plymouth49

Hmmmm - I can see using stock jets as a starting point. I don't understand why you would run richer jets. Each carb only sees itself; vacuum signal (in actuality, the amount and speed of the air flowing thru the venturi) is governed by the throttle plate. If you need, say, 50 BHP at any point in time, that might be from x amount of throttle opening with one carb, or slightly less with two. I have a Buick 322 with triple Stromberg 97s. It requires several size smaller jets in order to run at the right A/F ratio. My motor is stock, so there is nothing (like reground cam or larger displacement) to make it flow more air. Running the smallest amount of accelerator pump makes perfect sense. If the engine has a flat spot on acceleration this is easily opened up. I suspect I will need smaller than stock jets. Does anyone know which sizes I should be looking for? And, where can I get them? Thanks!!

What size jets are recommended as a starting point for dual single-throat Carter Ball & Ball carbs mounted on an Offy manifold on a otherwise stock 218 engine?

Welcome to this forum and congratulations on your new car! I know you can't wait to get it home and running!! I started out with a 1950 Plymouth. It was my aunt's. I staked a claim on it when I was 8, was spending free time polishing and maintaining it by your age, and was driving it legally at 16. I think your car is even neater than mine, as mine was a four door. Here are a couple of hints: read, read, read! Inhale every bit of information you can about these cars. With the internet, you can get hold of a lot on information - I know you know this already - so go to it. Spend time trying things out. Make some mistakes - we all do. Get the feel for your car, for your tools, for the metal: like, how a bolt feels when you are tightening it. Learn from your parents or other family or friends, too. Expect to come across dumbells, like those guys at the truck stop that would not mount your tires for you. They were just being arbitrary. People will make outlandish statements and tell you all the things you 'can't' do. The best thing for you to do is to just go ahead and do them anyway. Well, again, good luck and all the best for the holidays!

Try hammering on the next smaller size socket. Also, since you have nuts on the bolts, the beeswax trick can work for you. Heat the nuts/ends of the studs red hot. Touch candle wax to the threads. It will get sucked inside. Get that socket on there, and the nuts should spin right off. The wax actually works better on this than Gibbs, Kroil, etc.

The brass nuts will come off - if they are still there! Usually, over the years the brass nuts and special washers go bye-bye. Then, the manifolds crack because they can't expand and contract as they can with the stock hardware. To repair it, you have to pull it all apart and guess what won't come off. Also, the bolts in question are mounted underneath and go all the way thru the exhaust manifiold. There are only 2 bolts like this. The heads are in recesses so you won't get much in the way of a tool in there if the heads round off. Typically, step one is for the heads to round off. Step two is to hammer on a smaller six point socket. This takes a real good hold on the bolt head. Step three is for the bolt head to twist right off, leaving the bolt shanks in place. Step four is when the bolts are rusted solidly to the manifold, so it won't come off. Step five is to get out the Sawzall, as I described in a previous response.

Sheib and Maaco do cheap paint jobs. If you are lucky they will DA the car, tape it off and shoot. They don't sand or tape or anything to a high standard. Their employees are usually compensated on piecework so they are motivated to get the cars in and out as quickly as they can. That said, I know folks wo have gotten these cheap paint jobs and who have been pleased. But - expectaion is everything - they were not expecting much. If you car is Glee (as in ugly) and you need a quick and dirty ten footer, then why not? The more prep work you do before you give them the car, the better. Remove chrome, degrease, etc., etc. Especially smaller parts. Note that these prices do not include any body work - sometimes the promos will include a modicum amount of body work. Usually this means they slap on some mud right over the dent, cheese grater it down and it is ready for paint. Try to be the last job of the day so that your car spends the night in the paint booth. Otherwise, it might get dust in the fresh paint as they roll them in and out. The prep guys - usually the masker - is the critical path to how long it takes to get the car done, so again do not expect quality masking.

billwillard's suggestion is good. These bolts can be a real PITA. Here are some additional ideas: 1) Hammer on a smaller six point socket. 2) Same as above, with heat. 3) I have had the hex heads on these two bolts shear right off. You would expect the manifolds to come right off. Think again: the shanks can seize to the exhaust manifold. Drilling this out is possible but tedious. In this case, wiggle the manifold pair back and forth (all the other bolts and studs are out, right) until you get a little slack in between the manifold ports and the block. Poke/scrape out the gasket: now you have even more room. Slide a Sawzall blade in between and you can quickly sever the bolts. Be careful not to booger the block or manifolds with the blade. It does not take much to cut through the bolts. Drill/tap the bolt stubs as you would any broken stud. On reassembly, use antiseize!

I ran L78-15 tires on the rear of my 50 Plymouth back in the day when I was in high school. The tires looked very muscular. This was a Cadillac tire back then.

I got mine from Gardner-Westcott. I decided upon chrome hex socket but they have chrome, non-chrome, stainless in any style. I also am using chrome AN washers. In the picture is a stock head bolt, my chrome hex socket with washer, and a repop sold by VPW that I do not like very much, particularly because of the undersized and seemingly poorly-formed hex.

I've asked the same question in the past, maybe on a different forum, never got a response. Maybe this time will be better for both of us! I have got two heads from 218 engines (should be the same head). One, from a parts engine, measures 1.944". The other is the head off the engine in my '49, and it measures 2.004". Both heads are 1952 castings. I have no idea if either of the heads I have has ever been cut. Here's a shot of the thicker head. Going to use these chrome hex socket bolts with chrome AN washers. One of the other bolts is a stocker, and the third is the generic VPW replacement. Color scheme will be gloss black head and gloss dark brown (kind of a UPS brown) block.

if I recall correctly

On the Gyro-Matic, IIRC that would be OK. Another clue that you have the Gyro-Matic is that you have electrical conenctions at the carb. One is a kickdown switch and the other is an interupter that cuts out the ignition momentarily when the unit shifts to smooth things out.

Your car might have one of two transmissions. The terms 'fluid drive' and 'Gyromatic' (plus some others) are often thrown around willy nilly. Regardless, your 50 Dodge has one or the other of these two. As background, Chrysler had two distinct 'fluid drive' transmissions. They went by different names, and both of them were not always offered in the same make/model (Dodge, Desosto, Chrysler). Also, owners usually called them by the wrong names, like the name 'Frigidaire' might be ascribed to anyone's refrigerator. Note: these cars all used fluid couplings. They did not use torque converters. A fluid coupling has similar straight vanes on both sides, separated by a fraction of an inch. One side spins by the engine. It moves oil, and that gets the other side moving, like a water wheel. At first there is slip - in fact the oputput side can be motionless when the driven side is turning - but the faster the one side goes, the faster the other, and at a certain point it locks up because the oil is moving as a solid mass with both sides. A torque converter uses curved vanes and adds a set of vanes (a 'stator') in between the two sides. This arrangement permits torque multiplication to occur. A torque converter never completely locks up. Lock-up torque converters have a mechanical clutch that is applied by hydraulic pressure in order to lock up. So, a fluid coupling has little adverse effect on economy because there is no slippage when cruising. A torque converter (if it is not a lock-up tranny) always slips and that takes away from mileage. Chrysler's first true automatic transmission did have a torque converter and was just a crude modern automatic with planetary gears, etc. But that is not what is in your car. You have one or the other of these: First type: A conventional three on the tree manual and conventional clutch mounted behind a fluid drive coupling. This is the same tranny as found on zillions of MoPars, just with a longer input shaft and bellhousing to account for the added length of the fluid coupling. The torus would slip at low rpm and then slip less and less, and finally lock up at cruise. With this transmission you could leave the car in high when coming to a stop. The turbine would slip and the engine would not stall. To accelerate again, just step on the gas and the car accelerates away, albeit slowly, in high gear. With the long stroke and tall rear, you can even drive one of these cars today in mild traffic. For a little extra pep, you could start in second and only have one shift. Or, you could run thru the gears as normal. You only used the clutch when moving the shift lever. A secondary bonus was that it was almost impossible to stall the engine. Just put her in gear and take your foot off the clutch. It was really hard to kill a clutch disk in these cars for that reason. The turbine would slip to accomodate. This was a versatile transmission at a time when the need to shift less - or not at all - PLUS the ability to not stall the engine when starting out was an important marketing feature. Also, automatic transmission technology was in its infancy back then, and this was a very reliable and inexpensive design. I still have a 49 Dodge with a quarter million miles and the fluid coupling has never leaked, or been topped off, and the car is on its original clutch disk. To recap, the first type is a regular three speed manual and clutch, mounted behind a fluid coupling. In a 50 Dodge, this would have been called Fluid Drive. Second type: This used the same bellhousing/clutch setup as described above, but the tranny was different. It was a manual four speed. But you could only move the shift lever (on the steering column) to one of three positions. Reverse, of course. Then low range and high range. Low range would put the tranny in first. When you hit a certain (low) speed and released the gas pedal, a solenoid similar to that used on an overdrive transmission would shift to second gear. Floor it below a certain speed, and it would downshift back down to first. Low range was useful for climbing Mount Everest or pulling stumps out of the ground. For 99% of your driving, you would put the gear lever in high range. Just remove your foot from the clutch as described above. Then, the car started in third gear and did the same upshift or downshift according to road speed and throttle position into fourth gear (direct drive). This setup gave better acceleration (because of gear ratios) than leaving the Type 1 setup in high gear, and eliminated the need to shift from second to high (again, Type 1). But because the lags in this very simple electromechanical setup were long, it took a while. Also, you could not go thru all four gears unless you did this: start in low range, let the tranny shift to second, then shift to high range, but you would then be in direct drive so floor it for kickdown to third, then let it shift up into high gear. By the time this all happened your kids had grown up. If you were grandma, you could drive silky-smooth as you would want with a tranny that did not depend on the fancy hydraulics of the Powerglide, Dynaflow or Hydramatic. These trannys were pretty much gone by the early 50s when the Powerflite/etc true automatics debuted.. To recap, the second type is a four speed standard transmission mounted behind a conventional clutch and a fluid coupling. Two gears are selectable by the shift linkage (first or third), and two gears are only selectable by automatic control (solenoid/governor/etc.)( second and fourth). In a 50 Dodge, this would have been called a Gyromatic transmission. One other thing about these trannys (both types). No engine braking with the motor off, because the torus would slip. So keep a good parking brake or remember to park with your wheels pointing to the curb or against a rock. Also, both types made it really really easy to jump start the car. If there was the slightest downgrade, just switch the ignition on, put the car in gear and let her roll. In a moment the turbine would impart rotation to the engine, and the motor would start up smoothly and silently without using your battery or starter motor. This also saved me on many an occasion when the battery was too weak to spin the motor fast enough on its own. There is a lot of confusion and partial truths out there on these somewhat oddball trannys. For lubrication of the transmission, it is the same as on any old MoPar standard transmission. There is a filler plug on the side of the tranny, and you fill up with 90W gear lube. The fluid couplings are accessed from a plate on the passenger's side of the transmission hump. There is a plug in the fluid coupling - you have to rotate the flywheel to get to the right spot. Remove the plug and fill until it pours out. Replace the plug - don't drop it!!!!! Some people top off the fluid coupling with ATF but this is not a good idea as it hurts the seals and then they leak. 99% of the time the fluid couplings never leak, and never need to be topped off. You will know if yours is low as it will slip like crazy, just like as if you had a bad clutch in a regular car. DO NOT put 90W in the fluid coupling; that would be bad. I believe that the current recommendation is regular hydraulic fluid; check the archives on this point to make sure I have it right. Keep the regular clutch pedal adjusted properly and the clutch will last forever. Proper driving technique on these cars is NOT to add any gas while you are taking your foot off the clutch. This wears the clutch disk. Just smoothly let the clutch pedal up without giving any gas. The engine will not stall, and you will hear the fluid coupling whirr. Foot off the clutch, accelerate away. Enjoy! These are unique transmissions. They are easy to maintain, and provide a unique driving experience. They will not, however, provide any drag strip thrills.

Personally, I don't like the idea of cantilevering the weight of a l-o-n-g, heavy cast iron engine on a modern, conventional engine stand. Especially motors like ours that have the block bellhousing bolts arranged in a small circle. By the time the crank and rods and pistons are in, and the head is on, you see how it reacts to the attachment and it is very scary. In these circumstance I use a piece of 2x6 bored to accept the crank snout at the front of the engine. You can still rotate the engine but at least all of the weight is not hanging off those little bellhousing bolts. Period engine stands grabbed the motor in the middle, and when you think about it this makes great sense. It was probably the rise of relatively short and light V8 engines like the SBC that gave rise to the types of engine stands we see today.

Yes, DOT 3 is clear. But usually brown or even blackish in an older system. DOT5 is a nice purple. It is unlikely that anyone changed your old car to DOT5. If you are not sure, dab some on a rag and puddle it on some scrap metal painted with enamel. If the paint bubbles up it is DOT 3.