The Plymford

In reply to Gunchsta :

The LTD was given to us by a team mate's father.  It was his grandfather's car, purchased new in 1975.  When we got it, it had sat for over a year.  They'd tried to sell it, and no one in the family wanted it, either.  It was a Georgia car, but had weird, Georgia rust on it.  Mostly under all of the stuff that had been covered by vinyl. Which, given that it was a Landau, was like 1/4 of the car.  

The '51 Plymouth was an utter basket case.  I come from the salt belt, and I've not seen many cars more rotted than it was.  There are likely still thousands of 1951 Plymouths, sitting in yards right now, awaiting restorations that will never come....all of which are in better shape than this one was.  

In reply to sleepyhead :

This morning, my 3 got a fresh tank of fuel, and just passed the 5,000 mile mark on the odometer.  He was really enjoying his new life .  The owner had already washed him twice, seemed to be pretty good about checking the fluids over, and knew his way around a gearbox.  That was the big fear of the MT 3's- so few people really knew how to shift their gears anymore, they might end up in the hands of someone who thought they were good...or some freshly minted driver who might grind 'em, instead of finding 'em.  Pulling up to a red light this morning, a tan SUV stopped alongside.  The two lanes merged into one up ahead.  "Go on." the 3 whispered to its driver.  The light turned green, and the SUV bucked up.  The 3 felt it's driver carefully engage the clutch and take off- for a split second his hopes were dashed.  But then the right foot went to the floorboards.  "Yeeeeee Haaaaw" went the 3's little 2 liter mill, and before he knew it the SUV was disappeared in the rear view.  The tach bounced off 6,000 RPMs just as his driver clicked into 2nd, and planted it again.  The merge was made, and the 3 was giddy.  

The side story of the 3 is cute and all but I'm dying to find out how the plymford makes out.  I COULD go look at lemons results but where's the fun in that.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

That's perfect, what a great use for the two pieces. 

Also, the storytelling in the last few posts is excellent. 

I've been so enthralled with the build, I almost forgot to mention..... Welcome to the Mazda 3 family! Love mine and I know you will too!

Thanks for y'all's patience.  I'm trying to tell this tale exactly as it happened.  I hope it'll be worth the wait (and the resisting temptation to try to find out via other means!)  Each night, about his time right now, I'd be out in the garage pounding on some part of the Plymford.  It's somewhat relieving to be able to sit here with a glass of wine instead, and practice my raconteuring.  

The BFH, as we called it (Big Florence Hurricane) bought us another 6 weeks of time to work on the Plymford.  I felt at the time (and still do feel) guilty somehow that our good fortune came at the terrible price to others.  I cannot say I'm happy about any of it.  But what I can say is a fact: we would not have been anywhere near ready to race by the weekend of September 15th.  I guess even a foul storm blows some fair wind somewhere.

Back to the race car, I decided to split the TO DO list up into 3 categories:

1. E36 M3 that needed to be done before the car was loaded onto the trailer
2. E36 M3 that needed to be done before the car would pass tech
3. E36 M3 that needed to be done before we could race

Stuff that fell into the #1 bucket would be priority, and then move on to the #2 and #3 items.  #1 stuff was mostly to get the car drivable, so I could put some miles on it before the race to shake out any obvious bugs.  

Oh yeah- part of the secret plan was that the Plymford would be registered and drivable on public roads.  

First, it still needed a driver's side rear fender flare, to cover the wheel.  LeMons rules stipulate that all tires much be full enclosed within the bodywork.  So I did a mirror image of the passenger side, with the other PV 544 fender carcass on hand.

You may have noted that the PV 544 fenders didn't quite come down far enough behind the wheels.  I had some lower rear fender extensions from a scrapped Volvo 122 (these blue pieces) so those got crafted into shape and welded on.  They also served as good attachment points for brackets to tuck up under the Plymford to secure the bottoms of the rear fenders and keep them from flapping.

Next came the exhaust.  You'll recall it stuck up into the rear passenger compartment of the Plymford, like so:

per the rules (and common sense), it had to dump outside of the car, behind the driver.  So I welded on some 90's and jabbed pipes out the side of the car, through holes cut in the fastened-in-place rear door panels.

Nifty.

One little fix that was needed- the oil fill cap doubled as a breather, but was just an open hole to the atmosphere.  $7 at Autozone fixed this problem in the chromiest way possible.  

Thanks, Mr. Gasket!  You've always been there for me.  

LeMons rules (as well as the Motor Vehicle Department's regulations) require brake lights.  The rear fender flares had been redneck-Frenched around the stock '51 Plymouth tail light housings.  The Plymouth light sockets were corroded and useless, but some generic sockets from the parts store fitted in easily.  

And we had running lights....

And BRAKE lights!

Since we'd ripped all of the wiring out of the car, I had to run fresh wires from the fuse panel to a switch to the back.  4 wire trailer leads work great for wiring up a car.  

For months we'd been staring as the big old behind of the LTD sticking out of the garage.  Then we saw that butt morph into a Plymouth rear end.  Now, for a change, the grille was poking out into the yard.  Sure was encouraging.

After finishing up the wiring, I mounted the trunklid on the hinges.  

Now, here, I gotta say, I was pretty proud of myself.  Remember, I had sliced the whole back end of the Plymouth off the original car, cut that chunk into two sides and the center, fitted it all onto the remaining rear frame/ trunk pan of the LTD, and welded it back together.  The whole time, every step of the way, I was measuring and fitting, making sure the LTD frame was level, and the result was pretty Audi-esque body panel gaps.

Satisfied that the back end was coming together, I went back to look at what needed taking care of in the front.  Ah, yes- the windshield!  The stock '51 Plymouth glass was non-safety, and thus wouldn't pass muster with the leMons organizers.  One of our team mates, Rob, is pretty skilled at Lexan work and since the Plymford windshield glass was simply 2 flat panes, he made quick work of copying them onto 3/16" thick Lexan.  Of course, he brought it over to the house on his motorcycle, when he brought along the carb he'd rebuilt.

The windshield as it turned out was smaller than expected.  My theory is that the big rubber gasket that sealed the glass to the windshield reveal took up that gap.  But we had tossed that old gasket (it fairly crumbled into bits taking the old windshields off) so I had to come up with another plan.

Rather elegantly, these #10 screws with big fender washers (modified to create that flat to fit into the windshield channel) with some neoprene washers for cushion, worked perfectly.  I cut little notches in the reveal to locate them, and put 10 around each windshield half.

of course, the Lexan still had its protective sheet on it, but the Plymford needed to be able to see.

After getting both halves in place, I fabbed the center bar using two strips of aluminum with a slight bend in them (the two halves sort of angle away from each other slightly- perhaps by 10 or 15 degrees) and weather stripping sandwiched between the aluminum and the Lexan.

After that, I masked the windshield and put a bead of black poly caulk around the whole thing to make it water-tight.  Which worked better than expected.  

There were a bunch of other things I knocked out, too, in fairly rapid succession.  I locked down the transmission kickdown (we race in 3rd, so there was no need to hook this up) and welded in some reinforcements to the fairly floppy doors and hood pins.  The shifter cable (if you recall, it was an old Volvo 122 choke cable) got goobered up while trying to slam that buggered transmission into a gear it would not go into, so I broke out the old wallet and bought a $38 purpose-made shifter cable.  This worked tremendously better.  The upper radiator hose was one of those funky universal fit hoses, so that got replaced with a better, purpose-built solution.  The vacuum solenoid on the replacement C6 transmission was bad...replaced that.  

Mounted a pair of budget Hella driving lights into the headlight sockets:

(The headlight buckets on the Plymouth were rotted and gone.  These mounted conveniently to that giant rectangular frame that was my new radiator support.)

Installed an overflow tank for the radiator...installed the panoramic rear view mirror...put stiffening blocks in the front springs to raise the front of the car a hair...install a new temperature gauge...register and tag the Plymford...

Wait....

"Register and Tag"???

Yep.  

I had this from the old owner:

And after signing the back, and showing proof that my insurance company was dumb enough to write a policy on this old heap, I had a plate.  

Yeah, I wish I could have gotten that.  Alas, no time for vanity plates.  The Maryland MVA is a funny thing.  Or, to be less polite, it's a real cluster-berkeley.  In fact, it's such a cluster-berkeley that an entire industry of "Tag N Title" places has sprung up, which, for a modest fee, take all of your auto paperwork, have you sign a Power of Attorney, and then deal with the MVA for you.  Often, they can even give you license plates on the spot, for normal vehicle transactions. 

A 1951 Plymouth is not a normal vehicle transaction.  

The previous Tuesday I stopped at the local Tag N Title place I've been using for the past few years (I think I may have frequent flier points there) and gave them the tattered, decades-old, psuedo-legalish paperwork I had for the '51 Plymouth.  They called me on Friday and told me they were running a bit behind, but should have my plate for me on Monday.  

I sweated all weekend.

The morning of October 1rst, I got a call from them.  "Yessir, we have your plate ready.  You may come pick it up today."

Ran a few more errands, got home long enough to kiss the kids and hug the wife, then told Mrs. VCH I had to test drive the Plymford.  "What do you need to test out?" she asked.  

"The new license plate I got for it!!" 

She smirked in that way wives do.  I promised to not be too long, and headed out for the first real, legal test drive of the Plymford.

The 460 fired up eagerly, and after cleaning the bulk of the detritus off the top of the car, lashing the hood down, and tightening all the lug nuts, we were off!  It was about 4 miles drive to the nearest gas station, which I figured I ought to hit first, seeing as how there was no fuel gauge in the car and I had no idea how much of the 5 gallon jerry can I'd dumped in was still in there.

Now, let me tell you something about driving a vehicle such as this down the road.  You get attention.  A LOT of attention.  Boys smile and wave.  Men crane their necks and do a double take.  Women....well, they either deliberately look away, or, if you're lucky, sit up and take notice.  No one doesn't have a reaction.  They can't help it.  It's not just an old car- its an old car that's been modified in an deliberate, obvious way that NO ONE has ever seen before.  Calling it "art" might be a stretch- but its definitely unique.  The roar of the twin pipes through those race mufflers, the engine revving willingly (thanks to some 3.50 gears, cruising at even 55 mph is a raucous 2500 RPM affair), stuff flapping and shaking and rattling and ping-ponging all over the place.  It's a rolling sensory bin.  

After dumping in an appropriate amount of 93 octane:

I pointed the Plymford back for home.

The first real test drive was an unmitigated success.  The car ran, and ran well.  It had oil pressure, didn't overheat or explode, shut down and fired up again at the gas station, and even handled and braked fairly normally.

Best of all: I had a smile on my face the whole time.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Excited!

I need to learn to weld so I can do this and then daily it.

In reply to RedGT :

I bought my welder (a 110V Lincoln) when I was 19, after taking a machine shop class in college.  So by now I've been welding over half my life.  And I can easily say, this is the most magnificent thing I have ever done with my welder.  

I did buy a plasma a couple of years back, and the ability to cut metal asunder using electricity is almost as big of a game changer as being able to join it.

Going back to the unnecessary sentimentality here - the fact that the Plymouth skin drove with the LTD skeleton and heart on a public road is amazing. However, If I were in your shoes I would fall madly in love with driving it to the gas station and no longer want to race lemons with it. 

I guess I'll have to stay tuned to see if that's the case :) 

When you mentioned Taw-nee-town, I had to look up where you're from. And hey, we're neighbors.

In fact, that gas station in the picture is about 800 feet away from where I work, I can see it out the  window while I'm typing this.

If you're ever in a bind and need an extra set of hands, let me know!

These real time updates via Sir Clearing houses personal space time continuum hole never fail to entertain.  Now I can't wait to see how this thing does in the race in a few days time a couple of months ago.

You, legally driving this on the road, makes me all kinds of happy. 

In reply to BirgerBuilder :

Cool!  Another local!  I see you're into old Volvos, too.  

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Thanks?

Apart from the joy the can only come from driving a 1951 perched atop a 1975 LTD on public streets, the _main_ reason I put a tag on Plymford was to shake out any bugs before the race.  This is a novel concept for the Tunachuckers.  Our usual modus operandi is 

Step 1: build car, or modify existing car in major way

Step 2: trailer it to track

Step 3: attempt to race it

Step 4: Spend all weekend fixing some weird, new failure mode

After the post-initial-drive inspection, the first wrong thing I found was the Panhard bar bushing.

it wasn't actually bush-ing anything.  A new bushing was $90, and the end that connected to the axle was fine, so I scrounged some good-ish appearing donuts out of a pile of old suspension bushings (not 100% sure what they came from)

Situation: improved.  

The fan was sort of hot-wired on; a quick rummage through a box of old house wiring leftovers yielded this, slightly better solution.

After one particularly long drive on a not-too chilly day, I noted that under high-load cruising (like, up a hill) the temperatures climbed a bit.  I suspected the radiator wasn't getting sufficient airflow.  The electric fan was set up as a puller, so that probably wasn't the cause.  But, the radiator was just mounted in the front center of the car, with zero baffling.  After looking at it for about 3 seconds, it was plain to see that air would easily go up, under, or around it.  So, I welded in some baffles, between the sides of the radiator and the transmission coolers mounted on either side of it.

An air damn underneath (constructed of old LTD sheetmetal, of course) that bolted in place, so it could be removed if it rubbed when loading/ unloading the car on a trailer:

And a scoop over the top, that fitted under the hoodline, to direct air down.

The test drive was encouraging- under the same conditions, the engine barely saw 180 degrees, whereas before it was heading up over 200.  As I told the team, all of this was really, really....nice.  To be able to troubleshoot and sort the rats out before getting to the track.  It felt good.  Knowing we'd have gone on the track, green flag would have fallen, and the first driver would have come puttering in after about 4 laps with the temp needle heading up over 220...and then had to fix it in the paddock, with the race going on.  That would have been exactly what happened, and it would have sucked.

Now I was driving this thing at least once a week.  It was mid-October, the weather was perfect for old car cruising, and the more little niggling stuff I fixed, the better I felt.  Plus, I'd spent all summer working on this old girl, and not driving any of my other old rides.  It was time to have a little different fun.

One day, after driving it to the auto parts jobber, I made a discovery.

It's really hard to back up.  ;-)  No, that wasn't it.  Hitting a couple of speed bumps in the lot, I noticed that the front wheels were really keen to rub on the front fenders.  I'd spent some time on these flares, and actually re-did them both - on each side - at least once.  But they were still rubbing.  And, I realized, I hadn't been cornering this pig on public roads as hard as it was going to see on a race track.  I didn't want to open up the fenders more wth those flares, and I wasn't really keen on how open and light it looked compared to the back of the car.

I did have the tattered and battered front fenders from that Volvo PV 544.  All right.  Let's go boxing:

Not bad.  Let's try the other side!

I was digging this look even more.  It balanced the front and rear out, and kept the wheels tucked under metal tidily.  

While I was at it, I added some tow points in the front, per the rules:

Hopefully, we won't need those. 

Mrs. VCH had been less-than-enthusiastic about the front flares on the Plymford when I'd done them originally.  Welding those big fat Volvo fenders on there made her all sorts of happy.  

You guys have been all kinds of patient with me on this thread, so here's a full gallery of shots of this thing now:

It's now (by my personal space time continuum hole ) The middle of October.  T minus 2 weeks until the rescheduled race.  I was actually getting down to the last few things on the TO DO list.  I rigged up this "PIT LIGHT" that the driver can switch on in case of trouble, to let us know he's coming in (as long as someone's watching the car on the track....)

One of the spare tires was worn and chunked, so I replaced that with a good spare on hand.  And painted on the race numbers

And marked the "Tow" locations front and rear.  

Oh yeah- and early voted.  The race was the weekend before Election Day, and the whole family was coming along, to spend the week after the race on vacation with Mrs. VCH's family in South Carolina.  

I'd even had time, in between test drives of the Plymford, to get my truck fixed.  With an overhauled throttle body, new fuel pump, and new plug wires, distributor, module, and rotor, it was running way better than a 230,000 mile big block Chevy had any right to.

We were all excited now.  Me, my family, the team...hell even our dog was coming along, and she's always up for a ride in the truck! Boogity Boogity Boogity, let's go racin'!

You're my hero.

+1 for last year's icicle lights.   ;-)

This is so much fun!

October 31, 2018:

"I can't believe it's almost here...this feels like the race that would never come!  Which is an odd feeling for a team that's always rushing up to the last minute to get our shtuff in order.  The race delay gave us a much-needed month to finish some stuff up.  I even got the wiring cleaned up last night, so that's another thing off the list.  

Lesson learned:  Whenever we decide to get ready for a race, start one month before we think we'll need to.

WEATHER REPORT:  Looks like the forecast for rain remains about the same, that is, moving in late Friday morning and clearing out by about midnight.  I am going to try to get to the track before noon, so hopefully I can at least get my EZ up, up and the car under it.  Well, as under it as a 16' long car can be under a 10' pop up.  Oh yeah, did I mention?  I measured up the car (for trailer loading purposes) and it's now somehow over 2' shorter than the LTD was originally.  For all intents and purposes, its a veritable Lotus now.  

We'll make the call on the parade Friday after the car passes tech.  I've no qualms with skipping the party/parade if it's pouring buckets or shooting flaming balls of electricity out of the clouds.  

Truck is all packed with everything car and tool related.  Tonight I'll load the Plymford onto the trailer and toss my clothes and stuff into the back.  Tomorrow morning we're heading out, hopefully to be at Mrs. VCH's parents' in time for dinner.  

Excited!  Looking forward to seeing everyone, and seeing if the Plymford body magically transformed the LTD into a Real Racing Machine!

See ya'll day after tomorrow!"

Not wanting to screw up your time space loop, but will this thing get weighed in days of future past?

As an old Volvo guy (you can read that any way you like) I love the 544 and 122 parts.

TurnerX19 said:

As an old Volvo guy (you can read that any way you like) I love the 544 and 122 parts.

They were so badly rusted, dented, and rotted they really should have been recycled long ago.  Guess it was sheer fortune I had them on hand.  

Thursday, November 1.  Two days before the race.

I was loading a few last minute items into the BST (Big Stupid Truck - my red and tan K3500 dually).  You know, important race items, like alphabet crackers, clean diapers, dark chocolate, dog food...well, important items when your family is tagging along, for the first part of the drive anyway.  It was about a quarter to 7 in the morning, and my 4-and-a-half year old daughter followed me out to the truck.  "This sure is a great race car, daddy!" she squealed as she walked past the Plymford on the trailer, and beamed at me.  Melt your heart, these kids will.  

With a fairly normal amount of difficulty, we got two toddlers, a medium-sized brown dog, my wife, and me all fitted into the cab of the BST and headed south.  We'd done pretty well, all things considered, to be on the road before 7:30 in the morning.  We had a full tank of gas, half a box of animal crackers, it was getting light out, and we were wearing flannel.  Hit it.  

The 454 in BST hummed along happily (and quietly, since I'd just fixed the leaking exhaust manifolds) and soon we were in Virginia.  Time for the first pit stop.

While I tanked up the BST and we took turns emptying the kids', the dog's, and our bladders, a small white sedan rolled up next to the trailer.  A man stepped out and, without saying a word, started taking pictures of the Plymford.  I was a few dozen feet away, pottying the pooch.  Mrs. VCH came back to the truck with the little ones and he started asking her about the thing on the trailer.  Pretty soon I was back and, excitedly, he started querying me about...well, everything.  What was it?  What engine was in it?  Where was I going?  I had to pop the hood and show him the engine.  Then other men came over.  One fellow did opine that it was a shame I hadn't restored the '51 Plymouth, but I politely told him there were still plenty more left, in way better shape than this one had been in.  He seemed to quiet down and just enjoy it with the others.  

After what must have been 45 minutes, we realized that we could probably stay at that dang gas station in Staunton, Virginia all dang day as man after man came over to chat us up.  With 3/4 of our trip still ahead of us, I had to cut it short, and we all hopped in the BST and rolled out of there.  Quickly.  

The same scene repeated itself at every gas stop- which, seeing as how we were driving a gasoline-fueled big block pickup towing a race car, was more than once more.  Mrs. VCH took it all in stride, however, and the kids and dog have always been good road warriors.  And so it was, that around dinnertime Thursday we pulled up in front of my In-Law's house near Greenville, SC. 

They were _so glad_ to see us.  OK, maybe more so the grandkids and their daughter, and perhaps less so, me.  And perhaps even less so, my cruddy old truck.  Towing a trailer.  With a very odd looking car loaded on it.  Regardless, they greeted us, and helped us carry the kids', the dog's, and Mrs. VCH's luggage inside (they'd be staying here while I went off to race for the weekend).  They then fed and beer-ed us, and, bushed from a long day of changing gears and matching revs, I passed out while reading my daughter to sleep.  

I feel like I've cheated by seeing this before you finished the build thread.

Any plans to paint? Our hat car looked WAY better painted all the same color. Yours both looks amazing as a "rat rod" (sorry, I hate calling it that) but I think it would also look really awesome with refreshed two-tone paint. Also mad props for making a photo journey of the progress. We hid our handiwork from the public eye.

In reply to buzzboy :

I also hate the term "rat rod", even if, in its definition, that's pretty much what we've got here.  I've also heard the term "Derelict" used, I like that much better.  

The original plan for Plymford was to paint it- we even had a theme in mind, and the number "325" has something to do with it *hint hint* but obviously there wasn't time for that before this race.  Thing is... it's only going to look like ^this^ once, so now I'm having second thoughts about doing anything to it.  Hell we never even washed it.  

If someone calls anything I own a rat rod they’re getting shut down and walked away from.  Those people confuse lack of desire to spend cubic dollars and hours on bodywork with purposely doing stupid hacky crap that you know is unsafe just because you desire to fit in with all the other conformists that pretend they don’t fit in.

party on, VCH