'59 Plymouth Forum

This was a question put to me as a forum topic by Curt Lambdin of Ellicott City, MD. And an excellent topic it is! I'll be happy to start -- Faulkner and I have been inseparable since January 29th, 2003. You can read all about how it came to be here:

https://59plymouth.net/faulkner/page13.html

How about you? When did you acquire your '59, and what were the circumstances? Inquiring minds want to know!

Dan

Dan,

Thanks again for kicking this thread off for me.

Short answer is 15 years for me.

I bought my '59 Savoy two door post sedan in June 1991 from a friend that lived on Long Island New York. He kept saying it was for sale and I finally broke down and sent up a roll-back for the car.

It had 48,000 original miles on a two speed flathead six.

Since then the car has been modified with a sub-frame from a 1976 Volare Station wagon. We used the 318 motor, 904 trans and 8 1/4 - 323 positraction rear - all a very good match. The drive shaft is stock from a Road Runner - we wanted to keep it all Mopar..

The car has power bucket seats from a '76 Cadillac Eldorado, custom tweed interior, centerline wheels and is lowered. It has many 50's style horns under the hood - wolf whistle, bermuda bell, siren, Road Runner Horn, Bull Horn etc. The car also has neon underneath and a really loud dual exhaust system with 50's echo cans in the rear. Of course it has Power brakes and steering, a 10 disc CD player with amp, A/C, tilt wheel
and others items.

I hope I can finally get some pictures to Dan so I can get in the showcase someday. We drove the car for 10 years and put 30,000 miles on her and she still turns heads wherever we go. She has seen few miles over the last 4 years as my health has not allowed us much time to enjoy her - but I can't seem to let her go just yet.

So who has had their car longer than 15 years and who has a car less than 15 years???

My first attempt at loading pictures.

Fresh paint in 1993.

Early years as a 50's custom cruiser.

Thanks again,

Curt in MD

Oh well - I got the captions wrong - buut you know that already

Curt in MD

You'd think I'd recall those dates like my own birthday..
I am prety sure I bought my present '59 in 1993, sight unseen except for a few photos, from Dave ?... He locates, picks up, and re-sells Mopars. He lives in MN. He found "my" car in Iowa, where it spent its entire life..

savvy59 wrote: My other addiction - 1954 Seeburg Jukebox just after restoration.

Matthew - I want to see pictures now of your Jukeboxes!

You can see some pix right here, Curt:

http://members.chello.nl/rkeij/

As far as the translation, well -- you're on your own

Great to finally see pix of your car, though! Yes, please send some more -- and I'd love to see that video too. Thanks for the thread idea!

Dan

I like the car and love the gas prices (as seen in one of your photos) Those were the good ol days

Curt asked me a question privately, but it's such an important question I think I should answer it in the forum:

Curt wrote:Why did my jpeg pictures look so bad on-line.

Is there some other way to upload and get rid of the waves???

When you upload the picture, the forum stores two images -- one that's "icon-sized" within the post itself, and the other is the original uploaded image. To see the latter, click on the image icon -- the full size image will present in a new window.

But here too there can be display problems. By default, Internet Explorer scales images to be displayed within your screen size, so that images can appear with ripples. If you hover near the lower right corner, an icon will appear, and if you click on it, the image will present full size with scroll bars. Alternatively, you can force this to be the default behavior -- go to:

Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced --> Multimedia

and, if the "enable automatic image resizing" checkbox is checked, uncheck it. Then, images will always present with scrollbars.

Any questions -- just ask. Hope this helps...

Dan

Thanks Dan for setting me straight again regarding picture quality.

I see my idea for this thread was a "bust". I am sorry if I broke some sort of posting rule or perhaps was being too nosey.

So now I know the story of Dan's whole car history and that Roger bought his car around 1993. I know two histories out of 133 members.

I was just looking for an idea of how long 59 Plymouth owners keep their cars after purchase. There is no need for a long history - even though I think Dan has the most knowledge of anyone that I know regarding his personal car's history and it is great reading.

So how about some other members tell us about the length of time you have had your '59? No need for long replies.

Curt in MD

hey Curt,
because my carspent its first 40 years on Iowa, I was able to retreive some information from the still-friendly Iowa DMV. Actually, they have had to follow the rules like all others..Privacy Act and all that, so when I requested the previous owners list on my car, I got it, with the names and addresses blacked out with magic marker. But I could read thrut he magic marker and was able to ascertain most names of previous owners. It was fascinating.. They are all in their 60s-70s-80s or deceased. I wrote to them..they replied with stories of trips to Yellowstone National Park, etc, one person even admitted taking his date to the "submarine races'..
many of them owned tha car for a year or two, and the car was passed around from neighbor to neighbor.

savvy59 wrote:I see my idea for this thread was a "bust". I am sorry if I broke some sort of posting rule or perhaps was being too nosey.

Not at all, Curt! I thought we'd get a lot more responses too. But it's been kinda sleepy here in the forum, y'know? (*yawn*) I guess folks are ju...
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hey, who's making all the racket..can't you see we're trying to s-l-...........

Hi Curt and all the others,

just because there is a low response, doesn't mean the question was stupid - not at all!!! I had to think about how long I have mine and I culdn't find the bill or shipping documens. I guess I lost a part of it when I moved to Portugal. But - I still could find some picturs of May 1987 when the Fury arrived in Bremerhaven and of the years of restauration.

I'm surprised myself - how time is flying.

Stefan

Stefan,

I am always impresed with the level of restoration that some owners take with their cars. It appears you spent a great deal of time and effort on this restoration not to mention $$$$$. Your car certainly looks nice after all that work!

I consider myself very lucky since my car only had about 46,000 miles on her when I bought her and was basically a rust free body. The bumpers were straight and there was no body dents anywhere. There was minimal rust in one headlight and some in the lowest part of the rear panels but that was it - or so I thought.

Two years ago I wanted to replace the carpet and add sound and heat shield in the car. I t was then that I found that the two front floors needed replaced. Lucky I have a retired friend that replaced the floors for parts only (about $150) and no labor. Now the floors have POR 15 rust preventative and fiberglass/undercoating to seal out future rust.

Thanks for responding. You certainly have me beat by about 4 years as far as ownership of your car.

Would anyone else like to tell us how long you have had your car?

Curt in MD

I bought my '59 SF just about ten years ago from a friend in BC Canada. I completely dis-assembled the car, restored the chassis, and took the body shell and parts to have them media blasted. The body didn't look too bad before, but came back looking like swiss cheese. I began to replace some body sections, and all of a sudden I got too busy to work on the car. Five years later, still at the same point, but found a much nicer body shell. Bought a rusted convertible this summer, so I will probably be grafting the ragtop sections into the hardtop body whenever I get a chance. ---John

Curt,

I may not consider myself “unlucky” because my car was NOT a complete wreck. Truth is that I exaggerated a little with the level of restoration that I wanted to achieve, but you are right, few people have an idea how much work it is to do a good job (and to finish it)

You mentioned that you added sound and heat shields on the floor. What material did you use and how is the result. I really want to know more about it!

My SF is on blocks again and one of my concerns is that there is too much heat and noise coming from the floor. The headers and mufflers have only a ½” clearance to the floor. Do you have any suggestion or even pictures?


John,

You have a hell of a job in front of you. I hope you find the time to go forward and enjoy your work. But then again some people (like myself) enjoy working on these cars as much as driving it.


Stefan