Now we've caught up with real time.

The previous blogs have been posted have been a catch up as to where the car came from and where it's come too. I'll keep posting bits and pieces as I slowly progress.
I've had a first meeting with an engineer in regards to making the car safe and reliable. My first inspection will be once I have the chassis rails boxed in and the running gear in place. The rail plates only need to be tacked in at this point. I've got my TIG welder all set up, so from here it's going to be lot of practice!
As for the 14" wheels, well they're going to be scrapped. I'll be fitting 20" Dodge rims from the new Dodge Nitro. It should look pretty cool with 21st century Dodge rims, and they're close to the size of the original wheels!
I've also managed to pick up a 4 barrel Edelbrock manifold for the 318 as well as a set of extractors.
So from here on in there should be some interesting and strange progress!

The rust is slowly disappearing

This shot shows the guards in the foreground. I've been trying another recipe for rust removal on them. 'Phosphoric acid'. This is called rust dissolver and is available from K&H. Peter Tomassini put me onto it. He also suggested I use toilet paper over the treated panel and keep it wet with the rust dissolver. Well it worked, but the toilet paper stuck the proverbial to a blanket! I got onto it with the wire wheel and had toilet paper from a**hole to breakfast all through the shed! The guard thats closest to the camera actually has a shine on it!!!!!! (Look back at the photo's of the guards when I first got the car and the transformation is just shy of a miracle!)

Roadster tub joins

I've drawn over the weld joins in red to show where they are. This tub is made up of 8 pieces, not including the panels that sit beside the wheels. The person who did this welding in 1925 was very good. When running your fingers over the bare metal, you can't feel the joins at all.

Universal colour scheme

After a long weekend in the garage and a box of dust masks, the car was beginning to show a lot of promise. I was finding some good metal under the rusty brown colouring!
One thing that had puzzled me since I'd picked up the roadster tub, was how did they make it? There didn't appear to be any noticeable joins inside or outside of the sheet metal. After wire brushing the body, I found some beautifully welded join lines around the body.

Hmmmm. The colour scheme is looking pretty tragic. Green, blue and red over a baby shit brown! YUCK. It's quite depressing to look at this actually. I think it's time to invest in a new stainless steel wire brush for the angle grinder and a box of dust masks for the nose!

My Dodge is formally a Roadster!

Here's the Dodge with some more clothes! The rear roadster sectioned fitted beautifully! The return trip to Cootamundra that was exactly 1002km's was worth it. Along with the roadster tub I managed to also get a full winscreen, a fuel tank, a rear tyre holder, some roadster guards, a running board to template off as well as a bucket full of different folding mechanisms for the convertable top. Other things to note is the introduction of some running gear. At the front there is an indepenant front suspension setup from a mitsubishi L300. At the rear is diff from a VB commodore. (Since this photo was taken I've been trying to work out how to convert the diff to a ford stud pattern without much luck. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and just get a ford diff) Unfortunately the cheapy 14" rims and tyres don't do the car any justice and make it look like a roller skate!

I need a roadster.

After the fiasco with the rear tub, I decided that the Dodge was going to be roadster. As there wasn't enough of the car to determine what it was originally, I felt it was up for grabs as to what it should be. I wasn't too keen on the tourer idea, I thought they looked a bit too much like a bath tub when you took the guards off. I wrestled with the idea of making it a ute or pickup. I decided against it. No offence to any one that has one, but I think the 'ute' concept tends to show that everything else was too hard. I started to ring around to see if anyone had some images of a the rear tub of a roadster. This is where I first spoke to Cled Davies, president of the Dodge car club of australia. Cled put me onto 'Peter from Cootamundra'. After a few phone calls and a bit of negotiating, this is what I was going to pick up.

Here's a pair of rocker cover I bought on E-bay for about $20. Thought I'd try out the sandblasting version of rust removal. It worked quit well, but was a bit too aggressive for panel work. After blasting the covers I cleaned them down with a cleaner from "POR15", I then applied their rust converter and then painted them in Hemi orange. The paint was from POR15 as well. I think the whole motor will be painted in this colour.

I thought I should mention my newly discovered trick to remove rust! The photo above shows the brackets that mount to the side of the chassis to hold the running boards up. The brackets on the left are 'as removed' from the chassis. the ones on the right have gone the process of 'electrolysis' with a battery charger in a tank of water with 'lectric soda' mixed with it. I was very impressed with the state of the metal as it came out of the bath. If your going to try and do this at home, do a search on the internet for the instructions. If you get the polarity wrong on your part it can actually eat it away!

Here's a little mockup I did in April this year. On one hand it shows I've progressed along the restoration path. On the other it looks utterly tragic!
I found a 1928 Dodge standard six with a pretty good tub on the back. Who new that a 1925 Dodge fast four and a Dodge standard six were as similar as chalk and cheese! Needless to say the rear tub didn't fit. The standard six has been tucked away and may be the topic of a post in couple of years, who knows. One thing to note is the new bonnet. I picked this up on e-bay for $40. And yes, the tyre is just a tyre with a hubcap suspended in the middle of it!

A motor has been sourced.

I managed to find a nice V8 motor to get the car moving along (well not just yet). The engine is a 318ci motor sourced from a 1969 Dodge Phoenix. Sitting behind it is a 727 Torqueflite gearbox. This should get me to the shops in a hurry!

Here's another shot showing the new pieces added to the car.

Found some parts!

I met up with Sam in Albury and managed to get some bits and pieces to start getting my Dodge to look like a car again. I got a couple of doors, a couple of 'B' pillars, a pair of headlights, a radiator surround and some other bits and pieces. The Dodge was starting to look like something.

What we haven't got

After stripping the car down, there wasn't much left! It looked like I was going to need to do some pretty thorough searching for parts!

Home at last

Well the Dodge arrived home a little worse for wear. Along the way one of the headlights was ripped off while on the freeway. I guess the combination of rust and going in reverse at 110km/h isn't a good recipe for keeping hold of 80+ year old headlights!. Next step was to start stripping the car to see what was salvageable.