Great Race

[Tom]

Hi..l had mentioned our 34 Plymouth in a previous thread but recently uncovered some buried information...l will share it with you after a brief forward...

l acquired the car in 1964 from my grandfather...he had been using it as a storage container...l almost allowed the car to suffer a similar fate but some high school kids and the Great Race intervened in 2002...now here we are in 2018 and l see the same scenario slowly developing again...what follows is a transcription of what l wrote for the Great Race in 2002..

 

The woman who owned the car was Mabel Payne. She lived in Glendale on Louise St across the driveway from my mother and Grandmother. In 1936 my grandmother relocated to Armstrong Ave in Los Angeles and Ms Payne and the Plymouth accompanied her. Ms Payne passed away in 1942 and my grandmother "inherited" the Plymouth. I remember riding in the car with Grandma...l couldn't see out of the windshield but l can clearly remember the beautiful oval instrument panel and her wrinkled arthritic hand on floor gearshift.

Grandma passed away in 1958...l was 10 years old.  The car sat in the garage...we would go to visit Grandpa and l would go out and sit in the Plymouth. I pestered my father incessantly about the Plymouth... he finally relented and one day he and l made the trip from Whitter to West LA to maybe see if we could talk Grandpa out of the Plymouth.

Negotiations were successful and we towed the car with Dads homemade tow bar out to Whittier.

The winter of 64-65 was spent in the garage.. I knew next to nothing about what we were doing but l had read and re read an old copy of Automotive Essentials by Ray F. Kuns for hours and hours in anticipation of the big day when we would be putting the Plymouth on the road.

One day Dad said Ok we're going to rewire

the whole car from headlight to taillight. I said "What for, the wires look ok to me" He said "Take out all the wiring and don't cut or break anything" Ok fine. He then presented me with a wiring diagram which l had no idea where he got it and said "Look at the picture and follow it, it's not that hard.. No new harness, no schooling, just do it.. I began by going to the auto parts store and buying 5 or 6 spools of different color wire. I bought the braided although the plastic insulated was available l thought the braided looked more like what l had taken out. I learned to solder the terminals..Crimp ons were available l think but we didn't have a crimping tool and the solder terminals were much cheaper.

Then came the brakes and l have never struggled with a mechanical job before or since like l did with those brakes.

 

Dad said we'd start with the wheel cylinders.. He sent me to the store for wheel cylinder kits and paint thinner and emery cloth.

The fronts were easy..just take off the big nut in the center and the drum pulls right off...

But the backs...l quickly found out they're not the same.after hours and hours of sweating, prying.. dad said" ok loosen the big nut but only a turn or two"..he then got out his BIG sledge and hit the end of the axle so hard l thought it would come out the other side..."ok try it now"

I cleaned and cleaned and ran that emery cloth through the cylinders, installed the new seals and filled the master with fluid and was feeling pretty good about my developing auto skills until l got in the car and pushed the brake pedal to the floor. I must have pushed that pedal a thousand times...to the floor.

When Dad got home that evening he informed me about a process called "bleeding the brakes" He said to get in the car and listen for his instruction. "Down...up...down...up..."

As if by magic, after a few minutes of this we had brakes..

There is a lot more stuff to tell but you know what it is...the same stories you could tell too..

Now to prevent the old Plymouth from returning to its roots as a storage container ,through a truly interesting chain of events..  we may have the opportunity to have it accepted in an automotive museum..

Just wanted to share..

Tom

 

 

 

[55 Fargo]

Thanx for sharing. Keep it coming great stuff......

[Dan Hiebert]

Excellent story, thanks for sharing!  You learned wiring the way I learned to swim...