Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021
After spending several hours Friday giving the Plymouth a good wax job, today I drove into town for our local car club’s cruise event. Its held in a shopping center parking lot on the fourth Saturday of the summer and fall. Next month is the final monthly cruise for the season.
The weather today was ideal — partly sunny, temps in the low 70s with a nice breeze. I parked next to the spot we parked back in July for the cruise.
I had the chance to meet a lot of additional folks involved in the cruisers, including my wife’s old boyfriend who has a hot rod 1973 Plymouth Duster, and an old classmate of mine who has a 1967 Chevy Nova. I arrived about 2 p.m., parked and set up. I raise the hood and I have two items framed for display — a fact sheet about the car, including engine information, and an original magazine advertisement.
The Plymouth drove fine, I cruised at 60-65 mph on the way to town. The driveshaft vibration seems to peak at about 50, and settles down at about 60. Its nice to drive an automatic at highway speed.
Waxing the car again was a good idea — it sure did shine much better this week than two weeks ago. I expected the second waxing to help — I had a lot of oxidized blue paint coming off with the wax … in fact, its still under my fingernails, lol!
I stayed at the cruise until about 6 p.m. People began leaving at about 4 p.m. I left the cruise and hit Burger King for a whopper for some supper.
Tammy wasn’t feeling well, and she went back to bed before I left, and she felt kind of bad all afternoon, she said.
I met several people who remembered the car being owned by Gary, the man who owned it for 30-plus years. One of the cruise organizers posted photos of the cars at the cruise, including the Plymouth. Lisa, Gary’s window, commented on how nice all the cars were, especially the Plymouth. She seems like a very sweet woman, I look forward to meeting her.
On my way I home, I tested the new horn and heard — nothing! Huh? When I got home I checked and the 12 v line came loose. I should have used ring terminals on the relay connection but just wrapped the wire around the screws. Obviously, that’s not secure enough! I’ll get some terminals at Auto Zone tomorrow and repair it.
While I’m at it, I really would like to separate the horns and mount them in their original locations. The horns as a pair together look out of place the way they are right now.
TOUCH-UP PAINT. I ordered and received this week a quart of ready-to-spray Powder Blue paint that should match the light blue color on the car. I haven’t check the color against the car yet, but I will. Most of the rust spots breaking through are in the light blue areas, so my thought was to fix them and the repaint the blue sections on both sides if necessary.
There are some missing paint spots in the Midnight Blue poly areas — fenders mostly, and I have a rust spot or two to fix there as well. There’s some issues with crazing paint, I think there’s some heavy paint thickness in several places.
Tammy is discouraging me from planning an entire reflnish job on the Plymouth right now. She would prefer that I make some repairs and get another year out of the existing paint. I’m not opposed to that either.