Hey Scotty I just bought a 53' sedan coronet as my first car. I am the third owner and I was wondering if you had any advice on what to do to make it last as long as humanly possible my goal is to be driving this car when I'm as old as it is now ha ha ha.
learn everything you can about it. Those old cars need very specific , regular maintenance.
I would not be using it as a daily driver.
why the downvote?
I dunno, but I upvoted you. I get that a lot on posts like this for some reason. Thing is, you're right: I also can't see using it as a daily driver at all.
I get the occasional downvote as well. Don't really care. If someone doesn't like what I have to say that's their prerogative.
Whether this car would be OK as a daily driver really depends on how it's going to be used, the mechanical skills of the owner in keeping it in good repair, and making some upgrades.
My feelings aren't going to be hurt if you downvote me. I ask because I want to know if I said something that is incorrect, or maybe I misunderstood the question.
Does it have the flathead six or the early "Red Ram" Hemi V8? Stick shift or semi-automatic? (I think the "Gyro-Matic" was used with these, basically a three-speed stick with a torque converter.)
Oil changes need to be much more frequent than modern cars. There was no PCV system on cars of that vintage beyond a road draft tube that attempted to draw crankcase fumes out while driving along. Didn't work that well and there tended to be oil contamination and sludging problems if oil was left in more than a couple of thousand miles. Regular chassis lubrication is also important. Get a shop manual for the car if you don't have one.
You might want to do some upgrades to make the car more livable in today's environment. Original electrical system was a 6-volt positive-ground generator. Moving to 12-volt negative ground alternator is a common upgrade for easier starting, better headlights, and ease of adding modern accessories. Of course this involves changing electrical parts such as starter and bulbs, and installing a voltage reducer for instruments. Electronic ignition would be another good upgrade.
Brakes were not very good on these. You could consider upgrading to front discs. Scarebird makes an adapter kit for that car:
https://scarebird.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=64&product_id=97
Replace brake hoses, fuel hoses, and other rubber parts if very old.
Thanks for providing actually useful info. It's the v8 baby hemi. The car has already been upgraded with 12v neg ground alternator and starter but everything else was left stock and the 3 speed gyro was replaced with a newer 3 speed auto. Ideally I'd leave the interior all 6v and just upgrade the headlights for reliability as I want to restore it as close to original as possible with a few upgrades like the aforementioned and now the brakes.
Sounds pretty good. The flattie six would be a bit underpowered for today's highway traffic, the V8 should do just fine especially with a more modern transmission behind it. Bear in mind with disc brakes pedal effort is higher than drums and depending on weight of the car it may be too high for comfort without power boost. (I had non-power disc brakes on a '75 Hornet years ago and it worked fine but that's a fairly light unibody car.) It's possible there may be a disc brake kit out there somewhere using Mopar components for that Coronet but I'm most familiar with Scarebird due to their AMC kits. Hemmings is a great place to look for stuff like that.
OK
This is what you need to do.
Paint it black.
Put red and orange flames on the hood and front wheel wells.
Get a set of wide white walls and baby moon hubcaps.
And fuzzy dice hanging off the rear view mirror.
OH YEAH!
Ironically when I was browsing Craigslist/Ebay for the car there was an old Pontiac was literally exactly that description xD