Mark Haymond

Down for conversion, I was slightly miffed. New look and design, I'm thrilled. Way to go!

You must install a fireman's pole right away. For escaping from the upper levels, of course.

I think the front end design is well executed. The rear does not match, it looks like it came from an old Flash Gordon movie. It would be fun to take to a car show, jaws would drop!

Reminds me of the pump on my Coleman stove. So I will guess it is a pressure pump on an early kerosene or petrol stove or lantern.

Not sure where you live, but if you are near a good sized city you could have a drive shaft modified or built for you at a drive shaft specialty service. Such services support the agriculture and trucking industries and they are are used to fabricating drive lines for customers. Yeah, they exist. And you will be surprised at how low the prices are. They could use your four bolt Mopar fitting on one end and put a U joint on the other.

Pre wire the dash on the comfort of your workbench! Then push the wire loom through the hole in the firewall to the engine compartment. Then snap the tail light and brake light connections together.

I used YnZ for my 50 Plymouth. Very pricy but the best thing about it was they used the same special right angle lug connectors, old style bullet connectors, and heat soldered crimp connections which lets everything hook right up to stock parts. Color correct wires. After ten years I have had no electrical problems.

First you dream the dream. And I like the photoshop concept images of your new project. I think you're going to pull this off well. Please stick around this forum and let us know how it goes. Re boring: I meant the reliability would be boring. No weekly roadside emergencies, no call from the wife saying the car stalled at the traffic light, no drama on the way to a car show, no guy at the auto store who says they can't source that gasket or water pump. Stock reliability can be a good thing.

I have a 50 Plymouth. The bench seats and ride are very comfortable. With the V8 and automatic, modern brakes, and rack and pinyon, you could enjoy driving that car. If you keep the 318 stock, it will start every time and be boringly reliable. You can use it to make rescue runs to your friends who are on the roadside with carb, electrical, and mystery problems with their tweaked out high performance projects.

Thanks anyway Jipjob. Private message sent.

At the tire shop the mechanic spotted a very large stress crack in my spare. This explains why the tire would lose half its pressure in a week. The bead of the tire was covering the crack but a slow leak persisted. Does anyone near Fresno California has a 6.70-15 wheel from a late forties or early fifties they could part with? I could pay you or make a trade with spare parts I have for 47 or 50 Plymouths. Here is a link to a photo of the crack. http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/22193746_fWznm6#!i=2229271119&k=tNgWMbC

I nicked one of my front disk brake lines and had to reroute them. I can only offer a general goal, not having used Charlie's kit. The rubber line must stay away from the moving rotors in full left or right turns. The rubber line must not get stretched or twisted during full up or full down travel of the control arms. Checking left to right is easy, checking for full spring compression (bottoming out) is more difficult. Jack up the frame to observe the full downward travel of the front suspension.

Does it have a Mopar engine in it? It doesn't? How could you own such a car? -Mark Haymond 1950 Plymouth, 1947 Plymouth, and 1999 CORVETTE

I struggled to align the hood on my 47 Plymouth. My hood was too high above the fender on the passenger side. I found that adjusting the two bolts that hold the cowl hinge helped me. But it was a long adjust and re adjustment process. If you misadjust the TILT of the hinge the hood may want to scrape the body, or not want to gracefully close without causing a buckling of the hood. But I was able to lower the hinge adjustment a little, and raise the fender a little (without making any fender holes bigger.) I got it looking better but it still does not fit as well as the driver side. Not sure why.

Today I used MOTHERS PowerBall Headlight Restoration kit I bought from the local car parts store. It looks similar to the Megquires one. It was for the headlights on my wife's 2006 Caddilac CTS. It works as advertised. They were slightly fogged and showed surface cracks just at the top of the light. Instead of using the little squares of paper in the kit I tried 2000 grit wet and dry from my box of garage sandpaper. That was too fine to remove the surface scratches so I used 1000 grit wet and dry. That and a bunch of elbow grease removed the surface scratches and left a milky surface glaze that you could not see when it was wet but was visible when dry. I followed up with 2000 wet and dry. As the last step I used the polishing compound, sponge ball, and cordless drill to polish out the glaze. The plastic looks good now and passes wife approval. I have lots of polish left in the bottle, the sponge ball is still like new, and I have lots of 1000 and 2000 paper, so the $23 kit was a good value.

I just thought it was odd that maintenance instructions said I should use brake fluid from a freshly opened container, pour it into a master cylinder open to the air where it quickly turns dark and brown, and just check the level once or twice a year. And then if I needed to add fluid, not use my tightly sealed partial container from my garage shelf to add to the old system fluid. Huh? Water moisture really does get into the system. So I have concluded it is good practice to bleed the brakes and add all new fluid once a year to get any water out and prolong brake parts life. Anyway, I feel better when I see the dark stuff coming out of the bleed valves and the new stuff taking its place.

Over the years I have repeatedly read that it is good practice to use fresh brake fluid when servicing a brake system because an opened container of brake fluid absorbs moisture. The moisture can collect in low spots in your car and cause rust. And I have replaced a few wheel cylinders and master cylinders with rust damage. Our cars have master cylinders that are vented to the atmosphere, often a humid atmosphere. Did the designers know about this in the 1940's?

I had a Corvair engine. Temp light: loose or missing fan belt? Due to the double twist of the belt it was common for them to slip or come off the pulleys.

You have a two door sedan. (Your rear passenger windows are longer than those in a coupe or club coupe.) And it looks to be in very good shape. And you have come to the best ever group of owners for your new car. Welcome.

I am using my stock 1947 horns on twelve volts now. When I was first testing them I could barely get a noise out of them but that was because I was using twelve volts traveling the length of a 25 foot long extension cord with cheap alligator clips. That did not deliver enough amps to blow the horns. When I got the horns connected up close to the battery with large wires they blew loud and strong. So now I am using a twelve volt relay in the twelve volt car and both horns are quite loud. I have not tried a long blast as another poster did. I may also need to put a fuse in the line. Hummm, another project.

I installed a windshield seal from Steelrubber this year in my P-15 front split window. I used 3M bedding and glazing compound 08509 for the glass channel and for the rubber to window frame seal. I thought the fit around the corners of the glass was pretty good. It passed the garden hose test but after a few hours of heavy rain I had a leak on the passenger side lower right corner. It was not coming past the glass channel, it was a poor seal between the metal window channel and the rubber. I added more of the same glazing compound and fixed the leak. I attribute the leak to the installer, ME, and the overall dimensions of the rubber and metal window channel. I don't think I used enough goop the first time. I also have a Steelrubber seal in my 50 Plymouth that has held up well for years. Of course if your new glass is not exactly the same size as the old glass that will affect the fit. And the new seal may not be exactly the same as the original. If the new glass is cut slightly larger it won't fit in that hole and might break when you push too hard during installation. That happened to me a few years back. I would buy again from them, it's pretty darn close to original.

Just this week I blew the heater core on my Mopar Model 36 heater core while running a seven pound radiator cap and having a fan failure. But keep in mind the thing is over sixty years old. A pressure test will show you what condition your core is in.

The backward plugs may hold OK. I blew a plug in my 50 Plymouth the first time I got it up to 50 mph. The same thing happened the next test drive. I had not re torqued my head and a compression leak was allowing high compression into the water jacket. After I replaced the head gasket and re torqued again after warmup I have had no more plug problems. There are backwards plugs like you have and one correct plug in the block and they have all held now for ten years.

I have a Mopar Model 36 heater in my 47 Plymouth and I installed a NAPA 655-1022 twelve volt motor in it. A fact that surprised me was that the spacing between the threaded mounting studs was 2 5/16 inches apart, and that this dimension between mounting holes has been in common use for sixty five years. An internet search for NAPA heater blower motors resulted in many motors for a wide variety of American built cars that used this hole spacing. When I received this motor, and it was inexpensive, I had to slide off a (7mm ?) sleeve off the motor shaft. I guess the motor was made to fit a variety of metric based cars too. Anyway, I slid off the shaft spacer and bolted this motor into my heater, a true bolt in project. An internet search for other model heater motors may be just as successful.

With my first hookup my controller would run the fan whenever it had battery power and the sensor felt the right amount of radiator heat. After I turned off the car the fan would cycle on and off repeatedly for a long time and I found that annoying. So I ran a small yellow controller enable wire to my ignition switch. Then the fan would operate only when the radiator was hot, it had battery power, and the ignition was on. Until I get my old heater core repaired, I am using a simple twelve volt, thirty amp plastic relay to operate the fan. I have the coil of the relay connected to the heater switch on my dash, since I temporarily don't have a heater. And yup, I am now carrying a spare relay in my tool bag.