Projects 348 powered 40 Ford sedan

I also think I’ve got an answer to my damaged quick change center, thanks to Bruce Schnieder and Brian Bass, so that’s great.

 

Having visited Royal Kustoms, talked about floor clearance for the torque arms, we crawled under another 40 sedan that sits about where mine will, and Jim had to clear the floor in front of the rear seat a fair bit.
I made a note of what he’d done, and started cutting up my floor..
First I braced it all from the inside, and passed bolts thru the floor to try and keep it all in the right place . I then made a box to allow clearance. I thought of just having a sort of sloping wedge each side, but decided it would look to busy, and be even more work than this.
I got a bit carried away though, and decide to have ribs in the top to match the floor, which was a lot more work
Than I though, but I learned an awful lot about stretching welds…
I also decided that I didn’t want the ribs in the floor to look like I’d cut through them
And welded a box in, so I made a simple tool to reshape the ends where the where cut. A bit mot shrinking required, but it all turned out pretty good in the end. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it

 

Nice work!

 

Great job Neil.

 

Thanks guys

 

Great talents far past my abilities.
I originally keyed "Far past my Abilities". Spell check knew better so it was altered.

Spellcheck is an idiot.

 

Small update, as part of the hole floor thing, I wanted to get the Mustang buckets mounted. I was going to go with vw bug frames and runners, seats mounted on top, but after thinking about it, I decided that this wouldn’t have been done ‘back in the day’, they’d of made a frame and mounted the seat to it. I looked around and saw a lot of race cars back then used tube to make a frame and mount the seat,I decided to go that way.
The outside floor mounts attach via body/chassis mount holes, inside mounts will be into captive nuts like the stock seat, and I’ve reinforced the floor in that area. I’ll also be using the rear outside mount to take a seatbelt loop for lap belts, so this was drilled out to accept the larger fitting, and I’ll be mounting the other one to the side of the drive shaft tunnel, again reinforcing the area.
Thanks to Mike ‘Russco’ Russel for help with seat placement.
Obviously I had to make sure I could see ok, so I mocked up the hood and sat in, which turned to me making car noises..

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I love these seats, I’m now thinking about having a headliner with that pleat insert in the seats running from front to back, and a similar detail in the door cards, but that will be a bit pricey I expect…

 

Nice work Neil! Saving up for the upholstery guy is like saving for your kids college, start early in the project and put money in it often. It probably still won't be enough. But don't let me take your vroom (car noises) buzz away.....

 

I'm not sure how I missed your build thread Neil...just went through it all. Fantastic work! Will be following along going forward.

I'm sure there's a story behind the bashed rally cars...not sure if that's the same car with damage on both ends?

 

Thanks, its taking a while.

The two Rally cars were different cars, that was their first rally respectively, across various parts of Europe. I think one ended up being a re shell, just due to tur around time for the next rally! Both these cars are crazy clean.

Nothing exciting happening on mine, so not posted, just floor prep, and finally got epoxy primer on the floor a week or so ago. Need to do some small filler work, seal the seams, and then get it painted, ready for my chassis..

 

little update, I ‘ve been slogging away on rust, nothing drastic, just trying to remove as much as I can with a combo of mechanical and chemical techniques. Found a few new holes at the top of the inner door jambs and passenger side top screen corner due to rodent activity, so had to cut out and repair those areas. All very dull, so not posted any of it.
But I’ve made some progress elsewhere. I’ve had my quick change centre machined so it’s true again, I hope, and will be buildable. I’ve also just had the Buick drums modified for the 40 hubs and f250 backing plates. None of this is that dramatic, but it’s all progress.
Hope to have the body at the paint shop soon to get the underneath of the floor and firewall painted in the next month, and hopefully the chassis won’t be far behind.

 

Hi Neil! can you run a stock gas tank with the quick change?

 

Keep it going; progress is progress. Nice work on the floors and seat frames.

 

Thanks Joel

Yes, you don’t see much of it, but there’s plenty of room, which surprised me.

 

Thanks Neil, just curious about that.

 

Been a while, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d given up, but stuff has been happening.
Royal Kustoms have sorted the rear suspension, new torque arms, bells narrowed with lower shock mounts, 36 bones and their front mount.
Chassis then went to Wheelworks UK who painted it, as well as the bell housing. Gearbox, bells, bones and a bunch of brackets.

In the meantime I’ve been prepping the underside of the floor for paint. Trying not to go crazy as it’s the floor, but I wanted to loose all the welds from making and modifying it to miss the exhaust , torque arms etc. Finished that yesterday, (yellow tape is where I sanded through, and went back over them with a bit more epoxy) now onto the firewall.
Plan is to get the floor painted, build up the chassis, then drop the body on, easy eh.
So here’s some pics.

 

Good to see you are still working on your project! Working on those little details that nobody will see eat up a lot of time but lead to a quality build that you can be proud of. Keep it up!

 

It looks good, Neil. Keep on Keeping on.

 

Nice....seeing the colour going on after all the fabrication is such a rewarding phase of the build.

 

The body has gone into the body shop, a good friend has given me space and time in his shop to do a load of prep on the bits that Ive repaired to get paint on them, so I loaded it up and hauled it over. It’s been two weeks so far, this bodywork stuff takes a lot of time.
.. and, another good friend has finished hand painting my valve covers with Chevy orange, it may all come together yet

 

Finally an update. Ive just taken a month out (read no work..) to do my 40. A friend of mine who owns a body shop offered to paint the underside of the floor, which was great. He was busy, but when I mentioned that I didnt have much work on, he said to bring it over, I could get it ready and he'd paint it. Well, when I arrived, he looked at it and said 'we may as well get it all done!' I was a little shocked and knocked sideways, but when i got over it, I realised what a great opportunity it was to move it on alot, So over the next moth, I removed all the rust from the rear inner fenders, bare metalled the back of the inner rear quarters, prepped all the inside for epoxy and raptor, prepped the rear valance and tool box area, the repairs on the rear quarters. I then spent three days masking everything for epoxy and raptor. My friend laid on the epoxy, which was the either prepped for raptor, or masked off.
My friend was busy, so he gave me a short lesson on spraying the raptor, gave me a spray suit, and set me too it.
Once this was done, the inside was masked off, and the epoxied areas outside 320'd for paint. more masking, and my friend top coated the cowl, rear fenders, door shuts, tool tray, tail pan and inner fenders. That was all then masked off, the body flipped, and the floor and firewall painted.
I bought it home last Tuesday. Here's some pics, I left them small, 'cos there's a few...

Yo may see on the rear quarter pic that only the repaired areas have been painted, thats because Im not painting the complete car, too much time if I do it, and too much money if I pay for it, so the new paint is going to be 'aged' to tie in with the old. The firewall, tool pan and floor underneath will be left shiny.

 

Looks great!

 

Looking nice.

 

Nicely done.

 

Nice work! Great amount of progress for just one month!

 

Thanks all. I’m really happy with how all the bits I modified turned out. I think unless you are a 40 ford nut, you’d miss all the changes on the firewall, which was what I wanted. None of it is super straight, but it does look very ‘factory’, which is where I wanted it to be.
Gotta thank Angus at ‘The Rubbing Factory’ for all the time, materials and help at his over the last month, big leap forwards. I can actually look at putting it back together now, once I have the funds to buy all the gazillion little bits needed.

 

Oh, and a couple of nice little pics of the front re drilled wheels on the drums. I know it’s a fully fendered car and no one will see them, but I’ll know, and it makes me happy. Think I’m going to paint the hubs orange with a chrome bearing cap..

 

I know it feels good to take a big step. Congrats. It looks like the main wiring harness hole is filled; where are you planning to run the wiring harness?