Projects 1940 Plymouth Coupe Build!

Thanks for the info. My dodge has a 79 firebird front stub grafted in. I'm using 81 dodge truck motor mounts and the rear oil pan and pump from it to put the 318 in mine. I'm going to use early dodge truck exh. manifolds with mine. I'm wondering if you could eliminate one of your steering joints by using block hugger headers? Do you have any pics of your brake pedal setup under the dash? Did you check your starter selinoid to see if it's engaging the starter?

 

Yeah I am going to probably get another set of ceramic block huggers and a nicer dress up kit for the engine later on down the road (mainly due to my budget since I lost my job). But I think you are right, I maybe able to.

I do not have any pictures of the brake pedal setup under the dash at this point, I will see what I can do.

I dropped the starter earlier tonight and flopped it in the vice and hooked the battery to it. The gear is EXTREMELY loose, took it down to the auto parts store and they said it was failed after they put it in their machine (solenoid failure). Bought their reman, brought it home (without checking it against my better judgement), installed it (20 minutes) and found that one of the posts were broken... SOB... So I took it back, got my starter back went to the other autoparts store, the starter passes with flying colors, but the gear is still very loose. They of course do not have a 350 chevy starter in stock... WTF. One of the most common engines in any vehicle and they don't have one starter... So that is coming tomorrow in the AM. I think I have solved the mystery of what was making the racket though (the gear popping on and off of the flywheel and banging into the side of it. I think very shortly I may have it up and running again. Pictures when I get everything ready to rock.

I am going to have to get a fuel pressure regulator for this one too. AND the battery was dead. Charged it overnight, still nothing. Maybe getting a new battery tomorrow too. Eegad

 

If you're able to fix that noise in the engine by changing the starter, you're one Lucky Guy! Go buy a lottery ticket.

 

Do a search on shimming Chevy starters.
I understand why yours has that motor, but I had to laugh at the starter not in stock. Sorry....
Wonder how many SBC lovers will still say "you can get parts for them anywhere"?
Best of luck getting it going!

 

I guess we are going to see Dave, I totally forgot that you heard that racket too. I am going to head out there right now and install it and the battery that has been sitting on a charge all night. If it works and I win the lottery I am buying us both pre-1936 Plymouth coupes lol.

 

Shimming it was not the issue, it was the fact that the drive gear for the starter was loose and bouncing a half to a quarter inch back and forth when the starter was engaging and spinning. Then it would fall off the flywheel and bang into the side of it.

I know about the starter, right?! completely ridiculous.

 

good luck with your starter. Sorry to hear about your job situation, I was in your shoes 2 years ago. Keep an eye out on craigslist and scour swap meets for cheap set of block huggers. I did things like that to keep the flame going. good luck.

 

well the starter fixed it! I am back in business. I am going to start putting her back together tomorrow, maybe even to fire her up! (I have a lot to do tomorrow, but we will see)

 

Getting some new shorty plugs for headers (thank you Accel!) and fresh oil change since the oil smells like fuel. I am going to get that this afternoon and in the meantime install everything else so all I have to do is throw those plugs in and fire her up. Keep your fingers crossed. I will post a video or some pictures if that happens... probably after the engine burns off the marvel mystery oil that I coated the cylinder walls with!

 

Is your carb running a little rich? I see you said about puttting a fuel regulator on it, is it pushing fuel past the needles? Good luck with your fireup, hopefully the starter was the noise problem.

 

I think it is just because it stopped running and I was troubleshooting it while turning it over. I don't think that there is an issue with the carb overfueling a this point, but we will see. The starter was definitely the noise issue that I was hearing, but we will see if there is anything else that pops up. Going to install the plugs and headers now!

 

VICTORY! I shot some carb cleaner down the first two barrels of the carb and tried to let it roll over and it wouldn't fire.. So I went back and thought about the plug wires at the distributor and if they were in the right place. Sure enough (I don't know how it happened) I had them off by like 3 cylinders. So I put all of the wires back in there places and tried again and she runs! I am going to push this beast out in the driveway tomorrow, change the fluids and let her run for a while. It would make a good little video tomorrow right before the weather turns south. So wow what a relief! I am stoked. That noise the whole time was the starter.... lol

 

2nd what rodstrace said....we could really use some pics of that set up...I've heard of it being done but never have actually seen one. The slant of the enigne would probably be a hassle to change plugs, but there is a removable inner fender plate to aid in the oem L6 engines valve adjustment, it should work for changing plugs in the slants 6s case...how convieniant would that be!

 

59apache, just curious, are you keeping the oem speedo and gauges or going with modern stuff?...I saw a '40 ply dash where the stock speedo was replaced with a 5" new speedo and had a new side gauge each side where the oem two smaller gauges sat origonaly either side of it. Had a quad din pioneer radio where the radio speaker was.
Great build so far..its giving me ideas for my '40 P-10!

 

Good thing you got the engine running. Looking forward to that vid!

 

Thats awsome, glad to hear that. Heads up, I seen someone has a set of coated sbc huggers in the parts classifieds for $60 if I remember correctly, just recently.

 

Well I got sidetracked today with yardwork trying to prepare for winter. However, I was able to get the Plymouth out in the driveway, clear the garage floor where it sat and cleaned the car off. I did change the fluids while I was at it too. The garage gremlin screwed around with the Plymouth last night because the starter sounds like it needs to be shimmed, completely the opposite from last night... so that kind of got me a little angry with it, then it started to rain, so I had to push it back inside. I will try it tomorrow or the next couple of days and get it all set up and get that video posted. Here are some pictures of what she looks like now. I have stripped all paint and rust on the exterior and primed it with some rattle can rustoleum to ensure that the rust would not return anytime soon.

 

Thanks Modeljunkie! I had access to a complete machine shop with a CNC in school and was allowed to use the CNC as much as I wanted if I could get it running. I found a program and finally got that CNC running so I cut out the gauge cluster to fit a nice set of autometer gauges in there. I still have the stock cluster and was thinking about doing something cool with it in the future. I will have to do some thinking!

 

Well I will have to take a look at them then. Super Sunday Swap Meet is going on tomorrow so I may pick up a couple little things here and there. Maybe some headers, who knows. Thanks for the heads up.

 

here they are. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=634136

 

Looks like they are a nice set of block huggers, but the money order is questionable; easy way to get ripped off. I'll see what I can find tomorrow and use these as a fall back. Thanks man

 

your welcome, not a problem.

 

No prob, when one finally gets to the interior it time to say, "OK, WTF do I do now?" Your 41 is close to the layout of my 40 for the gauges, but you don't get the radio block off plate at all from what I saw...the businessman edition was sparse that way.
I'm liking the new auto-meter speedos that self calibrate in 2 miles no matter what you have...uses GPS I guess. Change tires or gears - no problem, just recalibrate and your good. For me to have my non working speedo fixed costs as much as the whole A-M set and there's no touching the other stock gauges then yet.
Hey, is your stock battery location under the front seat too?...I plan to move mine and install buckets...

 

Well I went to Super Sunday as soon as they opened the swap meet and picked up some loot . For this car I got a nice throttle cable, 350T kickdown cable, distributor clamp (old one wont keep the dist still), choke cable, timing chain cover timing bracket, and some nice LED lights, the greens will be for turn signals and the blue will be for brights. It's going to be fun to customize this to make it how I want it. More to come on the shimming situation and getting it to fire up and run. Its crappy weather out so not much is going to get done today.

 

I also picked up a brake master cylinder setup for the Plymouth too for dirt cheap $40 and it works (just tested it). It looks brand new by the pictures. Thank you Dave for helping me out on finding that.

 

nice scores

 

Well I started to install the tranny and throttle linkage that I bought at the swap meet and it bothered me that I have not started it up yet. So I jacked it up and installed my new dist hold down as well. I crawled under the car and found that the starter was hung up on the flywheel (too far away that they were touching peak to peak on the gears and jammed that way) So I got my .060 shim and poked it under the farthest bolt and that brought it right to 1/8 of an inch from the teeth of the flywheel to the shaft of the starter (perfect). I cranked it over and bingo that thing rolled over and the starter hardly made a sound. I then noticed I did not have any fuel rolling into the primaries in the carb, so I tapped the bowl with a rubber mallet and the carb started filling up with fuel (stuck float). I shot some carb cleaner in there and rolled it over a couple times so I could fine tune where the distributor needed to be and she fired up. It is a shame it is midnight and I don't have any gas!

Boy what a struggle. I think this is a good place to stop for the night

Here is a video and some pictures:

 

Yes, a vid! Sounding good! Shame you ran out of fuel....

 

Oh no joke, it was right around or below freezing outside when I fired this up last night so I wouldn't have done much anyway! The next three days are going to be sunny so I had better get this thing outside today to get it fired up, or at least pop the garage. I will make a nicer video and post it soon.

Goal today: make this video and idle the Plymouth for a while outdoors and get the water pump changed on the Apache.

 

Here is a compilation video of it running out in the driveway. Now that everything runs okay I am going to really start getting into it and make it roadworthy. More to come on that soon... in the mean time I am going to get that water pump swapped out on my pickup and a couple other things installed so I can clean up that half of the garage and hopefully get that hood on. Enjoy!