'59 Plymouth Forum

Finally another update!

Hi Ron, Looks like the folks are getting inspired! Gonna look great!! Steve

reminds me of a car I saw when I was in Mexico...a late-70's Ford sedan, so COMPLETELY rusted there was no rear sheet metal at all.. the owner had jammed a 2x4 from frame to "C" pillar to hold roof up. If only I could find that photo...

Don't get disheartened. Here in upstate N.Y. we call that minor rust. If your under stuff is ok you've got a solid one!! Look at her grill. She's smilin. Steve

and

Steve Storey wrote:Don't get disheartened. Here in upstate N.Y. we call that minor rust. If your under stuff is ok you've got a solid one!! Look at her grill. She's smilin. Steve

It is not minor rust but it isn't too bad! And we all keep smiling, everytime we go there we see a little progress. The guy doing the body work is very busy with their daily work but he works on our car as much as he can. And yesterday he started building again and that a lot more fun to see than tearing it apart He does great work so far and I am convinced that he will make it the car like new.

Some pictures:

Ron, this man is a true artist. What stunning sheet metal work! Fabulous.

Dan

Yes, truly supurb sheet metal work, I had a concern about the rust in the inner panels, looks like that's taken care of, can you tell us what he did to kill that rust.
Dick.

Faulkner wrote:Ron, this man is a true artist. What stunning sheet metal work! Fabulous.

Dan

He does a great job so far but the credit for the panel ready to install goes to John Fowlie, he sold me two rear quarters that were very solid I know te guy can reproduce them but it would take a lot of time to make them and I bought the panels to save some time and money. He will have to fabricate all the other parts of the car himself and I am convinced he'll do a fine job.

Dick, I haven't been able to talk to him yesterday since he was working on another car and I don't know what he did exactlly. More info will follow with the next update. I do know that he was surprised by the work of an American artist who did some "body work" on the car before it came to Europe. The part between the front wheel and the door was recreated with some kind of polyester and there was no metal there at all and you couldn't see it. But it will be all solid metal when it comes home.

Ron

Yes, we have some polyester artists here in Florida, in fact a lot of them, we call thier establishments "BONDO BALLROOMS".
Dick.

I had to remake my lower passenger side quater pannel it took a lot of effort without any real forming equipment but it can be done cheaply at home, first rule when undertaking a challenging bit of corrosion is DONT GET THE NEAREST HAMMER OUT AND KNOCK WHATS LEFT TO PIECES! because you have nothing to form from, dont take a body saw to your car unless you can find replacement pannels like these lower quaters i really wish there were a decent parts source for these old cars but then again they would be less of a challenge i suppose! Nice car by the way keep the photos coming.

Dick Koch wrote:Yes, truly supurb sheet metal work, I had a concern about the rust in the inner panels, looks like that's taken care of, can you tell us what he did to kill that rust.
Dick.

Dick, Matthew spoke with the body guy today and he told Matthew that there was very little surface rust on the inner panels. All he had to do was remove that with a wire brush and give it a protective spray.

matty wrote:Nice car by the way keep the photos coming.

OK, here are some new pictures.

Cool!

Today I went to the shop to make some pictures but there has been no progress at all in the past week

I spoke with the owner for a while though and he hopes to have the body work finished by the end of next week I will try to make some time to visit them and show daily updates if work allows it.

Ron

tomf wrote:Hi Roland,

I enjoyed being a part of helping you get your valance.

While at Carlisle, Ron Keij told me about a guy in Arizona that collected items and loads a container and ships to Europe. I contacted this guy and made arrangements for him to receive my shipment from Oregon. In the mean time Ron had purchased some side trim and some other pieces from Roger Howard in Seattle. Roger met my wife who was on a business trip in Seattle and sent his parts home with her to join up with Roland's parts. I built a plywood box and packed it up tight and shipped it to Mesa, Arizona. The container finally made it to somewhere near where Ron received it and got Roland's pieces to him. Maybe Ron can tell us about where it arrived and how he got together with Roland.

Tom Fox

I enjoyed being a part of helping him to get his valance too.

Well it took a while but here is my part of the story:

When I spoke with Tom about shipping the parts to Europe I thought it would be cheaper for Roland to have it shipped in a container than to use UPS or Fedex. Their prices are very high and you know for sure that you will have to pay a lot of tax when it is imported. We have to pay approximatly 25% of the value of the part and the shipping! But I know my friend Rik does make his own bils and he tries to help you where he can. So I contacted Roland first and asked him how he thought about driving up here to pick up the parts, he was very enthusiastic and asked me to arrange it for him. After that I called Rik and told him that he would be contacted by Tom. Tom did a great job in packing the valance and my trim parts, as Rik said the crate would have survived a nuclear blast When the parts arrived (April 2008) I got a phone call from Rik and I had to pick them up at his shop the next Saturday. His shop is about 1 ½ away from me but it took me a whole day but I came home with some extra parts too. I asked Roland when he wanted to come over to pick up the valance and suggested to come May 17th so we could go to the Jukebox Fair car show together the next day. He arranged to stay in a hotel nearby because we just had moved to our new house and had no guest room ready then. The weekend he came was a bit disappointing for all of us, he came Saturday morning and we talked for a while until Matthew came downstairs and asked me to call the doctor. Later that day he had to go to the hospital and Roland had to have dinner alone at the hotel Matthew was so sick that he didn’t even see Roland’s car! On Sunday we did go to the car show together and had a great time but I had to go back early to see Matthew in the hospital and Roland had to drive about three hours back home. I promised him that we would come to Luxemburg this year for a car show. So Roland if you know the date please let me know.

Ron

The restoration goes on without the car