Hello, I go by jawbonejr and I am a new member on the board. My wife and i bought a 1940 Plymouth 2 dr sedan at an auction held for a gentleman I knew briefly before he passed away. It was one of his potential street rods since he'd sold the one he'd last built to another guy in Texas. We were assured by the guy who had worked on this Plymouth with him that it was the most complete car in the ones that were up for auction... well it turned out that there were quite a few important and expensive to replace parts did not come with the car but had been stuffed into a 1940 Lincoln Zeph the went to someone else. The complete V-12 was in pieces in the trunk after being to the machine shop along with all the gaskets, rings, new valves and springs etc to put it back into running condition, I really hated to watch it go knowing that. After we'd had the Plymouth about a year and I'd done some work and ordered a few parts to begin putting it back on the road my brother, a truck driver who does qute a bit of looking online while he's waiting to be loaded and unloaded while he's out on the road sent me a link to a guy who had a 1939 Mercury 8 Town Sedan he wanted to sell for 6k or trade for another old car or an older diesel pickup. It looked rough on the outside and I figured he'd probably want some money to go with the Plymouth if he even did consider trading. While I was considering calling him and convincing my wife that I thought it'd be better for us to get the Mercury back on the road instead of the Plymouth, about a couple of weeks or so, the guy dropped his asking price to $4,999. He agreed to a straight up trade with no money difference. The Mercury ran so I drove it home and he trailered the Plymouth away even though it ran also. I have changed the glass with the exception of the windshield, thanks to Dennis Carpenter from what everyone I try to buy one from has been telling me, new window and door seals and so on. I can't seem to find a good body parts book showing the breakdowns and describing all the parts accurately in the sub assemblies like I like but have been told that I'll find all sorts of Chassis parts books everywhere but that the body parts catalogs were just found at dealers on most of the prewar Fords and the first Mercurys. I'm glad I found this forum and look forward to being a member on it. I am a retired crane mechanic who likes the older cars and trucks. A guy asked me if I worked on rebulding older cars one time and I told him, "Not really, I just enjoy playing at building them... I'm not good at body work, painting, upholstering or most everything else to do with it but I do love tinkering with them until I can run them down the road safely and without endangering anybody else in the process. We have a 1931 Model A Coupe (I gave it to my wife so I could make my...), a 1931 2 dr sedan, the 1939 Mercury, a 1953 Ford factory automatic and factory turn signal F100 and a 1979 Ford F100 short bed which is my drive around pickup. That's all about me, hope I haven't put anyone to sleep reading it.
jawbonejr

 

Hey,
Buying a used vehicle from an auction can be a much riskier way of buying a used car. You should be careful and visit legit car auctions. Cars from Korea - I've bought a few cars here over the years. Highly recommended.