Projects 51 Ford before and after... It's a start.

Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr

I know it's not much but I hope you can see a little bit of my style.

 

Looking good! Plans for the future?

 

Right now I'm painting with iodine and marking it duty. There's a lot of issues I'm going through one by one. I'm just about finished with the brakes. I have to do the final adjustments.
The next big thing is the wiring harness.
Then the rear axle.
Then the front end.

Eventually I want to start on souping it up some. I'm going to go a different route. I'm keeping the Loadamatic.

Stage One...Mercury 4 bolt intake with snorkel top Holley 885 4 bolt 2bbl...
Stage Two... Shaved stock heads or Merc heads, and a 4bbl intake with a 1955 Thunderbird Holley 4000. AKA the Teapot or the Towering Inferno.

 

Good looking - safety first, like brakes - seat belts too

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Love it! Looks like a nice ride....jealous here!

 

Good lookin' car. Might I suggest a set of EAB heads? They are the highest compression factory heads for the 49-53 Flatheads (IIRC)...it's been too long since I've had a flatty.

 

I love it, try a little drop in the front.

 

Thank you. When I got mine three years ago, started driving it after I went through the brakes and suspension. Mine is the two door while yours is the coupe. It was already done by the PO who passed away so I went through it to satisfy myself. Then the smoke escaped from the wires under the dash. I started rewiring with a Rebel Wire harness then discovered some seriously bad body work on the rockers and floors. Been working on that now and hope to have it back driving this Summer. Have you got the wiring harness yet? If not check into Rebel Wire they are an Alliance Vender here. Is the color "Glacier Blue"? Looks like the same original color as mine. It is a very nice example and looks great.

 

Nice looking car there!

 

That car is awesome. I like it a lot.
Good luck with everything.

 

Looks better already.

 

I love those coupes. That looks like a nice clean car man have fun.

 

I hope I'm wrong, but did you just take it from a '50s/'60s teenagers dream of a mild custom BACK to a Grandma's stocker?

 

In getting ready for wiring are you changing over to 12-V?

 

That color is "Alpine Blue". My car has one "respray".
Untitled by Travis Brown, on Flickr
The respray on mine is a tad "Bluer" but then again the shade is very close and it's very possible that the remaining original painted faded to a slightly different shade. The oil change stickers on the door jamb is just something you can't buy. I guess you could put repros on there but it's not the same thing. The oldest writing I can read is 1962. Those stickers go plumb through to the 80s.

The dash Harness is laying on the seat right now. I have not got around to installing it yet. I'm going to pull the seats and recover the seat bottoms. I don't know if I need to remove the dash. I've heard pros and cons either way. Right now I'm planning to lay in the floor and leave the dash in the car. How did you go about it?

I'm keeping 6 volts so I decided to use an original type harness from Shoebox Central. It's a Bauer reproduction offered in pieces from different suppliers. It's the same price and is sometimes cheaper going through a supplier rather than ordering direct from Bauer. It depends on the supplier and the overstock. Since I'm keeping the 6 volt system and running the original gauges the replacement harness was a the best solution for me in my opinion. With signals, the '51 wiring is the most complex of the shoeboxes.....Man I love the sound of a Flathead starter on 6V!

After the shakedown drive yesterday, the brakes are going to need more adjustment to bring the pedal up and it may need a few more bleeds. The E brake is working much much better and the back brakes are actually functioning now.

The rear axle was practically dry and I filled it before the shakedown yesterday. I found out why. It leaks like a sieve out the pinion. There was a tiny amount of fluid slung on the rear tire but that may be brake fluid left on the rim from bleeding the brakes, we'll see.

That real axle needs a pinion seal. Hopefully the axle seals are good. I do know worn bearings will cause the seals to fail. If it's bearings I may evaluate changing the rear axle.

The front suspension seems fine. The car is very controllable at the speeds I've driven it so far, even with the new narrow Cokers. I would not say it's "tight" though. Setting the wheel bearings, I did notice some slight play in the king pins. I have to uncover all my Grease Zerks. I can't find them all. That front suspension is absolutely covered in a mix of grease and Tennessee Mountain Clay. There was so much old grease behind the front driver's axle that it looked like the axle joint ball on a Willys jeep. So...I've got a lot nasty work ahead just to remove the grease and find the zerks. Looks like it's going to be some hammer and chisel work. That's stuff it like set epoxy.

Like rear axle. We'll see how the front shakes out.

From the front seat forward it needs some floor work. The structure is very solid as is most of the sheet metal but it does have some soft spots. Here, do I patch or replace the front pans? I would prefer to patch.

I have not even got to the performance stuff I would like to play with...

I know this long but one last thought...

I'm very fortunate to have a good solid car to bring back. The old car has always been kept up and one time it was a either Hot Rod or Whiskey Car. Even though it was not obvious, there has been a big OHV in the car. Likely a Lincoln or Ford Y block. Whatever it was there was clearance gained at the passenger side fire wall....the location of Y block distributor. This may date back to the 6V days. So...1951-55. So have a really good base.

My point is, it takes a lot of work, a heck of a lot work just to get a decent start road worthy. I see a lot of new guys who drag a really rough one home and they have lots of questions and plans. Most of it involves Bling and Strombergs.

They have lot to do, maybe more than they can imagine. It's OK to plan and for the final result. With that said there's a lot of work to do before all the Ding Dongs and Hoo-Hahs...

As you can see I have a pretty big punch list.

 

I'm staying with 6v. I love the sound of a flathead starter on 6V, there's nothing quite like it. It's just a sound that...makes me happy.

 

Well, I'm not a teenager.
A '51 was the most decorated of the Shoeboxes, lots of Chrome. This one has some more like the optional Stainless Triple Star Fender panel.
Full wheel covers, skirts and whitewalls was just a little too gaudy for me.

I like a very subdued Hot Rod. This was especially so on a Whiskey car, the less advertisement the better.
A big inspiration starts for me at 1:55 in the video below. This, and the 3 Whiskey Cars (3-49-51 Fords) of Mr. Layfield, that my grandfather worked on in the 1950s


You see this in later cars Like the 390 Interceptors, 406, 427 Galaxies, Super Stock Dodges and 409 Impalas. For the most part those cars were very subdued other than a fender badge or crossed flags.

 

As the owner of a '51 club coupe, I have to say that I am really impressed with the condition yours seems to be in. If it was mine, I'd be very motivated to just leave it alone after you've taken care of the mechanical problems. On mine, I've limited the visible mods to a pair of Aerostar springs in the front and some "big 'n little" radials. The stock chrome on the '51 is typical fifties and should be kept in my opinion. The aftermarket stuff (the fender trim, gas filler guard, skirts, and non-stock wheel covers) should probably go. I use my car all the time in the summer, and with a little added power (a warmed over '51 Mercury), the car is perfectly practical. The only thing I am lacking is an overdrive, which is going in this spring.

 

The 34 I have is supposedly from North Carolina. Had a bunch of hardened "stuff" on chassis. I used an air chisel on low pressure, and most came off nicely!

 

A pneumatic needle scaler, even a HF cheapie, is pretty good at that kind of removal.

 

I like your changes a lot.... subtle, and a good example of "Less is More"
Nice coupe

 

I really dig the powder blue man. Nice lookin box...

 

Yup, great coupe. Great movie clip also, but I'm astounded by how many folks showed up between 5:43 and 5:47, they must be quicker than me.

 

The small hub cap area big visual improvement. HRP

 

Me likey .

 

Me too.

 

Alpine Blue may be a shade darker than Glacier Blue. I am not sure but that was the original color inside my trunk lid.

I pulled my dash out to rewire it and used two 6 pin trailer connectors to enable easy connections for install and any future removal.

I kept mine 6Volt also. It worked and charged good so why fix it. I used a Rebel Wire harness which is not the cloth covered wire but just the plastic coated with each wire labeled about every foot.

 

So my reason for asking if F-one was staying 6-V or going to 12-V is my understanding that 12-Volts will work in 6-Volt wires without any real issues. However going 6-Volt with 12-Volt rated wire doesn't have the same results. Something to do with Amps not so much Volts. I do know if your running a 6 Volt system and install standard 12 volt ratted Batt cables you just created a problem. I have cured Starter issues for unaware customers that used the light gauge Batt cables simply by installing the right gauge cables.

I see no real reason to go to 12 Volt on your project. Personally if I owned your car I wouldn't change either. Just be sure the harness you install will function properly on 6-Volts. There are reasons electrical wire comes in many different gauge.

 

I went with a reproduction harness with modern 6V rated wire in the factory style cloth jacket. I just got the main harness or the dash harness. That's the main harness that everything plugs into. It a reproduction harness by Bauer. Some of the front lighting has been replaced and the interior lighting and tail light harness seems to be fine.

You are correct. 6V wire is much heavier. 12V can function fine with a lighter gauge.
Look at 6V as volume and 12V as pressure. The wire is like hose or piping. 12V is high pressure and does fine in a smaller "hose". 6V on the other hand is volume thus it requires a larger hose. 6V does not have the "pressure" to go through the smaller diameter "hose". If it tries, it gets hot...to much resistance. 12V on the other hand has no problem going through the larger "hose". Actually 12 does better with the larger wire but it can function properly with the smaller gauge. That's one of the main reasons the manufacturers went to 12V because it's a substantial savings in copper. Another reason is as the 1950s progressed more and more accessories were being offered and the old 6V systems were not up to the task. With that said, 6V could have continued but the continued development of 6V accessories did not make financial sense. Since 12V is "pressure" it's less sensitive to ground and connection issues. It has enough "pressure" to go through a little corrosion and less than ideal connections.

This same thing happened to generators in the mid 60s. Generators are excellent. In a lot ways they are superior to alternators. It was not practical to build large DC generators to power all the accessories when the AC alternators were compact and much cheaper. AC was more efficient in that regard.

12V is like a bull in a China shop. In most cases it can power through. 6V requires the right size wire and super clean grounds and excellent connections. The manufactures used just enough wire so the system could function. All they were worried about was the system being trouble free for 90 days. After 90 days the service department made some cash. 6V requires maintenance, cleaning the connections making sure the brushes, windings, stators and armatures. Were clean and up to spec. That's one reason why 6V and the early 12V stuff is so rebuildable.

The main problem with 6V cars is ground issues and worn components. A worn 6V starter will function on 12V, maybe for years. On the other hand 12V is very hard on a 6V starter so much so damage to the Bendix and even the flywheel can result. It's that bull in a China shop thing. That 6V starter on 12V hits hard.

Since the manufactures were stingy with the wire a good improvement on a 6V car is running extra grounds. Maybe even running heavy gauge ground wire back to the taillights (this is especially a good idea on a truck) and a ground bus bar under the dash in addition to the factory ground straps. Like I said the factory back then was only concerned with car lasting 90 days. After that, it was on the customer's dime.

8V....It's a band-aid for poor grounds, connections and worn out 6V components.

Heavy cables for 12V vehicles...The box store cables are for Hondas. The cars we like require heavy cable, even on 12V cars. 6V cars...really heavy primary leads.

 

Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing a photo of your 51. I would love to see it.