I lost the build thread of my ’55 with the recent demise of the Social Groups so thought I would re-create it on the main board. I realize I probably could have asked for it to have been saved and pulled out to the main board but the truth is I was never happy with the old thread so this will allow me to start over and tell the full story of the car. There will not be much interesting bodywork in this thread as the car was very solid to begin with so this will mainly focus on how the car has come together over the years to where it is today; and also be a way for me to document the time spent with my dad during the project. The story of the car is that it was originally built in the Atlanta plant as an I-6 automatic and had lived most of its life in South Atlanta near the airport before my dad found it. My dad originally purchased the car in 2004 while looking for his dream car, a 1956 Ford Victoria 2-door hardtop. The ’55 had been sitting under a lean-to shed with the driver side exposed to the open side of the shed (more later on why that is important here). Someone had swapped a 272 into the car, and then swapped the badges on the front fenders over to ones from a V8. Somewhere around 2008, he gave up the search for a ’56 and got to work on the ’55. He began by repairing the floorboards, separating the body from the frame, having the frame powder coated, and most of the steering components rebuilt when he finally stumbled on his dream car. The dream ’56 came with a Ford 9” out of ’57 Ford Wagon but with no center section, a supposedly running 302 with E303 cam out of a late model Mustang and the AOD transmission from the same Mustang. The frame had already been prepared for a GM 605 power steering box with the box in place. The previous owner of the ’56 had started taking the car apart and had separated it from the frame before deciding to move forward on another project. The two cars were in nearly identical states of restoration so my dad made the decision to swap the nearly completed ’55 frame under the ’56 and put the ’56 frame under the ’55. That is when he pushed the ’55 back outside and where it sat for a number of years again. Then in 2012, I asked about the future of the car. After some discussion, a decision was made to work on it as a project together and that is where our story really begins. I did not have the space or the tools to work on the car so all work had to be done at his house, which was about an hour away from mine. The build was started in June 2012 with a budget in mind so I initially kept a folder and spreadsheet of all costs/receipts (that quickly ended). The idea was to get the car mechanically sound and drivable and then work on all cosmetic aspects later. My vision of the car was for it to be an early to mid 60’s mild kustom built like a kid in high school or college might have done as their first car. I wanted to use as many of the custom touches from the period as possible to include bolt on parts swaps, which required the minimal body working skills and could be completed in a driveway. After the frame swap in 2008, he had just set the body back on the frame so the first order of business was to replace all of the body to frame mounts and get the car rolling as one again. Once that was done, we went to work on rebuilding the front end. First up was to tear down the front end, then pressure wash, and degrease everything. Followed by light sanding and wire wheeling the frame rails in the engine compartment. Then spraying the rails, firewall, control arms, and all steering components in a Rust-oleum Satin black. The upper and lower ball joints were replaced and luckily my dad already had the Granada spindles so we reamed them just enough to get the castle nut on and a cotter pin in place and then popped on the rotors and calipers from the Granada. We also put in the Aerostar springs, KYB shocks, and switched the end link and sway bar bushings over to the Energy Suspension parts.
It was here that we realized the stock wheels would not work with the larger center bore size of the Granada rotors so I found some wheels from a 2002 Ford Ranger XL for cheap and painted those with a rattle can of Dupli-Color Metalspecks Ocean Blue. We then stuck those in some new whitewalls and Dad had a set of some decent beauty rings so we snapped those on. The Y block that had come with the ‘55 was locked up and no good and the ’56 had come with a 302 and AOD . Not much was known about the engine and transmission, other than it ran and that it had an E303 cam. The engine turned freely so that was good enough for us. We painted it early ford blue, bolted in the Mustang motor mounts and dropped it in. The engine was originally an EFI engine but I didn’t want to see that under the hood so we swapped intakes, slapped on an Edelbrock carb and some Powered by Ford finned valve covers, and inserted an Aluminum radiator. It was obvious at this point we were going to be tight on space so it was determined we had to go with an electric fan for cooling. A set of Headman 88400 headers were powder coated satin black and bolted in place. We were able to get the engine fired and running in January of 2013. This is the video of the second start.
We upgraded the rear brakes to use 1966 Ford Galaxie shoes and drums so we could get the larger 2 ¼” shoes. Once outside I determined the nose down look was not the look I wanted for my Kustom so we put in 2” blocks before finally deciding that wasn’t enough and switched to 3” blocks. We went about rebuilding the front sheet metal to include all new rubber and air ducts with dampers. This is when I found the ’55 Plymouth Grill on the HAMB and made the purchase. It was crazy how easy it was to modify the original Plymouth brackets to work with the Ford. The grill fits like stock into the grill opening allowing the stock ’55 Ford grill opening trim pieces to remain in place.
This is when the custom touches began. I was never a fan of the ’55 dash and we were converting the car to 12volt so we found a ’56 dash and painted it the same Ocean Blue found on the wheels. My dad won some modern 12 volt white faced Omega gauges somewhere along the way but he didn’t like the look of them. I thought they looked great against the new blue dash but they were a little too small for the holes in the ’56 dash. We played around before determining we could double bezel them using the stock ’56 bezels and then inserting the gauges with their bezels through them. I then hand painted the stock ’56 speedometer to match the gauges. We used a ’56 Ford steering wheel and automatic column and connected it all to the 605 steering box. You can view what all went into the dash swap in my Album here. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/media/albums/1956-dash-install.43963/
We put a new gas tank out back and then converted the stock sending unit over to the modern sending unit before dropping it into place in the tank. We then were able to back the car out of the garage under its own power in May of 2013 and took her around the block on her maiden voyage. I then swapped the rear brake lights over to ’59 Buick and added backup lights.
Somewhere in here is where it was determined that the GM605 power steering box with the Ford pump was NOT going to work. The steering was twitchy while driving and would send you into the oncoming lane or off the road with no notice so we rebuilt a ’56 Ford manual steering box and placed that in the car. Then in May of 2014 we drove her 460 miles round trip out to the Nostaglic drag racing event in Union County, SC with no issues. Also hit a few local shows in June 2014 before driving 600 miles round trip to the NHRA Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, KY over father’s day weekend. This is about where life got in the way and I had to pull back on how much time I was spending on the car and away from my family. My dad continued on to the bodywork at this point and about a year later (2015) he texted me a picture of the side of the car with the front fender in primer from some rust repair he had made. He had polished the trim and had placed it on the side trying to get me motivated to come work on it again. He continued driving it around and taking it to local shows and eventually wound up having to replace the radiator with a new one from Champion due to a leak in the cheap original ebay one we had placed in it.
Recall earlier where I stated the car had been found parked under a lean-to in South Atlanta. Well the driver’s side drip rail was rusted through. My dad found a replacement panel out of another roof of a ‘55 and welded that in place. He also welded in an EMS panel to the lower part of the passenger front fender. By this point it was obvious I wasn’t coming back any time soon to work on the car so he drove it to my brother’s house and parked it in his garage while he focused on building his ’56.
The car sat there for the next 5 years until covid hit in 2020. By this time, I had moved into a new house, had a kid off at college and finally a space to store and work on the ’55 at my house. My dad got the car running again and then around June 2020 I ran out to his place and drove the car home in Atlanta traffic. At about the halfway point the engine temp rapidly climbed and the radiator puked nasty brown water all over the engine bay. I wound up limping the car off the interstate and to the nearest gas station to find that my dad had not fully fastened the radiator cap before we left. It was a lesson learned for me to do my own pre-flight checks before heading out on the open road. Once I got the car home, I found that the 5 years of sitting at my brother’s house had taken its toll on the old girl. The ethanol gas had eaten the insides of the fuel lines and had clogged the carburetor, the cooling system had been compromised and had to be drained, radiator purged, and a new thermostat added. That is when I started driving her everywhere I could. A vintage gas station not too far from the house became my favorite place to stop. Driving around in the summer without any air conditioning told me I needed to do everything I could to stop the heat coming in so the first big project I took on by myself was to scrape all the factory sound deadener off the inside of the roof and lay down some Kilmat. It made a huge difference to the temp and to deadening the sound. This is about when I got tired of seeing the car in a bunch of different shades of blue and gray so I stripped the roof and in keeping with my original “driveway build” vision, I sprayed the epoxy primer right out in front of all the neighbors. It was far from perfect and some of the imperfections are still there but I was satisfied and full of confidence. We are now in the thick of Covid and my company sends us all home to work remotely for the next several years. So I go buy some metal working dollies and hammers and get to work on some of the small dents that have been bugging me between conference calls during the day. I started with a small one on the panel below the rear deck lid.
With the lower panel now in epoxy primer I felt the rear deck lid looked out of place still blue and thus began the slippery slope of getting the car all into one color. At the time I didn’t yet have a welder so I skipped decking the trunk and just opted to sand and spray it gray. That Christmas, the wife gave me some Lancer’s for the car so I swapped out the spider caps and forever changed the look of the car in my opinion. After it warmed up in 2021 I began spraying more panels on the car. At this point, I had sprayed all of the panels that I could which didn’t require some sort of rust repair so I finally broke down and purchased a welder and got to work on a few patch panels. And then smoothed the door handles and sprayed both doors in epoxy.
And finally got the stainless trim polished and on the car Then almost a year to the date of my last gas station picture I drove over and snapped an updated progress picture. I finally went back, decked the trunk, resprayed the deck lid, and now had her all in one color and nearing my original vision. I then started hitting up every local show I could find. Then in 2022, the flexible exhaust pipe that we had originally attached to go between the headers and shortened exhaust pipes finally gave way. So, I headed off to the local muffler shop and had the exhaust fixed. Then set out to paint the front inner fenders white And drove her to a few more shows
With the outside looking better, I shifted my focus to the interior. I started small with the rear package tray. Then found some heat pressed vinyl used for marine applications online and decided it would work for now and got the rear tray wrapped and installed. I then moved forward to the door panels and created new door cards using cheap dry erase panels from the local home supply box store. I then went with a no sew method for the door panels that I found on youtube and used the same heat pressed tuck and roll vinyl and some blue zodiac material I found online.
I drove it like this for another year and then in 2023 decided to make the kick panels and installed some courtesy lights under the dash.
Then later that year I decided the plain gray primered car was missing something and decided it was time to start laying down some scallops. I started with the roof, a couple rolls of tape, the driveway, and the same rattle cans of Dupli-Color Metalspecks Ocean Blue before settling on the design. I drove it like this for another year and then in 2024 I decided to continue the scallops to the sides of the car. Using Jerry Koeller’s 1955 Ford Doll Buggy as the inspiration. And this is where she sits today. Next up is to add the scallops above the belt line trim and onto the hood and rear deck lid and to some serious upholstery work to the front and rear seats, replace the side glass, and eventually put some carpet down but mostly to keep driving and enjoying her. I'll post more in this thread as the work is completed.
I was actually supposed to get a 55 custom line as my first complete vintage build. Local cop that used to harass me but had become buddies with me was going to sell it to me cheap. His nephew that was supposed to take me to look at it before said cop would give me a price lied and said I didn't want it and got it himself. So I still kinda eyeball 55 Ford's 20 years later lol. Your build methods are kinda like on my own 53 Chevy. Only in my case it's full back yard and my dad doesn't have any mechanical ability lol. I love how your car looks
Ah. Didn't know if it had a mod motor or something. Still good looking cars. And I'm a diehard GM man.
Nice! Reminds me of the first car I bought. Same thing, 55 Customline sedan, with the 272 and a Fordomatic. Drove it home at 15, and was my mom mad! You know you’re in trouble when mom used your full name, including your middle name…
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