History 101: Dodge

Dodge was founded around 1900 by two brothers, Horace and John Dodge. These two brothers supplied parts for the auto manufacturers in Detroit. They grew tired of that and introduced their first car in 1914, the Dodge Model 30. The dodge brothers were unfortunately short lived as by 1920, they had both passed away. Okay, that's enough for now. Oh yeah, Chrysler bought the company in 1928.

 

Our Project: The 1917 Dodge

Our client brought us these fossilized remains of a 1917 Dodge automobile originally shipped over from France. Funny, it was an American made car, how did it get over there? Dodge, although short lived, became very renowned for reliability and was very interesting to the U.S. Military, so we can speculate that this particular vehicle was military issue during WWI, hence the bullet holes we found. Our client said he found the relic in a field and brought it home.

Here is the frame.

Here are some close ups of the damage. Not bad for being almost 100 years old. My '87 Bronco II didn't last nearly as long.

This is what is left of the body.

The rear cab portion along with the door openings. Notice the bullet holes. It was the one armed bandit on the grassy knoll.

Oh look, Bill found the rest. Now that doesn't look too bad.

Here's your pumpkin for Halloween. I think we can fix this.

A little WD-40 and those springs will look like new. Maybe a little elbow grease too. And a spit shine. And a prayer, and luck, and replacement parts.

Yummy, alkaline dipped steel. Personally I prefer ranch or onion dip, but hey, who am I to judge.

Here is some more of the frame, dipped and primered. Looks a lot better than before.

Okay, what shall we do with these. What are these?

Just kidding, these are the doors, or what is left of them.

We will keep you posted as more work is performed.