Here’s Everything Wrong With My 77-Year-Old Car After It Sat For Almost A Decade

At the end of July 2024, I brought home a project that was something entirely different for me. I drove 2,000 miles to pick up a 1948 Plymouth Special DeLuxe that hasn’t run in years. I’m finally beginning to wrench on it now and somehow, its condition is incredible. Here’s everything that’s wrong with my project car that’s been sitting under a tree for years.

Last year, I promised myself that I’d have the Plymouth running by that fall. Sadly, I underestimated just how much time all of my other junky cars took to keep alive. Now that I’ve sold a bunch of them I suddenly see how much time I was wasting keeping crap running. I now have enough spare time that I’m getting back into vintage gaming and oh yes, now I finally have time to start cracking on my Plymouth project.

Back when I picked up the Plymouth, its previous owner, the legendary post-war Plymouth and Citroën subject matter expert named Willie, had last driven the car 5 to 7 years before I picked it up. There was nothing wrong with the car when he parked it. He just had around two dozen copies of Chrysler P15 platform cars sitting in his yard and he got distracted by the other ones. As Willie got older he began needing to use a wheelchair to get around. While his chair is extremely handy, it can’t handle the terrain that leads to his backyard.

Sadly, that meant that Willie’s precious Chryslers and Citroëns were just beyond his reach, slowly reclaimed by nature. Using the wonderful help of Stephen Walter Gossin and other locals, Willie decided to sell his collection in hopes that younger generations would be able to experience the joy of driving these classic cars. In the sweltering heat of a late July day and after battling huge spiders, I became the caretaker of Willie’s favorite car, his 1948 Plymouth Special DeLuxe.

Willie told me he loved driving the Plymouth the distance between rural North Carolina and New York City, usually with a pretty motorcycle in tow. That’s right, my Plymouth was regularly driven on road trips in modern-day traffic! If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is. Willie especially loved this Plymouth for its shiny twin exhaust pipes and the white walls. Willie said that this car’s paint really popped a decade ago. He then told me that he mounted brand-new white wall tires to the car almost immediately before parking it. When these tires were new, Willie told me, they gave the car an extra visual kick. Amazingly, these tires still had 8 PSI in them after sitting for five to seven years.

Admittedly, I began to realize that I pulled the car out of one sitting situation and put it into another. I couldn’t let that happen to a car with such a great story, so I put down my PlayStation 2 controller and went into my garage yesterday.

Better Than It Seemed

When I descended into Willie’s backyard I was a little concerned. The car had a little more rust than expected and everything looked just a tad worse for wear in person than it did in photos. But I’m never one to back down from a challenge and I still couldn’t wait to save this ride. It was the easiest $1,000 I’ve ever spent.

The first thing I did when I got the car home was give it a car wash. I spent a whole 10 minutes blasting away nearly a decade of buildup from the car’s time sitting under a tree. While the car is significantly cleaner than before, there’s still an impressive amount of moss, sap, animal fecal matter, and who knows what else stuck in the paint. However, I did clean off enough of the body to reveal that spots on the Plymouth’s body still have shining paint. That’s incredible.

As I peered around, I also realized that this car had to have been restored at some point in the past 20 years or so. The frame was in perfect rust-free shape and the body was also in remarkable shape. The only rust I found came from the window seals leaking for who knows how long. Certainly, this Plymouth is in far better shape than any other $1,000 classic car would be in the Midwest.

I also confirmed that Willie’s recollection of when he parked the car appears to be correct. The car’s brakes, transmission, clutch, and even parking brake still work. I own far newer cars that don’t have working parking brakes! How do I know this? I had to roll the Plymouth down a hill to get it into my garage. I used the brakes and the transmission to slide me perfectly into position.

Speaking of the transmission, previously, I reported that this car has a Fluid Drive:

See, this car likely has something called a Fluid Drive, and back then it was Chrysler’s weird hydraulic coupler which replaces a flywheel. There are three gears on a column, but with a fluid coupling attached to the manual transmission, acting like how a torque converter would today. Fluid Drive was also slapped onto a “semi-automatic” transmission, which was really just a transmission with a high and low gear but still had a clutch pedal. You still need to clutch to shift gears in either case, but the Fluid Drive prevents stalling when shifting or when stopping. It’s weird and I’m definitely going to show you its weirdness once the car is running.

I did some research and discovered that my car does not have a Fluid Drive. Instead, it’s a plain three-on-the-tree manual transmission. This discovery came after observing that my car did not have the typical Fluid Drive L-pattern shift pattern. Instead, my car has three gears in a row, plus a reverse gear, and it operates just like a typical manual. Mopar experts have informed me that my low-end Plymouth was unlikely to have a Fluid Drive as that was a feature usually reserved for higher-end Chryslers and DeSotos.

Honestly, I’m okay with that! As much as I’d love to play with a Fluid Drive, I like that my first foray into classic cars is as simple as can be.

The big question mark I’ve had all this time was in regards to the engine and fuel system. Cars don’t tend to age very well when they’re stored outside. Aside from getting battered by the elements they also attract wildlife. I lost count of the massive spiders I found in this car and it’s clear that some rodents were using the Plymouth like a big black mansion. How many of these critters fancied themselves to a wiring snack?

Waking The Plymouth Up

This weekend I finally decided to answer my questions. I opened up my tiny 1-car garage at home, where the Plymouth shares the space with my wife’s Buell Blast, my Suzuki RE-5, and my BMW R60/7. Sorry for the mess, I’ve been in total shambles lately and my workspace reflects it.

The first hurdle was getting a battery. Normally, I head down to the nearest Walmart and choose the cheapest battery on the shelf. Well, this car has a 6-volt electrical system and understandably, Walmart isn’t stocking 6-volt batteries. I found plenty of batteries online, but many had prices of $200 or more, which seemed wild to me.

Thankfully, I finally lucked out when I checked out the local Blain’s Farm & Fleet, which had a 6-volt battery ready to go for just $86. Who cares if it says it’s for tractors and semi-trucks? If it’s good enough for those, it’s good enough for a vintage Plymouth. Interestingly enough, the new battery’s specs matched the one I took out, so Willie might have been doing the same thing several years ago.

Once I got the battery, I raced home to get started. I watch a lot of Vice Grip Garage and I started visualizing what Derek would do first. Usually, he’d walk around his new rig and take in the sights and smells before seeing if the engine was free. Well, it smelled like old wet books and death, which, hey, that’s an improvement from July!

What wasn’t an improvement was the 95 HP 217.8 cubic inch L-Head straight-six engine. Back in July, the engine didn’t move at all. We put some Marvel Mystery Oil into the cylinders and got the engine to move an inch before making a horrible crunching sound. Now, it was back to not moving at all.

For this one I got the bright idea to bring Sheryl along. She’s stronger than I am and I figured we could double-team the engine. Annoyingly, the crank bolt wasn’t easy to reach in my tiny garage, so we used the belt-driven cooling fan to turn the engine over.

Little by little, the awful crunch sound went away. Sheryl and I used a bit of a rocking motion, turning the engine one direction until we hit a hard stop, then turning it hard in the other direction until we hit another hard stop.

We did this for about 20 minutes and then, like magic, the engine freed up. Turning it over by hand was easy. We spent much more time trying to free the engine up in North Carolina. If I had to wager a guess, six months of Marvel Mystery Oil cylinder marinade must have helped.

Admittedly, I then put the original spark plugs back in. To their credit, all six showed only normal wear, so they’ll probably be good enough to get the engine fired up.

Now came the moment I was scared for. I knew I could get the engine free, but I had no idea what to expect from the electrical system. I plopped my battery down and hooked it up to the positive ground system. Well, no wiring smoke came out and I saw no fires, so I got into the car and started playing with stuff. To my shock, I didn’t get shocked.

Instead, every light worked, the radio came on, and every electrical part I turned on worked. Even the horn sounds glorious. I want these trumpets in my Smart!

Will It Turn Over?

Then came the moment of true terror. I hit the start button on the dash. First, I heard a click and then nothing. As it turned out, the battery cables were too loose. So I tightened those up and tried again. The engine began spinning over. I’m not a huge fan of how the starter seems to surge, but at least for now, it works well enough for what I’m doing.

Even better was seeing the car’s instrumentation come alive. The amp gauge worked perfectly and I was elated to see healthy oil pressure appear. Look how much oil pressure it has while cranking! I’ll be dipped!

I was feeling so confident and so happy that I decided to see if I could get the engine to fire off. I got my bottle of pre-mix fuel and took off the air filter to throw some go juice into the carburetor.

Sheryl noticed a huge problem before I did. It appears that a rodent made quite the disgusting mess in the air filter and used the carburetor as a trash can. Great!

The gunk in the carb goes all the way down to the base, so I will have to very carefully remove the carb without getting any more of the nightmare fuel into the engine. The stuff appears to be a solid chunk right now, so I’m not even going to try using a vacuum. I’m actually excited to remove the carb because thus far, the for everything have slipped off like butter. It’s a welcome change from the infinite stuck fasteners found in Midwestern cars.

I’m Stoked

This vintage carburetor is a Ball & Ball Carburetor from the Carter Carburetor Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri. As you can guess, you can’t buy these carbs anymore. Used versions are also hilariously expensive. So, I’m buying a rebuilt kit and will lovingly tear it down. I can’t wait to do that.

From there, I will have to check spark, clean the vehicle’s points, and deal with the fuel system. My plan there is to siphon out the old fuel, replace it with fresh fuel, and use some fuel filters to collect anything leftover. Once the engine is running, I’ll need to replace the radiator and probably the water pump.

The cool thing is that I should be able to do most of this over a Saturday. Unlike a modern car, there isn’t really anything blocking me from removing the radiator, and the carburetor is almost as small as a motorcycle carburetor. I just love how nothing in this engine bay looks like you’d need a degree to know how to use it.

Once I get the engine running, Sheryl wants to work magic on the interior. She’ll clean up all of the biohazards, then she’ll focus on the headliner and the benches. We want to try to keep the car as original as possible, but the lower portions of both benches will need repairs in the long term. I also want to replace the ruined carpet and the rusted-out rocker guards. Thankfully, all of the rust we’ve seen thus far is surface stuff, so it’s not going to be hard to fix that.

Finally, somewhere down the line I will want to replace all of the window seals so I could drive the car in the rain without getting soaked.

Honestly, the part that I’m most shocked about is how much of the car doesn’t need an immediate emergency repair. I’ve been watching other people revive cars for years and there are almost always complications like a dead clutch, no brakes, no oil pressure, a shoddy electrical system, or some terrifying rust. The worst obstacle I’ve run into was a stuck engine and I’ve already blasted past that.

This has given me the motivation I need to keep working. I’m not going to make a guarantee of when I’ll be able to truly drive this thing, but I at least want to get the engine started and running smoothly by spring. My plan? I’m going to be realistic here. I’m not going to restore this car. I don’t really have the time, the skill, or the funds. But I can get the car running and driving, do some minor improvements, and preserve the car as it is. I’m not going to swap out that straight-six and I’m probably just going to run its 6-volt system for a while, too.

I’m looking forward to my first drive and taking you along for the journey. I’m already shopping for a period-correct-ish dress with pinstripes to match the car.