The Continuing Restoration Of Arnold Sommerfeldt's 1941 Plymouth
To update you, Arnold our club treasurer, courted his wife during early WWII in a 1941 Plymouth P-12 2 door sedan. There was some mention of a bunch of chear leaders in the car so he must of owned this thing real early WWII.
Another story there! Anyway he blew the motor in 1952 and put it in a leaky shead for all things to crawl on and thrive in it. Arnold and Cathy went on to raise children, retire, and wait for the grand children to start havin kids themselves pretty soon.
For many years fellow club members, Arnolds grandchildren and middle aged adult children, have been insisting that sompthings "got to be done" . Arnold had collected quite a few things for his old car to bring her back to life one day, but tearin a rusty car to a thousand peices to be able to even drive it was another story.
One year ago club members met in mass to bring their car back to life..The car was removed from it's hibernation and brought to the Lash shop on the first workday in January 2007. Several weeks later on club workday #2, the "Floating Power Men" met at the shop to compleatly strip down the body to a thousand peices, and assemble the painted frame to the supension componets Arnold had attempted to repair years ago.
The men shook their heads and left it to Terry Lash to begin the year long process to repair all of the rust damage to the body and prod Arnold to get the engine rebuilt. Thanks go to Jim Vanhorn for picking up the ratty interior and getting the new materials sewed togeather. Also Richard Wines has been puttin quite a bit of time in sandblasting and priming dozens of rusty things. Spanky too, is real good at helping and scrounging around at the "farm" to find things we need.
Saturday January 2008 Workday #3
Arnold and Terry Lash had staged all of the engine, tranny and rear axel componets on mutiple work benches for club member teams to repair with the new parts ahead of time. We had the garage couch, food table , and the shop was warm.
Jack Kaylor with tools tore down the tranny for an inspection, and after giving thumbs up put her back togeather with new gaskets, seals and emergency brake.
Kathy Taylor and Julie Lash teamed up on the greasy old distributor and carburator and learned what men use stoddard solvent for in a parts washer. The Auto-Lite Girls learned how to install a new breaker plate, set the point gap with a feeler gage, and check the new vacumme advance for operation.
Spanky has the task of rebuilding the generator installing NOS aramature, brushes, and bearings. Richard Wines worked with Spanky to get the starter rebuilt and install all the fuel lines from the new gas tank to the fuel pump. Charles Scherrer was in charge of the torque wrench cleaning up bolts and getting all engine acessories bolted down.
National Club President Bob Kerico and Ed Lanfer were instrumental in assembling the rear axle. The "rear end" team learned how to install shims to set the axel free play and how to set the brake shoe anchor bolts with the correct Miller tool.
Richard Taylor saw to it that all of the supension componets were properly attached. Arnold and Kathy Sommerfeldt had set us a table with donuts, chili, hotdogs and drinks. Arnold was kept busy noting additional items that somehow came up missing or needed to purchase for the next workday in 2 weeks.
Past club member Fred Long came by with his photo album, and to scrounge in the cast iron pile for a split exhaust manifold for his 53 Plymouth. Terry Lash was kept busy runnin down parts, tools, and providing training to the teams on how to compleate their tasks.
By 6PM everyone was tired and heading on their way home. The members were amazed at what they learned and that so much work could be compleated in a day. Hopefully on workday #4 in 2 weeks we can get that Plymouth runing after 56 years of sleep.
Submitted By Terry Lash
Saturday, February 16, 2008 Meeting/ Workday #4
We had the propane heaters lit early for the shop to heat up in time for the members to arrive. The mission of the day was to get the 41 running. Richard Taylor and Arnold Sommerfeldt poured water in the radiator but it leaked out around the water pump bolts. The radiator had to be removed to pull off the fan pully to get sealer on the pump bolts. After the engine was found to keep all the water in her it was time to fire up the motor.
Crank and crank - no gas to the carb what next? Spanky tried a new fuel pump but still no go. We figured that the fuel pump was sucking air, so Arnold and Tim Couch headed to Parts Stop to get a fitting and hose where we could hook the gas can right to the fuel pump. Problem fixed, but when we tried to start the engine great balls of fire would shoot up from the carburetor.
It was found that the spark plug wires were installed in the wrong order. Also the distributor and oil pump gears had to be reset. Now that the iginition was all lined out the men waited for the starter pedal button to be engaged again. Arnold hopped up on the milk crate and pressed the starter and the engine wirred to life and was soundin good. We aint got no oil pressuer yells Tim. We shut down the engine again to find out why no pressure was registering on the gage. It was foumd that the oil line to the gage was clogged.
The ladies called down to the shop to inform us lunch was ready.We all treaked up to the house for lunch and a short club business meeting. Those in attendance were Jim & Jean Vanhorn, Charlie & Betty Scherer, Bob Kerico. Spanky, Richard Taylor, Ierry & Julie Lash, Arnold & Kathy Sommerfeldt, Tim Couch, Ed Lanfer. Not much was discussed in the meeting, we spoke of going to Spankys to help him tear down some Plymouths at our March meeting. The health of the Nelsons are worring our members also.
Time to head back to the shop and restart the engine again with high hopes. It started right up and had oil pressure. Things were lookin good, we let her idle and reved it up and everything was fine. I put my hand on the throttle linkage to speed her up a little and we heard a funny noise inside of the engine and then it shut off by itself,
OH NO what could of happened? did the insides of the newly rebuilt motor come apart? We pulled off the valve covers and found the #3 and 4 intake valve had stuck open. We tapped them down only to find that they would stick open again once the engine was started.
By this time it was 3 PM and after 6 hours of wrenching members called it a day. There was a feeling of dissapointment in the air as members left wondering about why the valves would stick in a newly rebuilt engine .
Sunday Feb 17th. I got up early this morning and started the 41 Plymouth engine which was missing badly due to stuck intake valves. I grabbed a full can of Marvel oil and poured it slowly into the chugging engines carb. The car smoked like hell and I shut her off to tap on one last stuck intake valve through the spark plug hole. I fired up the engine again - hey no miss!!. I poured another can of mystery oil into the carb with the throttle wide open. What a smoke cloud! the neighbor stopped by to see if the shop was on fire.
When the smoke finally cleared 30 minutes later the engine was still running good. Arnold and Tim showed up in the afternoon and were suprised to see the engine idiling smoothly. The engine was started and stopped many times today and ran for hours with no more problems showing up. Next chore is getting the body shell to the sandblaster.
Submitted By Terry Lash
Saturday March 29, 2008 workday #5
Arnold had the donouth and coffee ready by 9 am. Since Arnold had Richard Wines sandblast the body 2 weeks earlier, Terry had time to fix any more holes and get the body painted with epoxy primer. Jack kaylor, Tim couch and Jim vanhorn filling the dents and weld seams with body putty. Jack brought his body tools some of them looked to be 75 years old. We were shown how to sand curves with different sizes of radiator hose with sand paper attached by Jack,
Spanky and richard Wines tore apart the rear axel again because last workday sombody left a few parts out. They also tore off the front brake drums to replace the grease seals. Tim couch and Ed Lanfer removed the transmission to fix a leak and put it back in,
Richard Taylor stopped by during his work day to check progress. Bob Kerico dissembled all the interior window mouldings and put them along with the dash in Rich Wines truck to be sandblasted. Jim Vanhorn has been sewing up Arnolds interior at hom. He has finished the seats, kick panels and is waiting on materials to finish the door panels. Jack Kaylor is in the process ofpolishing and restoring all of the exterior stainless mouldings.
Arnolds daughters have been coming by to check progress and were amazed at how much the car was taken apart. They are very excited about the club members getting their fathers car restored. Pizza was picked up for the crew and we took a break from sanding all of the body putty. The car has cleaned up and smothed out real good with a little bondo. The project has taken the turn from taking apart rusty, ratty and greasy things to getting things assembled-runnin and restored, a much more pleasant task.
Terry Lash helped Tim Couch get togeather all of the cars interior mouldings and trim peices to deliver to be nickel plated.
Al Fritzsche showed up with his inlaws about 2 pm in his 62 Naliant. Al has only had this car around the block a few times after he restored it. The transmission messed up on his way over preventing him from shifting, This dilema stopped the work on the 41 as everyone was looking under the hood of Al.s car. There wasn't much we could since the syncro's were blown. We all pushed the little Valiant around and pointed her towards the highway. Better head towards the interstate we said. Al headed down the lane to the highway clashing the gears as he left.
By then the fellows were ready to call it a day and the floating power men headed home. We called Al and he made it home.
Submitted by Terry Lash
