PB 308 new page 14-18.indd - Plymouth Club

y Byron Parsons
Everest, Washington
Our ‘56 Fury Fur
Fury ury Fifty-six ifty-six
Having worked for Dependable Motors, a Dodge-
Plymouth dealership in Mount Vernon, Washington,
in 1955 and 1956, I remember liking the ‘55
Plymouths but really liking the ‘56 Furys and the Dodge
D500s. I have both now. At age 22 in ‘56, I couldn’t afford
anything like them. I was also about to be drafted into the
Army, which happened in January, 1957.
Through the years, I always wanted a ‘56 Fury. I saw
one for sale at the Portland Swap Meet in the early ‘70s. It
had been an automatic car but had been converted to a stick
shift. I did not buy that one.
I found another that was being driven in our town of
Everett in about 1977. I talked to the owner for a couple of
years but he would not sell, so I let it go. About a year later,
after the Fury’s reverse had gone out, he called and asked if I
was still interested in the car. That was 1980 and that was
when we got our Fury.
The seller’s grandparents had bought the car new in
Denver, Colorado. It had just over 60,000 miles when we got
it. It now has 131,422 miles and we are its third owners.
The car is more original than it is restored. The motor,
transmission, brakes, exhaust, seats, door panels, carpet and
Portland pair: With Allen Faltus’ Fury [LEFT] at the 2010 Summer
Meet
bumpers have all been redone. The
tires are new. The glass, grille, chrome
(except the bumpers), headliner, suspension,
trunk mast, trunk weatherstrip
and cardboard panels are original. The
body has been straightened and painted.
Some rust repair has been done.
The car originally had a Powerflite
transmission and heater as its options.
It now has power steering, power
brakes, a search radio, a dash clock
and after-market air conditioning. An
after-market continental kit has been
added and over the years it has also
had fender skirts and cruiser skirts.
It took about 13 years for me to get
the car back on the road. I was working
in those days, so sometimes the car
sat quite a while between work periods.
We went to Hot August Nights in
Mississippi River: 1999
Reno, Nevada, for three years, driving
our ‘59 Crown Imperial two-door hardtop.
We registered again for 1994. I had just gotten the Fury
going yet had not really checked it out. Still, we decided to
take it in place of the Imperial. It is about a 1800-mile trip
for us.
We did make the complete trip but, as I said, we had not
had time to check the car out and we gad a lot of car trouble
on that first trip. I had not had the gas tank cleaned, and
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Route 66 in Missouri
every 50 to 100 miles, it seemed, we had to stop and clean out
the sediment bowl. The car was also hard-starting during the
entire trip. At 200 miles, we stopped to put in a new ballast
convertor but it didn’t seem to help. When we got home and
checked it out, we found we had wrongly wired the ballast
resister which resulted in never getting full voltage during the
starting cycle,
On the way home, driving through Portland, Oregon, at
about 1600 miles into the trip with another 200 to go, we
thought the rear end was going out. It was making a noise
and seemed to be jerky, especially when making turns to the
right or the left. We had it checked out at a shop. The
mechanic said, “Yes, the rear end is going out but if you take
it easy and drive a lot slower than you have been doing, you