I'm starting a thread for the build of my '34 coupe i bought a while back. Vaughn Bros. Fabrication is doing the metal and body work and they'll be posting pics of their work. I've posted pics of the coupe when it was tearing the streets of Kannapolis NC up back in the 1950s and when we found it.
OK heres some door pics. Customcory is doing the metalwork, I'm posting some pics so he can stay focused.
Floors are from Paul Bradley in Charlotte NC. Super Nice Quality and well worth the wait. Other floors are ok, but if you want the original look Paul's are the only way to go.
The door skins came from Steves Auto restoration as well as the lower inner cowl braces. The subrails are from McPhersons Automotive in Kansas and the rest of the sheetmetal is Howells.
When we found the car it had already been taken out and replaced with an original '34 dash, but we looked high and wide for that modified '40 dash. guess it got sold sometime along the years.bummer
Neat project. However, I need to brush up on my geography. I don't know where Apple, Sugar, or Silver Cities are.
You forgot Chemical City too ( just a stones throw away!) Those sub rails look pretty nice? I had heard not so good things about the ones from McPhearsons. Please let us know how everything fits for people with model40s on the horizon. Great project!
They look really good, as far as fit...i havent heard from anyone else. But i'll be sure to let ya'll know.
Great save. A lot of rust replacement, but any 34 is worth saving! I have to wonder how much better the body would have fared had it sat inside a shelter rather than out in the elements. Cool that you have history photos. Was it bought from the back in the day owner? Can you share the story of finding the car and its history-and how long it sat?
Thanks for the positive comments. We knew this project was gonna be long and basically involve replacing everything except for the top. But, with the resources and aftermarket parts available we thought that it was worth saving another '34 Ford. If it had not been for the availability of pretty much the entire whole bottom end we would never had tried this. Basically the story of this coupe goes like this. The guys name was Rhonda. Back in the '40s-'50s there wasnt many jobs around here. Although he had a 100 acre farm in our hometown, he got a job at a cotton mill in Kannapolis NC back in the '50s. He later bought a mill house down there since it was over an hr drive one way(Even my grandmother worked there for a short time bc jobs were scarce). While working at the mill he bought this V8 Ford. He drove this car until he parked it outside for 50+ years at his farm in Taylorsville. Rhonda was the kind of guy who did not sell anything, nor hire anyone to do work around his place. If something needed to be done he went out and purchased the tools and materials to build,fix,etc. And after it was used it wasnt sold or traded. The guy had tractors,farm equipment,barns....basically a treasure chest for pickers nowadays. Although he had tried restoring the car, filling in the top,placing a chevrolet motor in it, nothing much got accomplished so the car just sit outside. And with so many sheds and barns setting around don't ask me why this Ford wasn't in one of them.#poor judgement. The car did have all the windows in it so it helped save some of the doors.Beside of where the Ford coupe set was a shed. There was a nice '34 Plymouth 4 door with basically nothing harmed on it since it wasn't exposed to the elements of mother nature. But with that said he had many toys setting around, Broncos,trucks,couple 49-51 fords,flatheads, and parts and pieces. The guy would never sell anything, until the time of his death a few years ago. His wife needed some work around her house so their neighbor remodeled their home,(new roof,siding,etc) And when the payment came due, his widow asked what do i owe you? So the neighbor(who was a friend of my grandpa) said he would see if she'd trade even for the '34 Ford and Plymouth. So the deal was made and my grandpa's friend and co-worker sold my dad the coupe so he could concentrate on the Plymouth. The crazy thing was that the ol Ford remained down on his farm,far from the road, only a few people knew existed, and we got it.Goes to show you that the old Fords are still out there. Its just being at the right place at the right time.Plans on the coupe right now are to fix the sheet metal back to originality,with the exception of a chop. The Jim Farley '34 on the Cover of the #50 Rodders Journal really caught my dads eye so maybe expect something along the lines of it.
The Jalopy Journal
