Vanderbilt Cup Races

It was a great day at the Wounded Warrior Car Show in Riverhead on Sunday. Smiles and thumbs up will be posted later in the week.

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Chrysler's Chrysler Chronicle III: An Amazing Discovery

By Walter Gosden

The restoration of the structural integrity of the coachwork continues. Weak wood framework in the rear doors and lower body in the trunk area is currently being restored. The four doors are the prime focus of the wood and metal workers. They all need to fit, open, close, and latch perfectly before any cosmetic refinishing will take place.

The gap around the entire door needs to be equal and even as possible. From decades of neglect all four doors did not fit properly. The doors like the body are framed in ash wood. Along the edges of the lower part of the door a metal plate about two inches was screwed in place and over lapped the edge of the wood framework. The sheet metal door skin was then fitted over this and the edge of the skin wrapped around the metal plate to hold it in place.

In order to repair the wood framework the metal skin had to be removed, the plate unscrewed and after new wood was fitted, the process reversed. The edge that was wrapped around age hardens and when pealed back develops cracks, all of which have to be welded to be repaired.

To date both front doors have been restored and rehung in place. The front and rear doors on the right side, now back in place, latch and fit perfectly for the first time in over 50 years.

As this process was taking place an interesting "secret feature" was discovered that could only be revealed and repaired to function once all the upholstery was removed. Check out this one-minute video.

With the doors on the right side now in alignment extra latches were discovered in both the doors and B pillar of the body. These looked like small version of the dead bolts you see in house doors. but were in fact part of a special feature.  If the doors are in the shut position, and the rear door glass was left rolled down, you wouldn't have to open the rear door to roll the window up and then close it again. A completely mechanical mechanism that is powered by two large springs located inside the door just below the window crank are connected to the latches just mentioned by cables. The cables also run through a steel tube across the car to the other side along the floor below the division window in the chauffeur's compartment.

When you push down on the exterior front door handle it will open that door as expected,  but if you lift up on it , this pushes on a latch into the B pillar which pushes another latch into the rear closed rear door that triggers the cable/spring mechanism to allow the rear door glass to raise "automatically" to close the window! .

That piece of glass goes up very rapidly and startles you when you first see it fly up and close. It is almost like a guillotine ascending rather than descending.

Steve Babinsky the owner of the shop mentioned it took a bit to sort this out as they didn't know what the function of the springs, cables etc. were. With the doors now in proper alignment this long lost mechanical power window system now functions as new. Neither Steve nor I have seen anything even remotely like this unique feature in any pre-war car domestic or European.  I would venture to guess that this was designed in late 1936 early 1937 while the custom body was being made. To my knowledge, no other car of the era built by LeBaron or any other coachbuilder was ever equipped with this mechanical automatic window system.

The trunk lid has been removed and stripped to bare metal.

The ribbed steel floor pan starts at the front of the rear wheel arches and continues to nearly the end of the back of the trunk area.Note in the 3/4 rear view of the passenger side of the body how the chassis/frame ends (the tail pipe is just below) but yet the body extends beyond by at least another 15 + inches. This whole tail section of the body is also framed out in ash wood. 

New wood at the very end of the body has been cut and formed to replace the badly deteriorated wood there that suffered from water damage.

This new wood with its compound curves replicates the original exactly.
 

It is an automotive coachwork historian's dream to be able to follow this project along and be there first hand to see the restoration, how the car was built, and the unique features. It makes me have a renewed respect for the craftsman that built this car. Thanks for having me along on this journey of the 1937 Chrysler's Chrysler since day one.

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Steve Babinsky proudly features the 1937 Chrysler's Chrysler in an ad for his company.

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