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4 July, 2014 -- Big forward movement! I decided to visit the shop while running a bunch of errands in Huntsville. When I got there, Dan was in the shop. Deron and Daniel (on Summer break) had not yet arrived. As I approached the car, I noticed that the rumble seat lid and doors were off and the hood, radiator, and all four fenders were now among the missing. Dan asked, "Do you notice anything different? I walked around the car but failed to notice the obvious -- The car is now detached from the frame:
Dan is preparing to mount it on its dolly once again to do the final prime coat in preparation for the "real" paint. He also said that the work on the front fenders was completed and that they are at the media blaster to be cleaned and pickled in preparation for their primer coats. He had been working on the top panels of the hood. The side panels are ready for final prime coat.
The hood of the Model PB Plymouth is an interesting subchapter in the history of automotive styling. In 1932, most automobiles had hoods that extended to the firewall. There was a distinct line between the hood and the front of the cowl area. The 1932 Ford is a good example of this design.
The Chrysler design team decided to extend the hood all the way to the windshield on the entire Chrysler product line for the "1932" models, including the Model PB Plymouth (The model changes didn't always coincide with calendar years.). This design introduces a challenge with regard to ventilation. It required that the hood and the cowl each have vent openings with vent covers that could be operated from within the car. It was a clever design with one serious flaw. There was no way to drain the channel in the hood in which the rubber seal cushion resided. These soft rubber gaskets always absorbed water, stayed wet, and eventually caused the steel channel in which they were cemented to pit and ultimately rust through. Such was the case with the hood for this roadster. It was better than most, but had some pinholes rusted through. The challenge to the restorer is that if we try to weld the pinholes, we stand a good chance of introducing warpage and distortion into the smooth curves of the hood. Dan solved this problem nicely by scouring the channels to rid them of any corrosion, sealing the underside of the hood with tape, and spreading a thin layer of two-part epoxy in the channel. This seals the channel, doesn't require any welding, and will be totally invisible since it will be covered by the rubber seal. And the repair will never rust!
The underside of the hood vent opening has all the complexity of the hinges and attaching point for the vent cover adjustment mechanism. This entire assemblage extends through the vent opening in the cowl, which is larger than the hood vent. The whole thing worked and allowed the '32 Chrysler products to look longer and more stylistically uncluttered. All that and the advantage of bugs and rain having direct ingress when the vents are opened! You can see the result in this picture of my other 1932 Plymouth taken today with the driver's vent opened:
While I was talking to Dan, son Deron and grandson Daniel showed up and within minutes, Daniel had retrieved a Model A Ford "Doodlebug" that he's been working on. Note the size and maturity of Daniel compared with his appearance just a couple of years ago. That young man has sprouted! BTW, he's now taller than his Dad...
19 July, 2014 - Even more progress was evident when I went out to visit the shop today! Notwithstanding that it was Saturday, I found all three of the "boys" at the shop. They immediately began showing me what's been taking place. First of all, I saw that the body is now off of the frame and resting on the platform that Dan had built when we removed the body in 2011.
The effect of the continuous hood is even more dramatic on the 1932 Chrysler Custom Imperial Phaeton shown in this factory photo:
As I looked at the body perched on its stand, I couldn't miss 3 test panels of paint that I had asked Deron to get. As I have seen certain paint colors that I've liked and thought might be usable on this car, I've determined the paint sources and passed these to Deron. Here were three of them in "living Color." I brought them home today to show Mary Ann to see if she particularly cared for any of them.
As I moved toward the rear of the shop, I spotted lots of parts -- doors, hood parts, and others -- in their final primer coats. What a beautiful sight!
And then I walked over to the chassis, now exposed in all it's Chrysler-engineered glory, and saw the front fenders lying on the chassis and an adjacent table. During my last visit, these fenders were at the bead blaster's shop. Now they were in primer. Dan said they were in remarkably good shape. He had observed one interesting fact. The right (passenger side) fender had substantially more pitting on the underside than the left fender. We could only speculate why this might be the case. Perhaps the left fender had been replaced at some point, or maybe the salt on the Ohio roads where this car was driven tends to concentrate nearer the edges of the roads. Who knows???
15 August, 2014 -- Today, when I arrived at the shop, Dan was outside sanding the underside of the right front fender (the one with the most pitting). He applies two or three coats of high-build primer, then sands by hand until eventually the pits are filled in. If you look on the second picture, a close-up of the fender brace, you can see some of the pits that are still visible. It's a slow process, but we want to do the car correctly to a very high standard.
9-27-2014 I visited the shop yesterday. Dan had finished masking off the main part of the body in preparation for its final black epoxy primer. The hammer and dolly work is now completed along with all but the last sanding before the final red primer. He is very meticulous in applying the masking tape, as he says the black epoxy primer is really difficult to remove if you need to do so. And in the last picture below, he has moved the body outside for spraying.
... and transformed the car!
10-23-2014 When I visited the shop this week, Dan was at a metal-working "school" in Shelbyville, Tennessee. He and his metal craftsman buddies (all of whom are tied together on the Internet) periodically assemble at someone's shop where one individual will hold classes on some special technique. This week, a group was assembling at Street Rods by Michael, a rod-building shop about thirty miles north of my home. The instructor is a metalworker from Australia, Peter Tommasini. Peter, a classic car restorer, is conducting a series of classes across the USA. In the meantime, Dan was concerned that my car, now almost completely block sanded and ready for paint, might get dirty. He made sure that wouldn't happen:
Isn't it nice to work with a shop that takes such good care of your property?
While I was there, Deron and I discussed the process that he will start soon on the chassis -- modifying the front tubular axle to accommodate '40 Ford backing plates and hubs, installing one of the Mustang rear ends that he acquired, fabricating and installing gas lines and brake lines, etc., etc.
We still have a fair amount of work to complete...
2-20-2016 The latest set of pictures... Primer is finished... Block Sanding is Done... Looking for a painter.
... To be continued...
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