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1952 Cadillac Convertible
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Sep 27, 2022
https://www.proshaper.com Our Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/proshaper 1952 Cadillac Convertible This past weekend, Wray and Esteban went to pick up a 1952 Cadillac Convertible from Wrays friend. The car has been sitting in the garage since 1965. Looking at the car the rust isn't too bad, mostly surface rust that we'll remove with naval jelly The wheels wouldn't move so with the help of a torch, hammer and pulley Wray managed to free everything up and put new tires on so the car would roll. He loaded it up onto the trailer to bring it home to ProShaper. Email: Wray@Proshaper.com Website: https://www.proshaper.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProShaper/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proshaper/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProshaperM Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proshaper
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0:00
yeah my friend dave who i've known since first grade in elementary school
0:22
called me up out of the blue last week and said hey i got a 52 cadillac convertible and
0:29
He wanted access to one of my customers, figuring that he could sell it to one of my customers
0:34
I said, wow, I might be interested in it. That's not something you come across every day
0:41
So he says, okay. And we negotiated, and he told me where it was
0:47
It's been in this garage since 1965. The story was a wealthy family from the Wister area bought the car, brand new, in a Wister Cadillac deal
0:57
I believe it was Lawless Cadillac on Shrewsbury Street in 1952 and it's a convertible
1:04
I think it was white with a blue interior originally. The family used it for a bunch of years and they were across the street from where it eventually ended up
1:15
The car became a used car at one point and the kids, it was the second car at this point
1:22
and the kids in the family were jumping on the roof and stuff. So the father said, well, we got to junk it or get rid of it or something
1:30
And this was in 1965. So at that point, it was only, what, 13 years old or so
1:37
And they had no intentions of driving it ever again. So there was a neighbor kid across the street
1:43
He was only 15 years old. And the neighbor kid liked the car and said, hey, can you give it to me
1:50
And they gave it to him. And he put it in this garage. He's only 15
1:54
He couldn't drive. I don't know what his intent was with it, but they put it in this bay, and it's a dirt floor garage, but it's pretty dry
2:03
And it looked like it went in in a pretty nice condition. And he took the valve covers off of it
2:09
He took the air cleaner off, which were in the trunk. He took the seats out for some reason, and a few other little things, nothing major
2:20
And most of the parts are on the car, and he never did anything with the car
2:25
It just sat there since 1965. So I went up and looked at it with my friend Esteban and he helped me get it out of the garage so a couple days later I think it was last Friday we took the day to get the
2:41
car out of the garage which when my friend Dave found it had four flat tires he jacked
2:47
it up, put it on some Harbor Freight jack stands and had the wheels sandblasted and cut
2:52
the tires off which were all rotted well he gave me the wheels and I got some roller tires and
3:00
mounted them I've got a tire mount and so Vestaban and I and his friend Juan did ran the camera for
3:11
us and recorded the whole event of freeing this car up from the garage so the big problem was the
3:18
wheels were just frozen solid it wouldn't move an inch they they were all bound up on the brakes
3:25
they were all rusted so these the left side the driver's side of the car was most accessible so
3:32
I said well let's try that I'm pretty sure I could get the front wheels off with a puller
3:36
but the back wheels you know drums are hard to come they come off very hard sometimes so
3:45
So I brought a torch with me, a cutting torch. I knew that I'd probably have some trouble
3:52
So I heated it all up first and see if I could use the slide hammer to pull it off, but it wasn't a go
3:58
So I had to end up cutting the central hub out of the brake drum
4:03
It didn't do any damage to anything other than the brake drum, and I'm pretty sure they were available
4:08
So that freed up the back. Both sides went pretty good. the front we had to put the puller on you can see at this point we're using the puller and the polar
4:17
pulled it cockeyed a little bit so i had to swing the arms around on this left side the right side
4:23
went really good and then once you got the drum off then we just pulled the brake shoes off actually
4:29
the brake shoes were all brand new so they had been replaced there was very few miles on them
4:35
So that took a good amount of time getting all the four wheels freed up and getting the tires on it
4:43
And we used two jacks and a nice hardwood plank to go across
4:49
We only had about two feet maybe at the max on the other side to work with
4:55
Just enough to get a jack in there and get your body in there to put the tire on
5:00
and when we jacked it up we put little spaces between the hardwood piece and the frame and it worked really good So we did the front the back first and then the front and then let it down and
5:18
it's the first time it's been on aired wheels since 1965. This thing needs wire
5:24
wheels to really make it jazzy. That's the real fancy version with the wire
5:29
wheels so be on the lookout for some wire wheels I think you can buy them new so I'll have to check
5:35
into that there's very little missing on it you might have spotted it there's a little ornament
5:41
on the front there that's missing let's see if that it might be available on the sedans too but
5:48
these convertibles are pretty rare and I don't know what the actual production numbers are but
5:53
It's not something you see every day. That's for sure. So I was Pickle pink to be able to
5:59
get this opportunity to buy this car so We're gonna be doing a bit city series of videos on
6:10
the restoration process on the car so just like the Scout and this came out of the blue so I
6:18
Don't know how far we'll go with it. We didn't have any intent of
6:22
buying a Cadillac convertible it just happened one day that's it so I say
6:28
Esteban's putting the hook on the front a.m. and we had to bring the car sideways
6:34
here to get it out because that column in the garage was in the way so it was a
6:38
kind of a tricky deal to get the ramps all lined up and the trailer was at an
6:43
angle the driveway wasn't facilitating we were on a neighbor's yard which we had
6:49
permission to do but it wasn't level ground so it was an odd all-day ordeal
6:54
for two people to get this thing loaded we got a nice winch on the trailer that
6:59
we have and it yanked it up no problem so but it was still so out of whack as
7:06
far as that angle so we had to do a bunch of different little things to get
7:12
the back end lined up with the trailer so moving it sideways and stuff then I
7:18
I think we had to let it back down or something and move the car over
7:25
At this point, we're going on the trailer, I think, for good. We had it lined up at this point
7:33
But it wasn't easy by any stretch. We're looking for the balance point
7:38
We don want to get too much tongue weight on it and stuff I was down in a hole in the yard next door and i was hoping that i have enough tongue weight so i have some it wasn four drive my truck
7:49
two-wheel drive hoping i can pull out of there was wet grass with soft soil under the grass so
7:57
we got one problem solved we didn't want another one so you can see this car and it has like very
8:04
few dents in it and very few rust outs on it there was right on the hood and the left front fender
8:12
you can see a little bit of really bad rust staining the garage door was semi open and
8:18
apparently raccoons or cats or something went in there and used it for a urinal so there's
8:25
some pretty heavy rust and they might have to replace a couple panels one on the hood and one
8:30
on the fender there but even the bottoms of the doors it looks like all the floors and the passenger
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compartment are all intact the trunk is all intact so we're going to have follow-up video showing all
8:45
that when we get it all cleaned out the the bumpers are in really nice shape they're askew a little
8:51
bit i think on the back bumper might have got a little lug tap on it the grill's got a little lug
8:56
tap on it but all the trim is there the convertible hot top the convertible top
9:02
mechanisms all there of course the the top itself is long gone but there is a
9:07
tonneau that goes with it too so when you let it down you can put the tonneau on
9:12
that was in the trunk and so what we're going to do is see if we can get the
9:19
motor to turn over if it turns over and the starter had been taken off so we're
9:24
We're going to check the starter out. This is a 6-volt Cadillac. They changed them to 12-volt in 53
9:31
And if we get the starter going and put that in, we'll put it up on the lift and show you what the underneath looks like
9:37
The frame and everything. It's got a rust patina on it, but it's in really, really good shape
9:43
There's no punkiness to the frame at all. So maybe we can get this thing running
9:47
And it's going to be a lot of neat videos as this develops. developed. So we'll do this alongside the Scout project. So we got two really cool projects going
9:57
at Pro Shaper. Keep watching the videos. Remember to please subscribe. Tell all your friends
10:05
It's Ray from Pro Shaper. And now we have Cadillacs
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