1934 Plymouth five window

[endicott_jb]

You Kanooks always find the best things. That truck, and the car you're working on, are gonna make such cool rods. Keep on doin what you're doin. It's perfect.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you Endicott.
I got lucky on the '34 pickup, as it was about 15 miles from home. I had been half-heartedly trying to get the truck for years but the old fellow wasn't eager to part with it. I waited, hiding in a tree like a patient vulture, and lo and behold the old fellows widow was a way easier to deal with. Did I mention that I got tea and cookies with this deal?
The '34 Plymouth was another story all together, as I paid through the nose to get it, and it was a third of the way to your place from here [A long old trip].

 

[MercuryMac]

I have now taken both coil over-shocks off at the bottom and re-installed them properly, I hope. Even just riding home on the trailer they were coming apart.
Next there's a new wheel seal and bearing, wheel cylinder, shoes, hardware and drum under this right hand wheel. I had to put a 1/4" spacer behind the wheels to make them tighten on there properly.
My usually contained paranoia leaked out a bit today when I noticed a loose rear-end nut, and then a nut that the previous builder threw away, and then another loose one. I'm now thinking he just slapped the rear-end in there with no gasket and sandblasted and painted it that way.

 

[1952B3b23]

Makes you wonder what else the previous owner just slapped together and painted [S I like those wheels!

-Chris

 

[MercuryMac]

1952, I have been lucky for the last 40 or 50 years when buying previously owned vehicles and machinery, so I never learned about n'er-do-well mechanics. One truck, a '79 Ford, was not good but I knew it and the seller sold it to me as a piece of poop. All of the rest were pretty good or very good. But this car was sold to me as a high priced, partly built hotrod and I didn't catch all of the sloppy workmanship when I looked it over. Of course, I wasn't going to buy it when I looked it over, I got to buy it over the phone days later. There is some very professional work done on this car also. Must have been two different guys. Anyhow, I'm partly to blame for not seeing that the brakes weren't done and the wheels wouldn't fit when the brakes were done and that the tires wouldn't fit the new wheels that would have to be bigger to fit over the brakes. The domino syndrome almost overtook me.

 

[1952B3b23]

I kind of did the same thing on my '52 Dodge truck. When i bought it i looked it over but not nearly as close as i should have. It looked half way decent and the paint job was shinny and black. I knew it would take some work in order to make it look and run how i wanted. Lucky for the owner he had done a great job of hiding terrible metal work and some other issues. I drove the truck around the block and i fell in love with it. The previous owner had a lot of BS and was/is the perfect used car sales man. He told me how he had done the work himself and hes a mechanic by trade so he knew what he was doing. Id say i ended up paying about $1500-$2000 to much for the truck. If it was today there was no way i would have forked over that much money. As they say hind sight is always 20-20. I learned a big lesson (expensive too) but i wish i had done some more research and had found this forum before buying it. I am glad i have it though cause working on it makes me very happy! You live and learn.

-Chris

 

[MercuryMac]

Yes 1952, I also, am glad I have my car, but I paid quite a bit for it and I'm going to have to put about $3000 into it to get it to where I thought it was.
Anyhow, my wariness showed up today, as I was doing the brakes on the front wheels I popped the dust caps off and checked the bearings for grease and torqueing. They passed the test. So the front wheels are done. [pic one]
I opened a few boxes that came in the mail and grinned. One from the Carburetor Doctor and he sent me a carb kit for on obscure Stomberg WW carb. The other box was from Hot Heads with sparkplugs, wires, seals and 426 style sparkplug wire, tappet cover boots.
Yesterday there was a young fox sniffing around so I took a picture of him. He will be a silver one when he grows up. Sorry about the bedraggled look but it was raining and snowing. [pic 2]

 

[Old Iron]

I have a feeling we've all been bitten by the goobers, at one time or another.
Your coupe is coming along nicely and the fox looks like he'll be glad when ole man winter is finally gone.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks Old Iron and I think the goober bites are beginning to heal. It is embarrassing though.
I was babysitting my Grandson today so had to change my plans a wee bit. It started out with me helping him make roads in a big pile of used sandblasting sand. Then I thought I could skim off the top dry sand and screen it to put in my little sandblaster. Well that didn't work out because there was only a quarter of an inch of dry sand, but I could use my dry sand that was in a barrel right in front of the shop still in sight of the sand pile and grandson. If you've used one of those cheepo little sand blasters you know that there is quite a bit of fiddling around for all the work that gets done. Anyhow, the Grandson really didn't like Granddad putting on this big caped hood and making a lot of weird noises, so he ran away. It turns out Granddad is not a very good babysitter. Finally, Grandma came home and called teatime so we were both relieved.
In the picture you'll see the E-brake and brackets , a hemi carburetor and some big block Dodge tappet covers.

 

[skull]

progress

looks like good progress[cl

Later

 

[MercuryMac]

I've been trying to move the body ahead on the frame, about two inches, so the mounting holes would line up and the rear wheels would be centred in the fenders. Well, the previous builder either hired a welder or was a welder and welded a whole lot of tin on the car. The patch panels are all welded on and some angle braces to hold the tail end on. The welding looks nice, but the warping that goes on with tin is scary annoying and the angle bracing at the back rides up on the frame badly. So I've been cutting and hammering quite a bit. I put the fender on and found that the fender didn't fit the fender well very good so I've been doing some more shaping.

I thought today that I should get something ready to start summer driving so I went out to the shed to get my 55 Merc mobile. Last fall I was having troubles with it. It wouldn't keep running. I took a new coil out there with me and put it on. The truck started up but ran rough only for a few seconds. When I looked at the motor I saw that the carb was flooded badly. As I took the carb off I got thinking this doesn't smell like seven month old gas, Whoa. When I poured the carburetor out in a puddle, it didn't get that pretty scum on it. Water, Whoa, lots of water in the carb and lines and maybe tank.

 

[Old Iron]

Where do you think the water came from?

 

[MercuryMac]

We've had to switch to ethanol-gasoline mixture and the ethanol attracts water and sticks to it. My farm tanks have worked alright for thirty years but the back end of them is slightly lower than the front so the water and dirt in there stayed away from the discharge end of the tank. Now the ethanol has absorbed the water in the tank that I carelessly never thought about and it got into my hotrod gas tank. This is my theory, anyway.

 

[05snopro440]

Last summer I had some new gas go bad after less than a month. It turned a yellow-green colour, stunk like crazy, and the truck wouldn't run. Put fresh gas in it, and it ran just fine. I'm not a fan of this new gasoline.

 

[Bamamav]

Yep, the ethanol has a very short shelf life, even shorter if it's not sealed good. And products like dry gas only make it worse, since they're mostly ethanol! From my experience, as long as you're running it, it works OK, but if you let something sit for a week or longer, you start to have problems.

Mac, fenders are over rated. Run it naked! {Without fenders, not you yourself, but if you want to do that, go ahead, we just don't need pics for proof, LOL!}

 

[MercuryMac]

A week or longer, Bam, this truck has been sitting for eight months. I could be in trouble with a capitol T. Most of our winters are at least six months long and maybe seven, so every year could be a problem. I never saw a carburetor flooded like this before. There was a shot glass of water or gassy water on top of each of the throttle plates on the back two barrels. The good news is this, I won't have to go to the A&W on Thursday night with the truck, because it is now raining pretty good and we have rain warnings for later. No showing off.

You don't know how tempting it is to run with no fenders, leave all of the welding warps, rattle can it flat black or red oxide, finish up the trans and motor mounts, use the grill as is, and slap a little glass in it, and go--- naked----- no wait you told me not to do that.
Anyhow, no it won't happen like that, due to; driving on too many gravel roads, paying too much for the fenders, wanting to stick to the plan too much and I have a Model A roadster that will be fenderless.

 

[JBailey]

I don't know if you have it in Canada lol, but "Heat" or seafoam or stabil should help out with the ethanol drawing moisture. I run ethanol blend fuel in everything I own except my motorcycle, it only gets 91 octane premium.

The build is looking great, don't stray to far from your plan!

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks JB for the vote of confidence.
We have Stabil but I haven't looked into the other names yet. The one downfall of adding these products is that you have to know when your last ride of the year is and not let it sneak up on you like I did last year. Anyhow, by the time I'm too old to build hotrods anymore I will have learned an awful lot of stuff.

 

[Bamamav]

One thing I didn't think about Mac is the difference in our locations.......down South here, we probably have a lot higher humidity levels that you do. I have a old farm tractor, a 1955 International, and if I leave much gas in it, I'll have to drain the tank at least once a month to get rid of the water that ethanol absorbs from the air. I take the line loose, and you can see when it changes from water to pure gas. If I don't do this, it will run a while until the carb bowl fills up with the water, then it will start spitting and sputtering and sometimes just quit running. Drain the carb {updraft with a handy drain plug on bottom}, drain a bit out of the tank, and you're read to work some more.

You probably need to drain everything and start fresh. Hope it works out OK for you.

 

[smallfoot]

Besides the extra camel**** they pour in it over there, we're forced to use the ethanol blend here too. I'd vote for the corn squeezins to go back to moonshine myself. The ethanol blends they have here really do suck! Our humidity probably does speed up the poor conditions. I had my tractor mechanic tell me the diesel fuel they sell now has changed some too. Don't know specifically why. Maybe they are adding crap to it to, but he let me in on putting some of the cheapest atf fluid in the fuel everytime I add fuel. He told me in the diesel, it keeps the diesel fuel from breaking down so quick. He told me and I've been doing it ever since to add a quart of atf to every tank. All it will do if it's noticed at all will add a little smoke. I can't even really tell that.
I've heard mention of seafoam and the others for gas treatment, just never do anything but run it right thru with my gas motors. Never let it sit more than a week. The Evinrude boys tell me the same thing. If ya don't burn it up on your fishing trip, take it out of the boat and run it thru the truck.