I figured my friends getting their 32 and 39 fords restored in time for christmas would make a good Christmas story, as for me , getting a chance to restart my old car restoration business and having a job for me and and unemployed friends, is the best Christmas present any one could wish for. Last year, it was two weeks before Christmas,and like alot of Hambers I had lost my job, which was working on yachts, I was down to my last forty bucks, so I decided to sell my daily driver 39 ford sedan. I figured it would give me enough money to buy the christmas turkey and restart my early v-8 ford parts business, the parts business is a good one but sales are ramdon and finding original ford parts is getting harder every day,so I decided to also get back to restoring old cars again. I listed the car on facebook and out of the blue, my friend Rex Jaramillo from the Gearheads car club gave me a call, He asked me if I knew of any 40 fords for sale and that he was looking for a sedan in particular, he had owned a coupe years back and had always regreted selling it. He told me he had always liked the Bob Mccoy sedan and wanted to build a late fifties , early sixties stlyed sedan so I told him I had just put mine up for sale and their was a picture of it on Facebook, I told him it had a 327 chevy, a dropped axle , a big bearing 8 inch posi with 36 rear wish bones but still retained the front and rear buggy springs, I told him it was a good driver but needed bodywork , paint and upholstery, and only had the front gl***. I'll post some later;
Rex looked up the pictures on face book and liked the car alot, the next problem was the money but I told him I wanted the car to go to a friend and would let him make payments on it. For the most part, 39 deluxe or forty sedans have been forgoten as a traditional hot rod, shure you see alot of them street rodded, but traditional ones are far and few between. They actually became popular in the late fifties and early sixties,alot of hot rodders had gotten married and had kids back then, and the 39 and 40 sedan had the best of both worlds. With a dropped axle and good stance , they could p*** as a hot rod or mild custom , and you could stuff the whole family in there. I feel that today with alot of hambers getting married and having kids , they have a chance of making a strong come back. As a project car, they are resonable priced, you can still find them for as low as $2500.00 as a roller, but the trick is to find one that the rain gutters are not rusted threw. Perhaps the most famous one is Bob Mccoys forty sedan , it was gloss black and had the set of most beutiful flames I have ever seen, it sported a set of nerf bars instead of bumpers and white tuck and roll upholstery, the car was featured in Hot Rod magazine and helped make the forty ford the popular car it is today. If anyone has pictures of it , please feel free to post them or if you have a traditional 39 or forty sedan , please get it on here.
That's how the 39 started. Miguel drove it across the border from Tijuana to San Diego every day for years. No windows except the windshield, no exhaust, only the front license plate, no wiper and most a time only one taillight... We went to Vegas, Primer Nat and others. People at gas station would ask us, what color are you gonna paint it? And if he gonna start a resto on it? The answer was no, the car is finished... till he sold it to his friend Rex.
My decision not to restore the body was not of choice but of necesity, I had blown the engine in my pick-up truck , so the 39 was my only means of transportation, if you notice, I had pulled the rear seat out of the car, so it would serve as the replacement for my pick-up truck, you would be suprized how many 40 brake drums , spindles and wishbones can fit in the back of one of these cars.
That's the other build we are going to be talking aboat, My fellow Lifter's club member " fireman Mark ***en " had ask me if I knew of any original 32 3-window bodys for sale, so I aproached Buck Rosson, At one time Buck owned 17 32 3-window bodys , I told buck that he was never gonna get to all of them and that it would be cool if he sold some of them to our fellow club members, he agreed as long as the cars stayed in the club, so several members step-up and purchased some of them, the idea was to someday, all of us finishing our 3-windows and rolling up to a show. Mark purchased the best one, Buck had hidden it in that reffer trailer for 18 years and was a solid body, someone had started to channel it back in the day and though the body was structualy sound , it was covered with small dents everywhere. The doors were another matter, they were a two for one special and were really wounded.
Another thing we can credit the Bob Mccoy sedan was it started the resto-rod movement, (a resto rod is a hot rod that for the most part retains a stock body and trim , but usually has an updated drive train, the wheels of choice are usually 15" wheels, they can be 48 to 56 pick-up wheels with caps and rings , or chrome reverse or hub caps from some fifties car. for the most part the dash is left stock in apearance, the car can have custom paint and usually has a dropped axle. Lets face it , there is not much you can do to improve the looks of a 39 deluxe ford, I think they have the pretiest trim ever design on a automobile, the same goes for the forty ford. this trend survived till the late seventies.
After Mark picked up the body. the hunt was on for a original 32 frame, several months back I had purchased a 32 frame from my buddies "the Kenedy Bros." I remember seeing a complete running chasis there and it even had a firewall, it was a swappmeet special, it had been ***embled from used parts they had laying around, though it was'ent restored, it had a lot of cool parts, the rear end was a 32 unit, the engine and ****** and steering column had come out of a 46 merc, it had a 39 standard generator that had been converted to 12 volt and had the original 32 fan and radiator. A perfect chasis for a late 40's jalopy, Mark stepped up and purchased the chasis and then took the body to Dave Iverson. Dave stiched a pair of doors from the pieces Buck gave Mark, the car had an excellent original floor but some one had started to channel it, so Dave realigned the floor. The next step was the body wood, for the most part , the body wood kits offered for 32 3 windows are very good, so I remembered Ray Wells lived a half a block fron Dave's house, Ray rebodies early model "T"'s for a living and had helped me with my center door "T". So Mark comisioned Ray to do the wood on the car so dave could hang the doors. The next hurdle was the dash, Mark tracked down a 32 3-window dash but the dash cluster area had been butchured, I told Mark not to worry aboat bringing the dash back to stock specs, instead I suggested he put a mopar dash cluster, mopars have some of the prettiest dash clusters, so Mark found a 35 dodge pick-up unit and Dave did the mods on the dash. By now the crunch was on to finish the car for the suede palace, Mark pick up the car and re***embled it and did the wirering. He had his friend Bill Giess finish up the exhaust but now the car needed a seat , I lent Mark my seat frame , so he coppied it and went ahead and made the floor boards. Next was the uphostery for the seat, Mark wanted a late forty's look , so we went to Tijuana and picked up some leather, I told mark to look up some patterns from late forty's furniture and cars, He drew out a cool clam shape pattern and had Champion's upholstery in Tijuana stich it up. The car made it to Grand National , but the new upholstery seemed to clash with the barn look the car had. Originaly, Marks intention was to build a roughe car, and the car did'nt have any old paint on it, this kept bugging him so he asked me we could give it a patina look , I told him yes ,and show'ed him some example's at Grand National. He turned arround and told me he did'nt like the fake look these cars had, so I answered; " that maybe I could locate some lacquer paint in Tijuana." Six months went by and Mark asked me if my shop had some time to paint his body, we were pretty close to finishing the 39 sedan, so the next week he dropped off the body.
Merry Christmas! What a great thread, sure is nice to read about what is going on in other shops, looks like you have a lot of nice projects, and good friends. Best wishes for 2013! Bob
Now back to the 39, I first purchased the 39 in Palm Springs from the original owner 26 years ago, it was a nice field car with very little rust, it was bone stock except for the engine which was a 59ab. the old guy never got to restoring the car and was missing alot of parts, so I struck a deal and haul it home, Time went by and I stumbled on a forty coupe so I decided to sell the 39 to help pay for the forty. I sold the sedan in the mid -nineties to Johnny(Deacon) Guilmet, he did a little work on the fenders but for the most part the car just sat in storage. A few years went buy and I asked johnny how the car was coming along, he answered " I hav'ent done much to it, I just don't have the time" so I had a running driving 1963 mercury country squire station wagon and I traded him back for the car. Johnny kept the dash, the 59ab and the 39 trans, but I figuered I was always tripping on that stuff , so we did the deal. Years went by and one day I was visiting the Kenedy Bros. they had just gotten a running 40 hot rod chasis, it had a 1968 327 with camel hump heads, a turbo 350 and a 8 inch posi. We struck a deal and though the frame was'ent that nice, it had everything you needed to build a cool early sixties chasis. As I mentioned earlier, my truck blew up a few weeks later, so their I was with no transportation. My friend Phil Hurdle lent me his back yard so I could ***emble the 39. With just some hand tools and some help from Phil with welding , I switched out the chasis and trasfered the running gear on to the 39 frame.Phil's yard was just an open field so their was'ent much shade, but you would be surprized how rideing the bus motivates you to finish a car, the cosmetics on the chasis were done with sand paper and rattle can primer and paint.
Howdy Miguel, Merry Christmas to you and thanks for being one of the great story tellers on the H.A.M.B. I always enjoy your posts!
Miguel , I saw Rex's car you did for him. Awesome job buddy! Buck is finally coming around, what a miracle. Feliz Navidad !
Best wishes to you and your wife kevan, I'm guessing our friend Squeek is busy shearing sheep in New Zealand, if you hear from him, send him my regards.
As I mentioned before, in the late eighties I was restoring cars for a living, one of my custermers Miguel Sosa decided to purchase a building that had once been a body shop in tijuana, so I rounded up the crew and move to the new shop. For years we pretty much worked on just his cars and years later I moved on to work on yachts. Over the years I continued to help him locating parts and cars , and when he needed to sell a vehicle , I gave him a hand. Last year he suffered a stroke and decided to quit restoring cars, so call it destiny, I talked to the guys and decided to get back into the business. When rex asked me to do a cheap and quick paint job on the 39, I acepted, I figured it would at least keep the guys busy so they could feed their families. We had done a comercial job on the 39 and had shot a guide coat to find any flaws on the body, and thats when I made a decision that cost me financialy but in the end I am glad I took. Me and the guys were not happy with the work, since the begining, we had always done frame off restorations, and we always took pride in our work, me and the 39 went back a long ways and I just was'ent going to do a **** job on her, so I told the guys " Lets blow it all apart and start over again. We decided to redo most the body work and restore the chasis. I called Rex and told him that I would disasemble and ***emble the car for him with out charge, but to help out with the cost of the materials and labor for the guys. He accepted so we started thrashing on the car, one of the things we had to fix was the floor pans, though they were not rusty, they had alot of dents, and stress cracks, must have been from hauling all those parts around in the back. we redid all the fenders inside and out as well as the decklid , hood and the inside of the body
Inicially we were just going to do the body work and paint on the body, but I convinced Mark to let me restore the chasis, I told him " hey you want to be able to drive this thing , otherwise you are going to break down every where, plus your car is going to look akward, you ca'nt have the body all shinny and the chasis full of rust and grease". As to the body, we stripped it to bare metal by usesing wire wheels, abrasive discs, 40 and 80 grit sand paper and acid on the real stuborn stuff. My daugter's boy friend had lost his job working on computers several months back so I showed him the ropes at doing this, by the time we got to the 32, he was getting really good at it. He would leave the metal like it was chrome plated, I never have been a big fan of sandblasting, they always warp and work harden the metal. Once we stripped the body, all the sins came out, aparently , alot of body work had been done on the car back in the day. Though it was done in lead, they never bothered to straighten out the dents and there was alot of stress cracks and br*** welds and it all had to come out.
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