Projects 37 Zephyr build thread

That looks realy good Paul. Well deserved enjoying the car after all that work you put in to it.

 

You really earned your run up the beach. Brilliant.

 

Excellent end result and inspiration to every rodder.

Hennie

 

awesome job-it came out great-has a cool look to it!

 

good work =)

 

It is a great inspiration for me looking at what you've accomplished on your Zephyr and has motivated me to began work on my 48 Plymouth aka Lumpy. Thank you for going through the trouble of photographing and posting your progress!

 

Great photo, I bet it was fun blasting up and down the beach!
Its truly a lovely car, great save.

 

That black and white shot could have been taked 50 years ago wow. Looks like you were having fun too. One question. You said you ran petro as if you weren't planning on that what is the other option. Are you talking race gas or what I'm confused (not hard to do).





Car looks phenomenal

 

petrol- gasoline

lpg- liquefied petroleum gas. Its liquefied in a tank to fit more in but comes out like a gas stove in a restaurant. Think of it like propane.

Beautiful car!!! I have been following the whole thread and I hope some day I can do half as good.

 

An amazingly fast resurrection! I looked at the add for this car so many times and wished I had the skills to do something with it. (It was less than an hour from my house) I'm glad it wound up in your very capable hands.

 

Amazeballs!!!!

 

Cheers guys.
Using the zephyr on an almost daily basis now (well everytime I get the chance). It's up and running on LPG which is good, means I am getting the equivalent of around 30-35 to the gallon from it. Amazingly it averaged 23+ mpg on petrol when I did the Pendine trip.
Still got loads to do but have to earn some more money before I get much more done. I am definitely going to reverse eye the front spring and get the ride height more to my liking. I will also have to make up some more drip rails and fit them. I wanted to run without them but it's just not practical at all. The water pours in the door tops and soaks the carpets and head lining. I don't want to mess up all the hard work I put in so they will have to go back on.
Hopefully I can get lots of the smaller jobs sorted over the winter and it will be ready to use properly next season.

Paul.

 

joined the hamd just to see your zephyr ,didn't realise the size of the task till I saw these pics wow ,much respect ,same taste in cars ,similar taste in dogs , we have had 3 English bulldogs ,maybe another sometime , cheers jim.

 

Welcome aboard Jim, yep the old Zephyr wasn't so well when I first got it.

Paul.

 

Way to get it on the road! Do you still have your Dodge Coupe?

 

Yep Beverly still has her Dodge coupe, it's a 37 D5. It too should have been at Pendine but with the amount of work I had on the zephyr I didn't get time to get hers sorted. Next year for sure.
I also have the 47 Plymouth coupe that's still awaiting new floors and a complete refurb.

Paul.

 

in looking at your doors, i realized the graft is actually 2 door ends, not 4 door ends. Which makes sense for the roof to line up at the point where it does. Now i understand the poor shape of the graft. Which sucks for me cause now i have to figure out a way to make mine work...

 

Very nice!!

 

My 1939 ford coupe was almost that rustedm came from minnesota! I have "limited" funds, so fabricated the rear roll pan. did not think I could do it, but it turned out pretty good for a farm boy. Keep the pictures comming, you think kind'a like me.Henry

 

The sheet metal work and finishing on your Zephyr is some of the best I have ever seen on any car. You and Beverly are artists!

 

That Zephyr has really come along way! It's looks great, good job! I love these cars with that long sweeping back end!

 

Finally found some time this weekend to do some work on the zephyr. Since it's shakedown trip to Pendine there has been a list of things that I wanted to get done.
The door windows were literally just slung in the night before Pendine and therefore didn't really work that well. The front end sat way to high for the look I was after and the I didn't want to alter it until it had a chance to settle down (it didn't). The rear end was also to high but that was my doing as I ended up raising 2" to stop the chassis crashing on the axle (didn't get time to sort the c notch after all. i know bloody slacker !!!).
Yesterday I made the window channels to allow the windows to go up and down as they should, once I get the garnish moldings they should all work nicely.
Today I tackled the lowering of the front end. The plan has always been to reverse the eyes on the front spring, so after stripping the spring out I marked the main leaf at 1" intervals with chalk and used my hydraulic pipe bender to slowly compress the spring at each mark and after a couple of passes and some fine tuning I had a spring with the same arc but with reverse eyes.
Whilst apart I noticed that the spring was also binding up with one shackle. This spring is definitely a mix and match of different leaves, it was completely bound solid when I got it and neither shackles had any movement. I had already removed several leaves that were clearly not original ones . Today I went through them all again and after removing some and replacing some it now works really well and also sits exactly at the height I wanted.

Hopefully I should get the c notch sorted on the rear next and remove the 2" packer and it should sit pretty much perfectly.

A good weekends work.















Paul

 

Lovely Paul. The wheel sits perfect in the fender now.

 

I'm enjoying everyone of your post!

 

Paul - one if the very best projects on this site ! You did a remarkable job on the old LZ and taking her to the sand, just perfect ! Have fun with her.
Best
John

 

Just blazed through this thread.....speechless....the first few pics I thought....wtf is this guy thinking" of course, I found out as I read along. The beach pics are so bad ass and the fact that you and your wife built it makes it that much better...take care...

 

Impressive build. Inspiring to see what talent, time and effort can accomplish.

 

really nice work =)

 

Thanks for all the comments guys all appreciated.
I'm still chipping away at some of the jobs that haven't been finished yet. I decided against the c notch for now as It's quite a major job and would involve removing part of the floor in the trunk and altering the inner fenders at the rear again. It's not as easy on a zephyr as the inner fenders are spot welded to the chassis.
I have brought it down by another 1 1/2" and I think I should just about get away with that, it doesn't leave a whole lot of suspension travel at the rear but I think it's just enough to work.
If it crashes out then I will have to carry out the notch. Time will tell. The picture now show the zephyr at it's final ride height apart from maybe some suspension settle.
I managed to get some garnish moldings from fellow Hamber and owner of another very cool zephyr Mats-Henrick, he sent me a really nice set of four zephyr sedan moldings. I have cut and shut two of them together to make one coupe molding and with some pie cutting and tweaking they fit really well. One more to go and then prep and paint them.
We are now working on finishing the door cards and parts of the interior that never got done before Pendine.







Paul.

 

There you go! Glad to se them worked out for you. Nice job! The ride height is just about perfect as far as I can tell.