New guy from West Michigan, just got a '32 Ford Pickup project

Hello all, I've been lurking here a while and recently picked up a '32 Ford Pickup project.
It currently has a 4 cylinder in it and seems pretty original other than the interior. The motor needs some love, trying to figure out the best path forward to sort it out and get it running.
Since everyone loves pics......

 

Welcome! Let the fun begin!
Looks like a very solid starting point, and now the exciting part of planning your attack. Always good to have an end goal, and keep this adage in mind: “Fast, Cheap, Reliable..pick 2.”
Make sure to Start a build thread and keep the pictures coming
Good luck and enjoy!

-Neil

 

Thanks Neil!

Of the two, I'm hoping for Cheap and Reliable.
That said, I do have a flathead V8 with some cool bits waiting in the wings.
But I don't know squat about these old motors, so I have a lot to learn before this will be running and driving.

 

Welcome to the HAMB from Illinois.

I'm looking forward to following your build progress..

 

Welcome. West Michigan isn't too far from us. Just above the Yooper section!

 

Beautiful and a 3x2! I know very little about flatheads other than they are one of my top 3 favorite hotrod motors. And I should probably come up with a new quote when referring to hotrods because nothing is cheap lol. I know a few ppl who have built flatheads and they run between $8k-12k with doing most of the work yourself. But when done right can definitely be very reliable!

 

Welcome aboard- those are the makings of what my wife calls a sweet ride. If you are the guy on the triaxle- you will likely fill out most of that cab, but it will be fun. No fenders in the plan? Make sure your paperwork is in order before you spend more money. Give us an idea of what you want to build and this place will give you a smorgasbord of ideas and advice. Here is one to start. Well actually two.

 

That guy on the trailer is my buddy. Although I’m 6-foot 235 he’s about 20% bigger than me in every way!
I had a Boxster for a while and he couldn’t even get his feet in it barefoot!

I have all the fenders, still need to pick up the running boards, hood, grill, dash panel, Both a 4-cylinder and V8 radiator and a host of other parts. Oh, the title! The seller (like many of us….) has an awful lot of projects stacked up and made the decision that he’ll never get to this one. He accumulated quite a few cool parts for it over the years that I’m getting.

The truck has been off the road and in some kind of storage for 40+ years. The guy I’m getting it from has had it about 15 years as I understand it, but it was sitting at Parker’s hot Rod shop in Detroit for many many years before that. In general Michgan is pretty friendly with respect to getting old weird titles figured out so although I’m confident it’ll be a hassle I’m also confident I’ll be able to get it squared away.

For stance, I’d like it to be as low as practical with full fenders. Probably no hood, or at least no hood sides.

 

Nice. A couple to think on.

 

You want low? this is my old '32 pickup.

I removed the front crossmember and replaced it with a Model A flat crossmember, I used a mono leaf front spring with reversed eyes and a 4" dropped axle. HRP

 

Thanks HRP! That truck is perfect. That's pretty much what I'm shooting for!

 

I sometimes see really high dollar figures in discussions like this about what a nice running flathead engine is gonna cost to build. I'm building my third one now, I'll have about $2500 in this one. Basically all stock.

 

Thanks Leon. I haven't spent very much time looking into what it'll cost to build a flathead V8 at this point. My HOPE is that the one I have is good enough to just run. In the short term it doesn't need to do anything more than just run like an almost 100 year old motor. So far I haven't seen anything that would indicate that it's not a runner, but I do need to put in the effort to verify it as such.