Customs The life of Losthope's 1954 Ford!!

I was thinking the same thing! HRP

 

He has become a bit addicted to a 1966 chevy truck at the moment. He will get back on the car soon enough. Lol

 

Been spending alot of time on my truck so i can use it as my daily driver since i wrecked my other daily driver truck! here is a thread on those trucks : http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=629142/ but the truck is about complete enough to be used as a driver.......Been having some teeth problems and dont have dental so i just dropped a $1000 at the dentist and have alot more dental work to get done so alot of my spare funds will be going to that...

but do have some small plans for the 54 like getting the carter 4bbl 500cfm carb rebuilt and installed instead of the 600cfm edelbrock that i used to get it running, I also plan on doing the aero springs up front and getting rid of the cut coils,Im going to redo all the drum brakes and do the self adjusting brakes upgrade,I also have a door popper kit thats been waiting to be installed for the past 6 months and shave the handles,and i need to finish the frenched headlights.....then off to frenching the tail lights and going to try my best at bodyworking a panel at a time so the car most likely will be put back in primer for awhile...also need new side glass and door felts and seals,...really im just going to make it ride and stop better and then bodywork the car as i drive it....i lose motivation when my cars dont run and dont have a garage to really do alot of work in at one time! Ill keep it updated as soon s i get working on it again but I still own it, it didnt go anywhere LOL!

 

Good job. Thats coming along real nice and once ya gotter done, It will be the one of a kind we all aspire to. And with friends in the driveway,, wont ever get better.

 

Nice progresson in the quality of stuff you're doing...from page 1 to re-doing paint again on page 2!

 

Thank you!

I guess that Im a little older my Idea of style is changing who knows what ill be doing to the car next year or the year after, but I atleast hope im progressing as i go...

Alright "Rustyfords" and "Mr. HRP" You guys have been my ford buddys for quite awhile and made me feel bad about spending more time with my chevy truck and neglecting my good ol ford, so today was dedicated to it!

First thing i did was try and get the bondo fordor front clip to fit better and have the body lines at the doors match, this is a major task when the body is straight solid stock metal ,and the front clip your using fender lines are sculpted and barely resemble the stock lines but I got them lined up pretty good for a driver, But right before I was done with the 1st task of the day the fordor comes back from the grave and bites me in the ass once again take a look:

theres literally no good usable metal on the rear of the fender from the bottom up for 1 1/2 feet, except where the fender wheel well lip is...(this is on both fenders there is no way to attach the bottoms to the car they kinda just sit there!) and the in front of the fenders(as seen in older pictures posted) they are caked with bondo up to the headlight buckets......And one of the main reasons for ditching the fordor and swapping a metal body tudor on..

As stated in older posts the game plan is to replace the fenders with atleast better ones when some are found, but for the time being I have to work with what i got so what do I do?

I figure I have a couple choices of a temp fix:

1#.first fix would ideally is to replace the lower rears with sheet metal, the only concern is theres limited metal around the fender whell to weld to and i dont think i can fab that part with only having sheet metal experience with sheet metal for roof caps and ac/heater unit's in the construction field,which has nothing to do with my problem, not to mention I have very few sheetmetal working tools maybe a couple pairs of tin snips,body hammers, folding pliers.....and only a 110 "harbor frighten" flux core welder since im a renter with no 220 outlet...Im always down to jump in and take a stab at new things but doubt this big of a project is best to start with...


2#. would be take it to a shop and have someone properly fix the rear area's on fenders , but then I still have bondo filled fronts, not to mention I dont have much money at the moment,and the fenders dont fit right anyways, so putting money towards fenders im going to replace anyways at somepoint doesnt make much sense to me..


3#.would be to sculpture the part that fell off with fiberglass-resin and mesh and body filler, which I know is a big no no, and wouldnt be a thought in my mind if i thought i was going to use these fenders and if they were saveable, but starting to sound good untill i can find fenders...

4#. Say hell with it at leave a hole in my fender...

Im not planning on painting the car besides a rattle can job till fenders are found just looking for a little advise on what i should do????

Well after the start of the day took a downward spiral I decided to work on one side of the car and weld the holes in the front fender where the mainline emblem was(which is no longer needed since I now have a customline and all the trim) shave the antenna hole and the door handle and lock hole....once again im only putting work in on these fenders because its all I have to work with at the moment plus its basically my first time shaving anything on a car so i figured it would work for practice also:



and last thing I did for the day was changed the oil in the y-block!

doesnt look like much but its something!

 

You had told me the front fenders were junk, but I had no idea how bad they were!

Good to see you making progress. I wouldn't think decent '54 Ford fenders would be that hard to find...

 

The problem is it is a common place to rust out, So the ones that are still good are on cars! I have to find a cheap fordor parts car with good fenders, our at least "METAL" ones...there was a $500 two door parts car on C.L near here but i dont have a extra $500 but decided to call anyways so when I go to call the number it expired that would have been nice to also get the split bench seat and other parts, then i emailed a guy with a add for parting out a 54 ford but no reply...im gonna shoot him another one soon giving it a day or so....

 

Well I still need new fenders But i did something to get me by for now!

Since I knew in my heart That just smearing some more bondo or fiber glass wasnt the right thing to do and id just be just like the guy before me.

After i laid in bed last night thinking about the situation i came up with a game plan. try and weld in a patch panel for the first time....what can it hurt cant mess it up more then it is...and if I dont balls up and try ill never learn how...

So Ive been lugging the 4 doors from the old car to swap meets and to storage, and to a couple diffrent houses ive moved to ,and for the life of me couldnt sell them here,craigslist,swap meets so you fordor guys dont get mad at me I tried to save them, and the other three doors have bondo for sure....so I took the drivers door since i knew it was all metal since i had bought it years ago from "Big M" junkyard...It has the same curve I needed as the fender...so after more inspection I found out i was just seeing the undercoating on the backside of the fender and not bondo so i started to grind the bondo off the fender and about 1/2" thick and 9" up i found good metal....

the donor door for patch panel:


heres another chunk of the lower fender:


cut to size and welded in, the double folded edge of the bottom of the door I put on bottom to give it some strength:


The fender lip is still in pretty bad shape, dont know how if I can make that part:


I know im going to have to put some body filler on it to make it look half way decent and match the old, And I might not have done it quite the proper way but i think it is good enough to get me by untill i get some new feners and better then just re-bondoing it...

heres another problem section, the bondo was bubbling out from rust under neath Ground out another 3/8 of bondo and found the problem...

Still working on it....but so far Im pretty proud of my self..

 

you need to slow down. your making all the guys with garages look bad!

 

Man....You are cruising with these projects!!! Makes me feel like I need to go out and get another one, just to try to keep up with you!! The coolest thing about your rides is that you made something out of nothing and didn't pull out a fancy shop or fat wallet to do it. I've said it before but have to say it again...you are very inspiring to a lot of us!!! You have balls too and aren't afraid to get out and make shit happen. I LOVE IT!!! That 54 is SLICK!!!! Now I got to keep an eye on both of your threaads!!!

Have fun today and Happy Easter, Bro.....J (Bugsy)

 

Nice Job. Been there, done that and the rewards are great. Have fun and enjoy.

 

thanks man!"Glendale" and I are in the Planning stage of getting it chopped , so hopefully if all goes to plan it should be going under the knife after santa maria car show!

thank you!

Well got a little more done, the tail lights frenched , still need to d a little more body work on them but its supposed to rain for the next 5 days ,so i rattled canned some paint on them to get a idea:

 

Well it was raining off and on today but I did get some work done sitting in my aluminum shed, when I was working on frenching of the tail lights the other day the deck lid kept catching my attention cause it doesnt fit right since it was the fordors deck lid,I was just lazy and threw it on back in the day because it was already in primer paint and i didnt feel like sanding the rust one from the two door....well I dragged out the two door deck lid and welded up the trim holes and started taking it down to bare metal its kinda pitted in some areas and has a small dent but the body lines should line up better then the one on there now:

I also decided id use the door popper for the passenger side door for a trunk popper, I didnt feel like buying a trunk popper and figured i could lean over and open the passenger door, so i got it mounted on the new deck lid:

well thats it for now..

 

Looking seriously good!

Looks like your car was originally a Sandalwood Tan car like mine was.

Congrats on taking on the sheet metal...it takes balls to jump in there like that.

 

I honestly think you did the right thing trying to save the doors from your cast off body but as you said nobody stepped up to the plate and bought them and you have good sheet metal for patch panels now.

You have learned like some of us older guys that you can do a lot with very little if you are determined to do so.

I have be at this a long time and remember working on the ground in all kinds of crappy weather,,this thread brings back good memories of those days.

Just keep plugging away at that old '54,,your work is paying off and best of all you have the mind set to try and that my friend is admirable. HRP

 

this, is a cool "do with whatcha got" thread. bitchin build man.

 

First I saw of this thread, and it's cool to see the car evolve.

 

ya i think both the four door and two door were both sandal wood tan.

thank you "HRP" coming from you that means alot to me!

thanks man!

thank you , more changes to come!

well I been messing around with the body work still, I got some panels in primer, and got the trunk lid on and hooked some poppers, I have a safety door button installed inside the engine compartment in case i lose the remote,heres a video dont mind the crap in the trunk thats my catch all storage space:

CLICK THE PICTURE TO VIEW VIDEO:

 

Great poppers, man!!! I don't know how in the hell you keep getting all of this done to TWO vehicles and I can barley get some damn naugahyde stretched over a crappy seat this past week!!! Also, evertime I start to feel sorry for myself and my tiny, broke down, 90 year old garage, I think about you churning away under no cover!!! Motivating...man...motivating!!!!

 

Well Jason dont feel to bad!
The secret is that i have nothing but time on my hands at the moment in not able to goto work at my job, still waiting for the doctor to scheduled my foot surgery i needed since the wreck i had in my truck april 2011, I basically had to stop smoking cigs because smoking and foot surgerys are high risk of loosing feet, and let my body heal itself for the past year in order to do the surgery, in the next couple months i should be having my ankle joint fused together and be bed ridden again for 2-3 months then after that 2-3 months on crutches,so youll have time to catch up

 

Oh man....I'm damn sorry to hear all of that, I had no idea. I'll shut my pie hole now. I should ship you to Kansas and put you to work on my crap for a while though!

 

This is a great thread. I am keeping track of what you are doing and from the looks of it you are doing a great job. I am also in the works of tearing down my 54 Ford and adding a wiring kit. I guess this trans adapter will also fit the 239 Y-block. How hard is the rewiring job? anything I should do that may make it easy to install? I was planning on removing the dash to install the pods in.

 

No big jason! I would be wondering also, cause i know when i was working 9-5 spare time and motivation were always scarce...

If your going 12 volt and using a universal wiring kit , I suggest if your doing a complete rewaire tear out all the old wiring first , it may sound dumb but if you try and look at the old wiring and try and figure out the new harness youll only stump your self ...ive done 4 cars now and after awhile of staring at the old wires i end up yanking them all out and starting clean, read the diagrams and each wire thats labeled and youll figure it out..
...If you take your time (sometimes step back and breath) and look at the diagrams that comes with the harness a closely youll figure it out, also dont be scared to pick up the phone and call the tech support line thats what they are there for, the thing that seems to stump me everytime is the turn signal switch at first but just take your time and dont over think it .....really after you do your first car youll agree its not that difficult \,
also i take the dash out on the cars that ive done if they come out and prewire all the bulbs ect.... then hook up the main wires when the dash is back in...

 

Cool !

 

Been busy around the house and being sick but did make it out to the sacramento swap meet and picked up some hubcaps, since im going to try and build the car more as a custom i decided to ditch the red rims and dog dish's and go full caps..

slowly im getting more of the car in primer, i picked up two sets of hubcaps some 50's ford hub caps, and some unknown to me caps....i put some bullets on them and popped them on just to see which ones i like better, i havent put the skirts on yet or painted the rims but heres some pictures i think im liking the unknown set better:

ford caps:



unknown caps:

 

Looking good.

 

I think the "unknown" caps might be mid-50's Plymouth...

 

I was right. Looks like 55-56 Plymouth. They look good on the car.

I prefer the Fords without the bullets, but it wouldn't be very "kustom" to run stock Ford caps on a Ford, would it???

 

Ya if i was going to run some stock ford caps id just run the dog dishs and beauty rings and paint the wheels a different color...

I was at "Big M's" spot at the swap meet and one of the guy's spotted me carrying them an said he thought that they were 55 plymouth's but to tell you the truth i didnt really pay attention and could only remember he said "55 something" and i never bothered to look them up...LOL

well i dug my fender skirts out of the shed , I had bought them off ebay years ago but couldnt install them on the old fordor because they didnt match up to the rear fenders that werre sculpted out of bondo. At the time I was painting the car black ,I just shot them real quick without stripping the old paint off them so they didnt look to good so i started stripping them today:

Rattle canned primered them on my hillbilly painting rack:

the skirts didnt come with the bracket/clamps for the bottom edges so i needed something to hold them to the car i went to homedepot and bought some patio sliding door locks:

I had to modify them a little by cutting the extra lip they have off:


I forgot to take a picture but i ended up cutting them in half and making to locks out of one patio lock( I could have just bought window locks but a double patio lock was the same price as a single window lock)

The skirts are missing the rubber edging where it meets the fender so i got to figure something out for that but here they are installed for a glance at how they turned out:

got them fitting pretty good and pretty happy i can actually use them after holding on to them for so long:

I ended up using the set of 50's ford hubcaps on the rear because with thesse fender skirts you can still see alot of wheel/rim so i think it made it look a little nicer where you can see the chrome cap: