History The Jimmy Summers 1936 full fadeaway custom rescue and resurrection

Wow! That turned out awesome.

 

Practically salivating, waiting to hear more about this...

 

Best thread on the HAMB at present. Can't wait to follow along on the restoration story.

 

Pretty cool!

 

Incredible!

 

That car looks like it went through a fire. I remember the pictures of when it was found. It looks like it was taken apart to do motor work, and the garage it was in caught on fire. Why else would someone let it deteriorate like that? It sure looks great now though.

 

The definition of “never say never”.........I am amazed of the skill it took to see this to the end.

 

Very nice!
more, more more!

 

Rikster... Thanks for the thread !
Always fascinating how the lost are found and great to see how they're resurrected.
Another Custom saved, She's a Beauty....made my day !!

 

More from Jim...

In the the original Hamb thread from 2009, when the car was originally discovered, some people posted that the car should be cloned, re-bodied or that there would not be much original car left to work with. That was just not an option for us!
Our goal from day one was to preserve as much work that Jimmy Summers had his own hands on as possible. This meant we had to plan everything ahead from the moment we started to start pulling it apart, and blast it to bare metal. We were very careful to try and leave as much of the original Jimmy Summers installed lead as well.




Since Jon (Schuchart) knew we would have to replace the door skins, since they were rotted not only on the bottom, but in the middle where the fade-aways were bolted on, we did not blast the lowers, or any part that we knew we’d be replacing.







The big news was that we had always heard stories about what a master metal man Jimmy Summers was, but it was not until we got the car back from the blaster and saw how amazing his metal work was on the chop that we got the full picture of how amazing his skills really were.













The metal is a little scarred from rust, but you can barely see where his cut lines were.
Keep in mind, this was 1940, when this car was only four years old, when Jimmy did the metal work on this car !

This is the first time in over 75 years anybody sees this Jimmy Summers metalwork in bare metal.

More to come. Jim

 

Really nice!

 

Beautiful work, back then and now.

 

He really did impressive metalwork back in the days!

 

Are there any other known cars that he did or was he more of a local legend ?

 

This is so kool and Jimmy’s metal working skills were pretty amazing especially considering the time frame and available tools, etc.

 

The imperceptible seams really are impressive, and I love the eagerness to retain as much original metal and workmanship as possible. This car really got into the hands of the right person.

 

The beauty of any finished custom is always up to the eye of the beholder, but the beauty of the craftsmanship under the paint is undeniable.

 

Damn! Great metal work & it was with an oxy/act torch and probably coat hangers.

Thanks for sharing the story and pix.

Chris

I need to do a post on the Summers convertible that I posted about a while back.

 

WOW!!! What an impressive restoration! I mean, holy hell, you guys basically started with a coffee can full of rust flakes and now look at it!!!

Don't get me wrong, Jimmy's metal work is incredible, but bringing that car back to the way it looked when it was a freshly built custom is pure wizardry.

Having said that... knock it off! You're makin' us all look bad!

All jokes aside, congratulations on such a beautiful build.

 

Yes you do. Please!!!!!
Torchie

 

Can’t wait for the next installment! Excellent metalwork by Jimmy, especially for “back in the day” when the standard was much lower.

 

It was the talent of the craftsman that made the difference. I took pride in my work, but worked next to a lot of Cave & Pavers who were in it to make a fast $$.

 

I am in awe of the end result compared to the starting point. Master craftsman now and in the beginning of this car's custom history. Can't wait for more!

 

Unbelievable end result !!!

that’s fantastic work and wanting to save as much as possible is simply fantastic and a testament to you and the original builder.

Im always surprised at a car like this being left to deteriorate. I know it’s an old custom yadda yadda .
But the lines on this car are timeless , it’s not just an “ old custom “ or “ old hot rod”. This thing had style and taste when it was built .

it’s like a Phoenix, reborn from the ashes .

 

That is amazing metal work. Hardly any lead. Truly a expert at his craft.

 

Jimmy probably learned his metals work from people who worked thru the Great Depression . I apprenticed for a a body man named Russ who worked thru the Great Depression and WWII and he was a scrounge. We did a lot of splicing parts together. When I chopped my A he told me if I had to run any lead I fucked up the job.

 

From Jim...

So now it was time to think about how we were going to repair the body. Our goal was never to do a pebble beach type restoration, but rather just return it to how it looked in 1941, when the car was freshly done by Jimmy Summers.

With that being said, we also knew that we wanted to repair the body, where needed, using original 1936 Ford sheet metal wherever possible.
One of the first things to do was to replace the rusted out floor. We felt it would be best to find a nice rust free original floor and sub rail set up. Unfortunately, those are not that easy to find when you are looking for them.
We ended up finding this decent Midwest body that was completely trashed on top, but the all important bottom looked to be good.

A perfect candidate we thought…

 

When the body arrived we cut away all of the crushed body that we were not going to use. Then we sent the floor pan out to the blaster to get a better look at what we had. Upon getting it back we were disappointed to see that although the sub rails and wheel wells were pretty nice, the floor pan itself was unusable.
We were almost back to square one…

 

Wow! Amazing. Great save.

 

From Jim...

While chatting with a good friend of mine on the West Coast and bitching about how I could not find a good floor pan, he chimes in with “I have a good one if you need it”, he sent pictures and it looked perfect for what we needed.

After getting it blasted, this floor sure was exactly what we needed.
John proceeded to install the pan into our sub rails and we were back on track.
This felt really great, we were making progress !