---

My plans are to keep this car as close to original as possible.  I know, they make great hot rods, and I have seen a few very cool custom ones.  But I also know that my Gramps, and Uncle Tom for that matter, would not appreciate me doing that to this car.  Out of respect to them I have decided to keep, and one day restore it as close to original as possible.  And truthfully, I like how she looks from the factory.

I will admit that there will be a few non-original modifications done.  They will be done judiciously with safety, reliability, or ease of use the main reasons for these changes.

The first modification, falling under the “ease of use” category, is the air cleaner.

The original one was an oil bath air cleaner.  For those who do not know, or have never seen one, oil bath air cleaners use a combination of motor oil and matting to capture dirt particles before they are sucked into the carburetor.  And while they work very well, they are very messy.

I have decided to convert this air cleaner from oil bath to paper filter.  I am not the first to do this.  I found some limited info online about another ’41 Plymouth owner who had done this modification.  I am showing you how I did it with some clearer instructions.

I thought a lot about this and easily convinced myself that this modification made total sense and was a no brainer.  But I have to tell you as I stood there with a very hard to find original air cleaner in one hand and a die grinder in the other, I had a serious moment of apprehension before letting the sparks fly!
However, I took a deep breath and started cutting…

The first picture is the original air cleaner in its oil bath configuration.  Hard to tell that the bottom of the air cleaner is filled with oil…

The bottom section is not modified, just cleaned real good.  The top section is where all the work is done.  The pictures are in order of disassembly.
The second picture is the inside of the uncut top section.  I started by grinding off the rollover flange from the inner circle with a die grinder and a cutting wheel.  Once this was ground off the bottom plate [#2] came off revealing the mesh retaining screen and mesh [#3 and #4].  I removed the very dirty mesh and found the center section tube [#5] that holds the mesh in place.  I cut each ‘leg’ of the center section off.  Under the center section were two layers of screen which I cut out with a pair of tin snips.  The last thing to come out was a thin layer of very dirty felt.

Once all the parts were cut out I went back in with the die grinder and a sanding disc and cleaned up all sharp edges.  Once I was sure there were no sharp edges or snag points I sand blasted and painted all the parts.

I did some more research and found that a Wix 46184 paper filter will fit in perfectly not revealing that any modifications have been done.  See for yourself…

Next I tackled the body while waiting for the rear end to be rebuilt and the drive shaft to be modified.
Click here for more ---»