Projects Tim's (aka anothercarguy) 1938 Ford Club Cabriolet Build Thread

MY DAD LIVED IN LOS ANGELES MOST OF HIS LIFE, SO IT IS DOUBTFUL, BUT ALWAYS NICE TO DREAM ABOUT STUFF LIKE THAT......HIS FAVORITE PART OF THE CAR WAS THE SHIFT HANDLE, BEING CURVED, IT SAID IS ALLOWED HIM TO SCOOT HIS DATE A LITTLE CLOSER TO HIM...HAHAHAHAHA.......GREAT CAR, ANYONE WOULD BE PROUD TO OWN AND DRIVE IT...

 

That's a well earned landmark! Congratulations and happy cleaning! I am looking forward to seeing your chosen color on the car. After months of fighting with black panels, that green you have chosen looks like it would have been a better choice for my project.

 

I have no idea why I have not read your build thread before but boy am I glad I have now. All I can say is man you are good. You and The 39 Guy, along with many others on the HAMB make me face up to what a hack I really am. I have truly enjoyed the posts and can’t wait to see what comes next.

 

Thanks Sam...having done my roadster in black, I know what you're going through. Part of the reason I was so easily swayed away from the original plan to paint it black as well.

Thanks @okiedokie being put into the same camp as The 39 Guy (Sam) and many of the other talented HAMB builders is indeed a high honor (I am humbled).

After the parts were squirreled away in the games room, I spent the better part of a week sweeping, blowing off, wiping down and vacuuming up the shop. OMG bodywork is dirty dusty work! It once again feels good to walk into the shop in the morning!

After the shop clean-up I wrapped up a few minor items including making a new set of bolt in across door opening braces. I then began carefully removing and labelling all the body bolts and shims one by one. I hope this will be helpful so I at least have a starting point come time to re-***emble. And once the last body bolt was removed, the body and ch***is were once again separated.



I couldn't help but compare...you've come a long way baby!


I am now doing a bit of clean up on the bottom side to address a bit of flash surface rust that developed on the bottom of the floor pans as well as the spot welds before the body will get mounted on to a body cart.

 

Look at that clean shop!! The ch***is and the body sure look better too! If you have been getting as much rain as we have down here I suppose that new cistern is filling up. Do you pump the water out of the cisterns or use gravity flow? I have decided to use those disc brake parts you brought down last year. I had one of the rotors turned down a little because of some surface rust. The other one had some cosmoline or grease on it and was in better shape.

 

I still have the caliper brackets as well set aside for you for the next time we head your way. I'm not sure why only one of the rotors had cosmoline and the other didn't (I noticed that too). It took 2 weeks for the cisterns to fill...and yes, the water gets pumped out.

 

I can only agree, after having read everything.
Thank you for sharing it.
Regards Harald

 

Thanks for the kind words Harald...and you're doing a great job on your model A coupe project too!

As a small update...with the body on the lift, I spent a few days under the car with the 3m purple stripper wheels and various wire wheels cleaning up the slight surface flash rust that had developed on the bottom side of the floorboards over the past couple years.


I was then planning to mount the body on a rolling cart, and build a paint booth in my shop as I had done when building my roadster. I was thinking I could support the tail of the body with my engine hoist and have the firewall on the ground for painting. Here's a couple photos to show how I did my roadster.


Well, long story short...the '38 body is quite a bit longer than the roadster...and while working on the underside with the body on the lift made me think, why not just shoot it on the lift? Sooo...with a large roll of masking poly and numerous rolls of masking tape in hand...the shop/body/pretty much everything got covered and masked off.
And the firewall and underside got a sealer coat of epoxy.

Next up will be a lap of the underside with brushable/paintable seam sealer (plan for today) followed by finish paint (hopefully tomorrow).

The firewall/underside of my roadster was painted Wimbledon white. I really liked how clean it looked when done, how easy it was to keep clean and notice any leaks but mostly, how bright it was under the car when working on it (as my eyes aren't getting any younger...this is a good thing!). Here's a couple photos of the underside of the roadster to show what I mean.

I have some left over Wimbledon white paint from the roadster project so it makes sense to me to use some of it up (especially at the price of paint these days!).

 

I think that's a great plan. Base /clear I ***ume; the base should flash off pretty quickly and not leave much dust. The clear has to flash and set.

 

The Wimbledon White is single stage. Once the underside/firewall are done I'll go back to my plan of building a "spray booth" in the shop for the rest of the painting (which will be base/clear).

 

Go get em, Tim! Nice work! I painted under the dash white and under the car light grey and it makes it much nicer to work on and see leaks, which is a double edged sword because I still can't get the T5 rear seal to stop. Lol.

 

Thanks Ed...yeah, finding the sign of a leak is only 25% of the battle, locating the specific source another 25%, adding fluid on the required replenishment schedule until it's fixed is about 5% and actually fixing it can be where the real time and effort are consumed.

It doesn't happen often, but the schedule went as forecast...yesterday was spent masking followed by applying the seam sealer to the underside.

And today the underside and firewall got sprayed Wimbledon white. I could have laid it on a little heavier to get a little better flow out, but being rusty with the paint gun and applying finish coat, and being aware of just how many nooks and crannies there are, I didn't want to deal with any runs. For the firewall and bottom side, I'm checking the "good enough and done" box.

I'll give the paint a couple days to set-up before I make mounts for the rolling cart to attach the body. Then, it's time to build a paint booth.

 

Wow, that came out nice Tim! Looking forward to seeing your new paint booth. We just finished adjusting my booth to a smaller size. I am calling paint booth 3.0. I'll post it in my thread soon.