Projects Build thread: 1959 Edsel Villager wagon

This is an old picture, showing how I removed the upper ball joints. You can already see the front suspension ***embled in earlier pictures

 

Another old picture. The old brake pads and hardware seemed just fine, so I just cleaned everything up, installed new seals and wheel cylinders, painted the drum and backing plate, put it back together.

 

There was not a whole lot of room for a steering box in the original location, particularly with my big engine. Also the idler arm was worn out and I could not find another one (although by now I think I did find one at C&G early ford parts). So I decided to try my luck at a rack 'n pinion setup.

I used a rack from a ~1990 chevy cavalier. This rack is special in that the sides bolt to the frame, and the center section moves, which is similar to cars like the Edsel that have a steering box with idler arm setup.

I figured I need to put the rack off center by some amount towards the driver side, otherwise the steering shaft will be underneath the engine. Also the bolt size and distance between the tie rod ends is different, so I made this bracket from heavy angle iron to fit it together. The bracket also brings the tie rods in front of the rack so they can't hit if the suspension bottoms out.





Here you can see what will be the bottom side of it. The shiny bolt heads are the bolts that go into the rack. They are a ***** metric size, very close to 1/2" but with a very fine thread. I don't think these are super high grade, so I want to stop by my local Fastenal branch to see if I can get some high grade steel ones before I actually put it to work.

I made the holes for the tie rod ends tapered with a cone shaped drill attachment, carefully worked them until the tie rod ends fit really tightly. In fact after bolting it together I had the darndest time getting it all apart again, so I'm confident this will work as intended.

 

I had to enlarge the transmission tunnel to fit the E4OD transmission. As you can see the total width and height are actually the same as the original tunnel, but it is more "square", it tapers off less towards the back. At least my foot room isn't really affected and I don't see that it will interfere with the bench seat, esp since I always put the seat all the way back.The body has a welded support channel just behind the transmission, I was able to cut in front of the support so the integrity is not affected.

You might think I cut out way much on the left rear side, but actually the speedometer cable goes there and that was about as tightly as I could bend it down.




The clearance on the other side of the firewall was just fine.




The transmission hangs slightly lower than the frame rail. I'm not going to lower the car so I think this is fine. Just be careful when putting the car on a trailer etc.



Here's the transmission mount to the frame. Yes, the bolt is loose, I didn't tighten it down yet. I'll take it apart again for painting. You can see the original transmission mount in front, the 3 bolts.



Here you can see the transmission installed. It fits nicely underneath the channel that reinforces the floor structure, so I was able to leave that intact. The angle iron for the mount is 1/4 I think, it's pretty beefy.


Another shot of the transmission tail shaft, a little out of focus sorry..



The bottom end of the transmission is about 1.5-2" below the frame rails. So for those of you who like lowered cars, just look underneath, it's lowered alright

 

Clearance from the fan to the radiator.


In front of the radiator. You can see my soapstone marking. I'm going to cut out a little more so there is room for the A/C condensor. This is still behind the grille support so this will not be affected.


I cut the radiator support so you can unbolt the top, slide the radiator in, and bolt the top back on. These aluminum radiators don't have any mounting ears, they need to be clamped. I'm afraid metal to metal contact would rattle while driving, and may eventually wear through the radiator. So I'm using some plywood to clamp the radiator. I took a sample piece of the wood and put it a tub of water for a few weeks to make sure it's waterproof and it is. I painted it with enamel and it actually looks pretty good now.

There is still another plate (with the hood latch etc) that goes on top of the radiator support, so replacing the radiator will be twice the job it normally is, but hopefully this is something I won't have to do often.

You can see the A/C condensor in front of the radiator.

Since the radiator has no transmission cooler lines, I purchased a transmission cooler with fan, which you can see in the picture below. I ended up not using it because it was too big. I ended up getting two smaller coolers, one on each side..



Here's the radiator cap. I used a piece of 4" exhaust pipe from my Ford C750, so now the stack is a little shorter

 

Tack welded the exhaust. I re-used the material from the y-pipe from the van. The original exhaust crossed underneath the engine, and then both pipes p***ed on the p***enger side. I kept the overall distance about the same, but crossed over behind the transmission, since my rack is underneath the engine.

I also fitted my custom driveshaft. It's the original Edsel driveshaft, shortened and with a cross u-joint to fit the E350 yoke.




I'll probably install a heat shield here to protect the transmission's range sensor.


driveshaft to the rear axle. You can also see my exhaust handywork. I ordered a generic flowmster muffler-back kit, it was like $70 shipped to my door.


Fitting and marking the pipes going over the rear axle. I had to cut them quite a bit since they are meant to fit pickups as well. Sorry the photos turned out a bit dark.

 

what do you guys think is the easiest way to clean the underside? I was thinking of taking the car outside and lift up one side so it's at a 45' angle, then use a combination of angle grinder (with steel wire brush) and sandblasting

I have a sandblaster, face shield/breather, although I'd work a lot more efficiently if I invested in a better compressor....

 

I love this build.

I probably would have blasted it BEFORE I got everything installed if I were going to worry with cleaning it on the underside.

At this point, I'd cook up a hot batch of Simple Green and some baking soda and run that through a bad *** pressure washer...... then lay the Por-15 to it.

JH

 

Thanks for reminding me i am dying to get a steam cleaner

I'm going to remove the engine and transmission before sand blasting and painting it. I just didn't want to be welding on aq painted car. I guess the official route is dis***emble blast weld paint. I'm mixing it up a little

I was just wondering how it would go, sand blasting outside, may be a mess. I think i will just try different things.

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone

 

This car had the original vacuum windshield wipers. Electric wipers is a must, IMO. My original plan was to use the windshield wiper motor and interval from a 1985 F350 parts truck I have. But then I realized the wiper motor turns round and round, instead of reciprocating, so it won't work easily.. for a while I was toying with ideas to make another arm / linkage to go from "rotary" to "reciprocating" movement, but I decided that would get messy and complicated, and I'm better off finding something that's a better fit.

I have read in the past that folks use a motor from a minivan rear windshield wiper, but I couldn't really find a specific make and model that folks say works well. I so happen to have a 1992 Plymouth Voyager van that needs a rear wiper motor, so I decided to order one of those and try it - if it doesn't work I can just put it on the van.. So far it seems like it fits the bill. I need to see if the angle is adequate to move the wipers far enough (and not too far). I suppose I can always modify the

It doesn't have a built in high/low so I'll either have to do without that or perhaps work with a resistor to make a slower setting.

The plate closest to the camera here came from the vacuum wiper system and it fits the firewall. I made the hole larger and welded a 1/2" piece of pipe to it, and this makes a very nice and tight fit for the snout of the motor. The snout of the motor has a plastic sheath around it so it has some give. I had to tap it in there with a hammer. Here I still have a piece of cardboard in there to figure out the shape of the mounting plate.
.





It works out nicely that the wiper has such a long snout. The original vacuum wipers hung down from the mounting plate, but I'd rather reserve that space for being able to get to the back of the engine. Since the snout is so long I can mount it with the gear facing up and keep some working room around the back of the engine. It should still be low enough to clear the hood.

 

This is pretty much what I ended up with on the A-arms. Had to notch it but not too bad.I turned around the bolts so they face away from the engine.

 

Working on the exhaust.

I made sure i got the right y pipe with the engine, so i have the right location for the oxygen sensor. The original drivers side pipe crossed under the oil pan and then both pipes ran on the p***enger side. I changed it so the crossover is behind the transmission crossmember, putting the oxygen sensor in almost the same spot (a little farther away but not much). You can see that section in the pictures above.

Muffler selection. I have an old Ford truck that sounded really nice - until i replaced the exhaust system and i never got that original sound back. I still had the mufflers laying around, in fact i used one for my 20kW generator. I decided to cut one open to see what it looked like inside:



Pretty much a standard turbo muffler design. <a href="http://blog.packrad.net/wp-data/public_html/bronco_sound/">This</a> is what it sounded like



So i decided to look for something like it. I didn't want too small of a muffler, i thought it may sound raspy under a load. I ended up buying a fairly large 3" muffler, <a href="http://www.summitracing.com/parts/WLK-17769">Dynomax (Walker) 17769</a>

So, we'll see how it sounds..

For going over the rear axle, I bought this <a href="http://www.summitracing.com/parts/FLO-15902">Flowmaster generic 3 inch tailpipe kit</a>. I'm quite pleased with it, it comes in pieces that slip together so you can move it around and cut it until you get the fit you want.

I'm welding the Y pipe but using some clamps for the back section so I can keep moving things around should the need arise.

 

prepping for paint. I'm planning to paint most of the undercarriage, springs, axle and frame black enamel.
The firewall and underside of the hood will be white to (somewhat) match the original color.
The exterior and interior will be the original white/blue. I'm going to hire a guy to do that, since the chrome pieces are quite delicate and I don't have a paint booth. I don't feel that I have enough experience to do the exterior paint properly.

 

interesting and rare Project

Keep the updates comin'

 

I decided to replace the wiring harness since the old harness is getting pretty brittle, and I need to use the EFI computer harness anyway.. It's actually a lot of work, the bulkhead and ECU each have like 50+ connections and I probably spent a total of 3 days ohming everything out, deciding what to keep and where to put it and how/where to splice it into the original harness. Since it's from a van it doesn't fit a sedan all that well. I'm getting pretty close now, hopefully this saturday I can ****on it up.

 

Love the build. Am subscribing

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No doubt patching an EFI harness into an old, basic harness can be a challenge. As a marine electrician I can really imagine what you are dealing with. I've seen both military and civilian electrical work that would have a competent electrician pulling his hair out. To me its fun, but it can be a pain in the *** at the same time. Have you considered do***enting your electrical modifications? I'm sure others on the HAMB could benefit from it should they decide to follow a similar course. Eli

 

looking good. I wire brushed the underside of mine with air tools. A real pain.
A steam pressure washer would be, i think, the way to go, but never used one personally. But always wanted to/.

I used NASON ch***is black on my frame. It sprays right out of the can, and covers well. Ive use it on 3 cars now with good luck.

Some edsels actually had a green color under the floor. My car is black, but i really like a lighter color on the underbody. With everthing black its hard as heck to see whats what when working on it. I will never paint the underside of a dash black again.

 

Yea i'm seriously considering buying one. No point waiting 10 years and then buy one for the same price or more when you could have been using it all this time!!

One of my friends bought an aerostar front end for his 56 F100 and it was seriously caked with oil. He took it to a steam cleaning place and came back with it totally shiny ready for paint!! There is no way you will get 20 years of baked petrified oil off with a regular cold pressure washer, even with a good detergent. You HAVE to have heat, the more the better.

Some like the sioux brand are 320 F and 250 psi, so they blast super heated water which turns to steam when it exits the nozzle. They can inject a detergent into the water as well. Others like the northern tool brand have 1500 psi but not such high temperature. I heard the Hotsy brand is good too.

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone

 

You got me thinking. I went upstairs and started rummaging through my stash of paint cans and this is what I came back with.



I think the almond will do great for the firewall (since the base color of the car is an off-white color anyway). Then the rest of the body (fenders etc) can be a 1/3 blue and 2/3 almond mix. The frame, axles, springs etc can be black.
What'ya think?

 

So I have this paint guy I found on craigslist. I've been talking to him, he works out of his shop on a ranch, sounds like a knowledgeable guy. But now I've tried to go visit him 4-5 times in the last 6mo. He'll be happy to talk on the phone for half an hour but when I want to stop by to see some of his work, he's always got some something and can't make it. Maybe I need a different paint guy.

 

I thought about the rustoleum paint. I have seen the black under the hoods of several cars and really likes the sheen. But I decided to stick to actual automotive paint. Ive understood if you ever wanted to re-paint with anything else you might have trouble?? But Ive heard all kinds of different stories, so who really knows.

Just take some of the paint and do a test panel first for the color. I didnt do that on my black and wish I did.

 

You can see the black on the brakes & springs in my earlier pictures. It looks good except that I got some dust on it before it fully dried.

I did buy real engine paint for the engine since it's more heat resistant.. and I got the Ford grey to match the existing paint.

There is a shop here that sells auto paint. I wonder what the cost is and if it's as easy to use as rustoleum...

 

<B><U>Delay wipers</B></U>

So I used a rear wiper motor from a 92-95 Dodge caravan/Plymouth Voyager. I'm sure there are other viable options.

I have like 3 Ford truck delay wiper knobs and boxes and was bent on using it. I seem to use the delay function like 90% of the time.

It took me a while to figure out how to make it work.. but I got it going.

Here's the original Ford diagram, borrowed from another site...



Here is the original Dodge diagram. I arbitrarily picked pin 1 as closest to the motor.


The key is that #28 provides 12V feedback about when the wiper has moved off the park position. If you don't connect it, the wipers will be always on. so we have to use the switch that's built into the Dodge wipers somehow, even though it doesn't have a connection for it normally. We can use the diode for this. I reversed the diode like so:




Now the diode will prevent the delay box from feeding back into itself, and we can use the built in park switch as the signal for the box to tell the wiper position ( Black-purple-28)

Red(63) is always-on power so we still use that for the auto parking
White-58 pulses on and is just used to move the wipers off park (or always on when the wipers are on continuous run)
Blue-orange (56) isn't used since these wipers don't have a fast setting .. but if you have a wiper that has this provision you can use it.
Black-white (941) is windshield washers..
Black-Green (297) goes to your power source.

A couple of the colors I mention are a little bit different than in the diagram since the diagram is '79 and I'm working on a '90 .. but it's all the same wiring.

so here's what I ended up with - All the modifications are in the blue box.

 

I hope the above makes sense, if you want to try this and it's not working out let me know

 

its coming along nicely .....

keep up the good work =)

 

Any update on the wiper motor? I have a 59 Galaxie with a vacuum wiper motor that I want to get rid of and dont want to pay $250 -$300 bucks for a conversion kit. The Edsel looks like its coming along nicely.

 

I tested the above schematics to work as intended.
The wiper motor mounts just fine to the firewall. I used the original plate + a piece of 1/2" pipe + cut a piece of sheet metal to mount the motor.
The only thing left is to mount the rods to the wiper arms and make sure the length of the travel is ok.
I was considering taking the wiper arm from my van and use it , so it's removable in case I need to replace the motor in the future.

The motor itself looks smaller than the one on my Ford pickup. We'll see how durable or not it is. It has air holes for cooling, the Ford unit doesn't. The holes may be a concern since it's in the engine compartment. The original location was inside the tailgate so it was sheltered from humidity and heat.

 

This is a great build, upgrading as needed for better performance. RV's get worked pretty hard, I'm not dobting that engine was rebuilt. I'm very intersted in the wiper motor swap. Consider this for paint, acrylic enamel with no metallic is pretty forgiving and you can sand out most blemishes. He's been selling omni for years and offers many colors, see if he'll mix what you need. http://www.m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?kw...rksid=p2056088.m2428.l1313.TR2.TRC1.Xppg+omni

 

Working on the steering. The original steering column tube slipped over the steering box and the steering shaft was one piece straight into the box. Since my rack and pinion mounts underneath the car I will need probably two u-joints to make it around the corner.

I sawed off the steering shaft from the box. I tried to keep the shaft as long as possible so I sawed straight through the nose of the steering box. The steering shaft is a standard 3/4" shaft. The main support bearings are inside the steering box - at the side of the steering wheel it merely has a bushing with a spring to keep the tension on & prevent play in the steering wheel.




I ordered my joints from Borgeson engineering. They standardize the 3/4" "double D" shaft and basically you can get conversion joints from anything to that size. You can buy 3/4" double D shaft and cut it to any length you desire, so this is much easier than having to order / use shafts of standard sizes.

I ground off the original shaft from 3/4" round to 3/4" double D. It's impossible to be really accurate with the grinder so I did it pretty carefully and kept pushing it on until it fit so tight that I had to hammer the joint on and off. This is in addition to grinding a groove and using the set screws.



I cut the steering column tube down to size so I could add a bearing at the lower end, and a U-joint. At the top end I still use the same spring and bushing as before. I just cleaned out the old grease and injected some new grease in there with one of those ominous looking needles you can put on your grease gun.

So this is the final product with the bearing and u-joint at the bottom.