The hours of wet sanding are done and now Jay and Duke are well into the cut & buff stages on the Ron Dunn Ford. We'll be moving into final assembly before too long!
it's the natural light playing off the color, where the inside light is giving us the correct hue. it had me wondering for a minute too.... BTW MAN that is a beautiful car.
I really enjoyed seing this one with patina at the GNRS! It looked nice for sure, but a car like this deserves to be in a good condition! It looks great with a new paint job!
This has always been one of my favorite Shoeboxes ! Still have my old "little pages" mags. when it was originally shown & featured. Can't think of a better shop to restore it. Steve is one of the nicest pros in the business, and his standards have always been of the highest caliber. Some great stories on the HOFL Site from our Interview a few years back with him. Congrats on an utterly fantastic save & restore ! Jonnie www.legends.thewwbc.net
Went back and was reading TRJ feature on the car, Did you ever figure out the air cleaner set up and the exhaust system ?
Yes, we have the exhaust figured out. It was split behind the header pipe and there were two glass packs installed by Huth Muffler (originally). Still brain storming on the air cleaner but I think I have the answer. Headliner going in today. 99.9% of all mysteries are solved. Restoring this car was like a treasure hunt and a lot of fun. I feel like a "history detective", but luckily there was a lot of magazine coverage on the car and quite a few pictures available through different sources. A special thanks here to Greg Sharp at the NHRA Motorsports Museum in southern California and also all the people who helped us in the "discovery" process. The real fun part is taking place now with the assembly process and all of the restored details and items going on. It's like hanging ornaments on the tree. Phew, glad I have that over with on the home front for the season.
Car looks awesome! I have two questions concerning the engine compartment: 1) is that chassis black you have used? I really like how it looks and doesn't look super high gloss. 2) Curious about the change in color along transition from the firewall to the toe boards. I assume it's on purpose that the body color doesn't go all the way down to where the black starts, but what is the reason?
The chassis is painted a black that duplicates the original Ford chassis appearance as near as we could figure. The first version done in 1951 the entire car was painted a metallic red tone and they (Valley Custom) painted onto the top of the firewall that color also at that time. When Valley did the second version in 1956-7 they painted the top of the firewall black to cover the overspray of second version overspray color on the first version color. So we did the same. Make sense? I knew people would question that and it looks a bit strange , but, it is what was done and our goal during this whole process was to "restore" as correctly as possible.
Makes total sense. I figured it would be something like that and was just curious about the "back story" of an interesting detail. Thanks for the reply!
was that Crestliner recast at Quality Restorations or Koch's ? Quality did my Crestliner a few years back and was perfect... Your restored wheel looks great !
Steve, I hadn't checked in on this thread in quite a while. I'm glad to see you're on track for the GNRS. The car looks excellent. Curt
No, Ron Dunn is no longer alive. Steve had bought the car from Ron's nephew. To our knowledge Ron did not have a chopped '40 convertible.
The Jalopy Journal
