thebelvedereman

yeah once I put the new wheels and tires on, put the Chrome back on, then unmask everything it might look different, I'm just not used to the color, it's kind of like a pastel color and I've never had anything like that on a car before, I'll see what it looks like when I wake up in the morning

Okay I've just painted the ugliest paint job in the history of paint, I started not to like it as soon as I started putting it on, but for some reason I just didn't stop, hopefully it darkens up a bit once it dries, but I'm pretty sure that I'm stripping it back down to bare metal and starting over again

almost ready for a coat of primer / sealer

I've seen them on eBay before, they are some kind of newfangled LED lights, they were on the car when I got it

Making a little adjustment to the rear Valance LOL, the rest of the car is solid as a rock, rear Valance had about 3 inch thick Bondo in it, all cracked and falling out, so I knocked it all out, straightend the panel the best I could, and re-bondo'd it, just for now, I found someone who makes new valances, but they're about $500 which I just don't have for a valance right now, of course as soon as I put the Bondo on it started pouring again, I don't think it's ever going to stop raining

I was just thinking about it, I should have replaced the water tube while I had the water pump off, maybe I'll take it back apart again while the gasket isn't baked on yet

well we definitely don't need any more rain here in New Jersey, everything is over full and flooding already

And maybe if it would stop raining sometime this year I'd be able to try and do it, it has rained every day for the past 4 weeks since I got the car

Yeah that's the way mine are from the factory also, I just wasn't positive what the Lower Mount looked like, the guy I got the car from butched it up quite a bit, my top shock mounts are still there, but it has a GM rear end in it, and it has lower mounts similar to The Originals, but they're offset to one side, and facing forward, instead of towards the middle of the car, I think maybe the guy just put them on wrong because he didn't know any better, they kind of look like newer Mopars but facing forwards instead of backwards, and the angle at they're on the shock would have to be straight up, which wouldn't be a problem, in fact I bought mounts to do it with but there is no inside of the frame to mount them on so they would be recessed inside the frame, and I would either have to notch the lower part of the frame which I would never do, or make some kind of extensions so they would sit out further, which I didn't want to do either because they wouldn't be very strong, but I'm pretty sure I can just unbolt the u-bolts and flip the lower shock mounts around so they face the way the originals do and that would solve all the problems

My car has something similar, except they point forward for some bizarre reason, I'm going to have to measure them and see if I can swap them so they face sideways like yours, if the U hangers are the same distance front to back as they are side to side, thanks

All right got the fuel-cell in today and fired it up for the first time since I replaced all the hoses and the water pump and the gas tank and a bunch of other stuff here's a quick vid

Hey does anybody got a picture of their lower rear shock mounts, Plymouth or Dodge, my car is a 39, but I think they're pretty much all the same, I'm just trying to get an idea of what they should look like, someone put a newer Chevy rear end in my car, it has shock mounts on it, but they don't match up at all with the factory upper mounts, and I'm just trying to figure out which way to go with them, thanks

thanks Andy for the hoses and stuff, you've always got the good stuff

Here's a real quick crappy Photoshop of what the car is basically going to look like

I also chose my paint, and I had it custom-blended for me today, it's kind of like a seafoam antiqued aqua, I wanted something different than everyone else has

Just got done putting on a new water pump, all new hoses, new belt, and a new thermostat housing gasket, I learned something today, every post that I've seen on the water pump so far says to leave the fan on take the bolts out and there's enough room to get the water pump out, that is not true, unless you want to do major damage to your radiator, I took all the bolts out of the radiator and shifted it over to one side and then slid it behind the mounting brackets and gave like another inch of space then the water pump slid right off freeze out plugs tomorrow, and if there's any time left in the day I'll put the new fuel tank in also, then hopefully I'll have it running good enough to take for a ride, without leaking antifreeze out of everywhere, and leaking fuel out of four different places in the fuel tank LOL

If the car wasn't already converted to 12 volts, and if I had the lenses and other pieces that are missing from the original ones I probably would have left the original ones, because I think they're really cool also, but the car was already converted to 12 volts when I got it, and had round sealed beams butchered into the original buckets, so I had to do something, I am going to have the headlight conversion bezels chromed, so they look closer to the original trim, not just painted like all the other guys did with them, I actually got one of them today, and I was surprised how cheesy they are, I figured they were pot metal or aluminum or something, they're just thin sheet metal

I'm going for that big and little Gasser look, my fronts are 165 80 15s, the wheels are 15x4 Chevy type Chrome Rally wheels, the rears right now are 14 x 8 Appliance Chrome slots, with something like L 60 14's on them, they're the same exact diameter as the front like 25 1/4, I wouldn't even bother keeping the 14's in the rear, except the wheels are like brand new, I went with the dual pattern Rally wheels in the front so I wouldn't have to grind off my rivets or my wheel alignment pins

was going to go with chrome smoothies on the front, because it still has stock drum brakes with the rivets, but I wanted something to kind of look a little more like the rear Anson Chrome slots that are on it, so I decided to try out a chrome rally wheel instead of the smoothies, they look pretty good, see what they look like after I get them on the car, and get some center caps in them, think I might just do spider caps

Actually that was my grandfather's DeSoto, he had two of them, that green 56 which was really my grandmother's , and a white 56, he bought them both new, dad did have a 57 DeSoto adventurer with the 345 Hemi, he used to race that and Island Dragway all the time too, I come from a very long line of mopar people, on both sides of my family actually

Eventually I want to drop a polyhead in it, I think, or I may go the other way, and just do a work up on the flatty, I just love the way the old flatheads run, if I can get it reliable enough and back it up with a modern transmission so I can get some decent highway speed out of it I may just keep it

I just ordered a whole bunch of parts for this 39 I just picked up so I figured I'd do a little before and after on the build, just ordered all new hoses and stuff from Andy, new wheels and tires, new water pump, new fuel tank, a sealed beam headlight conversion, and a bunch of other stuff, going to build it as a tribute to the one my father used to race in the early 60s, his was a true rat rod before there was a such thing, 39 Business Coupe with 325 poly head and a 3-speed truck trans swapped in, used to race it at Island Dragway in New Jersey, I had to laugh when I saw a picture of the front of Dad's car, because he had the same sealed beam headlight conversion kit in his car way back in 1963, here's a pic of Dad's car first and then my new one after

I would put a large-diameter wheel on it, as I plan to keep the original manual steering and everything

Hey has anyone tried to put an aftermarket steering wheel on our old plymouth's, I was wondering if I could put a 3 spoke hot rod type steering wheel on my stock steering column, I looked all over the Internet for one of those adapter kits like they sell for the 60's muscle cars, the only one I found for Plymouth said it fits "all year plymouth's" I know the 39 has a similar gear tooth type mount like the newer cars, but don't know if it's the same size or anything else, thanks guys