Speaking of new cars

Ron Smith is a new member of our club and he just bought this car and these are his plans for it

I purchased this 1936 Dodge D2 from a fellow in Colville, Washington the weekend before Thanksgiving. We hauled it home the following Wednesday.

I happened to find it while chasing a rumored '37 Ford pickup. The pickup was a wasted trip, too far gone for restoring, but this was sitting in an adjacent shed. The wife actually liked it, which was unusual, most of my ideal finds are "Ugly" and a source of comment.
The motor, transmission and running gear were all there, but had not been run in years. We drained the oil, flushed the system, installed a new water pump, distributor cap, points, plugs, condenser, rebuilt the carburetor, installed a new master cylinder and got it running.We need to find a new carburetor, but it runs well, smooth and no problems other than acceleration, all carb problems.

The tires are toast, weathered but available from Les Schwab, and will be put on prior to summer.We will need to rewire the complete car, whoever tried restoring it before had clipped all wires close to the lights and engine. The only body work to be done, is to reseal the top, this was the first year that had metal roof, and not a soft top, and the metal is inserted into the original soft top opening this year, needless to say, it leaks pretty good right now, but once fixed, will look good. There were creases in the grilles guard where it had been backed into, but those were taken care of by the body man.I have located working headlights, the taillights are complete and only need wired in. We have new glass and gaskets, and will be repairing the drivers door, which had been disassembled for some reason, but is all there. Lubrication seems all needed for the regulators, and all hardware is in the car. The windshield is frozen in place, so we will have to work on getting it loose and fixed so opens properly.

My plans are to have it to Larry to remove the headliner by February, fix the roof leaks, and then install the glass and seals, so Larry can redo the interior. We will do all bodywork this spring or sooner, but only prime the repaired spots, so we can enjoy the car this summer for functions with the club, then paint it over the winter.

Looks like he has his hands full for now. If you want to help call him.

We have a friend

My little Ford was very excited the other day because we thought we were going to have a playmate in the form of an other 1941 Ford. She looks to be in pretty good shape.

She's not really, she need quite a bit of TLC.


But guess what, Jack Yale, the owner, isn't going to let us play, he is going to lock her up and hide her away because some one told him she is worth more money if she is kept original.

How dumb is that!!


Oh well so our love will be unrequited.

THANKS JACK!!!

Transmission update

Some of you might remember some of the early Volkswagen commercials back in the mid to late 50's. They were very simple. One of my favorites was a very simple one extolling the abilities of the bug. Here is my version of that commercial in the form of an update on the work on my Ford. Don't forget to turn on your speakers.

The saga of the Kaput Transmission

For those of you who remember from the last post, My police cruiser was not in the parade and this is the reason. The Tranny is kaput (means broken).

It seems I did a little damage to the syncro gears, well not a little but a lot. This turned out to be quite a learning experience for me, not only about how the tranny works, but about the stuff people are made of.
The first person to offer to help was Jack Yale who didn't hesitate and when the word got out that I needed help, people came out of the woodwork. Everybody had a suggestion as to what I should do, some of the suggestions I couldn't put in print.

Here are some of the parts after they were sandblasted with the help of a fellow by the name of Mike Bughi, who I didn't even know. But he insisted that the work be done in his garage which was heated and very organized as you can see from these pictures.

He,Mike Bughi, said I was to do the work and he would over see, well that didn't last long. He first sandblasted the parts then painted them, and ended up doing quite a bit of the actual work.

See what I mean about neat and organized. This is a layout of all the parts, new ones and the old ones cleaned and painted ready for reassembly.

Here is Wayne Williams (one of our senior club members) hard at work getting ready to start putting the tranny back together.

Here is Jack again trying to confuse Wayne.

This young gentleman is the fellow I told you abut, Mike Bughi and camera hog Jack Yale, with the finished tranny.

There she is, I hope she works as good as she looks.

We had help from another fellow not pictured here, but equally as helpful, John Trumbo.

Thanks very much to every one who helped.

I don't want you to think that we over worked ourselves, we took time out to play some games such as " I can't find the tool I was just using" and " where are the bolts that go here" and last but not least " where does this part go".

All in all it was a life enriching experience, thanks again.

In my next post I will share the experience of putting it back in the car and whether it worked or not.