Ulu

Don't know about the windshields, yet I'm sure they're laminated, Clearly, the laminated door glass & vent wings were poor quality replacements. The poor edge polishing and imperfect shapes tell all. Oh, yeah...looking at that glass run channel, I'm not sure silicone would do the job. It's made from kinda corrugated/articulated metal (like a flex exhaust pipe) and it's got a sort of rubbery coating. Might not be chemically compatible. I got all the window fuzz and all the glass run channel out, the headliner is half down, and am looking in vain for the bolts to my steering wheel puller.

According to my 1957 Motor's manual, negative ground is now used because it generally gives a hotter spark. The accumulation of electrons charging the entire car negatively gives current easier into a mere wire than charging that mere wire negative and expecting it to go the other way. Remember that electrons come out the negative pole. If the whole car is hooked to the negative pole, you only have the same 6 volt potential, but available current given into any wire goes up.

I'm stripping the glass from my '47 Plymouth and I had to remove the glass run channel from the front door. My manual (which is for 46-54 models) does not really show the P-15 very well, but states to remove the clips from the door reveal by compressing them & pull out the channel. Mine didn't have clips. It looks like an aftermarket/universal product, and was installed with six #6 flathead wood screws into the inner door. It was friction-fit to the vertical guide rail and fit well without clips there. I'll buy new stuff, but this is actually good enough to touch up the flocking and re-use if I can't get what I want. The thing is that I don't see how clips would work on my car. There's no actual reveal at the door head, but just the outside half of one. Unless they consider the garnish to be the other half of the reveal. ??? I don't see how that would work, as the manual says to remove the garnish first. Anyhow, is the original style commonly available? or is everyone buying universal stuff?? or re-flocking??? I am not gonna use wood screws, but little rivets might be OK. I could also fab wire staples, which I'll certainly do for the fuzz that was originally stapled on. (Mine has more #6 wood screws!) But if I re-use this run, I'll re-flock it & probably glue it on the door head continuously with RTV silicone. Also, both my quarter windows were original tempered glass & good condition,as is the rear window, but the rest is all repop lam-glass. It's all cracked or de-lamming & needs replacing too. Is tempered glass ever available for the front side windows and vent wings? Are there different qualities of laminated glass for cars? I'm not sure where to go with this.

Trust a guy named Shel to direct a turtle autopsy.

Well you threw a damper on my spirit! I remember when I was young I was working in the drafting room at a big manufacturing company. We called ourselves "The Draftoids". I always just considered this a diminutive suffix of the slang sort. If that makes any sense. I was never a perfect student of grammar. Also not familiar with the Monroe Mystique Trivia.

The pin in his trunk lock is stripped/missing, It's the lock on the turtledeck (trunk lid of a bulbous car.)

Are we bored this PM fellas?

Many thanks Tod! Yes, that factoid will improve my sleep 100%.

@ Desoto: I had it made by a small driveline shop in Visalia Calif about 1987, and it cost $300 then. I designed it for 200 HP on a moderate duty cycle, from info in an old catalog at work. They worked from my drawing but they made it a bit short. I put an aluminum spacer on each end to make the shaft 1/2" longer. It will need to be re-done now that the stance of the car is changing. @ Tod: I had worn joints & rotten boots so I bought all new housings, joints and boots, for about $240 in 1986. Probably from Bernbaum. I set the shaft up and balanced it myself, and it was beautiful and smooth, until I smoked the tires over good one time. That would jamb the pin off center 1/16" and the thing would wobble noisily over 45 MPH again. I peened that pin at the middle and stuffed it back together. It went off again in a couple days. I put a flat on it and stuck a set screw (eventually two!) in the knob to keep that pin centered. No way. I decided it wasn't a suitable driveshaft for honking around and built the new one. (The rear joint never went crooked BTW) Since I had all new balls, needles...everything, I went in search of a good shaft to put them on, but as luck would have it my shop buddy mistakenly scrapped the shaft out along with a '57 Chrysler shaft (strong!) that I'd bought with hopes of conversion. :-( As an aside, I balanced that original Detroit shaft about 7 times. After the 2nd time I would just cut the boot off with a razor, wash it in solvent, and glue it back on with crazy glue. You can only stretch them on and off about 3 time before they rip. (At least the ones I bought.) When I ripped a new boot on the 2nd or 3rd attempt I was desperate to get the car going so I glued it with Crazy Glue and it held. When I attempted to rip loose my seam, when I had to re-balance, I could not, so I just cut it again. That boot looked like Frankenstein's monster after it had about 5 or 6 seams glued in it. My shaft was center-drilled on each end, so it was easy to set it up on some points and spin it on my bench, without a lathe. That's how I re-centered the pin. Wack it with a mallet, set it on the points (centers), run the pin over my dial indicator. Repeat until true. (I shoulda welded that sucker! & would have if I knew then what I know now.)

I had a feeling this was the issue. BTW, I could not keep my trunion-type shaft in balance. I ended up having a custom spicer-style driveshaft made for it, and suddenly a car that was always vibrating above 45 MPH was smooth at 80 MPH.

That's interesting. My factory manual shows a damper, but I don't recall what it says about it. I remember calling Robert's MoParts years ago about a 230 damper, and he wanted to sell me one without knowing what year the engine/car was from & I was a tad suspicious that there were probably different ones depending on displacement, size of the car, whether it was GyroMatic, or who knows what? anyhow it was expensive & I didn't buy it.

Thank you all so much for the kind attention. Being a newb here it's quite gratifying. That bell housing looks pretty meaty in the starter area, so I wouldn't hesitate to mill that if I had to. Fortunately it looks like I don't have to. However I have bell housings from both 218 & 230 & I was hoping that would solve the issue. Evidently not, as the length difference was all taken up in the flywheel counter bore. Well I have options, which is always nice. What I don't have is photos of the dampers. I got involved in the bodywork last night & totally forgot to look for them in one of my ten shelves of old car parts. We moved houses in the middle of this project, so you know what happens then. My pile of parts is in confusion. I guess I'm thinking about the damper as having balancing properties, but as I recall there's no "lobe" to speak of. These engines don't really use any external balancing do they? The 218 engine was always quite smooth for what it is (until I toasted a wristpin) so I will try the 218 damper (which is still in fine shape) on the 230. I'm asking questions about parts I haven't actually looked at in a long time, so I'm relying on memory a lot here. I didn't recall there being shoulder bolts, but they're still threaded in the respective flywheels, so I'll have a look. The truth is that I never intended to run this car as a 6v flathead when I bought it. I had always intended to install a modern ohv engine. It just ran so well that I never did do that, then I got into a situation where I had other cars of interest, so my '47 just sat ignored. Now that I'm refinishing it and deciding what running gear to have it almost seems like I'd enjoy running the antique gear again. Thus all the questions. (Well I haven't asked all of them yet. LOL ) Anyhow I'm on no time schedule, so there's plenty of time to decide what to do. Except for a few little issues I have a good set of running gear now, I'm just not sure I'll learn to love driving a 100 HP car again.

I actually just split my boot with a razor blade, then glued it back together with Crazy Glue. If the rubber is clean it works pretty well. I just looked at the boot recently & it's still glued together after over 20 years. CV joint replacement boots are often glued together with something similar. (Cyanoacrylate adhesive)

Man they sure look different. I figure the 230 damper would be different/heavier to accommodate the longer stroke 230. Maybe one or both aren't original/correct. I'll post some photos soon. So I should really deepen the counterbore on the 218 flywheel, huh? I guess it's easier to resurface the 230 flywheel after all. And shoulder bolts? I don't recall having any issue with the bolts when I first tried to bolt it up. I do know what you mean about the bolt pattern. It only fit one way. I'll have to have another look at this stuff.

I pushed mine aside for over 20 years, so don't feel bad.

Some years ago I bought a 230 Dodge engine to replace the ailing 218 in my '47 Plymouth. As it turns out, the 218 and 230 appear to be nearly the same vintage (1953 & 1954 respectively.) Anyhow I was sure everything would mate up, but there are two issues which made me shelve this project for some time instead. One is the flywheel. I want to use the 218 4-bolt flywheel with the 230 8-bolt crank. Since I'm putting it in a light coupe, I figure it wasn't worth drilling the flywheel for 4 more bolts or having the rather scored 230 flywheel resurfaced. But should I anyway? Did all the cranks eventually go to 8 bolts for good reason? Or was it just for the weight of the larger cars? Is there any external balance issue there to consider? (I didn't see anything to indicate that on the flywheels.) I didn't weigh the flywheels, but I assumed the 218 flywheel was lighter, particularly since I thought it came from a lighter car. Are they different other than the 4/8-holes? The second issue is the harmonic damper & pulley. FWIW, I don't have any way of knowing if either of these is the correct and original for the respective engines.Both have the narrow pulley, but the parts from the 230 are damaged. The holes in the pulley, damper, and crank flange are all just chewed up and wallowed out. I think it was riveted, but drilled out & the rivets replaced with hex bolts for some reason. No way could I index the timing correctly from that mess ever!. I don't think it's worth repairing either. I want to just use the one from the 218, but they look different physically. The 230 damper has 2 big flats on the OD which the 218 version does not have. (I'll post up some photos later if that will help.) Anyhow, is it possible the 230 engine will have a nasty vibration with the 218 damper on it?

Mine came out easily. Put jack stands under the rear frame and let the axle all the way down. That unloads the springs and it'll be much easier.