need help on 40 ford truck grill alignment

finally to the stage of fitting my front end and just not having luck. the hood, fenders are the best i can gather and i have beat and welded to repair the best i can. i bought the upper grill mount,lower gravel pan and lower chin new from macs and the grill from a hamb member that was in his truck.

the problem is i cannot get the grill center even close to align. if you look at the gap the top is like 4.3/4 and the lower 5 3/4. i tryed bolting grill together with upper and lower but the lower chin is not even close.i wonder if i have the wrong chin pan or it was welded wrong at factory. ive been fighting this for a couple weeks of tryng to move front end around to no luck.

i adjusted hood to cowl first and got a descent fit, then got fenders aligned to hood real close, but then grill is in left field. also its like the contour of the grill at the bottom edge by the bumper brkt hole sticks out about a inch were the rest contours nice. its the same on both sides and fenders dont look like the were hit up front. but the hood has been center punched in the nose and i have pulled back into shape best i can.

i have welded in the holes on lower front of hood, but now notice the grill sticks out further than the lip of the hood. did the chrome lower hood trim fill this gap??

i used an original yoke to align the spacing between inner fender panel but will use different supports after final fit and take yoke out.

anyone have a measurment i can use between front fenders for grill?

any ideas to get fit better, last time i drove with no front clip on truck and i wanna go for a cruise so bad with the front end on this time.

thanks

 

You could assemble the fenders,grill and then modify the lower pieces to match what you end up with. Probably the tweeked fenders has thrown everything out of specs.

 

Looks like a good fit to the fenders, and there is only one lower pan that fits the 40 std and 40-41 pick up (the deluxe is way different). I would loosen all the front end bolts and pre-assemble the complete grille and fenders, get them fitting good then worry about all the inner and smaller panels. I'll be going through this some day when I get my '40 pick up done.

Scotty

 

everybody's an expert, till they try it, IT IS A BITCH...one time we assembled the whole shoot-match, on the floor, 3 of us walked it back under the hood. Perfect!!! next time , not so much..

Call my buddy (in the afternoon) Dean, He's a know it all, and can probably give ya hints, he just recently did that job, again 360-274-0444, tell him Bob in Az. said he might help.. play nice !!

 

I'd find an original lower pan. And run smaller bolts to get some more adjustment. Aligning front sheetmetal sucks......

 

I worked in the repro parts business about 10 years ago...slddmatt is correct. If you can, find an original, even just to measure and compare. I believe there are still only 2 manufacturers of that piece. Both were a bit off.
As for the upper fit, yep, they line up with the whiskers on the hood. That can be a bitch in and of itself. You'll have to cheat things around and see what works best for you.

 

The 39 Dlx, 40 Std, 40-41 Pickup and the 40 Dlx too are probably the hardest front end setups to align. The fenders tend to splay out in the slightest of accidents.
You should determine what manner of grille you are working with. Original grilles will have the Ford part numbers cast into them. The center is 01A-8242-A(or B and maybe even C). The sides are 01A-8206-A(RH) and 01A-8207-A(LH). These numbers will be on the back sides of the pieces.
The only view we have of your center section is poor but it appears the slots are rounded at the bottom in the view there. Die cast parts have crisp corners in the slots of all openings.
If your grille is aluminum without numbers it is one of several 40s-50s period aftermarket replacements some of which fit with a little work and others with alot of work.

 

I was always told to mount the hood first and build from there

 

Like brokenspoke said: You always align the hood to the cowl and then make the front end match it. That’s why you see a lot of 39 and 40 Fords with hood alignment problems. A 85 year old retired body man taught me to do it that way a long time ago.

 

As hbrown said in his third paragraph...{"i adjusted hood to cowl first and got a descent fit, then got fenders aligned to hood real close, but then grill is in left field."}................he started in the correct sequence!

It is a bitch fitting these '39-'40s with good, undamaged and ORIGINAL Ford parts. Even worse when parts have been repaired, and when there might be a mis-match of repro parts thrown-into the mix. DD

 

I have aligned the hood to cowl first. Would anyone have the measurement between the fenders top and bottom where the grill goes? I think my lower is 20 inches, but not at home.

May do as suggested above and fit EVERTHING then rebuild lower pan to fit.

I do not have access to measure an original pan to compare to my aftermarket one.

Thanks for all the ideas, this front end has got to be the hardest I have ever worked on.

 

I have built several 40 Fords and there is always alignment problems,,I finally loosely assembled the grill along with the lower chin and bracing before attaching to the fenders,,it helps alleviate some of the headaches. HRP

 

Its a bitch, and here's one more tip, make sure you have the hood springs on when you do the allignment, as I was sent car springs, so I alligned everything with out the springs and all was good, then I installed the correct hood springs, then hood allignment was way off again. I would give you measurements from my 40 pickup, but mine is a collections of parts from many places and I'm sure the numbers would not be correct. Note the hood in the picture, still needs to be realligned.

 

"anyone have a measurment i can use between front fenders for grill?"

I measured my '40, the distance at the top between the fenders is 24 3/4",
distance at bottom 20"-fiberglass front fenders, aftermarket grille and chin plate.

My '41 the distance at the top is 25", bottom 20"-steel fenders, aftermarket grille (cheap chrome one with built in chin plate).

As others have said it is a bitch to align these. My suggestion is to keep everything loose, until in proper position then tighten them up.

My '40 I recently put together, aligning the hood to cowl, then continuing on, isn't right yet, after numerous tries at it. I live with the gap for now, will come back to it another time, after I've grown more patience.

Good luck

 

The problem is the aluminum grille is not any where close to an original or a Drake grille.I had one that looks exactly like the one pictured.I ended up making a wall hanger out of it,and used a 39 deluxe grille.I see you have a bunch of work in the fit already and believe me i have been there.My advice is get a differant grille or see if you can borrow another grille to see where your at.

 

Flattyv8 your truck is my screen savor at work. I use it to motivate me on mine. I am using hydraulic struts from mr 40 instead of stock springs, guess I need to get them on before I go further. I would be excited if my grill fit half as good as yours.

 

Thank you for the measurements, soon as I get home it will give me a start.

Thanks

 

I can't afford another right now so guess I gotta keep trying to make it work.

It's just a pain not knowing which piece is causing the headache or if its a little of each piece causing the grill fit issues. Is it the hood tweaked, a fender, or even the grill!!!!! But parts are so rare it's hard to just swap to another part.

 

This one has a Drake grille. I removed and reinstalled the front sheet and grille metal to make things fit better. Better, not perfect. It is a time consumming operation.


Looking at your first two pictures it looks to me the grilles are not shaped right. Look OK at the top in picture 1. Are the grilles flexible enough to pull the bottoms back to the chin? I'm thinking if you can get the hardware started and snugged up there, then install the center bar you might come out good.

 

yes i sorta thought that when i could not put grill upper mount and chin pan together on ground.



again thanks for all suggestions to use what i have.

 

Maybe your best solution is to remove the chin. Install the center bar to pull it all together. Run it like that to get you going. The fender/grille assembly should be more than strong enough without the chin. If you really want the chin modify one to conform to the new profile. No need to buy more stuff if you really don't need to.

 

As others have said, I fit the hood to the cowl, then the grill to the front edge of the hood. I did use the stainless whiskers that screw to the bottom of the hood to fill the grill gap better to the hood. The mounts I built to support the front end on the inner fenders can be shimmed to further make up and down adjustments. Because the way the fenders mount to the cowl and running boards I'm hopeful the fenders will mount with out too much trouble. I used the same mounting system on my coupe and it aligned well.

 

Our advisor on the 40 grille project told us he always had to use a heat gun to "persuade" the grille sides to come in to the fender edges and chin. The grille should always be loosely assembled before installation. Since your grille has been repaired it may not like heat as a help. So you'll know, any broken grille didn't grt that way easily. It takes a nice hard punch to the grolle or fenders to deform then snap the luminum or die cast zinc alloy of original grilles.
Good luck.

 

From the first photo it looks flattened in the center / needs more curve … Id heat it …. Not much to lose at this point

 

been spending a ton of time trying to refit. this time i put rubber bumpers on hood and took grill out.

what am i missing? i put upper grill mount and chin mount on loosely and hood would just set up on top of fenders with rubbers on.

so to experiment i started shimming between upper mount and fender and at 1/2 on each side i achieved a fender to hood gap i can live with, the contoured edge of hood fits the contour of the fender nicely and the upper hood latch aligns with the hood real close. actually it could probable use another 1/16-1/8 shim to make better fit, but got a lot in there now.

has anyone had to add so much shim between mount to get a good fit? i do have air diverter panels in and know when i add grill it wil take up about and 1/8 but it seems odd I have to add so much.

if i take out shims it pinches the fenders together at front. right now i have approx 25 inch gap at top and 19 3/4 at bottom.

i am attaching a few pics, note the thick nut used as spacer between upper mt and fender. if this is a normal thing to do then i will machine some nice spacers to put in.

also do my fender to hood gaps look close? again i adjusted hood to cowel gaps real nice before i did the fenders.

thanks for all tips.

 

Thanks for all the info,....Mine is giving me fits,...getting the grill opening distances correct. I'm using 'glass fenders from Speedway, and although close, they need massaging, to match the fender inner panels. I'll give the "hood first" suggestion a try this week.

Thanks again 4TTRUK