I hate being bored.
With the 37 Dodge PU on the road I decided to revisit the 57 Plymouth I built 10 years ago (with an eye on driving it back to Illinois for my 50th HS reunion in a couple of years). The car has a 1956 354 Hemi, Tri-Power, Overdrive 4 speed, and Chrysler 9 ¼ Rear end with 4.10 Posi.
57 Plymouth by M Patterson, on Flickr
57 354 by M Patterson, on Flickr
57 Int by M Patterson, on Flickr
The car is fun to drive, but as age is catching up with me I wanted to redo a couple of things. So far I’ve redone the clutch linkage to slow down the engagement and take a bit of pedal effort out of it. The rear springs were starting to sag a little bit so they got a couple of additional leaves in them.
The next thing I want to tackle is putting power steering on it. The 50s era PS is huge, slow and has absolutely no road feel. I purposely built the car with manual steering for those reasons. So right now I’m in the process of seeing if I can retrofit a Saginaw steering gear in it. Of course the PS pump bracket I want to use that will work with my current pulley set up was made by PAW and they no longer exist.
Also on the to do list is the induction. The Tri-Power has been great and gets 20 MPG on the highway. I always thought I could pick up some more mid and upper range power with a bit more carburetion soooooo…….
I dug up an original 57 Chrysler intake and a pair of my favorite early 60s Cadillac AFBs to try on it.
Cad afb s by M Patterson, on Flickr
As long as I was building linkage, I also did built a progressive set up. It will be interesting to see what the engine likes best (and how far in the dumper my mileage goes ).
Cad AFB P by M Patterson, on Flickr
.
With the 37 Dodge PU on the road I decided to revisit the 57 Plymouth I built 10 years ago (with an eye on driving it back to Illinois for my 50th HS reunion in a couple of years). The car has a 1956 354 Hemi, Tri-Power, Overdrive 4 speed, and Chrysler 9 ¼ Rear end with 4.10 Posi.
57 Plymouth by M Patterson, on Flickr
57 354 by M Patterson, on Flickr
57 Int by M Patterson, on Flickr
The car is fun to drive, but as age is catching up with me I wanted to redo a couple of things. So far I’ve redone the clutch linkage to slow down the engagement and take a bit of pedal effort out of it. The rear springs were starting to sag a little bit so they got a couple of additional leaves in them.
The next thing I want to tackle is putting power steering on it. The 50s era PS is huge, slow and has absolutely no road feel. I purposely built the car with manual steering for those reasons. So right now I’m in the process of seeing if I can retrofit a Saginaw steering gear in it. Of course the PS pump bracket I want to use that will work with my current pulley set up was made by PAW and they no longer exist.
Also on the to do list is the induction. The Tri-Power has been great and gets 20 MPG on the highway. I always thought I could pick up some more mid and upper range power with a bit more carburetion soooooo…….
I dug up an original 57 Chrysler intake and a pair of my favorite early 60s Cadillac AFBs to try on it.
Cad afb s by M Patterson, on Flickr
As long as I was building linkage, I also did built a progressive set up. It will be interesting to see what the engine likes best (and how far in the dumper my mileage goes ).
Cad AFB P by M Patterson, on Flickr
.