of remodeling has been done to the house and property since my wife retired, and all this left no time for my hobby cars (or aircraft!) Discovering some termites extended the duration of the remodeling, and we spent a lot on appliances and landscaping. I've been re-arranging my garage and planning a shop. I joined the local rifle club and started shooting a lot. I had quit when I got out of college in '75, and never owned more than one piece in all that time, but my flying buddy got a firearms license and I started fixing old guns. I recently bought a .308 Ruger Precision and I've been tuning that up. I've been teaching my wife and grandkids to shoot .22s and .38s. Due to the market boom it looks like I will be able to afford a new workshop and carport, and I might be able to hire out the whole construction. I've been waiting for the new shop to get back on the Plymouth, and as soon as I straighten up my garage a bit more and fix the clutch on my motorcycle I'll get the workshop going. By fall, I should finally have inside workspace for Edith d' Plymouth. In the nonce I've taken stock of what I want to do, and I've decided that if I want a restored P15 I will just buy one. Mine was built from parts of other cars and can never really be restored. I've decided that if I'm going to work on this car it will be a full custom job, and I'm pretty much decided on a 2-passenger roadster. I have 3 other vehicles with roofs. I want to cut this one off. 2015 and 2020:

I drove my old P 15 Club Coupe up and down to Yosemite and Kings Canyon and the Giant Sequoia Forest. It was NOT stock having a carburetor from a slant 6, a glasspack muffler, and a lightly milled head, front and rear lowered with staggered low profile Michelin sport radial tires, & 3-speed overdrive from the later Flathead Plymouths + 3.90 gears. I had the same problems. Handling was a fabulous going downhill, but it was hell on the brakes. When going downhill you simply have to take it out of OD or relegate yourself to abusing the brakes. The only alternative would be changing gear ratios and tire sizes to try and get a more favorable Cruise ratio for these roads. Normally I think 4:10 gears would be called for. This would allow the overdrive to kick up without the car speeding as much. Anyhow I was very happy with the performance of my car as far as handling on mountain roads and I had spent a lot of time changing all the bushings, King Pins and steering gear in that vehicle. I also had high pressure KYB gas shocks all the way around and the rear sway bar from a 74 Thunderbird. I had removed all the packaging from the rear springs, made my own silencers and clamping. I also switched to a Spicer U joint drive shaft as I was not happy about the high torque performance of those Detroit cup joints.

I'm not sure about the construction of the Cokers but when they added belts to the bias ply tire and came out with the belted bias tire that was a big deal for high-speed stability in heavy vehicles. Until they started making radials, that was the state-of-the-art. I definitely preferred the ride of the bias ply tires but the radials lasted longer.

If you think the radial tires are making your car wander try pumping them up a little more or letting out a little more air to see what happens to that effect. The more you pump them up the more you can feel the loose things in the front end as being distinct from wandering of the tires.

Who remembers when they invented the first Tire designed to resist squirm?

Regarding the original topic of radial tires on an old Mopar, I would suggest that if you are having bad handling with bias ply tires then it might be those particular tires; because I had excellent ones which I thought made the car ride better than radials. Unless your wandering goes completely away buy mounting radial tires I would advise you to have your kingpins checked carefully and maybe replaced, because they are the major source of shimmy on these cars.

Clean white rags and Dot 3 brake fluid will make white wall tires look like brand new. People have told me this is bad for the tires but if brake fluid is bad for rubber I don't know why we're putting rubber pieces inside of brakes? Anyhow just keep rubbing with brake fluid and a clean white Rag and don't rub the dirty stuff around in circles. Wipe it off the tire and turn the rag and then wipe with a clean spot, then turn. Go in One Direction Around the Clock. This will make the oldest yellowest Whitewall tire white again, because we understand that yellow rubber is slightly "burned" by oxygen and sunlight. The brake fluid removes the burned rubber, exposing the pure white rubber underneath. Regarding portawalls I think they are a bad idea unless you trailer the car. You'll find that out the first time you drive through a pothole. Actually you might find out just backing the car off the trailer. Unless they have improved remarkably in the past 50 years portawalls suck & are only for show cars.

I'm happy to report there were no leaks, and we had her in the lake for 8 hours. There's my lovely wife holding the boat for me. It was a terrible fishing day but a beautiful day for boating!

Well the X-36v suffered some small hull cracks at the site of a previous repair, and has been dry for 2 weeks now. I ended up repairing 1/3 of the transom heel with epoxy and glass cloth from the inside, after removing some rotten plywood from the transom. She's tight again now, and will be back in the water Wednesday. I had to open a 4"x8" hole in the top of the flotation chamber & R&R the styrofoam to do so. This led me to find that this boat has only 2 chambers, and not 6 as I thought. The bottom has one, and all the others are connected internally around the perimeter. This is my first and only boat, so no clue if this is a typical situation.

I had a matched pair that was swiped in the great tool theft of 1982, along with a matched set of 4 Stewart Warner vacuum gages. This made me into a bitter old man far ahead of my time.

You mean all those little rats don't run inside a squirrel cage to power the thing?

Well I was so happy with the performance of the electric outboard that I decided to repair and replace the two Navigator 5000 trolling motors. This will essentially double my horsepower at the stern. From 1 horsepower to 2 horsepower. Exciting stuff huh? Anyhow these motors are Obsolete and it's impossible to find brushes, so I bought some bigger brushes at the National Hardware Store in Pinedale California and cut them with a little saw and then some sandpaper. This motor was very noisy and previously had water in it, so I spent some time cleaning it up and replaced the seals, though it was not the seals that were leaking. A casebolt had come loose. The brush shown installed in the holder is still way too long. I trimmed and dressed them as exactly as possible by hand. I soldered the leads and then insulated them with urethane rubber glue. When I hooked it up to 24 volts, she ran as quiet as a brand new motor.

what? 13mm × 0.04 in/mm = 0.52" it's a full half a mm bigger than 1/2"

Rock sailing . . . now there's an interesting sport. 'Course once you stop moving she sinks like a stone. When I was a little kid I lived on Cape Cod, & I don't remember ever seeing Plymouth Rock. But my mom spoke of it and I always imagined this thing like Gibraltar. What a disappointment. If you planted Plymouth Rock on top of Morro Rock you wouldn't even notice it. The West definitely has better rocks. Better Plymouths too, because they don't seem to rot as fast out here. I remember back in 05 when the Old Man of the Mountain came down. A buddy from New Hampshire was visiting here when it happened and I had to tell him the horrible news. ;( East Coast rocks are just too rotten, just like their Plymouths.