Projects Tony Miller's Custom 40 Ford Convertible

Wow, it's great seeing some late 30's early 40's customs being built. Great lines, it's a real credit to all involved!

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Here is a comparison of 40 Ford and 40 Merc bumpers. Hope this helps.

 

Stu, we had this discussion (you and I + a bunch of others) a while ago -- see posts 149-165. I like the Merc bumper, but not a lot more than the Ford; if I found one at a reasonable price, I'd want to try it on the car. But I think the Ford bumper is fine too, and there are many other fish to fry yet.

Thanks for the comparison photos!

 

Let’s back up a little bit. On our last major update we were fitting the tail lights and rear bumper. The tail lights didn’t fit the fender as nice as we wanted so we re-shaped the outside corners of the fenders to give them a little more girth. This allowed us to mount the tail lights with the point at the top right on the peak of the fender while keeping the lights vertical.

 

Our vision for the grille in this car is for it to look very much like a 40 Mercury grille. Here are a few examples if you’re not familiar with what that looks like.

 

Next up was determining the profile of the peak of the grille and the beak of the hood. This is an important detail in the overall profile and proportion of the car. In Tony’s words, he didn’t want the front looking like Neanderthal Man’s forehead, and if the car, minus the bumper were to run into a wall, the hood should be the first thing to touch.
Since we’re working with what was a 40 standard hood we decided to start there. We borrowed a 40 standard grille that was in pretty good shape and used it to build a jig to be used in fabricating our grille.

 

We also fitted the standard grille to the car to see how it fit with the modifications that we had made. We knew going in that it would be too tall because we added about an inch to the lower edge of the hood. That was done to maintain the proportions between the pie cut hood and the grille. On every other sectioned 40 I’ve seen, the proportions look wrong to me because the height was taken out of the hood and none from the grille. Our hood is about two and a half inches lower than stock so, we added one inch to the bottom edge and will take that inch out of the grille height. Clear as mud?
The first surprise came when we discovered that the hood was shorter than the grille. A little more research revealed that 40 standard hoods are in fact a little short of the grille and the space is taken up by the trim on the bottom edge of the hood. Since we won’t be using that trim we needed to lengthen the hood at least that much.

 

We made a profile gauge of the grille and hood as they were and then transferred that to paper so we could begin designing what we wanted for the front profile. A few emails back and forth with Tony and we settled on a profile that we thought would look good.

 

Next up, I used the jig to make a prototype center bar and grille skeletal structure that we could install in the car to fine tune the profile and use as a guideline for modifying the hood.

 

Here are a bunch of shots of the rhinoplasty. During this time we also did quite a bit of work to tighten up the hood to fender gaps.

 

Once the hood modifications were done we used the prototype grille skeleton as a template to make a new center bar and skeletal structure.

 

Somewhere around this time we discovered that the grille attachment points on the fenders were going to be in the way of the mostly horizontal bars that we planned to use in the grille so, we had to modify the mounting arrangement to be more like the Mercury grille with tabs a little farther back.

 

Since we want the grille to look very much like a stock 40 Mercury grille only sized and styled for this particular car, we used some beat up Mercury grille pieces to gain some critical dimensions. I cut one of the undamaged bars from the grille and used it as a pattern to make a pattern for our grille bars. Our local water jet wizard used that pattern to cut 60 bars that we would then individually fit to our grille. The top two bars were cut a little wider than the rest and we also had him cut the side plates of the grille from the same 3/16” stainless stock.

 

With the grille skeleton back in the jig we went about the tedious task of fitting each bar to the grille using a spacer clamped between the previous installed bar and the one being welded as each bar was tig welded in place. The grille chin is just mocked up at this point. The final chin piece will have the bottom edge rolled under. I told Tony that we will probably make three chin pieces so, they can be replaced quickly as they will surely hit the ground at some point.

 

We were all very pleased with how the grille turned out.

 

The next step is fitting the chrome eyebrows that attach to the hood and finish off the top edge. We have a rough pair of Mercury eyebrows that we are fitting to the hood. The shape is quite different from the bottom edge of the hood right now. I kicked around the idea of making some new eyebrows from aluminum or brass to fit the hood and the grille but they just wouldn’t have the right shape so, we’re going to have to do some more surgery on the hood to get it to fit the eyebrows.

 

Since Tony was on his way for a visit and I wanted to provide a visual on how I intended to make the hood fit the eyebrows, I used modeling clay to fill in the gap and give an indication of where the metal work would be and what it would look like. We also gave it fresh squirt of brown so we could take some more glamour shots for our chronicles of the project.

 

Before we shot the brown we sprayed some “chrome in a can” over the areas where side and hood trim might be on the finished car and then taped it off. After Tony eyeballed it for a while and shot some pictures, we peeled the tape off to reveal what it might look like with the trim installed.

 

i just found this thread not long ago, and i love your project. i have a picture of it, but did'nt know where it came from. i've been blown away finding out how many modifications were done. very inspiring. i have a 40 coupe project myself, but it will be more stright forward than yours!

 

I only wish the build could go faster! I am in awe of the beauty being created here!

 

Your skills, vision and execution blow me away! This truly is "coachwork" of our time.



'27 T Roadster build: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=734383

 

Wow. I've been watching this thread and have been impressed, but my mind is blown with that grille! Thanks for all the detail pics of the process of making that beauty.

 

Looking good guys! No Looking Excellent!

 

Absolutely beautiful work.

 

After seeing the most recent work on the grille and the primered front end, I've changed my mind from what I wrote above. I think now that a trim strip down the top/center of the hood, ending in a bullnose at the front, will look cleaner with the grille than it would to continue the trim strip all the way down the center of the prow.

 

Me too! We've now set a target date to have a running, driving car (not with complete cosmetics, however), and Don said that he may have to work faster than the speed of money. This is fairly alarming, of course, so I need to start peddling some stuff from my stash in order to keep up with his progress.

 

Just what I need, another post from ya'll to make me feel evan more like a slackard and incompetent on a Sunday morning.

Awe inspiring and beautiful work.

 

Looking great guys. I have built one grill myself and truly appreciate the time and effort that took!

 

That came out real nice...awesome job!!!

 

Very impressive to say the least! Beautiful.