vintage mopars

After stripping the body off the chassis we then pulled the engine, suspension and axles from the frame. The frame looked ugly on the front end. There was a bunch of Frankenstein like patches around the front end. I sent the frame to be media blasted and when it came back it was worse than I expected. The chassis looked like it had been in a collision and some fool who had never used a welder before had welded patches all over it thinking that they were doing a good job. The rest of the frame was better but not much. The rest of the frame was held together by very poor tack welds. The tack welds were very far spaced and were done very cool so they had poor penetration. An "old guy" came and saw it and taught me a history lesson. He said he remembered watching his older brother trying to weld after he had come back from the war. The women had been welding for the duration of the war and had been doing an amazing job. Any welding on a military vehicle would have been perfect. The women though had gone back to the homes and the trade jobs were given back to men who had no clue what they were doing. Thus the poor welding on the '47 Chrysler.

I was planning on putting in a different engine, axles, suspension etc. but I was hoping to use the original chassis (after boxing it in) but It now looked like it wasn't worth it. In keeping with my concept of a salvaged hotrod I decided to find another chassis to put it on. I came across a few candidates that I could have for little money, a case of beer, or even free.