Projects Edith d' Plymouth: restyling my P-15

See you are from Baudette..Did you know Bobby and Steve Olson that lived up the Rainey River East of town ? Im from Grand Rapids and now live in Brainerd. Im restoring a 1946 Plymouth convertible that should have been crushed... Im keeping it original except for the Chev 350 with 400 trns along with the floor shifter. Ive had a couple 47 Plys and liked the original handling and brakes etc. Like to discuss this Ulu ? Dale at [email protected] e-mail..

 

Hey hey love you hambers..always genuine Appreciation for the love of these cars and love of fellow hambers...HAPPY NEW Year.....

 

The solution is water and washing soda (sodium carbonate) sold also to raise the PH in your spa. about one cup per 10 gals of water is plenty. The water should feel soapy in your hand.

This is the active ingredient in the new age ecology-minded laundry detergent we buy, and if my clothes are stinky I toss in some extra sodium carbonate.

 

Thanks Dale.
I was born in Kentucky but I did live in Duluth and Baudette plus at the AFB out near Hermantown, Mn. I went to 5 different schools there and I met a LOT of Olsens and Olsons so who knows. It's been 40 years since then.

 

Hey Ulu Great Tear down I'm currently working on a 37 Plymouth I have built it several times in my head while working on it. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who loves these cars yours is gonna be really cool . thank you for posting an entertaining thread. Happy New Year!! Subscribed Jim This pic is right after I bought it before the teardown process.

 

Thought you may have been born there. Are you going to have sandblasting done ?

 

I plan to blast the frame, but I'll send it out.
I may spot blast the underbody depending on access issues.
Mainly it'll be wirebrushed/scotchbrite/etc.

 

Thanks Ulu, I am going to try it. Do I go to the pool supply place or can I use laundry detergent?

 

At most grocery stores. With the laundry detergents. It says washing soda. Mine was in a box about the size of a cereal box. These are off Amazon both under 10 bucks. Probably cheaper than pool supplies.


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I picked up a quart bottle at Rite-Aid but it's too expensive there. Usually Lowes or Ace has it.

 

I sand blasted my rear fenders and it makes for a great surface to put primer too.. Good idea sending the frame out. That silicon sand can be deadly... I wirebrushed my frame where I could get at it but sandblasted in the corners etc. Carefull with sanding off that old lead based paint.. I think I got some in my lungs off mine. Debating whether to undercoat the floor or not on the bottom side. Put in new floor so nothing original to save there.

 

Thanks. I don't have any electric motor plates, any other ideas on anodes? Brake drums? Rebar?

 

Blowby, pretty much anything will work (cleaner the better though), some just better than others. We mostly used steel scraps off the ship in my buddies. Did most of a '69 Oldsmobile that way ( everything that would fit in a large trash can!). If I remember right, rebar worked ok, but not great due to the small surface area. Had to move it around the part quite a bit to get an even de-rusting.

 

I'm currently using random chunks of sheet metal from old PC cases.

 

Hey youse guys...

I was gonna complain about not being able to work on Edith because of all the cold & foggy weather here, until I saw the photos of the East Coast.

I'll just keep my mouth shut about the weather.

Not much to report today, except that I've been organizing and repairing my garage and my concrete
"door yard" to where I can assemble Edith more conveniently, once her various bits are refurbished.

I've been digging through all my boxes and crates and cabinets to discover the old car parts I hid there 10+ years ago. It's sorta like an Easter egg hunt where I'm finding parts and tools I'd quite forgotten that I owned!

My garage is double insulated on the walls, but has a tile roof and no ceiling. I'm preparing to put up R30 batts and 1/2" sheetrock, once I get my courage up. LOL

This is the first time I've done more than a patch job with sheetrock, & I've never done a ceiling, so it'll be an adventure alright. I'll also need some recessed lights, various new wiring, and a ceiling hatch. It'll take a while to do, as I'm basically on my own, but it's a job I've been pondering and planning for some years now, so it's time to bite the bullet and do it.

I now have a PC in my garage (OK, 3 actually, but 2 are just for the grandkids to play games) plus a new UPS, a new modem & a new hot-dog wireless router. I have internet access and all my car manuals on CD for easy access right in the garage. I took down my garage stereo & quad speakers (from up in the rafters as they'd be totally useless after the ceiling goes up) and I built a new garage music system to run from the PC. I also now have a small 'fridge, plus an electric tea kettle, and even an electric heater to warm my bones.

Now if I could just afford a hydraulic lift...

When I plugged in the UPS it told me my garage has a wiring fault. It's probably got a hot wire and a neutral wire switched at an outlet upstream. I picked up a new "no-contact" Klein circuit tester so I could dope it out. This thing is very sensitive and will tell you which wire in a 3-wire romex is hot, right through the insulation, just like magic.

Was I kidding myself when I decided that I could re-do this car in two years? While still working a 9-to-5?
Sheesh...right, like maybe after I retire! I'm still telling the wife, "Sure we're gonna remodel the kitchen this year honey..."

 

Folks it has been almost 3 years since I last posted in this thread and I truly hesitate to reopen it.

I am afraid I have let life (and death) get in the way of my car for a long time.

There were lots of family things, and some health issues with my eyes that forced me to retire a bit early at 61. My wife and I are now both fully retired and so we are having a Roman Holiday fixing up the property and doing all the projects that we want to. Okay, actually I did a custom glass job on my boat but you're not going to see it in this forum.

I converted my boat completely to electricity but that's not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is I managed to do that and still not have to remodel the kitchen yet! Can you tell how long I've been dreading the kitchen project? (15 years!)

Now I'm starting to work on the car again. I drug everything out and pulled off the tarps and moved it around where I can work on it, but first I need a good survey of the damages.

The body is still attached to the frame but most of the Fasteners are loose.

I haven't removed the gas tank yet.

One of the door hinges is still rusted on.

The master cylinder bolts are rusted solid to the frame so it's still there with the pedal shaft and pedal arms. Part of the fuel line is still attached and the rear brake line is still attached.

Otherwise she is as Stripped as Stripped can be. And she is wounded in undignified places.

So yet to come, the bill of damages . . .

 

welcome back ULU!

 

I'm rather new to the HAMB so I just read all your old posts. I purchased my P-15 on January 1 1971 and it has been sitting dormant in the garage since 1996. It's fit for the "sitting and rotting" site. Hopefully, after I deal with the cars that have jumped the queue I'll get to it before I die.

 

Sometimes you survive and still don't finish what you started. ;(

This could have been back in the car by now but due to circumstances Beyond My Control it sits under a blanket in the garage.

It still looks pretty good.

Tomorrow I'm going in for eye surgery, and hopefully this will look even better to me then. I'll tell you this getting old s*** is cutting into my cartime.

I was setting up to work on Edith again, and I pulled it out from under the tarp and drug it out and turned it around so I can get at the real damage.

California's drought ended last year and we had some heavy rains, and it has continued on and off here, so everything has been covered up with tarps for a couple years now.

Not only is this beat-up but it's poorly repaired and the body mount below is still bent.
I wish it wasn't the rear quarter panel and the doorpost and the rocker. this car has been T-boned low.

You can see the rubber body mount below was replaced with a piece of inner tube.

When I strung out the frame it did not seem to be out of whack by more than 1/16 of an inch. As far as I can tell it's still nice and square except for the screwed up body mount.

Anyhow when you look very closely, the entire cowl is slightly racked because of this which is why the hood never fit very well.



By the way folks I just went back to the beginning of this thread and realized that since the Meltdown of Photobucket, I have lost a lot of photos here. I may go back and try to replace them.

 

Ulu: It would appear that we are soul mates. Had the eye surgery on Oct. 25 for a detached retina and I've been surfing the HAMB ever since because I can't do diddley in the garage until the gas bubble recedes in the eye. The Plymouth has sat idle in the garage due to the same problem as yours. Been hit square in the front way before I owned it. I chopped the top over thirty years ago and was never happy with the way the doors fit. I attributed it to my chopping skills and asked friend the bodyman what to do. He told me to stuff a portapower diagonally in the door opening and keep applying pressure until something popped. I really put a hurt in my A pillar. Then I got smart and measured the door and door opening and found out about the previous damage. Everything started to make sense. I had previously replaced the hood with a really nice one but there was this noticeable overbite over the grille. Therefore, the car sits until I can make more room in the garage to address this problem and the other cars sneak up and take over. I've really enjoyed looking over your shoulder on your paint stripping ordeal. In the past, I did this by getting the body dipped but now that I'm older and poorer, this is starting to look more like the way to proceed. Keep up the good work.

 

I can feel for you because I had a minor incident with the retina and a dehydration of the vitreous humor in my right eye. Between that and the cataracs I was forced to retire because I simply could not deal with the paperwork & the computer 8 or 10 hours every day.

The truth is that if I want a nice restored 48 Plymouth I can go right out and buy one. They're not all that expensive and they're not hard to find. There is absolutely no reason for me to spend the rest of my life fixing this one up, now that I have it stripped and know how bad it really is.

But I bought it originally to build a Hotrod, and this car was beyond the 30 year reach of California's smog control laws so I could do anything I wanted.

Now I am thinking I am going to go total radical on this car, because the one thing that I can't go out and buy is my own ideas. If I want them in metal I'll have to put them there with a torch.

With enough torch work I can turn this car into a step-down Frame two seat Roadster.

Whether it will really be HAMBly remains to be seen . . .

I owe a lot to Ed Roth, but a rat rod it will not be.

 

Ulu: If you are into customizing, how about using a bumper/grille assembly from a '69 Firebird? Years ago, I noticed one of these cars that always parked in the same place, so I took my Plymouth grille with me and placed it in front of this car. Similar contours.

 

If you intend on turning that Plymouth into a real step down roadster, you have a lot of torch work in front of you. With the inside of the frame at least 10" inside the rocker, its going to be a mighty wide step, or you have some major frame work in your future. Good times are coming, I'll be watching. Gene

 

Yeah it's a lot of work that I'm envisioning. Who knows if I will actually be up to it.

But, I am doing okay after the eye surgery and for the first time since I was about 12 years old I can actually walk around without glasses if I close my right eye. But I'm trying to walk around and drive around with my eyes so different and it's not working well.

Also I'm forbidden to do any real cleaning, grinding or sanding, because if I unconsciously rub my eye or get grit in it, I'm going to be a very unhappy fellow.

The doctor and I both thought that everything had turned out well so I go back on December 7th to have the other eye done. It was in better shape to begin with so I'm hoping it will turn out even better than the first one.

 

I don't think I'm going to transplant metal from another car onto this one. But I do have this weakness for tail fins . . .

No I'm really going to try and keep this body and reshape it.

But yes indeed the frame is quite a way from the rocker panel, and you have the choice of making the frame wider or the body more narrow or both.

Once you throw away the roof a whole lot of options open up.

Throwing off the fenders gives you even more options.

None of them are simple or easy, but I remember what John Kennedy said: "We don't do these things because they are easy."

 

I have spent years now fixing up the house and property, and my welding shed is still not done. We did put in a tool shed. But virtually nothing has been done on my car for several years, until this past week when I pulled it out, drilled out some rusty bolts, and started measuring and sketching some new plans.


Right now it's under a waxed cotton tent, sitting in a thick coat of dirt and oil, getting rusty again due to unexpected rains.

I will post up some more sketches and photographs as this work progresses.

I was trying to contract for the construction of a new welding shed when this Corona thing hit and now my work is sort of back to the theoretical stage.

What I have decided is that I want to make this into a two seater car by moving the windshield and firewall and extending the cowl. I will weld both of the doors shut and create a small passenger door for my wife. So before cutting the top off and taking the cowl skin loose from the firewall and chopping out the acre of Rusty floorboard that's going to disappear, I've got to get my welding shed set up.