Hello all,

I am new to the forum, what brings me here today is the new purchase of a beautiful 39 dodge D11. So far it seems to be in fairly decent shape. It has its problems as all older vehicles go. It has a 318 and a 727 transmission, the rear end out of a 70s dodge model and potentially the chassis of a 70 dodge vehicle.

Anyway, what I am having the biggest issue with is finding parts and compatible swaps if parts aren’t available. This has been very cumbersome, I have found several forums wanting to turn the 39 into a rat rod. Nothing against rad rods, but Ive always understood rat rods as being a bit of a Frankenstein car, a piece from this manufacturer and a piece from that manufacture. The previous owner took the time to swap all the old stuff for newer Mopar keeping it true to its origins, which I can appreciate, so we would like to do the same.

Our biggest problem we are facing now are the brakes. When I bought the car I told ahead of time that the brakes did not work and they were unaware of what the issue could be, oh the naïveté of me, I thought the brakes may have been updated at some point in the last 40ish years and a simple swap with new parts and everything would be great. Sadly, this was not the case. The original wheel cylinder was rebuilt on the drive side due to a leak. After bleeding all the brakes there is still very little brake and what appear to be no signs of leaking. I read on another forum that there is an adjustment for the brakes and we have yet to try it but will very soon. All this leads me to my question.

We decided that maybe it would be best to upgrade the brakes to discs, but it would require all these pieces for a front end and this is proving very costly for a fix we are unsure will even work. We had been told that the duster, dart and several other cars from the 70s can fit the front end of the 39 dodge d11. However; this is from a parts lists based on parts needed for conversion kit and one man at an oreillys store. Has anyone had experience putting a front end suspension with disc brakes on these cars? If so what is a compatible swap, is there any extensive cutting or welding required to for the swap, we are not knowledgeable welders by any means.

Any help is greatly appreciated and anything anyone has about upgrades to these cars bearing in mind price would be wonderful!

Thanks in advance.

No need to swap in another front suspension.

http://rustyhope.com/site/mopar-discbrakes/

there area a couple possible options as to what spindles you may have, he details the differences and has kits for them all.

I would suggest you also consider an upper shock mount relocation as the stock setup is ineffectual.

I have had a 38 Plymouth, 40 Chrysler and am now daily driving a 51 Plymouth.

Good luck.

Rusty Hope has a pretty good kit, he supplies the caliper brackets, the bearing spacers, and a couple other things, but most important is a list of the parts you need, so you can buy the parts at your choice of parts stores. I've used several of his kits. There are other disc brake conversion companies that also have very good conversion kits, but most of those are expensive because all the parts you need come with the kits. Be weary of kits that don't use "off the shelf parts" because that means some of the parts may only be available through the kit manufacturer.

What bothers me most was your thought that maybe your car has a 70s chassis swap. You really need to determine if you still have the original front suspension before you can move forward. The original front suspension is pretty unique, a google search will probably provide pictures of the original suspension, it shouldn't be hard to determine if what you have is era correct, the 39 suspension was used up until the early 50s largely unchanged. Gene

Thank you both for the information. I will check them out hopefully make life a lot easier in the brakes. We are basing suspension completely of what it looks like in comparison to the rest of the car, although in very good shape for its age. The suspension itself appears in much better condition than the body. I did search on line for locations of vin number on the suspension. Going to look today.

A picture of front and rear will help us , we can figure out what you have

I am not sure what you might need. I took one of each side and one down the middle.

I missed rear end. Here is that.
If you need better pictures please let me know. I have a general idea of what you need, but not exactly what you need.

Front stuff all looks stock ( I though it may have had been changed ) --with exception of the coil springs , they do make parts to interchange the brake/ front end parts

I had one of those kits at one point but, gave it to another guy --I don't think he ever used it however .. I clipped my Desoto --it was a lot of work
the interchange they are takling about is putting a volare front on I'm sure ..that is again a bunch of work and fab skills and tools

this is a guide for your rear you have in the ca --see pic


disc brake parts for the stock 39 front


https://scarebird.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=64&product_id=96

Page 17 on this catalog, will show you can purchase dropped uprights and spindles for about $500 if you want car to sit lower

http://www.fatmanfab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-Fat-Man-Catalog.pdf

Based of what you’ve said. The important pieces for a disc upgrade are original. And if I understand the website as well, there is no adapting or changing of anything it is a bolt of to what I have now, which is very convenient.

Thank you for the help!!

It would look super slick sitting a little lower, but I wonder if that would take some work to the rear fenders. Currently the rear tires are larger than what may have come with the car. Already the fenders are a little tight.

I don't have pictures of my Desoto on this computer , if I remember I will post them this evening when I get home, its lowered a lot and I have 225/15's on it or did I should say , I sold it

The scarebird brakes are a somewhat bolt on, you will still have to do some engineering , brake lines getting a new brake master cylinder fit up, etc

more info on that

https://butchscoolstuff.com/brake-boosters-master-cyl-disc-brake-conv-kits/

It will low mount under the floor of the car

I would run as far and as fast as possible from Scarebird stuff. Just google it.

Butch uses a GM master cylinder that works for virtually no one, you can find several recent threads right here on Moparts about it.

I would mimic a Mopar brake system. You already have the rear end, looks like a 7 1/4. Pull the wheels and see what size the drums are. take a pic of the brake setup and we can tell you what you have.

On the front I would use the Rusty Hope kit that has a decent rep. If you care to roll your own here's an interesting link. Those guys are also familiar with both the Scarebird stuff and Butch's too.

http://p15-d24.com/topic/28870-front-disk-conversion-project/#comments

Yes, Butch's also has the brake conversion parts too as well as a reference to purchased parts needed.

- EM

Thank you all for the tremendous information, just knowing what the car is sitting on has been a huge help and a better understanding of what we can do to the car. I love these old cars, and have since I was young, I was determine to own one one day and I was fortunate to be able to so. But for me it is very overwhelming in terms of what needs to be done and what can be done. I am very limited on my knowledge on working on cars, but hope to learn more with this very intensive project. My boyfriend is the brains behind the operation and the one doing all the heavy lifting so to speak.


Edit:: I do have one more question regarding the brakes (I think). Our intent with the brakes was to fix the brakes if we could then upgrade to a disc brake system over the winter. We just found out that, drum brakes are terrible. Our biggest city is about 30-40 minutes away via the highway and we were told because they brakes do not self adjust we would not make it there without having to adjust the brakes. The reason I am asking, maybe it would be more cost effective to dive into this conversion versus buying odds and ends to fix the drums and not have the ability to drive more than 20 miles at a time without having to make adjustments to the brakes. Would this be the case with the current brake drums?

I don't know who is advising you about needing to adjust the brakes that often, they are wrong.

You need to get a copy of the factory serviced manual. RockAuto has it on CD for $20. that will give you the proper procedures and intervals.

A friend of a friend who owns an old vehicle. Thank you, this puts our minds at ease.

One thing that does need to be understood is that these older vehicle do have more stringent maintenance requirements. Especially lubrication intervals. See attached chart

Minor brake adjustment, I tend to do this every oil change, it's simple enough. See attached. It;s from the same era Plymouth manual, sorry I'm a Plymouth man.

These are both extremely useful. When we thought the brakes were good, we had a great deal of play in the brake pedal. This answer all of that. Thank you

my desoto before I sold it

as was already said, a FSM is a must, and it will cover almost any question you can think of including body parts r&r.

one thing i don't remember being mentioned ["oldtimers disease" plus CRS] is the condition of the wiring.
you don't want problems there. that could make for a very bad day.

The DeSoto is beautiful! I like how it is lowered. There is really nothing better than these old cars.


The wiring I believe has been updated. All the switches have been replaced with new or removed all together which is extremely frustrating. I have ordered and waiting to ship the manual with a wiring schematic to attempt to piece together the handing work of the previous owner. Unfortunately, the panel light switch, high beam switch and wipers switch have all been removed and no longer function. I can live with the interior light and the high beams. But the wipers are a must.

So, this brings on the next question, has the original steering column been replaced with something newer? Maybe the dimmer switch, and the wiper switch are on the column?

Is the turn signal switch part of the column and up high like the modern stuff? The original turn signal switch was an after thought and is a small box with the lever protruding from the box, and the box is clamped to the side of the column. If your car has a modern auto trans, it also probably has a modern steering column. That would actually be better for you. It is easier to go with an aftermarket 12 volt wire harness for a late 60s or early 70s with the modern motor/trans (and possibly a modertn steering column) then it would be to try to merge the 30s harness with the 70s drive train.

At this point I think I'd like to see pictures of the upper control arms, the steering box where the column meets it, the point the steering wheel is attached to the column, and possibly the dash showing the instrument cluster. I think everyone needs to know exactly what you have. Someone started swapping a bunch of stuff, but we don't know what and what has not been done. There are enough of us here that has dealt with this old stuff, we can probably identify what you have by looking at the pictures. Gene

Most of it appears to be original, if the brights are somewhere on the dash, I have yet to find where those are located. The high beam switch has been completely removed from the floor and there is a toggle switch where the wiper switch was located that is not connected to anything. There is a single motor for the wipers under the dash currently. I did not see a second one if there is supposed to be one. I began searching for wiper motors and they listed them as left and right implying that there should be two. The steering box? Where might this be located? I have attached is a picture of the steering from with the engine compartment. There is no power steering if the steering box is apart of this system.

Back to my brakes.......we are trying to order a new master cylinder online. It was discovered after bleeding the brakes and a chuck of debris came out revealing a leak in the master cylinder. My boyfriends suggestion was a dual reservoir master cylinder enabling the back brakes to continue to work if the front brakes go out. I do know the rear brake drums are not what came with the car, they appear to be 10” brake drums, possibly what came with the rear end that was put in from the 70s possibly. Will the original master cylinder work with the two different brake drums? Can a new dual chamber master cylinder be installed, if so are there compatible years or make/models that may work with our situation? Bearing in mind a future upgrade to front disc brakes.

Thanks in advance!!

OK, your steering column is original, as is your front suspension. Moving the upper shock mounting from the upper control arm to a bracket welded (or bolted) to the frame will improve the car's handling a lot. Several companies make those upper shock mount kits.

Are both wipers connected to that single wiper motor, or maybe one wiper is connected, or maybe neither wiper is connected. Does anything connect to the base of the wiper spindles that come through the cowl? Some of the original vacuum wipers were part of the wiper posts, so there was no linkage involved. Its also+ possible someone tried to get the driver side wiper to function with a more modern electric motor and couldn't figure out how to hook it up to the switch.
Originally the car would have had vacuum wipers, and there would have been a vacuum wiper for each side.

The brakes. A dual chamber master can probably be installed, but its been a long time since I've seen how they were setup. Some fabrication may be required to make a bracket to hold the master cylinder. There were a few years when the only way to change to a different master was to knock a hole all the way threw the original master and run a rod through it, then mount the new master behind the old one. I just don't remember the few years Mopar had that setup. The modern rear brakes probably came with the rear axle, the size of the drums, and the size of the wheel cylinder diameter may be very close to what was originally there, the modern axle and brakes are a huge improvement or what was originally there, as far as I'm concerned. Gene

I went ahead and bought a new original master cylinder, so hopefully this elevated our issues with brakes 🤞

I looked at the wipers and the wipers themself are both connected to the motor, however, the motor is not connected to anything. I was told a toggle switch was in place if the original wiper switch, but it is not connected either. I have bought the manual for the car and no where within the manual does it show the wiper motor lying within the wiring schematic of the car. Surely this was not an afterthought and came original.

i believe you won't find a wiring schematic for the wipers because they were vacuum units.
look close to see if there is an approximately 1/4" diameter barb on those wiper pods that a vacuum hose will fit on.
if so, those barbs need connected to a constant source of vacuum at the engine.

New Port makes wiper motors for it and assc

https://newportwipers.com/product-category/cars/dodge-and-plymouth/

I did look that the wiper motor and I didn’t see anything that jumped out at me as to where a vacuum line may go, however; there is a lot of crud caked on one side. It may be hiding out there. I will dog through and see if I find anything. I did look at the wiper site and Some YouTube videos on how to check if it’s functioning. So I’ll go that route first. Then decide if I need a new one later.