Thread: 57 Plymouth

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“……..Actually I'm going to get the alignment checked on the 57 before I start on the steering box change. The shop I use can't get me in till Wednesday so with luck I'll be able to get a start on that next week………”


Well Wednesday turned into a you got to be kidding me moment (couple of them actually).

So I get to the alignment appointment Wednesday and we get the car up on the rack. In the process of setting everything up we find out the upper ball joints are junk (the loose enough to be scary kind of junk). I knew the steering box is shot, but the car has less than 22,000 on it since I built it including the front suspension. With that few miles on it I didn’t even consider or bother to check the ball joints before I took it in for the alignment.

Anyway we get the car back off the rack and I make another appointment for this week. I knew getting ball joints would not be a problem (Chrysler used the same ball joints from 57 to the late 70s). The parts store actually had a pair on the shelf and Chrysler ball joints just screw in so I figured about an hour to get them changed out.

The hour to get them changed out pretty much turned to crap once I got the car up in the air. It turns out the upper control arm bushings were starting to go away. Now I had check those before the alignment appointment (from the top side). But when I lifted the control arm up to cleat the ball joint stud from the spindle, one of the bushings was starting to lose chunks of rubber.

That really didn’t surprise me too much (I had the same issue on the 57 Dodge I had several years ago). The 57-8 Mopar upper control arm bushings were way too small for the weight of the car and Chrysler re-designed the upper control arms for bigger bushings in 59.

In addition to the bushings being too small, they are a 2 year only application so I suspect productions runs are small and far between, so who knows how old the “new” bushings actually are and how long they have been sitting on the shelf. 10 years ago I could walk into any parts store in town and have a set of bushings by that afternoon…….not so much now. The local parts store has a set coming out of Denver, but they won’t be in till Monday or Tuesday (hopefully).

Oh well, I’ve got a couple of medium sized trees that didn’t make it thru the winter I need to get down and cut into firewood, and I just got in the satellite radio (and installation kits) to add to the Plymouth/Dodge and El Camino. Want to guess what project I’d rather do first???



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Neat switch; I miss that good old American manufacturing from that era where you could actually disassemble it, clean it, and it it still works after 50+ years.

Isn't that nuts? Over engineering the head light switch but under engineering the suspension. Those ball joints are used on Mustang II control arms so if you ever need more and are out and about on a trip and can't find them, you can source them from hot rod shops in a pinch too. Sorry to hear of the issues but I have the same kind of luck. At least they didn't come apart.

This was as far as I got with the 57 before I had to make the trip back to Illinois.


57PS by M Patterson, on Flickr


After I got I got the front end aligned the Plymouth was up in the air and the front wheel off.


Now that I’m home again and have a few other things taken care of I can get back to figuring out the steering and get the original box and column out. There are still a few clearance issues I’m trying to resolve with getting the box physically fit. One may be a show stopper unless I can figure a work around.


Taking a break from that, I decided to play with a couple of pitman arms with different offsets to try to keep the geometry as close as possible to the original. One of the original gm ones I had looked promising but the male master splines were located in the wrong place to properly index it. My original thought was to go ahead and just grind out the master splines. When I looked closer I realized when the arm was indexed where I needed it the area I ground would be right next to the female master splines on the pitman shaft. It probably would have been fine, but I decided to go ahead and just turn the male master splines into teeth. It actually wasn’t that bad just a little time with a triangular file.


PA2 by M Patterson, on Flickr



PA3 by M Patterson, on Flickr



PA4 by M Patterson, on Flickr



It may be wasted time if I can’t get the new box to fit, but I haven’t given up quite yet.


In the mean time I’ll probably also pull the driveshaft next week and haul that up to Tucson to have the balance checked…….the cars always had a little drive line vibration above 75 and having the driveshaft checked was one of those roundtoit projects.



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Smooth hand with that file. Looks good..

I’ve kind of set the power steering aside for a bit so I can come back to it later with a fresh eye.

I got the drive shaft out so I could take it up to be balanced. When I took it out I noticed some unusual wear on the slip yolk and seemed like there was excess play in the tail shaft. I put another yolk on the shaft prior to sending it out for balance.

I picked up the drive shaft Wednesday…….it had been slightly out of balance but not by much. When I road tested it the vibration was gone, but I suspect that had more to do with the new yolk rather than the shaft balance. I’ve got an appointment at my friends trans shop to put a new tail shaft bushing in next week (he has the tool to do it in car…..and yeah he would loan me the tool but it’s just a bunch easier to have him go ahead and do it on his lift).

We have a local cruise on Friday night. It’s been a while since I went to one so Thursday I figured I’d go ahead and get the Plymouth cleaned up and take it in.

The paint is holding up really well for being 12 years old so I just used a clay bar on it and waxed it. I also pulled the scoop off so I could replace the edge guard around the base …….when I built the car the only options for the edge guard I could find were “chrome” or black. I went with the chrome but never really cared for it. Now they’re making it in a bunch of colors so I went with red this time. I think it looks better but I wish it were a little more red and less orange, but it will do for now.

While the scoop was off I couldn’t help thinking that a 671 would sure look good sticking thru the hole in the hood




Hoodscoop by M Patterson, on Flickr


Of course the cruise got rained out so the Plymouth ended up just sitting in the garage, but at least it’s cleaned and waxed



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Nice new edge guard. At least the vibration is fixed. Those get annoying quick!

It will be a couple months (at least) before I can do anything with my hand other than the exercises the physical therapist has me doing. At least I can cruise the internet.

I recently came across a post on another site from gentleman down in Texas who is just starting to put together a kit together a PS kit for the 57-8 Dodges and Plymouths. He is using a Ford truck PS steering box (one of the steering gears I had looked at and kind of discarded). He did the original prototype on his personal 57 Savoy and was able to send me pictures and measurements. As it moves the steering box back a bit it looks like it will work on my 57. It will require steering tube and column mods but I had planned on having to do that anyway.

I've ordered the kit (his first one) and it should get here next week. It pretty much includes everything except the PS pump and brackets and PS hoses which I had him delete. I did have to source a 57 Plymouth PS pitman arm (which is longer than the manual pitman arms) which I have a couple of sources for.

So a couple more boxes to collect dust while I heal up.



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UPS came by today and dropped off my PS conversion. About all I was able to do was unpack and inventory it.

PS Conversion by M Patterson, on Flickr

I'm still waiting on a PS pitman arm that's coming from a friend out in California. I glanced over the instructions and they seem pretty comprehensive.

We'll see how it goes after I'm able to get the car apart and get it installed.


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Don't rush it I know from experience it just is not worth it.

Thanks Charlie, I'm taking it easy and doing what the Dr tells me. I had my first occupational therapy appointment last week and have been doing the exercises they gave me....not a lot of fun but necessary.

I purposely had the surgery done in January figuring the majority of the healing would be done while it was colder and I wouldn't mind being house bound so much. Of course were having a bit of warm wet weather right now....just right that the weeds were grown up so bad the yard and arena needed mowed last Sunday. This was the 3rd time in the 25 years I've been out here that the mower had to be broken out in Feb. Fortunately I had Cade here so I wasn't tempted to overdo anything. Cabin fever sucks.

As far as getting the PS parts yesterday admittedly that was kind of interesting. UPS normally drops off at the front of the house. The box weighed over 70 pounds and going around the house to the shop is about 40-50 yards. No problem....I figured I'd just use my 2 wheeled dolly to get it to the shop. It worked out OK but I suspect if I go back and look at the security camera footage of me getting the package tipped up on to the cart and then the cart tipped back on 2 wheels and dragged across the yard one handed it would have a striking resemblance to a monkey and a football.



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Originally Posted by Mike P

a striking resemblance to a monkey and a football.



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Just love the simile!
A mate of mine came out with one the other day whilst describing something similar: 'like a horse with its legs in a gate...'

The mind goes in to overdrive...

Naw, the monkey (enamored with) the football was me and the tech assistant hanging a cork board cabinet at work recently.

No matter how clear your instructions are, always double check the helpers measurements.

:rolleyes

I really haven’t given up on the Plymouth and driving it back to my 50th HS reunion next summer. Other than ordering the PS conversion kit at the beginning of the year there was really only 1 thing I got done on the Plymouth this year…..adding a satellite radio. When I originally put the 57 together I installed an AM/FM/Cassette player and 60’s reverb unit……..and yeah I have a box full of tapes. Changing them every 90 minutes gets to be a pain though.

I’ve slowly been adding the satellite radios to everything I drive (except the 37 Dodge). The radios are cheap, it’s the subscription than kills you. All the radios I picked up are the same and slip into a docking station so I only have one activated and swap it between the 3 cars.

On the 57 it took a bit of figuring to find a place where I was happy semi-permanently mounting it. I finally settled on where the ashtray goes. I didn’t want to destroy the original ashtray so I bought a “junk” one without the trim from a friend who runs wrecking yard out in California. I mounted the docking station to the front of the ashtray and wired plugs on the wiring for the docking station. That way I can just pull out the ashtray and slip in the original one when I want.

Sat Radio by M Patterson, on Flickr

The Sat Radio works great and gives a lot of listening options for the 48 hours I’ll be on the road to Illinois and back. As it’s an add-on receiver it goes thru the stereo in the car including the reverb when I have it on.




Anyway with the new house and all the other little projects the 57 and 37 have pretty much just been sitting in the garage gathering dust. With things pretty much under control with the house I figured that getting some fresh gas in both and exercising them would be a good idea.

Ever since I swapped the Tri-Power to Dual quads I’ve had and intermittent stumble and occasional backfire thru the carbs. I’ve been playing with the carbs and timing to try to tune it out. When I had the car out earlier this week it hit me…….that stumble is not fuel, it’s ignition! Sure enough, I pulled the distributor cap and had arc trails on the inside. New cap and rotor later and it’s all happy again. Heck of it is if the problem hadn’t shown up right after the manifold swap I would have gone right to the real problem instead thinking it was fuel related. Oh well live and re-learn.


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Nice to get uipdates. I'm bad at that right now