Thanks I built the convert before I found the HAMB... It is kinda BLINGY But soon I will have the 3 rib plymmie bumpers and some 57 cadillac wheels and caps to clean it up some
so we've been debating colors pretty badly lately. we need to get our rears in gear. Hopefulyl we will be making some major progress on the fenders and door tomorrow night and saturday. Hopefully we will make enough progress to etch and prime them too and then we can start blocking out everything We've been struggling with our dupont representative *grrrrrrr* and he's been a real big PITA as far as bringing us color samples that we've been requesting for 3 weeks....yes...three weeks. We think the car would look awsome in black but i think we're leaning towards blue. We saw soem photos of the Ford G. Washington Blye (the darker of that color) and i'm thinking its a definate candidate. Anywho Wish us luck on getting the panels done in the next two days... warm weather is approaching!
a little Monday update on the car: the body guys that work for my boyfriend who promised to help do the panels with us keep finding excuses not to help so we've made-due on our own. We can't wait any longer so he went about it on his own yesterday morning. All of you guys who have dedicated people who thoroughly enjoy your cars and working on them with you...you should feel blessed. Its just him and I at this point which is fine but now we're thinking that the person who said they would paint it for us is also going to find excuses haha....so we'll be painting it on our own too. The passenger side door is FINALLY done and it looks GREAT. We finished fixing up the rear fender which is ready for primer. We need to fix one smaller dent on the front fender panel and we are GOOD TO GO! We need to etch and prime those peices and the remaining doors and then we are ready for block sanding...can't wait! I will try and get some photos tomorrow to add to this thread. We have decided against a modern, metallic type of color. we feel that it will only degrade the look of the car so we are going to go with a vintage paint code and a nice clear on top of that.
Its tough when you get let down by people you thought you could rely on, been there, done that. I learned a couple of things from that; 1) learn more so I can be self reliant, 2) never depend on other people for really important stuff, 3) its easier to control the quality of workmanship if you do it yourself and 4) the beer tab is cheaper if no one else helps. I'm getting ready to follow your path, just bought a 1951 Ford F1 pickup yesterday. Its a project truck that the owner lost interest in, already has had work done but needs a moderate amount of body work. I don't know a lot about body work but I reckon I'll be learning. Might hit you up with a question or two about etching and primer choices.
yes theyre professional body guys so they know what theyre doing and they are employees of my boyfriends so you'd think they'd be a little more willing to take one morning for a few hours to help but i guess we all have busy lives. My boyfriend isn't a professional with body work but he can make due with it and we're pretty pleased with how everything looks so far. Let me know when your ready for etch and primer and i'll ask my boyfriend what he uses. Whatever he used on this car is what they use in their prof. body shop on a daily basis. stuff is good too
so we are at the shop this evening on a very rainy/snowy crappy night. thought i would come in and update everyone on the progress. the body work is pretty much FINALLY DONE! WAHOOOO!!! We are aiming to prep the remaining doors/panels for primer this weekend. the entire car will then be ready for block sanding. we might even get the 1st round of block sanding done on sunday! the car is looking great. still haven't decided on a color yet. its like choosing a name for your kid
yesterday consisted of fixing a 2" x 2" minor rust spot in the floor. easy as cake. Now onto fixing 2 other very minor rust spots on the body where the fenders would sit. shouldn't be a big deal. While Joey was fixing those things, i went to block sanding. we're on our way!!
Well we are one step closer to DONE after the weekend. We had a leftover gallon of herculiner so i herculined all the floors yesterday and they came out GREAT! The entire body has ben block sanded and touched up with putty for any issues. The body shell is ready for a second round of primer then paint. We have one rear fender that is still awaiting the first coat of primer. the rest of the body pieces are ready for block sanding. Wehave set a deadling to finish in about 2 weeks. Hopefully that will be feaseable. We are currently trying to figure out how much we want to drop it. looking like 3-4 inches in the rear and about 1 1/2 - 2 inches in the front. heres a pic from yesterday
RE 50 Plymouth build. I need a good 6 for my 35 4 door Plymouth. current engine smokes and I want to sell the car as a good driver. If you get around to swapping the engine I really want Betty's 218. Larry Burnett 303 619 0003 lburnett05@gmail.com thx
Hi Larry. We are looking into doing a swap eventually. maybe over the winter or next spring? I know once we get the car done we just want to drive it for awhile The original 218 has 22K miles on it right now and runs like a champ. We are looking to put a vintage hemi in it. If someone knows of one send them my way
another quick update for thursday morning. the nice weather and clean roads have finally greeted us here in CT!!! It's about time! I can't tell you how nice it is to see the green grass! We still have one rear fender that is still naked with a minor dent waiting to be fixed. it should be a quick fix and a quick primer job. This weekend we are hoping to primer the entire car once more and then we're hoping for PAINT next weekend? It took us about 2 nights to block sand the body so we're expecting that by next weekend we should be well prepared for paint. I can't tell you how excited we are. We have a tremendous feeling of accomplishment right now and we are not even finished yet! My dad owns a machine shop and he will be making the lowering blocks for the car for us. we're shooting to drop it about 3" in the rear. As for paint color we finally decided on something. We are going to have her finished in her original color: New Brunswick Blue with a satin clear over that. We debated long and hard over a color and we came to the agreement that anything over the top or pearl would detract from the appearance of the car and the "look" we were going for. We've been struggling to get paint samples from our DuPont representatives and its been like pulling teeth to get the samples so we're just going to give up the fight and work with Providence Laqeur to recreate her original color. It's been a fun project but now that we're coming down to the end of it all we are stoked that we had the opportunity to preserve the car for many more years to come. I know the first day we get her back on the road...she's going right back to her second owner (who we purchased her from) for him to have the opportunity to see her finished. I hope he smiles from ear to ear. I also want to take this time to thank all of you for helping us along the way and for pointing us in the right direction when i had questions about products, etc. This is our first vintage car build and i can tell you I bet it's not our last. If i hadn't stumbled across The HAMB, we wouldn't have taken the car in the direction that we had- a mild custom. If it wasn't for the HAMB, the car would've just been restored to original condition. So thank you all for being such an influence and filling our brains with information- it's been a lot of fun!! I will try and get photos this weekend if i can. it's a hectic weekend with a dairy show going on and all so i wont be around the car much but the boyfriend will be. i'll give the camera to him!
Looking forward to seeing the pics. I've come to remember that body work is just sightly more fun than getting teeth pulled without anesthesia.
Hey There! So yesturday I was driving home from Waterford on Rt. 85 and I saw a cat driving a 1951 Plymouth 2dr. It was just in primer with scallops and that bastid is bad ass!
Wonderful progress, love the attention to detail and walking thru all the moments with you guys. Feels like I was there getting upset with the Dupont rep as well...Maybe it's time to switch to PPG? Anyways, can't wait to see the follow-up shots.
thanks! Hopefully i can get more photos sometime this week. Unfortunately the car is back at the shop and the shop is 45 min away from home so its difficult to get there on a weeknight. We are aiming for paint this coming weekend! My boyfriend's autobody shop uses DuPont as their main paint supplier but they get most of their products from an autobody paint supplier who is local. They use PPG too. The paint under the trunk-lid is still in pristine condition so they are going to come out and match the original color on the trunk lid so we can re-create her original color to paint her this weekend. I do need some help in finding some knick-knacks though. We need the rubber weather stripping for all four doors and the trunk. there are also rubber step pads on the rocker panels that we had to destroy in order to get them off. unfortunately the rubber became very brittle and we had to break them to get them off. So now we are looking for 4 of them for each door opening. there is also a rubber peice that goes underneath the hood to support it on the bracket. Right now that rubber pad is missing and the hood doesnt sit level on both sides. it kind of caves in in the middle withouth the support form the rubber pad on the bracket. We didnt want to gerry-rig that peice just incase the hood rattled around like it shouldnt. Looking to rewire most of the car eventually. any ideas on wear to get vintage looking wire kits for these cars, etc? It's very hard to find things specifically for these 50 Plymouths since they are not in demand as projects and people rarely ever work on them. If anyone has any leads on wear to get these parts....please let me know. thanks!!
Steele Rubber for weatherstipping and such, maybe even Kanter. Wiring stuff is expensive if you go thru YnZ or Narraggansett productions. You should speak to Tugmaster here on the Hamb, he is an independent dealer for Rebel wire, very affordable and reliable, Tug is a great guy full of knowledge also! Chuck
I agree with csimonds on the Rebel Wire kit. I just bought one for my 1951 F1 and after looking it over I can tell its a nicely put together harness. Good price too, $185 to the door and we're just a little farther from Tennessee than Connecticut is.
here is a photo of the finished rhinolined floors. We weren't able to remove a lot of the noise deadener coating that was from the factory. luckily there was no rust under the hard to remove stuff. So we figured if we rhinolined the floors it would all blend in and look original. The floors came out AMAZING and i tall looks like the original coating from the factory.
as for the interior and the complete crap headliner: we are going to save our funds and do the interior next winter. hopefully we can have someone local do it for a reasonable price. i cant wait to show pictures from this weekend if we get to paint it on saturday!!
providence laquer came and matched up the original paint on the underside of the trunk lid for us on Monday. The paint came in yesterday with the sample and its PERFECT! We will be spending friday night taping everything off and looking forward to painting the body on saturday. Since Sunday is Easter; the rest of the panels are going to have to wait until the following weekend. I will get some photos for all of you; i promise . I'm like a kid in a candy store; I'm so excited to see this car finished in her original color.
I am happy to report that the body is painted. We just finished the third coat in the paint booth and it really looks amazing. it's truly wonderful to see Betty in her original color and its exactly the color we were hoping for. Unfortunately during the third and final coat a very odd chemical reaction happened in spots directly in the middle of the roof. Don't know what happened or why it happened. Paint was mixed in one batch and there was zero cross-contamination with anything. The first 2 coats went on just fine. the third coat went on fine and then 10 minutes later the rough spots showed up on the roof top. The body/paint employee lives next door and he came over and looked at it. he has no explanation for it either. Good news is that its contained to one area. We have the heater going in the booth to get the paint to dry. we're going to sand those spots back down, hit them once more with color and then clear the entire car. At this point we're bummed because the car really looks spectacular but we're great-full that the one issue really isn't as bad as it could be. stay tuned for my crappy cell phone pics.
The Jalopy Journal
