Projects 1939 Ford Convertible Sedan Resurrection

Not an easy/straightforward project roof etc. wise. Great to watch and follow.

One of life's most enduringly pleasant - and yes, satisfying - sounds.

 

Very interesting to see how Henry and the boys designed all the idiosyncrasies and unique parts to accomodate the 4 door convertible. The car has the right man on the job to bring it back to it's full and former glory!

 

every post ,i think-'how on earth did an assy. line make this jigsaw puzzle'--excellent resto!

 

Thanks for posting the detailed pics of the B pillar parts. These help.
I like convt sedans, don't own any, nor any parts. Have a cowl n partial body that I'd like to turn into one. Stupid amount of work, & figuring out what isn't there & how to "fake it 'till it makes it". No timetable for actual "cut/weld/drive", much less finishing...
Marcus...

 

Thanks, I hope so.

I'll just be happy to get it back on the road and dependable. It has been a long time since it was last driven, probably 60 years....

BUMPERS

I just delivered my 39 bumpers to the chrome shop in Spokane for the second time. The first time I went into sticker shock and brought them back home. I figured I could buy some new 40 bumpers at half the price and be happy with them. I had purchased some from Bob Drake for my 40 Ford coupe and they were very nice. The plating was great and has held up well for 7 years so far.

I tried to buy some from them this time but guess what? They were out of stock! So I Ordered some from Dennis Carpenter. I was very disappointed. I'll share some pictures. The good news is that they took them back.

First off they arrived like this with the ends of the bumper sticking out box.



The nested them together which worked out okay but they didn't put any reinforcement
at the ends of the bumpers on either end. Nor did they put any packing material in
the box to keep the bumpers from bouncing in the box.

Fortunately the ends of the bumpers were barley scratched. But the plating left a lot to be
desired. My pet peeve was the lack of plating around the center bolt holes. They must of
used the center hole to hang the bumper for plating.

Now if I was going to use bumper guards I could have lived with this but I wont be
using them. The oval bumper bolts I will be using do not cover up this area.





The back side of the bumper had a large area that did not receive any plating over an even
larger area.

So as I said they took them back without a fight. I beefed up the box ends and packed them
tighter so they wouldn't wiggle around. What kind of morons are they using to package
product anymore?

So you may wonder why I chose to use the 40 bumpers in the first place. Well I am using
the stainless bumper braces that Drake sells and they don't make them for 39's. Besides
they were half the price of having the 39's plated.

Here is another reason. Henry's engineers for some reason made the 40 bumper holes
a few inches wider. so I had to fill one hole and drill and file another one to make the 39
bumper work. I chose to have the chrome shop fill the hole which of course costs more
but if I had not done the job to his specifications he would have charged me for the fixing
it.

Just another bit of information on these bumpers. They use 7/16" on the outside
and 1/2" on the inside holes. I have no clue why they did that.



I did drill out the new holes and filed them square


I should be able to pick up the bumpers in a few weeks.I'll post up some pictures of the finished
product. I'll save up some cash in the mean time.

Happy New Year to you all !

 

I have been looking for a way to play my music in this car without using a radio. I finally
settled for this system from Classic Audio Solution. It will play 4 channels at 50 Watts
per channel. You can use a thumb drive or blue tooth from your phone or I Pod. That
small controller at left front in the picture controls it's simple functions. Works pretty good.
I'll post a picture when i figure out how to mount the controller. The amp will be mounted
to the firewall.

We needed to get the trunk to latch so I found the striker in my collection of parts.
When I tried to mount it to the reproduction trunk support I found the holes didn't
match. Apparently the support was made for 40 fords which use a striker with a wider
pattern.



So I cut out the base and welded in a chunk of 16 gauge plate.

Drilled and cut some new slots.

Fits good now.

Inside view.

 

I bluetooth my phone to a Bose portable sound bar. I still have too much back ground noise and I have to keep both the Iphone and the Bose batteries charged. I may have to look at stuff you have. Thanks. It might also be I need noise cancelling hearing aids.

 

Hood gaping !!!!! Here is a job that I took on over a few months time. I procrastinated more than usual on this project. It is a project I dreaded, mostly over concern of screwing up a rare hood. I had done this job before on my 40 coupe but still lacked confidence in the outcome. We made sure the front fenders and grill were mounted right where we wanted them before proceeding with the gaps. The pictures posted here are kind of random but should show most of the process of achieving a decent gap.


This line indicates an area that needed to be cut down

Unlike the door skin the hood edges are just folded over on the end edge, while a door skin
is wrapped over the inner door structure. This is not a big difference but it does make the
welding a little more difficult and warpage more likely.

I don't remember why I put this arrow here but I think it just shows an area that has
been ground at the arrow already ground welded and ground again on the left . To the right
is an area still needing some shaping.

So when you weld through you have to delicately spot weld that edge to join the outside
edge and folded over inner edge back together.

You can almost see the split I am trying to weld back together adjacent to the spring support.


This area needed some metal added so 1/8" rod was welded on.

The straight rod is easily bent to the hood contour as tack weld it on. The weld heat softens
it.

An edge ready for a test fit.

That is a lot of spot/tack welds. I tried to keep the heat area done to a minimum by
blowing coolair on the area after 2 or 3 tacks.

First test fit. It still needs some work.

I tried this technique to get the contour right.

You can see I had taken off too much here and had to add on in some places.

Here we go again.

More welding!

Ugly looking. It is hard to show this but it worked.

This process continued for awhile.... Until I was content with the contour and gap.



We recently borrowed this very cool portable planishing hammer from a fellow HAMBER
It works great! We used it and some good old hammer and dollie work to gently take the stress
out of the welded edge. The edge had curled in just a little bit from the weld heat. I will be
posting a detailed article on this tool on the Home tools site on the HAMB soon.

 

Hi Joel! My hope is that I can either use my old Samsung phone or a new I pod. If it works like the I pod i have in my coupe I can leave the phone or I pod plugged into the USB on this device or to another USB in the car. Hopefully the amp will just start playing the recorded music without me having to take the time to push too many buttons to connect them to the amp.
I should get my first new hearing aids next week. They are supposed to be top of the line with blue tooth and sound canceling abilities ( wind noise cancelling ) I hope. for what they are costing they better do all of that. Apparently my insurance doesn't cover hearing aids. This is going to be a big hit on my car budget! I think it is strange that they will cover cataract replacement surgery but not hearing aids..... My left ear pretty much died on me this summer. The right one still works pretty good considering my previous career and current hobby. I think my left ear died from convertible guy syndrome. Too much wind noise and oh yes, slightly loud exhaust note!

 

I'm going to the VA for hearing aids; I have several friends that are very happy with the ones the VA can provide. That hood work is very challenging, but it looks like you have a handle on it.

 

Hood fitment is a tough job...I can understand procrastinating. And, after it comes apart for paint you keep your fingers crossed that you can get everything back to the same place! I've gapped cars so everything fit perfectly, pulled the car apart for final paint and re-assembled them to find something moved! My theory: the drying paint pulls the panels out of shape...that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

A tedious task indeed. Thanks for sharing, I know I have more of that in my future.

I'm in the middle of wiring the car right now...well the electrician is...and I'm not bothering with any sound system. If I want music, I will bluetooth from my phone to a cube or sound bar thing I'll toss on the back seat. But first, I'd need tunes in my phone or however that happens. I'll ask the kids.

 

I haven't tried to use the VA yet. I have enough trouble getting competent timely care through the medicare and supplemental insurance companies. If I add the VA into that mix it will only get more complicated. Besides I was never really in harms way while in the service and feel they owe me nothing. I have one more post to prepare for the hood project. I have to wait until my lift no more than 10 pounds limit expires after eye surgery so I can lift the hood. There is one more fitment issue to cover there.

Okay, I'll keep that out of shape theory in my excuse file for later

Some how I managed to get my tunes first transferred to a file on my computer and then to the phone. As usual I was guessing the whole way through the process. It helps if you have your own CD's to record to the PC. I hear they want to charge you down load them form the internet.

Thanks for watching and commenting y'all.

 

Hello patsurf, I just noticed your comment from December. Yes really I wonder that every time I work on this project. I suppose doing the same thing over and over each day helps. I would really like to see the assembly jigs they used while assembling these bodies. There seems to be way to few photos and drawing available of the assembly lines from this time period.

 

Awesome, watching you talented folk do your magic makes me wish I could do more than just watch people with talent do their magic. Sub'd.

 

Thanks for commenting nitrobrother! Not so talented but we do have some tools and have a lot of fun trying to do this stuff well!

So another project with hood fit involves the bottom back corner of the hood and the the front edge of the cowl. I did not have this problem on my 40 so I was not happy to see that the hood didn't fir the cowl here. So after much deliberation ,discussion and of course procrastination I tackled this job.

For some unknown reason the hood was wider than the cowl at this leading edge. I couldn't
live with that so I tortured myself for quite awhile to correct it.

Right side not exactly perfect but much better than before.

I had to remove the capture nut and then replace it after welding the extension in. Not too
pretty in inside but sound.

You can see that I cut the skin back around 5 inches on the top and bottom. Then pulled
the skin out about 3/8 inch at the front to get the interface right. I used 1/8" welding
rod to fill the gap. I did smash the crap out of the welding rod with a 3 pound hammer on
the anvil to flatten and widen it before welding it in.

This left side came out real good. I only had to do this side once. The right side took two
tries.

Some views of the under hood area. It should not be noticed by many folks after painting.

So this was (I think) the last major body modification on this project car.
We have started the paint prep phase.

That's my build buddy Don pushing sand paper at almost 81 yrs old!


We have a long way to go with this phase of the project. This is just our second attempt at
preparing a body for paint. The sanding part seems to be a muscle memory thing though
and after a couple of days we quit wining and just settled into the routine of slapping a bunch
of filler on and sanding 90 percent of it off. What a messy job. The whole shop is covered with
dust and we are not even using air tools!

I am in the middle of a forced 4 week no shop time period for some cataract surgeries. We should be back to work soon though and well rested. Just had the second one done this week. It is still a little fuzzy but at least I can see the screen and key board. Thanks for watching!

 

Thanks for the update Sam. Looking good as always. Good luck with the cataract surgery.

 

Cataract surgery was the best thing to happen to my vision in years. You guys are doing an outstanding job on that car. The hood/cowl came out great.

 

This is really coming along, waiting to see it at some local shows in the future.

 

On to paint prep..excellent! I want to be like Don when I grow up.
The hood edge mods worked out well, I wasn't going to look at any of that on mine, as i'm not repainting it, going for the 'Henry fit', but yours looks so much better, I think I might have to..thanks Luckily, my hood was split and blasted before it was louvered, so needs paint anyway.
Great progress, seeing yours moving forwards gives me hope and enthusiasm to keep on plugging away at mine ( just found some more rust, having thought i'd done it all, pesky mice!)

 

Cataracts? I always preferred Lincolns! Keep up the incredible work, it's gonna be a beauty!

Dave

 

Lookin good!

 

in the original joke,it is 'rinkon'....

 

Very nice! Great job on the hood! Hope I'm still pushing anything at 81

 

Thanks sshep! So far I am not impressed. They healed well but it does not seem to be as drastic a change as most people experience. They are going to do a laser surgery in about 3 months that is supposed to make my vision clearer.

Thanks weedburner 40 , After taking the old bondo off of the hood top it looked like the car had been used as a staff car during WW2 or some one had been dancing on it at a football game! It took awhile to sort through that problem. We will see how it looks when we put the filler primer on it before announcing it cured.

Thanks adaleeric, Future is the operative word here. It may be awhile yet.

Thanks Neil, There are some that argue that you should not have to add any metal to a hood to get a good fit. I don't disagree with them, it's just my experience that I get a better outcome doing it. Yep Don is the real deal! He has been sanding on my car all week and then going over to his son in law's shop and sanding on his 37 ford on weekends. Keeps him young.....well actually keeps him old and alive. That's a good thing. I have been enjoying your thread too. Keep up the good work!

I picked up my bumpers from the chrome shop in Spokane a few weeks ago.

I am not real impressed with his work. You may remember I had him fill two holes
in each bumper so I could use the 40 ford bumper supports. He did a fair job of keeping
the center line edges sharp on half of them. Admittedly it is a difficult thing to do. He had
convinced me that he could fill them in the way he wanted and get better results. Not so sure now.

So then you turn them over and there are these big weld goobers where he welded on some
large washers a place to hang the bumpers during plating. I would not think that the washers
would need that stout of a weld. He was worried about blueing his chrome if he ground them
down any further. Maybe... but I think I will use a steel arbor bit and cut them a little at a time
to get them a little closer to the surface.

Now look at the crap he left on the surface on this one. I thought a guy that had done work
on so many top notch show cars would take the time to clean the back side of the bumper
before plating it. Just my luck when I hire stuff I can't do out.

I have been working on getting my side glass cut for a couple of months now. Lot's of
miscommunication going on with that. Seems that a guy has to put EVERYTHING (expectations)
in writing when dropping a project off or placing an order. I working on the 3rd try at getting the side
windows cut in the correct 3/16" size.It is a good thing I didn't wait until the last minute to order the glass.
That is enough ranting for now!!!

We are still doing the body ( bondo) stuff. That is kind of boring so I won't show this phase much.

I did do a fabrication project for some dash stuff though.

I decided where I wanted to put the controls for my tunes and the old heater. A little
fiddling with some yellow poster board and i had a plan. In case I haven't shown those
round gizmos on the blue tape where the stock radio goes ,those are for mini rocker
switches for the rear door power windows and door locks plus two more for front seat
seat heaters.


I found this counter top particle board cut out in the shed to make some hammer forms.

Broke the trusty router out of storage and rounded off the edges.

i screwed the form onto a piece of 2X4,clamped in the vise and beat the crap out of
the 19 gauge steel with some hammers.


You can see I took the easy way out and cut the corners which I applied some weld metal
to later in the process.

A little welding and sanding later.

I used the dremel tool to cut out the middle.

The same process was used for the heater controls.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture. This is the original bracket for this control switch. At this
point I decided that too much of the switch was showing out the right side of this bracket
and my new one.

So I decided to add on to the new bracket. The same form was used to shape the addition.

Lots of mig welds

Close enough for a little bondo...



I tried the switch on at it looked like it stuck out too far from the face of the bracket.
So I decided to try and recess the panel a little bit around the switch. I used this flat
wood bit to cut a recess in the panel form.

I hauled the parts over to the hydraulic press and used this socket to form the recess.

It worked out okay I think.


Body worked and in primer for now.
That's all for now, thanks for watching and commenting!

 

Yes, body work sucks. Taking a break now and then is the only relief. I love that little switch box; I doubt many will realize that it is completely fabricated when the car is sitting on the lawn. You're doing a great job.

 

Good job on the little stuff as well, Sam.

I share your frustration...it is so disappointing when you get handed a poor quality job with an invoice that reflects the going rate or better pricing (and this is not limited to the car hobby!). It's one of the reasons that I've learned to do so many things for myself...but like you, I've not yet invested in chroming industry.

 

Sam, looks like you are making great progress.
Just got done having 4 weeks off of shop time for the same procedure. I was really hoping I wouldn't need glasses. I can see, but not close up without my glasses. They said they could put some sort of corrective lenses in my eyes for $6000 with no guarantee I still wouldn't need readers. You know how many cars, parts or tools you buy with $6000?

 

Thank you Joel! I pretty sure nobody will notice it but I will

True, I have been having quite a time getting my window glass cut too. More on that later.

I got my new glasses a couple of weeks ago. I still have some fuzzy vision. I don't know if it is the side effects of the surgery , medications I take or something else. Kind of frustrating. I passed on the expensive lenses also. I have worn glasses so long it would be just unnatural to to do without them.

So we stretched out the body work break for a while longer since the dash projects are a little more interesting and fun to work on.

Let's do the 12 volt socket/ash tray project first.

I have no use for an ash tray so lets repurpose this thing for something I can use. We are
going to put this 12 volt socket in this ash tray.

It is a tight fit but doable.

Pattern from clear plastic.

It needed a spacer bushing to get the socket up to a usable height in the tray.



Used a couple of multi bits to drill the hole. The 12V socket was still to low in the
ash tray.

So I made a false bottom in the ash tray out of 16 gauge steel. I cut a slot with the Dremel
disk to slide the bottom plate into.

Cut a small slot in the front of the ash tray and stuck a bit of the new floor out of the slot.

Front and back welded.

Note the round tab was cut off the retainer clip.

My Garmin adapter fits in to the socket well and should not vibrate out. Note the handle.
That thing is brand new and malformed (another product quality problem).

The 12 V adapter came with a cap. I don't think I will use it but it looks good in there.

 

More dashing projects.
I have been looking at those throttle and choke knobs that no longer have a use on this
project. So decided the throttle lever would work well for a wiper motor control. I had
considered using the rotary switch that came with the wiper motor in the stock location
on top of the dash. This top position would require some modification to and the I didn't
like the knob choices for it anyway.

So a plan was hatched to convert the sliding throttle lever to operate the radial switch.
After a lot of thinking this is what we came up with.

We fiddled around with this thing for about a week trying to get it engineered.


A lot of adjustments were built in to get things aligned.

More fine tuning was done after this picture.



Filled the hole.

After we were happy with the function of the switch we decided to make sure it would work
with the wiper motor in place. You know 10 pounds of bread in a 5 pound box!

Of course it didn't fit ( by about 1/8") So we had to spend a few more hours shortening the
brackets and the stroke of the arm.


The light switch also had to be shortened a little with the belt sander along with turning
it what I consider upside down.

Fits now.
Bye for now! thanks for watching