Projects Tim's (aka anothercarguy) 1938 Ford Club Cabriolet Build Thread

Hi all,

So, I've been debating whether to jump in with a build thread or not. I have typically preferred to enjoy scrolling through, admiring, encouraging or commenting on other's well documented efforts. That said, maybe this project could provide encouragement or insight that could help others and so I really need to make the effort.

There will be a lot of quick looking progress at the beginning of the thread but trust me, it was anything but quick, I'm about 3 years in and anticipate another 2-3 years to go. The pace is more tortoise than hare, slow and steady, understanding all of life's other distractions. I pretty much try to not farm anything out so that too can make for a slow build.

For background, I'm building this car for my wife to replace the '36 Ford sedan that we sold 6 years ago before we moved to the west coast. We've owned this car for 15 years but have known about it for over 30. When we first saw the car it was sitting in a barn in southern Manitoba. The owner at the time had 5 barns full of collectable cars. We met him because we were buying the '36 Ford from him. He was a great car guy and he proudly showed us his collection. After seeing the '38 we expressed an interest in it along with the '36, but he politely declined saying the '38 would remain in his collection. We kept in touch asking if he had changed his mind, but the answer to our inquiries was always the same. After he passed, we purchased the car from one of his sons (who also happens to be quite a gearhead).

The '38 has patiently waited its turn to get into the shop including a cross country trek from Manitoba to BC. The plan will be: dropped axle, split bones, 9" rear, 283 sbc, tri-power, 4 speed manual super T10 trans, pretty much a stock body in black shiny paint, either a black or tan top Halibrand Sprint style wheels etc. etc.

I'll start with a picture of the car in the garage waiting its turn to get into my shop...and one of the photoshopped versions thanks to @themoose on the photoshop thread.

 

Next, I need to say that my shop and house garage have about a 100 foot elevation difference with the shop being located down the hill. The car has no brakes and my wife was not sure of my genius plan. I figured, gravity would provide the rolling encouragement and my truck would provide the rolling discouragement, my wife would provide the directional inputs...what could go wrong?

Fortunately, the plan worked...and my nervous though ever willing wife's worst fears did not come to fruition.

Once in the shop...tear down began.

and continued...

Some bolts loosened, some broke, others were cut...but after a long day the body and chassis were separated. I should add here that before the body was separated I spent some time fitting up the doors and once they were right, I added body bracing (re-bar I had laying around) to hold the body secure as the floor was weak.

Then the same fastener drill continued until the running gear and frame were completely separated. The bare frame was moved onto my frame table where a center line string was drawn. After much measuring, it was determined the center of the frame needed to be pushed an inch (or so) towards the passenger side. Out came the porto-power and chains...some time monitoring the center string, carefully measuring and pushing with the hydraulics until everything was where it should be...and then it was tacked solid to the table so it couldn't move.

 

Once everything was where it should be...time to assess what we're working with...it's a convertible...from mid Canada...so there was rust. These photos are the passenger side rail, but suffice to say the driver side was equally eaten away.



So, small bites with the side rails being first, I determined where the good steel met the rusty steel, cut out sections of the the rusted steel, made new steel replacement patches and tacked them in place, repeat (noting that the center string remained in place for constant measurements to make sure nothing was moving with all the cutting and replacing going on). For ease, and to take advantage of steel I had in hand, I worked in relatively small sections. Once welded, it becomes all one piece.

And then the top rail...weld solid, grind, blend, smooooooth and make repair invisible. Repeat on driver's side rail.

Being called for lunch...back shortly. ;o)

 

Fantastic work , that is one huge patch. The sunny side of the 38 looked so good too. Is it rusty in the rear kick up double skins?

 

Lol that's how we got my 36 home from paint... Shop was on a hill by my house and we had no seat, or brakes... Had steering and gravity... Worked for us too. Looking forward to this build

 

Thanks, the sunny side indeed looked good. My experience has been on "good" cars, we end up replacing the bottom 6-8"...on "bad" cars, we end up replacing the bottom foot. The kick up double area was fine. Most of the rust was likely from water ingress from the interior cabin (did I say it was a convertible lol).

 

So, back from lunch (mmmmmm home made pea soup...she steers brakeless cars going down steep hills and makes home made food...a keeper of 36 years for sure!). Now, where were we...oh yes, rust...so here's a picture of the still to be finish ground driver side rail just so there's no doubt in anyone's mind that I did both sides (no shortcuts here!). Now, time for a sidebar...Knowing how well you guys scout pictures...notice the plywood box under the gas tank area of the frame? Very simple devise, wooden box made with a 16"x24" opening in the front (same size as a furnace filter), inside the box is a 3 speed house furnace blower and electric motor (I scavanged it for free somewhere) and then an opening on the other/exhaust side. Running this filtered fan/box while grinding, welding, sanding bodywork, rust etc. is amazing how much crap it'll pull out of the air saving your nostril hairs the effort of keeping this stuff out of your lungs. I use a coarse furnace filter in front of a finer filter stacked behind it. I blow the filters out at the end of the day...it's shocking how well it works! Now that the public service announcement is complete, we return to our broadcast.
Ok, next up...I want the car to be low. The dropped axle (a Henry original '34 I believe) that I have was dropped by a guy that was doing it as sideline in southern Oregon. Between it, and the reverse eye spring, I figured (with a measuring tape!) I may not be as low as I wanted to go...so, I flattened the front crossmember to get that last inch ('cause who couldn't use another inch right?). I think it ended up being cut into 11 pieces...
And then lastly, I wanted the front axle to be moved forward an inch and 1/4 (or 1/2, I can't quite remember). Again, my tape measure suggested this would look good...so now that the crossmember was one piece again, I ground off the rivet heads and air hammered them out (it made lots of noise so people knew I was gettin' stuff done!). I slid the crossmember forward "one set of holes" and then plug welded it into place. Later it gets fully perimeter welded as well. I then cut, modified and welded the radiator braces so they fit the now closer than it used to be front crossmember.

 

Next up, I decided I wanted to box the entire length of the frame to help make it sturdy (given the convertible offers no body rigidity to speak of). I removed the center crossmember (with temporary frame bracing holding the same shape), and rolled it outside for a round with the HF sandblaster (dry compressed air and filtering the media through a screen when filling the unit helps to prevent these units from clogging).

I whipped up some boxing plates with strategically placed access holes cut with my plasma cutter. To ease access for tacking the plates in place I broke the frame free of the table and positioned it for convenience (I hate welding upside down, overhead, or while laying down...I have the burns on my chest hair to attest...I am a girly man, I'm ok with that).

Once the boxing plates were fully welded in place, the chassis was rolled onto it's back. The original crossmembers were trimmed to fit, welded in and the rear suspension/9" was put in place. This was the speedway rear leaf spring suspension kit, though strangely it came in TCI boxes and had TCI instructions. I didn't use the rear shackle mount that came in the kit. Instead I simply bored a hole in the frame/boxing plates and welded in a tube for the upper shackle bushing. For my friends and family back east, note the light and dark portions in the photo...see...we do indeed get sun in the Pacific Northwest!

 

So next up was the front suspension...and splitting the bones. I got the 11/16" weld in bungs and rod ends from Speedway. Cut weld, grind etc. thread in the rod ends and there was a lot of slop!! I posed the question here on the HAMB...and after much discussion, decided to re-drill the bungs larger, and re-thread them up to 3/4" (thanks @alchemy for that suggestion) and use some rod ends that I had left over from another project (that just happened to be 3/4"!).

And then I set up the front axle. Of course this required heating and moving the front spring mounts on the bones to have them line up properly with the front shackles, figure out a location and mount for the steering box (a Vega copy), heat and adjust the spindle steering arms to clear the bones and axle, and make up mounts that collect the rear of the split bones.

 

Next up...locate engine and trans.

Which helped me realize I was going to need more clearance in the center crossmember area. I wanted to use the steel from the original crossmember...it just needed some adjustment. I made the same changes to both sides, and of course, this meant I had to remake the plate that picked up the rear of the front split bones. I've never built a car that I didn't need to re-do something (and sometimes many things!) along the way). Lots of room now.


This was when I realized that my axle had way too much positive camber on the driver side after being dropped. I used some box tube I had laying around and chain to strategically anchor the axle. I used a hydraulic jack and my angle finder to bring the camber back into spec. I hadn't done this before, so it was a learning experience...it's surprising how much "spring back" a forged axle has before it bends and stays. I put the kingpin in upside down so the jack had something to push against, without distorting the king pin boss. It also gave a good surface for the angle finder to rest against. (I've since purchased a digital angle finder...that old plastic gravity swinger got pretty close!)

 

Some good work here; I'll be following this build.

 

I'm not following how the blower box works. Does all the bad stuff end up inside the box somehow?

 

I think that pretty much brings us to the end of the chassis build for the time being...though the master cylinder and pedals are also mounted but I apparently didn't get any good photos of that portion of the task.

I needed a bit of a break from the big picture stuff...and decided to spend some time putting together the tri-power set-up (assembled from bits and pieces of about 10 carbs and an old Offy Manifold all of which were sourced at the Portland Swap Meet, lots of reading about setting up tri-power carbs etc. I also rebuilt the Borg warner Super T10, but strangely don't have any pictures of the process...musta been concentrating too hard.



So now it's time to hang the body back over the frame, but first, I cut out some of the rough and rusty parts, and added additional bracing to secure what was left using some old re-bar I had lying around.

 

All the dust and stuff gets capture in the furnace filters. The fan draws from the face you see, with the filters in front and blows out (filtered) of the side you can't see. I can take a few more photos of it...it's very simple and works great!

 

Thanks

 

Very cool! Nice work.

 

Thanks.

With the braced body back on the frame, metal work began on the shell. First order of business was rebuilding the bottom 6" of the door post...but again, no pictures (doh!!). Then followed the passenger cowl and kick panel area. I should note that no commercial patch panels were used. All panels were hand formed and beat with hammers until they approximately conformed to the shape needed and then welded (sometimes mig, sometimes tig) in place .

 

And then the drivers side (tig welded)...old speaker magnets (Alpine in this case) work well as welding clamps.

I then turned my attention to the cowl vent. It had some real deep pitting that I decided was best to replace. This piece (the gutter area) was made with a hardwood hammerform cut to shape...and more time beating flat pieces with hammers until they conformed. Apparently I need to take another picture of this area welded and finished. I'm happy with the results. And, I had to make the same repair on the passenger side of the cowl vent as well.

 

With the cowl mostly taken care of, I turned my attention to building the rockers and subrails that the floor attaches to. I don't seem to have pictures of just the rockers at the door sills, but trust me they are there. I also took this opportunity to recess the rear wheel wells, though you'll see later that I end up re-doing them.

 

Now I had something that I could begin attaching floor pieces to. I started at the rear seat riser and driveshaft tunnel moving forward towards the firewall that wasn't there.

Followed by figuring out what I wanted to do with the firewall. As you'll see, I like to weld on the inside corners on the firewall which allows me to grind a nice radius and ensuring there is still plenty of meat in the area. I'm getting ahead of myself, of course first there was cardboard patterns (Ram board at the Home reno type stores works great for this...it's used to protect new floor when contractors are building houses). The beadrolls were formed on my homemade bead roller which is similar to the cheapy HF versions with a bit of added braciing.

 

Now, there is somewhere for the front of the floor to land...so next up floor panels.

And the quarter panel patches for both sides...the floor was plug welded with the mig, the quarters were tig welded in order to aid metal finishing. The quarter panel patches got a slight roll/shaping on the English wheel, and some flanges along the lower edge that were folded with the brake.

If you look at the bottom of the quarter patch in the last picture, there are 3 small raised areas. I hand punched 3 mini louvers for drainage (open side of the louver to the rear).

 

We're moving right along here...I should say that in the not too distant future, this thread is going to significantly slow to real time. That said, next up was the continuation of the floor toward the rear. This required the replacement of the sub-rail. So, I removed the old wheel well in the area and ended up replacing it with new steel. The flange is 18 gauge steel folded on the brake and then run through the hand (foot) operated shrinker/stretchers until it was close to the shape needed. Again, plug welds are mig, others are tig.

 

As I was working towards the rear anyway, now seemed to be a good time to remove the rear of the car. This gave better access for the floor replacement and allowed me to cut apart the tool tray to see what I was up against there. I decided it was better to replace than repair it. I decided to include a floor access panel for the gas tank sender.

 

Wow! Some great fabrication going on here! Nice job so far.

 

Nice job, I think most people would have looked for another frame. Look forward to see it move forth.


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Great work thanks for sharing. That's going to be one nice rag top.

 

Nice '38 ragtop! We don't see any in any body style around here. Great work on all the fabrication. You mentioned body rigidity at one point, Ford convertibles of this era used one gauge heavier steel for the chassis than the closed cars - I think 10 gauge vs 11 gauge. Same with the pickups. Also these brackets are convertible specific they help tie the A pillars to the frame and crossmember:

 

Thanks guys.

Thanks for that info and the kind words. I removed those little brackets (not realizing they are convertible specific...doh!). I'll hope that the boxed rails more than make up for them not being there any longer.

 

Carrying on with our story...while the tail pan and tool tray looked pretty good in place, once they were off the car, and apart their true conditions became clearer. This is just a few of the problem areas noted.

Hence the decision to start over on the tool tray etc.

 

Great fabrication skills! Thank you very much for sharing your build with us. I’ll eagerly wait to see your updates despite ‘em coming less frequently.

Awesome stuff!

Chris


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