Inliners International Forums General Discussion MOPAR 1936 Chyrsler Airstream 6

Greetings . . .

The weekend after Thanksgiving was incredibly mild here in Ohio. The new owners of a house nearby took the opportunity to move another of the time capsules parked in the barn.

In this case a ’36 Airstream 6. It was parked outside in ’57 along with quite a few other cars. A pole barn was eventually constructed around them.


The unique shape of the hood line and grill is subtle until you zoom into the profile. The high and tucked wings suggesting a bird of prey in a dive.

I like the artillery wheels and stained glass 'zeppelin' construction of the tail lights:


The interior is in fairly good shape – but will need upholstery and a headliner

A unique feature is the regulated vent windows. When the vent is latched the window regulator rolls down the window and the vent together. Unlatch the vent and it stays put – with the normal swing out functioning. Never seen anything like it.

Under the hood is a 241 flat head six.



Several thing stand out to a car guy. The coil lives in a cylindrical cubby hole in the fire wall – essentially stowing it in the passenger compartment and keeping it away from engine heat. The oil filler tube has a built in funnel. The head is held on by nuts/studs instead of bolts – not sure how common this was on flatheads or Chrysler in general. The spark plugs are Reflex brand - a now defunct Cleveland based company.


They used a winch to drag the car 50 yards across the lawn to an awaiting trailer. The rear wheels finally broke free and started rolling for the last 20 feet or so. It was headed off to a shop for restoration. Not sure what the new owner’s plans are for the drive-line. Not sure if the engine is free or seized but the dip stick shows a full crank case of clean oil.

Regards,
stock49

Sweet It will be sad to see a Vthing stuck into it.

Suicide rear doors: best back seat!

My dad was a Mopar flat six guy. I made Texas to California round trips in at least 4 vehicles thus powered. Great strong and dependable engines. Suicide doors? As a kid I was flung from the deceptive safety of the back seat of a '41 Dodge to ricochet off of a stock trailer in tow before landing on the roadside. All I remember is a loud "swoosh" than my dad carrying me into the headlight glair and my mom screaming. It was all OK I landed on my head.
That Chrysler is a good looking car. I hope it gets the treatment it deserves.

I wonder if the 25" Chrysler 265" L6 engine is a direct fit?

Based on what I see in Hollander it would have to be complete engine and transmission swap. The Hollander data shows no interchange (flywheels, transmissions) between '51 and earlier with '52 thru '54 sixes.

When I was researching my 413 Dodge flathead six I found that there were lots of sizes of these things and generally the bigger the bore the longer they got. The 375 & 413 were 4' from the trans mount surface to the crank pulley.

The big truck L6 SV series (306, 331, 377, 413") have large bore pitch, but staggered differently from most many older engines into front and rear halves.
Cylinders #1-2, 2-3, 4-5 & 5-6 are 4.750” apart (same as modern Buick V8), but cylinders 3-4 are 5.5625” apart with a huge center main bulkhead.

It's a monster but I still think it would be fun to play with. Unfortunately it is too big for the vintage class at Bonneville. A 373 would work, same engine for a shorter stroke. As is it would be in B lakester class and tires alone would make me mortgage the house.

Somewhere on this site are a lot of MOPAR flat six specs if you can dig them up. The MOPAR forum seems to only have 4 posts in it's life. There are many more! I can only find old posts by searching my old posts until I run across someone's post that I remember had a particular interest and then search his pol posts until I find, or don't, what I'm looking for. Our contents here are often easier to search on Google.

You can browse all of the posts in the Mopar forum by going to the bottom of the topic list and adjusting the Show Topics filter to "from all dates". I agree that google does a great job of searching our content. The Advanced search panel will equal google with proper quoting and the use of -/+ hints. Search Hints Post circa 2018

Have a hard time with the search engine here just too dumb I guess. I is so much easier on other sites and I truly feel it is a reason so few use this site. I don't even try to post build stuff or pictures here anymore.

Unfortunately I haven't checked in here for some time...

Nice battery of photos there, beater. Certainly it has potential. On the subject of the engines, I'm sure the 241 inch engine was the same block (25" long) as the 265. But a nice thing to do with it today would be to put a Hemi 6 265 into it. Or even a Hemi 6 245. Plenty of extra power and revs, likely a tad longer but not enough to make it a problem.

Of course, you'd have to source one from Australia or New Zealand...

25" engines (Dodge truck, DeSoto, Chrysler) 237, 251, 265 *-1954 (some replaced by Chrysler polyspheric V8)
23" engines (Ply-Do) 218, 230 *-1959 (some replaced by Slant 6)

In 1959 we moved from Texas to California. We shipped a lot of stuff on the train but we hauled most of it in huge U-HAUL pulled by our oner loaded'52 Dodge 1/2 ton pickup. Dad & my uncle Blake, who ran a wrecking yard, had just swapped in a near new engine. I'm pretty sure it was a 251. The trans was still a 3 on the tree fluid drive which Dad really liked for mud and towing. That old truck was moving far more than it's legal limit and never ran out of power. It vapor locked s few times and we went through several tires bot power was never an issue. One of my most memorable road trips, I turned 14 somewhere in New Mexico.