Revisiting the 57 Plymouth

[marcar1993]

huh, funny. I have an 82 fairmont. It was my mom's, she gave it to my dad when they got married, and he dily drove it until 2011! Not in good shape, but its still around. Straight 6 auto but its a futura, so its a coupe with the fastback window and slanted tail lights.

 

[Ratchet]

Fairmonts are light, take all Mustang suspension components and make great drag cars. I’d like to find a clean Fairmont or Zephyr wagon. If you see one that is solid and reasonably priced- let me know.

 

[Mike P]

I decided to go ahead and get the intake swap done before I start on the power steering. It hit me when I got the intake on the bench that this is the first time on over 30 years that I haven't had at least one Tri Power car to drive.



TPDQ by M Patterson, on Flickr



The swap was pretty straight forward a bunch of little changes need to be made that took up some time but all in all nothing really unexpected.


20180331_165142 by M Patterson, on Flickr


FL by M Patterson, on Flickr



I started out using the 575 CFM Cadillac carbs They worked well with synchronized linkage, but I was a little disappointed with them running progressive linkage. I could have played with them and gotten it better but figured what the heck the 625 CFM carbs were ready to go too so I went ahead and threw them on.......the Plymouth liked them a whole lot better with either the synchronized or progressive linkage.

Still have to fine tune the jetting and set the choke but overall I pretty happy with the change. It will give me an excuse to "road test" the hell out of it LOL

 

[Mike P]

Shortly after I made the last post some family matters came up and the Plymouth went on hold for a while. Then about 6 weeks ago I had wrist surgery (carpal tunnel and removal of a wrist bone) so it will be a while before I can do very much work out in the shop. Fortunately my old El Camino is still doing good as it's the only thing I've got to drive with an automatic and PS.

Before the surgery I did get as far as building some brackets to mount a Saginaw pump on the old Hemi and started figuring out how to mount a later model PS gear.

HP4 by M Patterson, on Flickr

As luck would have it I came across a guy who is putting a kit together using a later steering gear for the 57-59 Plymouths and Dodges. His complete kit will have everything to convert a stock Plymouth or Dodge.

PS kit by M Patterson, on Flickr


After several E mails and phone calls (he provided several pictures of the prototype installed on his personal 57 Plymouth) I ended up ordering a kit with just the basic parts that I will need to do my Plymouth.

PS Conversion by M Patterson, on Flickr

I had envisioned engineering something pretty close to what his kit does but have to admit it will be nice to eliminate the "figuring out" steps and just do a bolt on.

For now I'm just following the doctors' orders and healing up. It's likely still going to be a couple months before I get the go ahead to starting doing much with the wrist.

 

[85442/86buick]

well , take of your self ..........we will be waiting over by the water cooler for your next update.

 

[DRIVEN]

Rest up. Still have some projects to finish.

 

[1evilregal]

glad to see that you're still at it, other than the setback! let it heal, or it'll be worse than before, the plymouth'll wait!

 

[olds307 and 403]

It really is a beautiful car. I would have never guessed the hood scoop wasn't factory. It will be interesting to see if the mileage goes in the toilet, betting it will. That tri power intake does look factory. I wonder if something like extrude honing and a bit of careful grinding would help or if the carb cfm is limited. What are there cfm total compared to the 1250 cfm dual quad? The power steering looks really slick as well. Is that the A833/NP440 4 speed overdrive in that car?

 

[Mike P]

Thanks guys. I purposely held off on the surgery till Jan so the majority of the healing would be over the "colder" months.......it's a lot easier for me to sit in the house then than when it's nice and warm outside and I fell like there is a million things I should be doing. There is currently about 8" of white stuff on the ground right now and it's about 20 degrees right now .........I don't mind being inside at all! I sure don't remember the travel brochures saying anything about this crap when I moved to Arizona though!!!


Olds, yeah it's the Chrysler A833 OD unit, I got lucky and scored one of the cast iron case ones. I did get a chance to put some miles on the car with the dual quads.....haven't really done and in depth mileage checks but so far it looks like I dropped about 3 MPG to somewhere around 17 MPG. The Tri-Power CFM is around 1050-1100 CFM. Keep in mind though that 1250 and 1050 ratings are pretty much theoretical max CFM ratings. The 4 barrel carbs have secondary air valves that will only allow as much air as the engine demands/can handle. On the Tri-Power I have the linkage for the outboards not set to open until 80 MPH on a steady cruise so they never fully opened......of course when you nail the accelerator they do open to the maximum amount the linkage allows regardless of the speed you are going.

I do think that you are correct that opening up the Tri Power runners would have shown an improvement.

I'm not totally thru playing with the Tri-Power yet. I did get around to rebuilding it last summer with an eye on selling it.


T1 by M Patterson, on Flickr


Then I made a deal on a bunch Hemi and Poly parts over the summer so the intake will stick around for a while.


I ended up with a basket case 331 Hemi and 2 pair of Poly heads. I plan on initially assembling the engine as poly with the Tri-Power as a base line then eventually switching over to fuel injection and finally doing the swap to the Hemi heads.

This isn't my engine but it shows how much different the Poly heads are from the Hemi heads.

s Poly by M Patterson, on Flickr

 

[olds307 and 403]

Sounds awesome, a 3 mpg loss isn't bad if it is more fine to drive.