More has happened

Well, the gutting was complete in the last post, and now it was time to tackle the floors and redo the repairs. What I could see was patched metal panels on the floor, held there with rivets......

Little did I know that the best was yet to come... or worse.... depending on how you look at it.

The patch panels were actually a sandwich of metal, with the old floor in between....

Gutting complete

Well, I know I haven't been working on the car as much as I'd like (we were on 3 weeks forced vacation as the company closed for 3 weeks) and the forest fire that was 14 km away from the town almost made us evacuate..... as well as the 30+ temperatures (a little hot to work on a black car) but all in all, all that is left on the inside of the car is a couple of gauges. With nothing in the car came an interesting discovery. Someone had previously repaired the floor, putting metal over metal, riveting it in place and covering the job with fiberglass..... the metal that was replaced was rotting away slowly, so now I have to cut out all the bad metal, weld new metal in place and fix the floors correctly.

Allan

Updates.... still gutting... coming along

Well, over the past little while I've continued the "gutting" process. It hasn't been easy, and I've gotten a little frustrated over it as well..... (better learn to get used to that, I'm only starting). I had trouble getting the dash out, but after finding a few bolts I'd missed, and then deciding to unscrew the gauges from behind (they are still in at the moment), I finally pulled the metal dash off..... The other problem that was bothering me was the front seat. The bolts holding the bracket to the floor are quite gone, and of different sizes too..... Couldn't get them out. Finally, I decided to try another way... removed the bolts holding the seat to the brackets.... bingo, out it came in 10 minutes..... The headliner is also out (with only one dead mouse to be found).

Now for the bad news.... well, the floors are in rough shape... rougher than expected, but better than a lot I've seen recently. It seems a bodyman repaired the floor in the past, and I use that term lightly because the metal is rough cut, the rivets are of different sizes and parts of the floor seem to be a jigsaw puzzle, plus the coating of fiberglass that was unevenly spread over the whole area..... gotta clean everything up, remove the repairs, remove any other bad metal and then weld in some metal in its place. Since there is almost nothing left in the interior, it shouldn't be too bad to get to. I'll be taking more pics as I go along...

One thing is for sure, the guys at the P15-d24 website http://www.p15-d24.com have helped so much with information on everything I've asked to date, its just fantastic. I also have to thank Bill Ward for creating a page for me on the old plymouths site http://ww.oldplymouths.com . Its people like these from those 2 sites that make the internet fun.

Allan

More gutting

Today I continued some of the gutting on the car. I pulled part of the headliner, but before I did that, I tried getting the front seat out. The seat bolts are all rusted in place, and some bolts are of a different size and shape than the others. I took the bench seats (without the front seat rack) to the upholsterer to see how much material I'd need to put the seats together. It'll need 8 yrds of tweed, 3.5 yards of leather, and that is beside the headliner and door panels. The floor pans don't look all that bad, actually have some of the original rust proofing on it still... but we'll see once everything has been taken out and sandblasted.


Allan

Interior trim removal

Well, along with trying to make a template for the interiors of the doors, I've started removing the interior trim. Yesterday I removed all window trim from the inside, the 2 mirrors (side and rear view) and the light switch and hanger hook (You know, the hook that allows you to hang up your suit beside the back seat windows. There will be some heavy duty cleaning to do on the parts, but other than the cleaning, there might not be any refinishing necessary. We'll see as we go along.

Allan

Shop manual

I gotta thank the guys at the P15-D24 site.... I found a site with shop manuals for the Canadian edition of the Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler/Desoto cars. Nice price went with it too. I was discussing it with them on the forum and one said why don't I wait to see one on ebay..... duh.... why didn't I think of that... and whaddya know, there is one on there, with less than a day left. Well, I bid on it and won it.... yippee, should be here early next week.

Allan

More prep work

Well, I went and did a few things around the house yesterday. I work tonight from 6pm to 6 am. I also went and purchased a few sheets of damaged plywood to put underneath the car for now to make sure that I have a solid base to work on until the car is mobile. I can't wait to get my garage built, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity of getting the car either. It'll be in and out of my friend Michel's garage for the next little while..... at the same time that he works on his rod and his ferrari kit.

Allan