1948 Plymouth Special Deluxe (p15)

Chet's Old Plymouths

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  Monday February 14, 2011

A productive day:

I tackled the Plymouth Model 36 Special Deluxe heater.   I have two and both are basket cases.  I stripped them both down to the component parts and choose the best of the lot to work on.

  • I had the tires removed from the rims for sandblasting and then paint. 
  • I was going to sandblast them today but it was way to windy and decided to chip away on the interior.  
  • I disassembled the electric motor which was original to my car and cleaned both bearings and the commutator.
  • I put shrink wrap on the wirers because they were starting to fray and replaced the 8x32 - 3.5" casing screws  The rear casing, bottom pan, and fan shroud. 
  • I dropped it off at the local NAPA store to be bead blasted.  
  • I flushed out the heater core with warm water by attaching a hose from my slop sink and another hose down to the drain.  Pressure tested it at 50 psi for one hour with no pressure loss so I think it's good to go.  
  • Cleaned all rust from the remaining parts including the heater core.  
  • Painted the heater core with a flat black Rust-Oleum.  
  • Painted the housing and other parts with a Rust-Oleum Hammered finish (7210 Gold) paint which is extremely close to the original color. 
  • Really looks better then the picture.  The Hammered finish is really nice.