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The Plymouth PE :

Engine No. PEI 76092

Body No. 600-74219 by Briggs , Detroit

Serial No. 2343903

Sold by French Motor Car Co. , Calcutta

I purchased the car on 27th August 2003 -

Receipt ( or what we call a receipt in UP ) is attached :
\

Pictures of the car prior to restoration are attached :

Further photographs :

And then we got stuck !!

The crank shaft , pistons and the connecting rods were stolen , supposedly by drug addicts for the daily fix.

The restoration had to be shelved .

The project has been maturing for the last 6 years - when we decided to innovate for repair of the engine :

A total junk 1947 Plymouth was purchased :

This one came from a police pound in Kanpur!!!

Note from the Team-BHP Support Team: Please use the EDIT buttons instead of typing one post after another on the same thread.

Great fine even if it was 6 years ago....do let me know if I can help in any way there may be some bits and pieces available here in Coimbatore if you need me to look around and source them

Waiting to see more pictures and the rest of the story.
Thanks for sharing.

Nice to have you back on the forum Capt. Chauhan. I went through that so called letter of sale (receipt) & found it quite amusing as to how the error in mentioning price was corrected with stating half the amt. Need to know whats the procedure to get the papers of a car made on the basis of such letters.
I have come across old cars without papers or written reference of the owner but the caretakers (relatives) of these cars are ready to provide such letters on a blank paper. I always refrained from doing such a transaction as i didn't knew the rules on how to proceed further.

BTW going by the pics, Plymouth looked in a decent shape though sad to hear about the theft of parts. Hope you find the missing parts & put back the puzzle together. :)

Thanks Vintageman for starting this tread. The initial pictures show that the car is indeed a good restoration project. PE's are relatively rare in India and the fender mounted spare tyres are indeed rare even in USA, though common in India.

Heart breaking to read that parts got stolen. I look forward for more pictures

Total production of 4 door sedans were 108, 407 cars. I will try and get some additional information from the club

Source : http://www.ply33.com/Models/PE/#4door


regards

KPS

Hello KPS ,

Thank you for the assistance actually I have started the thread once I got the engine running again.

Some more restoration pictures are attached :

The car does look very handsome - can't wait to see the finished product. For such a run down car its amazing that the meter console survived in such good condition.

A shame that such critical parts were lost, but happily you are back on track. How similar are the two engines? Did you transplant the 47 engine altogether, or were the crank, pistons et al interchangable and the original block salvaged?

Any special history on the car? Best wishes for the restoration.

Excellent Thread!
Hope we get to see the car in all its glory like back in the heydays!!

Keep up the effort, it will reward you with sweet surprise.

Cheers

A very handsome car.
She seems to be so proudly standing in that 3rd photo and her grace is still intact when being towed. Though you rescued her 10 years ago, she still looks like a fresh barn find.
Very best of luck with restoration and though we not be of much help except writing posts but would love to be part of this resto in any possible way.

Raab rakha.

The interesting 'receipt' which is posted by you states that the "registration is either USA 241 or 242!!" Does this mean that there were no other documents to verify the registration of the vehicle when it was sold?Have you managed to decipher the actual regsitration number subsequently? Just being inquisitive. All the best for your restoration!

A very interesting thread. I will stay glued to it to see what the final outcome is. All the very best with your restoration efforts.
Best Regards,
Ashok

Dear Sirs ,

Thank you for your kind comments , I regret I have not been able to compile the thread as per the actual time line - this due to the large number of photoraphs I have for this restoration.

The interesting part of this restoration was the engine restoration , for which I have prepared a note :

The 1934 Plymouth PE should have been a straight forward restoration project, which could have been easily handled by my team at home, but loosing the crank shaft and connecting rods was a major setback, because PE engines/spares are not available, although P series engines [post 1942] are common and are easily available in India. Chrysler Corporation set great store by their flathead 6 engine which continued in service from 1930 to late 60’s in automobiles and till early 70’s for other applications. The main problem in substituting the bigger P series engine block in the PE restoration was that from 1933 to 1935 the engine block did not have full length water jacket , the original starter motor and other peripherals could not be fitted with the full length water jacket. The bigger engine would have also involved changing the engine & gear box mounting. Further, in 1942 the cylinder bore for Plymouth engines was changed from 3 1/8 in to 3 ¼ in, most of the spare Plymouth engines available in India have a bore of 3 ¼ in or the later 3.40 in.

I could have carried back the spare parts for the PE engine from the USA, but, my friend Akhilesh Agarwal & I decided to work on the PE engine using the crank shaft and connecting rods taken from a 1947 P-15 engine which I had

Though the cylinder bores are different, all the Plymouth engines of this era have a common stroke of 4 3/8 in , thus the P15 connecting rods could be utilized in the PE . The most delicate part of the engine building process was line boring the smaller PE block to accept the heavier/bigger P15 crankshaft, having bigger main journal bearing diameters and bearing caps. The line boring was accomplished at my friend Pervez Kherawala’s engineering & lathe works- his Austin 6 appears in the http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/vintag...ys-cars-3.html ( posted by his distant cousin Karl).

After the crank shaft replacement , the P15 main bearing could be used for the PE engine, and, as the stroke of the engine had not changed I could use the P15 connecting rods and big end bearings in the PE block.

The next issue was the cylinder diameter , non availability of rings and pistons for the PE engine. The initial bore for the cylinders was 3 1/8 inch ie 79.375 mm, in the case of the block for my car this had degenerated to variable bores in each cylinder , I had rings to fit pistons of 80.2 mm the cylinders were machined to receive pistons 80.2mm in diameter.

The piston blanks were cast at Lucknow , subsequently there was an inordinate long delay in machining the pistons, as, no lathe operator found the cash incentive attractive enough to spend the time required for machining the pistons , finally, when we machined the pistons the operator made the mistake of machining the piston by holding the piston in the lathe chuck from both sides - this resulted in the pistons having a miniscule taper at both ends & it was back to the drawing boards . We re-bored the cylinders to 82 mm and introduced a liner and rebored/ polished the cylinders to receive the 79.80 mm pistons, the rings were finished to suit the minor discrepancy from the original size. The piston was machined such that the P-15 small end & gudgeon pins could be utilised.

Before assembly the oil pump was overhauled and tested , the engine clearances were kept as close to original as possible .

When the time for starting arrived it was noted we had introduced the P-15 flywheel which was balanced for the present crankshaft and because of the centre distances the self starter motor would not engage correctly. We started the car by pushing and the engine ran wonderfully well during the running in – subsequently road trials have been conducted – so far so good

My friend Noor s/o Dilawar sahib at Dilawar Engg Works is working on the new starter motor pinion - we have used his CNC wire cut machine to make the gears for the biggest clock in India http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...rent-kind.html.

The best part of the engine restoration was the input and help I received from friends , acquaintances and work shop persons in my city – I think this was possible only in Lucknow – people helping in this interesting but thankless task for no monetary benefit

Regards
Chauhan