Projects 1939 Ford Convertible Sedan Resurrection

Sam,

Your build is so far beyond my skills, which makes it WAY beyond my budget. This is going to be an amazing car.

b

 

Man, it's hard mentally to take that step backwards when your mind is so close to and ready for paint! Good on you and Don for taking the time and effort to make the right repair.

 

You’re making great progress Sam and Don.

 

darn nice job!

 

Most of the time I feel this car is beyond my skill level. Budget ? I gave up on the budget years ago! . Hopefully we will finish it before I run out of wealth and health.

Thanks Tim, This is a constant problem, especially in this final bodywork and painting stage. Nobody likes doing things twice but it seems that especially in this painting process we have to stop and compare my expectations with the reality of our skills. Doing things twice has strained our working relationship a few times but we are working through it.

Thanks John! I hope you had a good trip home ( despite your problem) from the cruise in.

Thank you patsurf!

Well it's been another busy month around here. Don's been fishing and camping a couple of times. I have been doing yard work and seasonal maintenance and putting on a car show while trying to make some progress on this painting project. We are trying to wrap it up before it gets too cold to paint without making my electric power meter over heat from spinning so fast, from trying to heat this shop while*****ing air out of it with the exhaust fan.

We finally got some paint on the front fenders.

Fortunately I remembered to pull these running boards out of storage before we tore
down the paint booth. They appear to have an anodized finish on the bottom side.
These are Bob Drake reproductions. They are very nicely made but do require some finishing.

There is some loose rubber on the flanges that needs to be cut off. Otherwise it will
probably catch dirt and water causing future problems.

I used 400 grit paper to prep the boards.

Masking these things was fun. NOT!

Don applied 2 coats of 2k ( gray) then some sealing primer,followed two coats of black
Raptor liner. While doing my 40 coupe years ago I just painted some Rustoleum over the
yellowish coating . Some of that paint has peeled off over the years, so I wanted to be sure
we prepped and coated this set properly.


We had been doing some color sanding on the front fenders so I covered them up
for today's project.





We started with 2000 and then 2500. I see some places that need some further
attention before we buff them. It is nice to see them shine ( with water on them) during
this process giving us a glimpse of the shine we are striving for.


While Don was camping last week I just could not resist putting some bling on this
grill.

This makes me smile!!!! It took me much longer to install these strips than I thought it would.
I guessed wrong and installed one whole side of them upside down! Those little clips that hold
these strips on are a pain to work with. It takes 4 of them for each of the 26 pieces. Darn things
would fall off of the far end while I was working at the opposite end,trying to line them up
with a hole in the grill My hand was sore from slamming them down with the soft side of a
closed fist. I finally got the process figured out after a few hours and the process went much
quicker on the last 25 or so. They do not recommend using a rubber hammer for this. It is too
easy to bend the pieces. Over all I rate this reproduction stainless grill trim a 5out of 5.


One last item for tonight. while don was away fishing I did some work on the chassis.
One of them was swapping out the disc brakes. This is the same metric brake I am using
on my 40 coupe. The new one on the left should provide much better braking than the little
Mustang 2 unit it is replacing. My experience is that you don't need power brakes if you are
running these discs up front.

Yes they are a little wider, but I compensated for that with some chassis mods.

That's it for now. I should be back soon with some pictures of shiny black body parts.
We hope to get the paint booth down and the chassis and body into the working shop
before the snow fly's. We are looking forward to the****embly phase. We expect the 4 door
body to give us some grief when we mount it to the frame and try to get those door gaps
back to where they were before we pulled the body off for paint work a year ago.

 

Wow great update Sam! Looks fantastic!

I'm glad you made the comment about the Rustoleum peeling on the bottom of the running boards on your coupe...that's what I used on mine. Might need to re-think that.

 

Thanks Tim! I don't think it was the paint. I think I did not prepare the surface correctly. Good old spay can Rustoleum has actually severed me well on other parts of the 40 coupe. I used some of it to patch a poorly painted
piece of the frame in the engine bay. It has held up well.