Projects 47 Plymouth Build

yeah thanks fellas. no big deal...

i THINK i have next steps figured out. but like i said. right now i only have welding wire invested. so if it all goes south i will stub on a front part of a frame. but i will do some more head scratching until then. i can fix what i did. just a minor set back and great learning experience. but thats just how i learn.

got the R&P unit in just now. bought it from a place in northern arkansas for 45 bucks w shipping. a reman. everything looks good from what i can tell by looking at it. But getting it figured out will have to wait another weekend.

i will keep everyone posted on successes, near misses and potential tragedies.

 

If you goof up the frame too much, you should be able to find a replacement fairly easy ..Its a common car

I noticed you were doing some wild work but, figured you had a plan and didn't need me to throw in my two cents

 

Oh shit..this where you paint my face very RED. Sorry thunder, looking at too many posts........


.

 

oh i thought i had a plan too.... it just want a good plan. but i had to see if it was possible. its not, not unless its cool for bumpers to be used as hood ornaments... no? i didnt think so.

 

no big deal. its a pretty cobbled together post with some build pictures mixed with the intermitent cry for help.

 

here is a pic of one that a friend of mine is doing in vancouver WA.

might get some ideas

 

With all due respect, ThunderRoad, I think you might want to sit back, take a deep breath, and rethink your plan.

If you want your car to look anything like the photoshop version, the frame has to be a lot closer to the ground than the 6 inches you mentioned in the quote above. Mine is about 2 1/2 inches off the ground at the same point and it's just barely low enough to look good.

If you plan to have the car look like the photoshop when it's parked and "aired out" but drive at 6 inches that's fine. But if you want it to look low while it's driving, that's a whole 'nother matter...and will take considerably more engineering to accomplish.

Ray Lund, the builder who engineered and fabricated my frame and suspension, scratched his head long and hard as to exactly how to get my car as low as I wanted while still being fully driveable WITH NO BAGS!

And he did it...but it took a total re-engineering of the frame, suspensions, driveline and crossmembers to get it done. To be brief, it's got a fabricated front stub that's heavily Z'd with a Mustang II crossmember and dropped spindles in front. The rear is mini-tubbed with raised rails which are C'd with Chassis Engineering leaf springs. It's got heavy anti-sway bars front and rear and handles like a slot car!

The driveline was installed after all the suspension work was done, mounted high in the frame so that nothing hangs below the frame rails to drag or catch on bumps or painted lines. Then the floors and firewall were fabricated to suit.

Not intended to put you off your project in any way, but just offered to share a bit of hard-learned wisdom from experience. But then, I'm old-fashioned and just don't "get" the allure of "laying frame" when parked but having to "air it up" to get it to move. I never got the lowrider hydraulics thing, either...

Ray did a wonderful job and the car has been on the road in it's current configuration for over 15 years with no problems other than the harmless scraping of the frame once in a while. It's built to protect itself from hazards on the bottomside.

And yes, before somebody points it out, it does have scrub line issues, but I can live with that to get the traditional bagless look, ride and race car cornering I was looking for. Thanks again, Ray!

 

Greetings! Here's some pictures of the Dodge Dakota front clip, enjoy. P.S., the Volari front suspension is a poor choice for your project, you wouldn't believe how much work it takes to properly install one a car, althought it is a good choice for a truck.

 

MissysDad1,

Do you have any build pics. floors, drivetrain mounting pics? What is you drivetrain?

 

just a minor update...

first things, i appreciate the suggestions on the front clip. i am being a little hard headed in wanting to keep the original frame. mostly for no other reason than the frame is in such good shape. i dig the challenge and believe me it would have been easier to splice in a new front clip.

lately what we got done was a little more to bridge and final welds on all the four link. i added on these pretty nice looking gussets just for added strength and the plane fact that i get caught up in the details way too much...







and another gusset on the back of the upper bar link bracket...



thank god for family. my cousin who is helping me, stopped by to burn some wire on it for a while and thank god, his welds were coming out so impressive i was afraid to weld after a while...



and here is the Z update. here is a picture of what i had original thought was a good idea until i was steered right and told i was goign to have troubles down the road...



so here is where i ended up after taking a step back and doing some patching up to fix it...



i added a nice little build up to help the flow of the frame a little. going to add the same detail on the bottom...



now we have the whole frame rolled over to finish the bottom of the Z and to weld the underside of the bridge and make some changes to the spring pockets and the lower A arms. but we ran out of wire and weekend. so these will have to wait until next weekend. sorry for the mediocre pictures but all i trust myself with is the camera on my phone.

but hopefully we will have the bags on the front next weekend and the front suspension set up. every time i update the build thread i realize all the pictures i didnt take. i made some pretty nice shock relocation brackets for the front. but i didnt take any pictures so everyone will just have to believe me. just a small update but realize that i am just very slow. more updates to come soon...

 

The 42-early 49 Coach, or 2door sedan, is a fairly rare bird. If you think about, you'll realize that most Chrysler products you see are Coupes or 4door Sedans.

 

kick this back to the top since i posted an update in the middle of the night.

 

just another small update. well still not much headway on the car this weekend but i will post it all the same. right now i am having to use my uncles garage which is great but when i go over i have to spend about an hour getting things out of the way to work on it. cant bitch too much though.

i will apologize in advance for the shaky pictures. i have to use my camera phone to take the pictures.

The Z is all welded up and still grinding down all the ugly welds.



see at first i thought i wasn't getting back into welding that well. we realized that the tension on the feed was all wrong. of course after we were almost done. of course this would have been realized had someone been doing it that knew what they were doing. still looks a little rough but i think it will clean up nice.

So then we go ahead and start working on getting the bags on the front end. i had tossed around putting smaller bags that fit up into the stock spring pockets but i was worried about the weight of everything effecting the ride. so i cut the spring pocket out to make room for the larger bags.



I will add a small fill piece behind the new hole and probably add some bracing inside the pocket as well. there wasn't much to the piece we cut out of the inside of pocket. i still need to work on the rod i bent to run around the inside of the hole. i will lay a bead all the way around and then grind it down to give the lip a slight radius. for bot looks and just in case the bag shifts any i didnt want it to rub u against the lip at all. but we ended up with quite a bit of room around the bag...



and here is what it looks like with the lower A arm in place...



oh now i did forgot to mention the whole thing is upside down. so i think we can get the Z and the spring pocket modification cleaned up and get all the wheels back on. would really like to get the tabs for the R&P figured out as well. Would really be awesome to blast some more primer on it and set the body back on and start on that within the next 2-3 weeks. maybe when the weathers warmer i can take a few days off and get a little more done. until then this will be a slow moving build thread.

 

Well I'm still watching...

Looking good so far...are those the stock lower control arms??

 

yessir they are. I have a small cross piece welded to it because i had an idea to modify them plates, but have since scrapped that idea.

 

Looks like you know what you are doin...Sometimes,trial and error is the only option you have. Looks great!

 

any updates?
def more technical info on the front bag set up...ive got a 52 i plan on bagging

 

How are things going on the plymouth there Thunder?

I'm working on getting a 48 Desoto and I'm now watching this build with great interest!!

 

Looks great!
Keep up the hard work!

 

He hasn't signed on since 8/27/09!

 

Fun project! Love the fact that you are getting your daughter involved. I'm already thinking about projects to start with mine, and she is just shy of 8 months! LOL

We recently finished a resto/mod of a '48 Plymouth. Pretty stock from the outside, with the exception of the ride height, but lift the hood, and that's where it ends. We dropped a nice 1959 392 Hemi in there!.

 

Don't want to hijack this thread but....

Would love to see some build pics. And some more info on your build. Maybe you could start a thread about your sweet plymouth there.

My plans for the 48 Desoto involve a 331 Hemi and such so I'm very interested in what you did.

 

PM Sent

 

well i finally came back on here. things in my life turned pretty lousy for quite a while. but i'm not going to get on here and whine about it. i have had to move the car all over the place to try and find a place to work on it. so things haven't gone to well. i have a few minimal updates and am hoping to get going again on the project this summer and make some major headway.



finally got the body and frame back into the same location.




a little re-enforcements to get ready to channel




this sure looks easier in a magazine article. floorboards are gone.




had to prop the door and fender up to see what it will look like.


right now i am contending with the weather and trying to level things up on a gravel driveway just to get the body and frame tacked back together in some way so i can move it back home. next time i will definitely build the shop THEN build the car. lost two of the rear body mounts in all the moving around.

oh well, hoping things will get better here pretty soon.

 

how much is it going to be channeled?

 

i am thinking 2 1/2 - 3 inches. i want to keep the body maybe a 1/2 inch above the thickest part of the frame in front. in the picture the body is setting around an 1 - 1 1/2 inches lower than what it will be when the bags are aired out.

 

ThunderRoad, Very interesting reading. Oddly enough you are building a similar project to my buddy Dave. His is a '47 also. Check it out--
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=366932&highlight=chopping+47+plymouth

 

PUNK RODDER i have totally checked out that build and have already talked with your buddy Dave to stop by your guys's shop to see the build in person. cant wait to meet everyone. I think i will be coming by tomorrow evening, if all works out.

 

Great build hope your Daughter is still involved . May be it will keep her away from those hairy legged boys.

 

41Plymouth4-dr,
If you throw some burgers on the grille, put a case of beer on ice, and have a PA/NY HAMB meet & Greet, that's a good start on getting some help.
PM me, I'll be at Cowanesque over Memorial Day weekend, can stop and take a look.
Skid.