Projects "Losthopes Ol' Lady's 1949 ply Build"

And its Out! Now its time for more grime and grease removal on the frame:

 

Hell yeah!! Man...the coils and A arms look like new!! You are moving right along for sure!! That front end looks great too all painted up. I can't wai to see what's next!!! Good call on the 5 speed too with this. I think it's worth the effort MUCH more drivability then. A 2000's Explorer rear matches up nice to these and you could get way better gearing too. These flat sixes have a lot of torque and will handle the higher gearing well.

 

Ya im planning on getting a 96 and up explorer parts car to swap rear end in for disc brakes and having machinist two doors down from our shop cut me out the the disc brake brackets for the front and use the discs off the front of the explorer also, going to try and utilize everything off the explorer that i can from the master cylinder , any brake or extra gas lines, to even cutting the roof and any other sheet metal off to repair the floors and rusted areas on the Plymouth, then part out the rest of the explorer and then send the remains off to the scrapyard. So far ive found explorers cheap as $500 in the surrounding areas with smog problems , hoping to find a no motor or trans explorer even cheaper. When its time to pull the trigger on getting a explorer ill post a wanted add on craigslist and see what i can find.

 

I like losthope threads.

 

That is a very smart plan. I'm eventually going to do the same thing with my '48 Dodge. Lookin good, Bro!!

 

very cool man! These cars always turn out looking pretty cool, they have a lot of neat stuff on them its no wonder why us chevy guys tend to steal trim and grill pieces and hub caps.......well you get what I'm sayin!!

 

thanks Ive been going over my options and think itll be the best bang for my buck!

Haha I know what your saying! Good to hear from you meddler hows the truck doing brotha?


Today i final finished wire wheeling the rest of the front of the frame back to the trans crossmember of crud and got it painted and put the suspension back on:



and temporary put the drums back on to make the car a roller again, Boy is it sitting low without the engine in , I had the ol' lady stand on the front of the frame with her big ol' butt and jump up and down and everything's looking good so far , but will see what it looks like when i set the weight of the engine back in, and then i can determine if i need to swap some taller springs back in:







cant wait to get the rear lowered now, when i swapped the plates on the a-arms I knew the plates on top were going to be close to the springs so i only bolted them on and didnt weld them like the bottoms, have very little clearance as of now going to be pulling them back off and doing some pie cutting and welding on them to gain some clearance and still have to cut the stock swaybar mounting hole tab off since i wont be using the stock sway bar and with the plate swap mod the sway bar bracket wouldnt work anymore anyways:



I also cut out a better c-pillar from another 49 plymouth in a junkyard to patch in since the original c-piller was just to mangled up to really mess with anymore , also got the rear fender off the same car that was messed up a bit also , but banged out some dents and started getting it back to shape to graft the to boogered up fenders together to make one good one!

 

After hitting the bad spots with the DA ,using red scuff pads with a TSP solution and wet sanding the rest I finally have the firewall painted it looks white in the cell phone pic but its actually a almond/cream color:

 

Timmy, you're a machine.

I'm impressed with all the progress. Great job so far!

 

Excellent progress, Bro!!! The firewall looks great! Good work with that rear fender too. This is moving right along!

 

Thanks guys had a few days off because of rain but back to work now , I'll only be able to put a hour or so in on the car each night so progress may slow down some.

So after work I went to the shop to start stripping the motor to degrease and clean it up for paint and low and behold I start pulling the rusty valve covers to soak in the derusting tank and can't believe my eyes looks clean as hell. Pull the pan and confirm the motors been rebuilt, still see red thread locker on oil pick up tube threads, cross hatch marks on cylinder walls, New positions,oil pan looks clean as a whistle inside, need to measure positions to see what it was bored out too....it was kinda weired when I ran the numbers on the block it said it was a truck motor, and starter was looked rebuilt when I took it apart and all the clutch components were also visibly rebuilt, someone must have had it all rebuilt then car was wrecked then parked... looks like low miles were ran on it.... So Stoked right now! Probably the reason it fired right up without rebuilding the carb or anything LOL

 

That is phenomenal! Really nice score on the motor!

Is it a 230?

 

Haha i know i im feeling really lucky,for the price i paid i could throw tge car away and still be happy with just the motor........I dont know yet on the engine size, looking it upby the block numbers it says it could be a 218 or 230, thats why i said i need to measure the bore size since im not to hip on these motors, i need to reasearch how to till if its a 230....ive heard you can take a 218 and make it a 230 by changing out the crank and stuff when rebuilding one but once again i dont really know how to tell that just by looking at it and why i was going to try and measure some stuff......got any advice on how to identify it?

 

Well....I know that the rod lengths are different between the two. Center to center, the 230 is 7 13/16 and the 218 is 7 15/16. The stroke is differnt too. 4 3/8 on the 218 and 4 5/8 on the 230. Don't know if any of that helps.....

What a great surprise too, Man!! That doesn't happen every day! SWEET!!!! I love the Mopar sixes too. Tons of torque and smooth running. They are built really strong and looks like someone put some money and time into this one!! My '48 Dodge has the 230 in it with Fluid Drive. I love it! Would be better with a T-5 though!!

 

Thanks for the info brotha! doing some reading after work today i think your info is spot on, so far the only way i can find to tell the difference between the 218 and the 230 is by the rods, and stroke...I read theres a plug you can pull above the #6 cylinder and measure the stroke with a stiff piece of wire so you dont have to pull the head. going to try it tomorrow after work ...I was tired after work so i took tonight off from going to the shop

im still contemplating the t-5 swap, i have all rebuilt clutch parts for the 3 speed and everything to put it back in , and budget wise it would be the cheapest to get it back on the road and I personally really miss having a 3 on the tree in my 54 , and like the column shifting and think it would suit the wife better....but a 5 speed would be nice also...but I still got time to decide...and if anything i can throw the 3 speed in and swap a 5 speed in later...

 

I'm like you and enjoy running the 3 on the tree!! That's one reason why I like bombing around in my Dodge. I say since you have the rebuilt clutch parts, then just slap it together with the 3 speed and get it on the road. Use that time to shake it all out and see what you really want to do. Having the higher gears from the Explorer rear end will help some too. Plus, the flat 6 has enough torque to handle that with no issues anyway. You could always find one of the 50's, Chrysler, 3 speeds with the OD unit. That would be the best of all worlds!! They aren't easy to find but they are out there!

Not sure if you've been on it before but here is a great resource for these cars. It's like the HAMB for old MOPAR!

www.p15-d24.com Lots of good guys on there and piles of info on these rides.

 

Ya ive known about p15 forum for along time Ive been lurkering on there for years now cause im always working on these mopars for friends and need info here and there but ive never posted.

Well I ended up going to pick-n-pull and I didn't end up buying a explorer for the brake parts but still plan on getting a parts car of some sorts to strip for donor parts land sheet metal which shouldn't be hard since Joe and myself are both part time scrappers from our day jobs and come by ubwanted cars from time to time...it was 1/3 off parts at the yard and I ended up walking out the door with a complete rearend and the front rotors and calipers from two different ford explorers, besides needing some cleaning and surface rust removal the rear end has new rotors and pads, and the front rotors are decent and pads look hardly worn...cost was under $200 after I take some parts back for core charges..

8.8 disc brake rearend was out of a 96 ford explorer sport 4wd 3.73 gears with a limited slip :



and front brake components were off a 99 ford explorer :



I printed out the front brake bracket pdf file from "yourpc48" tech thread here:
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=702258Heres

even tho he said he used 4x4 front rotors and calipers I walked around the yard and compared 4x4 to reg ford explorers and they use the same rotors and calipers and pulled the best looking set off the standard 99 explorer..

started mocking everything up and getting the template made for the machinist 2 doors down from the shop to cut the actual 3/8s brackets for me:













going to start on rearend until I have the brackets to finish the front

 

Mad genius, resourceful, diligent and knocking out the to do list. Rock that MOPAR!

 

Next time you are at Pic N Pull look for a 1988-93 Ranger 8.8 also had locker rears and getting to be popular for an almost bolt-in on 1949-59 Fords and 1 1/2" narrower than the old Ford rears 56 1/2" wide.

 

Haha thanks Slammed!

Great tip Jeff! I Really want to swap something into the ford also so I will defiantly be keeping that in mind, 1 1/2" narrower would really help out with getting the rear tires off also! NICE!

 

Slow day today didn't get a lot done but I did get the stock explorer spring perch's cut off and ground down and then I cleaned and painted the rear end , I left the sway bar mounts on just incase I come up with a way to mount a rear sway bar , still need to weld on new perchs for the Plymouth leafs soon as I get a set or carefully grind the ones of the stock ply rear end:



while waiting for paint to dry I decided to see what the engine was a 218 or 230.....and after measuring the stroke 3 times to make sure I was doing it right, the test results came back as a 230 measuring 4 5/8" of stroke!

 

Good progress and great pics at the yard! Good news on the 230 as well! I'm keeping a close eye on the brake work and rear end installment as I need to do the same with my Dodge eventually. She's coming right along!!

 

looking good ....

nice build ....

 

Today I got the 2 1/2" spring perches welded on the 8.8 and bought a set of 4" lowering blocks:





The lowering blocks I got from speedway and they don't give you a lot of length on the u-bolts to play with and are made for 3" diameter rearends so buy the time you put the u-bolts around the 3.25" rearend you have lost 1/4" of threads on the u-bolts so I cut the 4" blocks down to 3 1/2" blocks to gain back enough threads to bolt everything back together and to gain back some scrub line , also the original leafs and perches are 1 3/4" , I used 2 1/2" perches and the 2 1/2" explorer bottom leaf spring plates ..I made up the difference of space on the sides of the 1 3/4" leaf pack buy welding some filler pieces to the bottom leaf spring plates that make it into a type of c-channel that slides up from the bottom around the leafs and keeps u-bolts lined up straight and plates from twisting

still has 14" wheels on the front for now but I got the rearend installed and mocked up some 15" roller wheels and tires on the back and everything clears , car is defiantly lower then stock height but wont know the real out come until all the weight of the engine, trans, front clip, driveline, exhaust, seats ,full tank of gas and spare tires installed



had the brackets for front disc conversion cut out today and I started putting the front together before I headed home for the evening should have it all bolted together tomorrow:

 

Never fear Jeff,the '54 Fords are deep in my blood...but as a kid my granddad had one so I always migrated to them. HRP

 

I didn't get as much done on the Plymouth today as I liked but I was working wiring some new lights up in the shop and some other things that needed to be done around the shop but I did clean and sand and paint the stock 15" rims for the Plymouth and went to the tire shop and had the shaved white walls mounted , I will probably be repainting the rim color when the car gets painted amd I would like to find a decent set of real whitewalls but for now the black paint and shaved tires makes them look more presentable at the moment....And today I realized I really need to invest in a older manual style tire changer with all the tires I change and swap on different rims tired of paying tire shops all the time...

 

well today I started getting the plates bolted on and made some 3/8" spacers with the drill press and a hole saw from the left over 3/8" plate I had from cutting out the brackets out of , worked out great I think you can probably just bolt them in but I decided to weld them on then drill the holes through them:





I also drilled out the threads in the spindle and pulled new 1/2" by 20 ford explorer wheel studs in , since the rearend has the ford explorer wheel studs in the rear I felt like I should ditch the wheel bolts and make the fronts wheel studs also:



I just used the template I printed out to drill the caliper holes and everything bolted together fine until I went to put the wheel on:


Since the tech thread Im using the author said he used different wheels I was worried about not being able to use stock wheels, I had asked around here on the HAMB to a couple of guys that did this conversion if stock wheels would fit but never got a reply confirming so I knew there may be a possibility they wouldn't work, wish I didn't just use the template to drill the caliper mounting holes in the brackets because I could have pulled the caliper in a little closer to the rotor, but I probably would have had to still grind and reshaped the caliper but maybe not as much:



So far ive had to grind alittle, then spray some spray paint on , then put wheel back on and spin it , then pull it off and check the spray painted area for where its hitting , then grind some more, then reapeat the process, ive done this a number of times today so I didn't get the front discs on like I had hoped today still working on drivers side trying to get the wheel to clear



its still hitting a bit im going to have to find a 1/8" wheel spacer or I think im going to have to grind a little on the inside of the wheel where the center is riveted to the outer ring of the wheel since that's where its still hitting in a small spot I don't want to take any more off the caliper, hopefully have a positive update for tomorrow....if all else fells ill have to buy a rustyhope kit..

 

Were the wheels that you are using the original wheels to the car? What is the diameter of the wheels? How much can/would you have pulled the caliper in towards the hub then the template indicates? And, with the calipers in the current location, are the brake pads centered on the rotors or too much towards the top?

Do you have a website address you got the caliper bracket template from?

Thanks, Gene

 

Ill have to address all those questions when go back to the shop tomorrow , but the rims im using are 15" and off a 50 Plymouth should be the same as a 49 Plymouth that I have , and the template I printed from a pdf. file from a tech thread a member did here on the hamb the link is couple posts back on this thread, and he did it on a older year mopar and it was a at home garage disc brake conversion he shared so it may because im putting on a 49, and because it was not a manufactured part from a disc brake conversion company and he did say he didn't use stock rims...if I cant get something to work ill just get a kit that does so far im only on the calipers and pads for $30 and brackets and my time were free

 

Thanks.