I Managed to take a lot of photos of my old '47 Plymouth today. This is a P-15 Special Deluxe Club Coupe with original radio, a heater, and a clock delete. I thought I'd post them up here to see what the HAMB'rs could tell me about it. Is this considered a "period" style? Or is it just a hodge-podge of spare parts? First a bit of history. I bought this car in 1986 from an amateur customizer in Visalia, Calif. His name was Simon Florez and he'd built it for his wife Edith. It had won a few trophies in it's day. It was basically in very nice shape considering, and ran well, but had a crushed bearing in the steering gear & would not make a left turn under any pressure. It was set up so low you couldn't turn a corner over 10 MPH without dragging the lake pipes. I fixed up the mechanicals as needed, stuffed a stereo in the glove box & started crusing. I put in a later Plymouth overdrive trans bought from Galen Olsen of Visalia (bike customisers will remember him from the 70's.) I drove the car to work daily for nearly 5 years. At that point it seized a wrist pin & I put it away until I had time to swap the engine for a 230 Dodge engine I'd bought. I'd have just rebuilt the original, only it wasn't the original engine at all. It was a correct 217 flathead, but the serial numbers had been brutally defaced with a chisel. I knew what that meant: my hopped up Plymouth had a "hot" engine alright. I bought the Dodge engine because of that. Life happened to have other plans for me and any work on the Plymouth was forestalled a bit. That "bit" turned into almost 24 years of total neglect. The results you can see here were not too devastating, and the whole thing is in very good shape, owing largely to the past 10 years of drought here. Anyhow I intent to customize it some more & put it back on the road, but my plans for that are still nebulous at this point. I've been told that this is a "cholo" car, but exactly what that means is possibly related more to the style of customizing than anything about the car itself. Frankly I'm clueless about that. I also got the impression that it was supposed to be a sort of "gangster" style, but I cant see how that fits with painting roses on it. LOL Anyhow, for your comment and amusement, I post up these photos of the car as it is today. The lakers and bumper guards and lowering blocks were removed & sold 25+ years ago, but it is otherwise styled as I bought it 28 years ago.
I've never seen a heater like this on a '47. It says: "MOPAR DELUXE MODEL 36" & has 3 doors that open. The fan is in the top of the case. The pinstripes were done by Rubin of local fame, and it's a shame the condition they'd fallen to. A few more detail shots:
Looks like a stock Plymouth to me...neither period style nor a hodge podge of parts...looks like fun either way. now get to work on it and stop caring what people classify it as.
From the description of how it looked when you first bought it and from the photos posted on this thread, your Mopar was a old school lowrider (or bomb as they are often called) but most bombs are Chevys. Your Mopar would make a nice (mild or wild) custom or rod.
looks solid and not in that bad of shape ... i would work on the engine, in running smoothly and the brakes .. and as mentioned, enjoy it =)
Just get it mechanicaly good and driving and drive it till the wheels fall off. Do it for yourself no matter what people say. Enjoy
In total agreement. I like the look of it. I say get it mechanically reliable, clean it up, maybe drop the front a bit and drive the heck out of it. Oh, I say take off the fender skirts and visor...but that is just me. You have a car with some history. Would be cool to save it.
A nice start. Take those awful chrome strips off the back glass. Clean, get running and driving. Drive until hell freezes over.
Yeah, I do see the "bomb" thing. I'm sort of a Kentucky moonshine hotrod type myself, transplanted to California for the weather. Never being involved with the So Cal lowrider stuff it was sort of a lark when I bought this car. I immediately raised the rear & dropped the front & removed the skirts. With the engine & trans out it sits rather tall though. At one time I had a Buick 350 donor car, but the transplant never happened. I was too busy driving it! I just uncovered this for the first time in years. A used dodge engine I bought in 1991 for $400. It needs to be overhauled now. . The trans I bought from Galen Olsen. I overhauled this about 20,000 miles (& 25 years) ago. It's not so much a matter of "caring" as of simply wanting to post this stuff up in the right place.
If a 218 truck engine will fit, I have a good running one listed in the classifieds. This is a cool car! I would clean it up, get it running, throw a blanket on the seat and drive the snot out of it.
Wash it. Lose the visor and skirts. Put the flathead six back in with a T5 behind it. Slam it on a mild forward rake with big 'n' littles. Drive the poop out of it. Here's a hard-learned lesson: if you make it too good you'll not want to drive it...except like a little ol' lady...and that's not much fun. "Edith". I love it!
Thanks for all the replies folks. I found these snaps I took 28 years ago, and scanned them this AM. This shows the car exactly as I bought it, except the lowering blocks are removed.
Edith will always be Edith, but I'm working on ideas for a facelift. How about a chopped Carson top, air bags, custom skirts, and a complete grille re-style with rectangular lights? I dunno...
Not sure Edith needs that much of a face lift. I think she is pretty cool the way she was. Just my opinion though...great photos.
Looks like a lowrider bomb in it's previous life, as-is it's more of a neglected, accessorized stocker. I like old paint, and I like that the pinstriping on this one has some history, but I think the paint is too far gone on here to preserve. It's full-on rusty now. If it were me, I'd take some good photo documentation of the striping, then repaint the car and have a striper re-create it again (leave the dash alone, it's fine). A shame it wasn't garaged and kept up better.
You would be surprised how well that paint would clean up with some of the rust treatments I've seen guys use one here. I think CLR was one of them? Cleans the rust off and leaves enough good paint behind to polish. My 47 had the same heater. Love this car. I'd drop it 2 inches with wide whites. Clean the snot out of it and rock it out! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using H.A.M.B. mobile app
Yeah i was going to mention clr. Or phosphoric acid. I bet you'd be surprised at how much of that rust will disappear to reveal old paint.
I use Jasco metal prep, which is basically water, alcohol & phosphoric acid. I also like that spray-on treatment from NAPA. I don't really have much interest in preserving the car as it was. The style never appealed to me. My goal was always to customize it & hop it up, and finally I have a situation where that can happen. The thing is that I think the body style looks best as a tail dragger, but tail draggers aren't really my thing. Still, with bags & custom suspension... Yeah, two divorces, 3 jobs, 7 grandkids, 5 cars, another marriage, and 4 houses later... It's funny how life totally fails to respect our most sacred plans.
Personally, I dig this; only thing I'd change is to lose the grille guard & headlight visors, punch some louvers in the hood, and put some wide whites on her. I actually like the visor; looks good on this car IMO.
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