Running Boards

8-29-2013  Dan has started working on the running boards.  On the original parts, the rubber was vulcanized directly onto the steel using heat and pressure.  The underlying steel panels were perforated with dozens of tiny holes to allow the air to escape and some excess rubber to flow out as the pattern was pressed into the heated rubber.  After 80+ years, it takes a lot of manual effort to remove the brittle hardened rubber.  I was fortunate a few years ago to find out that the Canadian Plymouth 4-Cylinder Owners Club had reproduced the running board rubber and I was able to buy one of the last available sets.  After the steel is cleaned up and sandblasted and primed, we'll fasten the new tread using a superstrong contact cement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How the car looked today (8-29-13): 

Blisters VI

8-29-2013  And as of today, the left side hood panel is pretty close to being finished:

                                                                                                              

BTW, sometimes it's fun to just stand back and appreciate how far we've come on this project...

Blisters V

8-22-2013  As of today, Dan is working on the left side hood blister.  If you're a close observer, you might notice that the left side blister is placed slightly forward of the right side (Count the fins forward of the blister.).  It's because of the slight offset in the banks of cylinders in a V-8 engine, which places one rocker arm cover slightly forward of the other.  The goal here was to place the center of the blister (the point of highest clearance) Directly over the highest point on the rocker arm cover.

A Gift of Great Savings -- Bumper Bracket

10 August 2013   I looked high and low and couldn't find the front bumper bracket.  Then one day the latest issue of The Plymouth Bulletin arrived in the mail (the quarterly magazine of the Plymouth Owners Club).  In the classified ads was a listing for a huge variety of Model PB Plymouth parts, including bumper brackets!  I called the seller immediately and acquired the front one, which had already been completely restored.  It arrived 8-8-2013.  Here it is right after we had the "unveiling" at the Shady shop:

                           

Blisters IV

8-2-2013  Dan has gotten back to the blisters and here is the result:

  

Notice how Dan is welding the cut ends of the louvers back into the side of the hood in such a way that the contour of the louver ends follows the upper curve of the blister itself.  I think the effect will be that this is the way the hood side was originally crafted.  What an artist in metal!

Lotsa Primer

And now (6-20-2013), Dan has applied high-build primer to some of the panels to start block sanding.  This helps reveal imperfections that might not have been visible before.  Notice the low spot in the upper right image, for example.  The red color primer coat (in anticipation of some version of red as the final paint) is applied over a black 2-part epoxy primer.  Any high spots will show up during the block sanding as black primer revealing itself.

   

Progress on Many Fronts

There have been many activities going on with the car that are not particularly photo-worthy, but represent progress nonetheless.  

• The rumble seat lid had a slight warpage so that when it was in its closed position, one corner stood high by about 1/2 inch.  Dan re-glued the corners (Remember, there's a wooden frame supporting the steel skin.) using corner reinforcement blocks and braced the lid in a compensating warp in the opposite direction.  When the clamps were removed, the lid assumed its correct shape.  It now fits perfectly.
• The spacing around the doors was imperfect.  Dan welded to build up certain areas of the door edge and filed other areas down so that we now have perfect gaps around each door perimeter.
• The doors were imperfectly formed so that they bulged out in the center of their curvature beyond the overall contour of the side of the body.  Dan heat shrunk both door skins so they are now fair to the curve of the body.

These are items that had to be done but don't exactly jump out at you when you look at the finished product.  Here are a few detailed shots taken on 5-10-2013 of the kinds of body "tweaking" that take so long and are invisible in the finished product:

 

 

 

 

You can click on any of these images to see them in more detail.