1950 Ply convertible restoration

[Go Fleiter]

If You lift a convertible off his frame, You definitely must weld a kind of reinforcement over the door pillars to prevent bending here. You will not succeed in lifting the body perfectly evenly.
If You don?t , You will maybe have problems with door spaces and roof fto fit.

Anyhow, it is nice to do a car from zero up!

Good Luck ! Go

[Jim Benjaminson]

I'd make a jig to hold the body together when you lift it off the chassis.  Just recently looked at a body-off Buick convertible being done and they have an entire framework inside the body to keep things from twisting and keep it as true as possible.  Even though you car may have been hit and bent early on in life, don't complicate the process by doing more damage trying to save it!

[Court DeLorme]

Thanks to those who replied to my post. Any other input would be appreciated. I had a '50 Ply in high school back in '59-'61 and had it apart from front to back and engine out several times, so I know these cars are well engineered (I mean it took the thrashing I gave it for three years) so I'm looking forward to getting back into the project. Thanks, Court

[SD Glenn]

I envie you the 50 Convertible, and also the task of reclaiming it. Sounds like you have a great plan of action. Congrats and good luck with that project. you have been a while getting started on this. lol  Keep in touch will you.
SD Glenn

[jd2ksilver]

Man, I'd love to have a convertable.  Good luck with it.  I can't help you much with body or frame work, sorry. 

[Court DeLorme]

My '50 Ply convert has rusted out rockers, lower door skins, front & rear floor pans. Also, at sometime a driver backing up with the door open must have hit something because the cowl seems to be bent forward about 1/2" which makes the driver's door close really sloppy. So, here's my plan and I would like some input as to whether I'm nuts or not and some positive input or alternative ideas....So, here goes. First, remove the front sheetmetal from the firewall forward. Then pull the engine and transmission. I already have a freshly rebuilt stock flathead six to put in. Next, after scraping, cleaning and painting the chassis and undercarriage, rebuild brakes and suspension as needed. I'm not equipped to do a body-off rotisserie job, so how about if I remove all body mount bolts and with doors shut and using several jacks and some 4 x 4 lumber lift the body up maybe six inches so as to scrape, clean and paint the remaining frame and undercarriage and use new mounts and bolts to remount the body. Next use a jack or ram to square up the cowl and bring the driver's door gap back to spec. I'v got new sheetmetal to replace all the rusted areas; door skins, floor pans w/hump, rockers and backing panels,  so replacing all the bad metal is next and will be a bear of a job. Obviously there will be lots more detail stuff to do, but is this a viable plan or is there a better approach that I haven't thought of?