Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 1935 plymouth hot rod build.

Hi Guys, i haven't posted a build thread for a long time, figured I'd see how it goes. Here's a project we are currently working on.

Customer brought us a pile of components that he had been collecting for a couple of years, needed someone to turn it all into a car. It went a little like this:



Frame, which we had to alter quite a lot. The wheelbase was wrong, the 4 bar brackets were out of square by a couple of inches, the mustang II IFS geometry was way wrong... I wish we had started with just the original 1935 frame.



Loaded 9" rear end, which we later found to have no outer bearing races at the axle tube ends...

Gen 3 6.4 hemi, brand new factory SRT engine.



545 rfe trans



big pile of random parts in the front of this trailer.



the body was delivered on another trailer.

We put the chassis together for the first time to see what we had to work with.



This was out first clue that the chassis builder was a crack smoker.

lifting the body off the trailer.





First time joining the body to this frame. This lead to a lot of floor replacement and frame mods for wheelbase corrections and body to frame interface.



at this point we are fairly nervous about fitting a 6.4 hemi into a 35 plymouth, no idea where to start, a big shoehorn would have been good.

Cutting floors for frame relief, it didn't take long for us to figure out we needed to just build a new trunk floor.



we cut and relocated a 4 bar bracket on the frame, along with panhard bar bracket and coil over crossmember.



with the wheelbase corrected we continued work on ride height as far as body to frame fitment.



cozy mouse home

Frame mods for body support.

Had to cut the trunk floor completely out. We found that a 49-51 ford car gas tank would fit between these frame rails, we built a new floor to ride high enough to allow for the tank and also to carry the tank.











Building the tank straps and hanging system.

Building the new driveline tunnel and forward floors.

now, in this photo, notice how the upper A arms on the IFS are angled downwards. That's all F'd up. Mustang II lowers should ride close to level and the uppers should reach slightly upwards towards the balljoints. This helps so that the outside wheel pulls inward slightly when loaded on a turn, it's supposed to pitch the tire face to help with any body roll and outward load on turns. This is another example of this chassis being all dicked up. We had to research the correct geometry for this suspension system and correct this by cutting the coil spring hats and lowering them about an inch and a half. e also made mods to the crossmember for engine room, we notched the frame for engine accessory clearance and we did a tricky steering shaft route through an engine mount. We had to relocate the power rack to do this, we went forward with the rack and clocked it so the input shaft laid back.











Test fitting before burning the welds full. notice the boxed clearances at the rack input shaft, near the AC pump on inner frame rail and the alternator area, frame was box clearanced and access sleeves added to be able to change alternator without pulling the engine.

upper A arms now reaching upwards like they are supposed to.

Starting some steering column/input work here.

we routed the shaft between the exhaust manifold and the engine block, had to run it through the engine mount.

I envy your talent.

Absolutely amazing Dave. I can’t begin to imagine what goes into fabricating/building that ride up. I can’t wait to see the final product.

The 1935 body originally had external door hinges, our customer wanted them removed and replaced with internal hidden hinges. This is fairly common with street rods but it's an extra challenge with a 4 door with rear suicide doors like this car has.



It might not look it, but that was a bunch of work per door.



This was also the day that we pulled the rear axles out of frustration due to the car being difficult to roll around in the shop. The axle builder pressed bearings on the axle shafts but they never put the outer races in the axle tube ends. So, we once again stop our progress to correct something another shop F'd up.

with new bearings pressed on, we get back on track with the door mods.







The guys that sold us the hinge plate kits said it couldn't be done (to the rear doors). We said "just send us another kit for the front doors and we'll cut em up and make em work" (we had to cut up the first kit they sent anyways so this wasn't a huge step)

We ordered a bare set of bucket seats from procar and we built our own riser boxes that located the seats at the correct ride height.



I'm jumping all over the place here but in this picture we have our custom 3" mandrel bent exhaust all cut and fit the way we want it. We made this in house with various sections of straight and mandrel bent tube sections cut to fit and clocked correctly for the routing we wanted.



That exhaust is bad ass. Stainless Borla mufflers, our hanger system is clean, looks nice and these pipes are rock solid.



Fitting shifter, under dash AC, locating our AGM optima battery, engine module and related electrical under passenger seat.



We string some wires, plum some fluids and she's a runner soon.

Good to see you posting pictures Sir David. Two thoughts, WOW!!, and $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Very cool! I feel lazy.

Absolutely amazing!

Too bad that this can't be made into something that could be easily shown to all of those who say, "Nothing can be done about, best to just junk it and buy a new vehicle," when asked about some (compared to this) minor problem.