Well, I'm back from a rough week. I'll get the finla things out in the mail this week, I promise. Jury duty, death in the family (thanks for the thoughts and prayers), funeral, crazy kids, and a wedding coming up this weekend. A very trying week. One small glimer of light to round out last week was the trip I took to follow up on a couple of things offered to me. I posted a "for trade" ad on Fordbarn a while back looking to trade my T coupe body for an A coupe body. I received a call from a guy that said he had a rough coupe body that he was looking to sell, not trade. It was only a couple of hours away and we were coming back his way after dropping off the oldest boy at college. We drove up narrow two-lane highways, to turn off onto a narrow two-lane gravel road, only to turn to a narrow one-lane 'rock' and dust road to find this guy's farm. It's getting dusk when we arrive. He takes me out to the barn (red of course) and I can tell it's an A coupe, but the condition is hard to get a real handle on since it's so dark. I took some digital pics and when I look at them, I realize this thing still has paint on it. I tell him, I'll take it and then he tells me about another A he has in his garage. He says he needs to sell them both since he's on the mend from open heart surgury and can't play with all of his toys like he used to. We walk over to his garage and he opens it up to reveal two model A's in it. One is his 'driver' '28-9 closed cab pickup with a stock four and a T-5 backing it up to an open drive conversion. Nearly perfect red paint and black fenders. Yeah, I got some pics of that too, but forgot to bring the pics from the first trip down there with me today. Then he shows me a nearly complete '28 two-door sedan waiting for paint and an interior. After he told me what he wanted for it (it was more since the body was so good, he said), I told him I would have to buy them both. These are the pics from when we picked them up last Saturday. While we were there, the guy's neighbor, walks over (he's restoring an A hack wagon) and asks if I have a steering box for the coupe yet. I said not yet and he offers a newly rebuilt two-tooth model A steering box with column for what it cost him to have an 'old guy' rebuild it, $50. That came home with me, too. I got to ride in the hack wagon (sans body) from the cowl back and we almost ran into a cow that had escaped his field. I was also given the opportunity to drive this guy's little red pick up as I had never driven an A before. I was stoked to drive that thing around. The five speed conversion is the real deal if you want to put a lot of miles on a stock banger. Here's the pics from this weekend. You can see the condition of the coupe when we got it out of the barn. I will also add that both bodies had most of the wood still in them and most of the wood is still good. He also gave me an extra windshield and seats as well as all the garnish moulding for the coupe. The coupe is to be my hotrod and the coupe is going to be something more drivable that my wife should have fun in. When we were at the HAMB drags this year, she fancied an orange two door A and I took note of it, now she will have one to drive. r
I had a pick up load of stuff that constituted the 'extras'. I think I'll keep them. I've wanted a A coupe for a hotrod for years and always wanted a 'stocker' A for a Sunday driver. r
Wow, what an up and down week. Sounds like it ended on an up note, but really sorry to hear about your loss.
Sorry about the trying week and loss. Congrats on the cool scores. I have a 47 ford rearend if you want to do some horse trading. I think it would work well in the coupe. Tim
Congrats on the score. That's a late 31 coupe. Built after April 1931 because of that teardrop shaped indent in the passenger side firewall. If there is a round hole in the package tray on the passenger side, it also had an optional roll down rear window. Those were only available in the last 3-4 months of production. Again. Cool scores!
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