Projects Bought a 51 Ford on Purpose

Jeff that is a killer photo and looks like it could be a post card Guthrie is really pretty!! That’s the advantage of living in a small town they roll up the sidewalks at dark and you have the place to yourself so to speak

 

This is what my city looks like at night…..

 

This isn't the downtown area, but a couple blocks east. Decided to take a quick video heading up toward the Masonic Temple in town. I passed a museum, the nursing home my wife works at, a church I used to go to and the junior high school in this video. I learned that holding the phone to take a video, shifting on the column, and watching where I was going took some coordination... The only real sounds in the video are shifting gears. Gives an idea just how quiet this car is with just single exhaust and a Smithy glasspack.

 

Man that sounds so good!! My car is so quiet with the factory exhaust I sometimes kill it when I’m leaving a light. Heck I think these new Honda cars are louder than my’51………I’m definitely gonna put a glass pack on it now.

 

Jeff that is so cool! The 40 has single exhaust so I took the muffler off and put in a straight pipe. Sounds perfect now. Your video reminds of my 40. No squeaks or rattles just a nice exhaust note.

 

Thats is really cool.
Greetings Harald

 

As of getting home this evening from dinner with my folks and taking an award base to get some sharpie art put on by a good friend and talented guy south of me, sitting at 284 miles driven so far. Planning on another 75 or so tommorow getting to work and back as well as likely a few errands.

And, man this is a cool gauge cluster especially how it lights up and circles the speed you are going at night.

 

Nice car! On my '49, I cut a coil and flipped the spindles. Not a simple job but gets results.

 

Yea, I like the way the front of yours sat! And, I don't want to lose track of the flipping the spindle trick. Sid (Nostalgia Sid's Dropped Axles) reminded me last week that I had given him a complete front end for a shoebox since he was going to make a jig to bend the spindles to correct the camber? when you flip them. He said that if I would come spend some time with him, we would use those to figure it out and my car to be the guinea pig to get it right. With the limited travel I already have with shorter springs, seems that would be a better solution than cutting the springs even shorter or adding the control arm spacers. And, then Sid would be able to bend spindles to where there is another alternative out there to the expensive fabricated dropped spindles if those are even still available.

 

sounds like a win, win and your car will have a new name....
Guinea.....

 

Lol! Silas has already named the car Hank (the tank), but that hasn’t stuck with me yet…

 

Anyone want to open a bank? Took the scenic route home to avoid the interstate.

 

That would make a killer home!!

 

I’m guessing a person could pretty much do whatever they wanted with the building. It was a restaurant several years back before the add on part caught on fire. It’s a pretty cool building on an old two lane highway in the middle of a town that is pretty small. My kids went to school in that town for a couple years.

 

Depending on the land that comes with it you can build a period correct dealership/garage/shop next to it and have one hell of a spot to work and display cars in. It’s zoned commercial so it’s all up to your imagination. At 2000 sqft it’s a little small but could be made into a really nice home after renovation.
My wife and I are always watching the show “You live in what?”and they have some really nice homes built from commercial properties.

 

You could name it Lucas or Doolin, Robert Mitchum's character in Thunder Road, although his was a '50. That is if you're into naming your cars.

 

All I got done this evening was a few more miles and hanging some more wheel covers on the wall…. Oh, and I ordered radiator hoses and a u-joint at the parts store. Trying to get everything gone through soon.

 

I think someone mentioned a camber kit in an earlier post on your thread - It amounts to a couple of pieces of heavy gage angle iron - you turn the upper control arm shaft 90 degrees, bolt it to the angle bracket then bolt the angle bracket where the shaft normally bolted.....now you can adjust the camber via shims like a later model car.....no need to heat and bend....

 

that is a fun little car you have. a couple of small changes and its looking great.

 

I could be wrong, but looking at it previously, not sure that the camber kit would resolve the issue if flipping the uprights. From what I at least remember, the spindle angle is way off when turning them over. I will have to look at it again.

 

Okay I’m gonna chime in on flipping spindles because I have already gone down this path and it’s a very persnickety one to say the least.

Years ago I did just this because that is the was Valley Customs did it on my avatar but I didn’t find out until way later that there was more to it.
Okay so you take the spindles off and flip them over and swap sides with them. Weld some tabs onto the spindles so you have steering stops otherwise you can have a serious disaster on your hands if you turn the wheel too much while driving. When it goes back together the car is nice and low but bow legged as they come. Even after adjusting the camber you’re still a mile off. Whenever you load the front end the tires will toe out really badly. We accidentally caught this while pulling my car onto a lift. The next thing I did was take a bunch of measurements and pull the lower A arms and cut something like an inch or so out. After welding them together and putting them back on the front end aligned perfectly and was ready for a trip down the road. I drove it like this for a year or two as a daily driver and had to put tires on the front several times because it would still toe out under hard braking and eat the tires. Needless to say I parked it and went through several more hot rods before pulling the car back out of the field and rebuilding it using dropped spindles and springs from Fatman.

Here’s what I didn’t know about….. I was looking at some pictures of the Jim Dunn car while SAR was going through it and lo and behold I see that they had the angle iron camber adjustment blocks on the thing. Well I’ll be damned….
Here’s the only issue I have with those blocks. Yes they are necessary and do work, I had to use them on my front end after doing the Aerostar spring swap and Jeff and I both agree that not only did they help getting it aligned, but they also gave me a little more drop because of them relocating the upper A arms. I had to add about 3/16ths worth of shims to get it right but if you flip the spindles how much of a shim will you need if you don’t get them corrected? I don’t think I’d trust an inch or so shim/block but hey what did they do back in the good ole days? With today’s technology and know how I feel like dropped spindles and or springs are the way to go.

Now that I’m off my soapbox and through rambling we thank you for your patience and now return to our regularly scheduled programming

 

Great input! That’s what I need to hear. I laid under the car last night to assess the whole deal some. What I saw was that after cutting the bump stops in half, I have about 1-1/2” travel before they hit. That seems fine since I don’t know that I have ever smacked them yet. And, I have a set of 1/2” thick spacers for the lower arms that I could throw in which from what I remember gets me about the extra inch I am looking for. That should leave me with an inch or so travel before hitting the bump stops which I could also swap for something even shorter.

 

I had an article from the 80's HRMx magazine(Tex Smith) that outlined how to flip uprights. Can't remember the exact modification, but it was either heated and bent, or welded on.
If I can find it, I'll post it here.

 

Exactly, you have to heat and correct the geometry of the spindles for it to work correctly. You can’t just flip and be done with it.

 

I didn’t have to cut my bump stops at all and it’s never bottomed out on me. I think the camber kit fixes all that

 

the car is looking great

 

Okay I ran out to the carport and shot these pics. Now that I’m looking at it I might need to cut the bump stops down a little bit but I haven’t bottomed out yet. Then again I’m not playing Dukes of Hazzard so that might be the reason. If you look the spindle is nice and spaced out from the frame and has all the room to move without binding on anything.

 

Here is a better shot of the bump stop. I should note that I have the 1” swaybar under the car instead of the dinky factory one.