The Plymford

In reply to Patrick :

Pretty sure that "stupid hacky crap" is going to be the definition of "Plymford" when it gets added to the dictionary.  

On a related topic, this thread is the second result if one does a Google search for "Plymford".  

Fantastic. Loving this whole build.

This is an awesome build and great build thread.  I had to laugh at the light switch hanging from the dash area for cooling fan control.  

Is it just me or does the car look slightly... bent, in the middle, around the A-pillar?  Like the hood is higher than it should be, and the trunk as well, in comparison to the front doors.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

I'm surprised you're the first to point this out.  It's the main thing that bugs me about the car as well.  The problem was getting the trailing edge of the hood at the height of the base of the windshield, and having the leading edge of the hood high enough to clear the radiator cap.  In doing all this, and lining everything up, and making sure that the radiator was higher than the engine (to prevent air pockets)....I mis-measured somewhere (or my spirit level was off a tad) and the hood ended up with a backwards-angle to it.  Unfortunately, fixing this would require re-aligning the hood, and the only way to do that would be to raise the cowl or lower the radiator.  And then the fenders would have to be re-attached.  And the grille.  So, needless to say, it ain't happening.  

Rest assured, the frame is straight, and the car is not bending in half at the base of the A pillar.  

Nah, I really like the "bending in half" look to it. I feel like it fits with the rest of the stupid hacky crap that makes Plymford so handsome.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I noticed it, and looked through the pictures and assumed it was because of the size of the radiator... which was already stated as being important for "enduro-cooling"

I'm conscious of the fact that I may get a reputation around here of being overcritical, so I decided to keep my mouth shut about it

you could fab up a hulk fist over the windsheild sometime... "hulk smashed plymford"  ?

I say you just add rake until the nose is perfectly level.

Yeah, isn't that a hot rod thing to do? To rake the passenger compartment while leaving the engine area flat?

I noticed it too, but I couldn't remember if the Plymouth started life that way or not.

Patrick said:

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

Or maybe they aren’t overthinking it.  I’m sure most people that use the term don’t intend it as a personal insult to the owner.  It’s a very common term now and means different things to different people.

I bet the 'bend' would be far less noticeable without the obvious white line going down the side.  If the car was painted and a new white or contrasting feature line was added it would look a lot 'better'

I just jumped in my TARDIS and did a quick rattle can touch up in the pits

pancake that hood!   make the rake of the center of the hood match the rake of the roof and the "dip" at the cowl disappears.

Love the suggestions.  Thanks- some really good ideas here.  Funny, I'd used that white pinstriping as a way to align (or, not, as it turns out) all the panels when stitching them onto the LTD chassis.  But modifying or removing the line altogether now makes sense.  

I'd thought about modifying the hood some way to remove the backwards-rake.  The radiator might get in the way in front, though perhaps that could be worked around some way.  Maybe relocate the radiator cap to the center of the radiator?  

Anyway, on with the rest of the race!

I'd leave it bent the way it is. It doesn't look like a 51 Plymouth, it looks like some sort of cool hot rod race car cartoon thing. 

Friday, November 2, 2018

We race tomorrow.

At 6:42AM I kissed and hugged Mrs. VCH, the little ones, and the dog goodbye and rumbled off in the BST hauling all the (hopefully unneeded) spares and tools, and trailering a very hilarious race car. 

Figuring traffic wouldn’t be bad having gotten a bit of an early start, the back roads to CMP seemed like a more interesting and scenic route for the morning drive.  The BST was running fine for about the first hour.  Heading up a particularly sharp grade, I mashed the gas pedal in 4th gear, and as the truck crested the hill, my foot lifted…but the accelerator pedal did not.  Weighed down with 16,000 pounds of truck, gear, trailer, and Plymford, the 454 did not go wailing up into stratospheric RPMs, nor did the truck rapidly gain additional velocity, but, all the same, it would be difficult to make the remainder of the trip like that.  After prying up on the pedal with futility, I finally clicked off the ignition, levered the gearbox into ‘N’, and coasted up the next hill to a stop on a very narrow shoulder. 

A bit of quick fiddling and some spray lube under the hood fixed the bound-up TBI throttle easily enough, but twisting the key to restart the engine lead to the heart-sinking revelation that the starter was heat-soaked.  My first instinct was to roll the truck (and trailer) backwards down the hill and pop start it in reverse.  It was a fairly deserted road, so I gave it a go.  Unfortunately, gravity and the shallow grade had a difficult time overcoming inertia and friction, and the truck couldn’t get moving fast enough to turn over the 454.  After the first failed attempt, a tow truck happened by and offered to go block the road off for me to give it another, as it turns out, unsuccessful go.  Realizing A) this wasn’t going to work, and B) I was running out of hill, a claw hammer was pulled from my toolbox and the starter solenoid beat upon with all of the pre-coffee morning enthusiasm I could muster.  Amazingly, this worked, the starter engaged and the engine caught.  After thanking the tow truck driver I set off down the road.

At this point, two things became clear in my head: First, I wasn’t going to shut the truck off again for the rest of the trip, and second, I really needed some breakfast.  But before I could find a place to grab a bite to eat, I realized that my back and neck were itching and I detected a distinct crawling sensation.  I yanked the wheel to pull the BST into a gas station, left it idling, and jumped out.  Fire ants were making tracks up the velour of the seats.  I dashed behind my truck for some modesty and pulled my shirt over my head, beating it furiously.  I must have trespassed upon their nest on the shoulder whilst laying on my back to pummel the starter.  Having rid my truck seat and clothes of as many of the nasty creatures as I could find, and making what must have been a very curious scene for whoever might have been watching, I steered the BST back onto SC-9 and recommenced putting more road behind me.

Three more stops (Advance auto for a throttle return spring for BST, a gas station, and Bojangles for a Cajun chicken biscuit breakfast meal) later, at around 10AM, I smiled as the “Carolina Motorsports Park” sign greeting my fire-ant-bitten self.  Just making it to the track felt like an accomplishment, and the Plymford hadn’t turned a single lap yet. 

Things went a bit more smoothly after that rocky start.  McCall showed up shortly after noon with all the food, and we added his pop-up to the EZ-up I’d already erected.  Matt and Rob arrived shortly after that with the Opulent, Palatial Recreational Vehicle (OPRV) and another pop-up canopy.  It rained some, but methodically the team managed to tick the last few items off of the ‘TO DO’ list on the Plymford so that, by mid-afternoon, we decided to make a dash in a lull in the rain to the tech shed.  There wasn’t any line, so we rolled right in as another team was finishing up and, sitting behind the wheel of the race car, I saw Jay Lamm’s face noticeably brighten as we pulled under the tech shed roof.  

I was somewhat nervous about how he was going to react- after all, we’d sliced the old Ford LTD up and pasted a bunch of body panels in a rough approximation of a 1951 Plymouth onto what remained of the chassis.  But, he seemed to have no real issues with it (one of the other scrutineers detected a loose exhaust clamp and a loose light, both of which we rectified later) and told us, “This is as happy as I’ve been all day*”.  We passed tech. 

*One of my teammates claims he actually said, “This is as happy as I’m going to feel about this car all day, so get the hell out of here.”  Either way, we were cleared to race, but my interpretation sounds better.

We had 3-D printed up some new badges for the race car's new persona, so, armed with drill and super glue, we made the car officially a Plymford.

Sometime around 5 o’clock the rain started to clear up in earnest.  The radar maps on our smartphones were promising, so the 3 other guys piled into one guy's Jeep and I followed them in the Plymford, headed for the parade/ block party/ BS inspection, scheduled for 6PM in Camden.  The hood very nearly blew off a few minutes after we left CMP (all but one of the hood pins had been left unfastened, in a fit of mass team scatterbrainedness) but I managed to salvage the situation, pulled over and re-fastened the hood, and arrived in Camden well in time to line up for the parade. 

En route, we passed the Idle Clatter Toyocedes (Toyota Hilux mounted on a W123 chassis), so we had fun “racing” each other and taking pictures of each other’s body-swapped “race” cars. Their team captain managed to get this photo, which has become the background wallpaper on my work laptop.  

There were nearly a hundred cars signed up to race, and nearly all of them were at the parade.  I drove the Plymford, two of the guys sat on the back shelf, and the 3rd rode shotgun sort-of squatting on top of a cooler full of beer. 

The parade led us past the cheering denizens of downtown Camden to a town square, which the LeMons racers all parked round to kick off the celebration.  Bacon was grilled, a band played, and B-S judgements were meted out in the traditionally hap-hazard fashion.  We scored us a pizza and some fries, which was quickly shoveled down our pie holes, chased by copious amounts of fermented beverages.  It was a great time, and before anyone could believe it was 9PM and time to roll on back to CMP. 

Back at the track post-party, I went off to socialize with the all-too-many members of the LeMons community whom I only see at races.  I met up with the guys from Terminally Confused and we made the rounds, ending up back at their paddock spot with a few other racers.  Ribeyes the size of frying pans and at least two inches thick were grilled, and we feasted on midnight meat.  By the time I got back to the OPRV it was 1AM, and the rest of the Tunachuckers were already sacked out.  I slipped into my bunk over the cab and dozed off into a beer-pizza-and-steak induced coma. 

Well done......the stance she is perfect!.....and the patina.....err oops....sorry......NOT!!!

'PLYMFORD FIREANT' it is then.

I want a big ass fire ant painted on the side as the car bit you in the ass for hopefully the only time over the weekend.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Wasn't the Plymford Fireant a rebadged, de-contented DeSlowto Firedrone?

Ug. Fire ants.

That's the reason people up north deal with snow.

Robbie said:

Ug. Fire ants.

That's the reason people up north deal with snow.

Ug. Snow.

Thats the reason people down south deal with fire ants.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Well, at least we agree!!

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I gotta side with Robbie here.  Maryland seems to be right on the fire ants - snow line.  Luckily we don't seem to have any of the former, and only the latter 3 or 4 times per winter.  

On to the race!

Saturday, November 3rd.  Race Day #1.

6AM is one thing…6AM in a camper with the heat kicked off through a clear, starry night in central South Carolina in early November is another  altogether.  I believe the chattering of my own bicuspids roused me from sleep.  Several attempts at curling deeper into the sleeping bag proved futile, so I relented and slipped quietly out of my bunk and departed the RV.  The other 3 guys seemed to be unresponsive.  The cab of the BST yielded a stocking hat and some warmer clothes, which helped the situation somewhat. 

With Daylight Savings set to happen that night into Sunday, the sun still wasn’t up yet.  And as the time ticked by, and the cold stillness grasped the track, I began having thoughts that perhaps the sun had burnt up in the night; that light would never come.  At least the stars were pretty.  I picked out a few constellations to get my bearings, and, satisfied that I knew where North was, picked up my rechargeable worklight and started picking away at the sundry minor things left to do on the Plymford. 

The sun did begin gradually driving away the darkness, and 2 of my team mate stumbled out of the OPRV to put new brake pads on the car whilst the other prepared breakfast. 

The driver’s meeting came at 9AM.  Jay thanked everyone who made the race and parade reschedule happen (due to Hurricane Florence), made some other enthusiastic/ smart-assed remarks, and reminded us the green flag would fly in an hour.  We tech'd our gear and the guys strapped me in to take the lead-off stint, battling traffic. 

The Plymford was ready to go.  By the time I headed on to the track most of the field was already making parade laps; I got in a couple before the green flew and the fun started.  I’d made a conscious decision to drive smoothly and conservatively, to make sure everyone got a chance to drive and Plymford would stay together all weekend.  There were a ton of fast cars that passed me very easily, and several cars that were much slower that I passed without trouble.  There were a handful of cars that were faster than me in the bends, and slower in the straights, and those were fun races to have.  The purple Dodge Coronet “Coronautski” was in the last category, and we diced it up for many laps before finally leaving them in the rearview in some traffic.  The Plymford was more than eager to rev over 4500 RPM at at least 3 places on the track, but, again trying to preserve something for the other 3 guys to have fun with, I rev-limited myself at those portions.  4500 is still 100 miles per hour or so- not really slow for a ’51 Plymouth screwed onto a ’75 Ford frame.  And it was faster (in a straight line) than all but 3 or 4 other cars were able to hit.  With somewhat less weight over the rear tires than in past races, the chassis felt more tail-happy, and the 460 Big Block was more than happy to oblige when asked to rotate the car around a turn.  Sometimes too happy.  I did note that hard, sustained right turns seemed to cause the oil pressure to drop somewhat.  At WOT, it would stay around 40 psi, but under high right hand g-loading, it would drop to around 15 or 20.  I eased up a bit on the corners and kept a light foot on the pedal until it was pointed straight again. 

In this manner I clicked of pretty strong laps for about an hour and 45 minutes.  The plan was for me to pit at noon, but coming off one hard righter I dipped into the acceleration well and came out dry; the engine bucked and stuttered before catching.  Thinking the fuel situation might be getting dire, I made a very slow cool-down lap and came in to our pits to turn the car over to Matt.  He took the car over to the track pumps where we’d planned to fill with jerry cans, but after dumping in 10 gallons an official came over to scold us; apparently we were to only use the track pumps there.  If we wanted to fuel with jerry cans, we had to hot pit.  Matt then strapped in, did about 10 minutes on the track, and came down pit lane where Rob and McCall finished filling the tank and let Matt out for some racing in earnest.

Around 1:15 Driver #2 came chugging back to the pits, saying the transmission felt like it was starting to slip.  Harnessing all his vast racing wisdom and experience, he’d made a couple of cool-down laps and brought it in.  We popped the hood pins and yanked the dipstick on the C6 to confirm:  yes, the fluid was low.  He also reported smoke coming from the car and a smell of burning ATF, so he maneuvered the car under the carport and cut off the engine so we could raise the Plymford off the ground to inspect.  I was the first to crawl underneath, and it seemed like the entire undercarriage was soaked in hot, red fluid.  One of two things could cause this, I reasoned: either the pan was leaking, or the front seal of the transmission was.  Since fixing the seal would involve dropping the transmission, and since the pan gasket appeared to be pushing out and deteriorated, we rolled the dice on dropping the pan and changing this gasket.  As it turned out, several of the pan bolts were finger tight.   And as it also turned out, one of the transmission fluid filter bolts had dropped right into the pan!  One guy went out to grab some more fluid.  We bolted in a new filter, blacksmithed the pan mounting flange as straight as we could with some wood blocks and a hammer, and put it back on with a fresh gasket.  The front left tire was showing cord, so we swapped on a very slightly better used tire while the front end was jacked up.  Once the trans fluid arrived we dumped it in and drove the car to fill up with gas at the station just outside the track entrance, figuring we’d motor it around a bit and re-check the fluid level. 

On the way back from the pump, the temp gauge was showing 230 degrees+ even with the fan switch on; the fans weren’t running.  Some frantic troubleshooting showed the fans worked, but the fan relay was burned up.  I hotwired the fans directly to the switch, bypassing the relay, and we crossed our fingers that the fan current wouldn’t overheat the switch. 

After 100 lost minutes, everything seemed to be back in order again and the 3rd driver took the tiller at 2:45 to give it the real test. 

After an incident and black-flag free stint of around an hour and a half, he came to our pits in to hand the baton over to our 4th driver at 4:15.   We decided to hot pit for fuel again, so the 4th driver made a lap and came down pit lane so we could tank him up.  We nearly got in trouble when he forgot to get out of the car during fueling, but fortunately we all remembered what we were doing and the pit stop went off fine.  Driver #4 took off to (hopefully) finish up the day.

At 6PM the checked flag waved and our clean-up man cruised the Plymford back to the pit space.  Terminally Confused’s BBQ bash was at 7, which we supplied with 3 dozen ears of corn on the cob- and which were completely gobbled up in about 30 minutes.  Note to team: bring 4 dozen ear next time!  BBQ successfully consumed, we turned our attention to the Plymford.  It still seemed to be leaking ATF, though at a manageable rate of half a quart or so an hour, so we figured we could live with that for Sunday.  The 460 had succeeded in converting yet another load of cooling water into a chocolate milkshake, so we drained the radiator and refilled with fresh water.  The tires were definitely looking sketchy, but we had only one new tire mounted to put on, so we decided to leave the tires on the car as-is and get the spare new tire mounted Sunday (assuming we could find a tire shop open on Sunday in rural central SC).  The cold rolled in again as the sun disappeared and the stars shone brightly in the cloudless sky.  The OPRV’s heat was engaged, and we retired to our enclave to wind down for the night around 10PM. 

Sounds like a pretty good first day of racing.  What's with the cooling system contaminating the water like that?  

I think I was the first to mention the "bent look" because no one else wanted to offend your sensibilities.  It's a great project!  I think it's super cool as-is anyway.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

The 460 seems to produce mud.  I'd flushed it out ad-nauseum, but after a good long drive the water always comes up brown.  ???

Worried about offending the sensibilities of a guy who just welded a '51 Plymouth onto a malaise-era Ford is like being concerned your farts might be smelled while standing next to a septic tank cleaning truck.

We got some Instagram love from 24hoursoflemons on the first day:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bprqn8BBQ7u/

and

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpuc5UMB3S5/

So that was pretty cool.  And other than the transmission and fan issue, the car ran pretty great.  Hopefully Sunday would go just as well...