Projects 1939 Ford Convertible Sedan Resurrection

Lookin good. I sure like all of the problem solving.

 

Great work! I am all caught up again. Nothing better than binge watching a build thread.

 

Great progress! that back seat will be easier to get into than a rumble seat!

 

I am totally late to the party, its looking great with very inventive solutions to unique problems.

 

LOL, a lot of good a a fancy shoulder belt would be in one of theses tubs.....

Thanks! Problem solving keeps us young!

Thanks bandit! I can think of worse things to binge on

Thanks Johnboy34! That's true it should be...

Thank you Crusty Chevy that was quite binge you went on catching up.

HOOD FIT:
We finally got around to fitting the front sheet metal. Considering we started at the back of the car and worked our way forward we were concerned about the front end fit. It is never easy on a 39-40 ford. As you know there are several elements involved in the fit. This is the first element we corrected. After getting a decent preliminary fit we discovered a serious flaw. This was similar to a problem I had on my Forty a few years ago.


The hood stuck out quite a bit on the drivers side.

So here's the culprit. This support was bent pushing the hood side out.at the hinge.

Rear view.

The other side was fine. Some of the stuff I read on this subject said that the brace should
be flat against the hood and actually showed it that way in pictures. This hood seems to fit
in this configuration though.



So we cut the brace out and after considerable hammer and vise work it was ready to go
back in. decided to primer the area behind it first.

The pinch weld area is a little tricky and we had to add some sheet metal just to the left
on the hood. Don't know why that was missing.

Results.... Much better fit.

Still a little off here but we can adjust this a little more.

 

Inner Fender:

I will be using these Mr40's fat stuff inner fenders on this project.


had to trim a little off here for clearance.

Since the stock 39/40 v brace won't work in this SBC , and Mr. 40's
application we had to make some new supports.

I used some 16 gauge steel to fabricate the new supports.





I think I will add a large fabricated oval shaped washer here on the inside to strengthen
this area. I'll post a picture when I do.

The bottom cowl brace on this 39 sticks out here unlike the 40 which is straight here.
This makes the flat panel stick out too far. So a little T cut was made

Bending it out a little at the cut gives it a enough clearance to clear the brace. I'll weld this
up when we take the front end off.

 

Always learn something from your posts, and realize what a hack I am. Great workmanship!

 

Nice work Sam...(as always!).

 

looking forward to more updates, yet another job on my 'to-do' list

 

Thanks okiedokie! That is always nice to hear that something can be learned from stuff I post. It seems like I learn something everyday out here in the shop. This project has required a lot of learning as we go from one challenge to another.

Thanks Tim!

We are a little way ahead of the updates I have been posting lately. I have a short one for today.

Grill Stuff: I am fortunate to havve four 39 deluxe grills to work with on this project. The grill I chose to use had this bar mounted way forward as shown (arrow) . I am not sure what type of latch that was supposed to work with.



This is the grill and hood latch assembly that came with my project car. It is my understanding
that this is the early 39 system. This grill needs a lot of work so I decided to transfer the
latch mechanism to the better green grill.

I am not really a fan of this latch system.

So far this wire type latch has proven pretty touch and noisy.

Here is a better shot of the system in latched mode. I have considered swapping the whole
assembly out for the 40 ford style. I may still do that.....

Of course the assembly was riveted to the grill. drilled the rivets in the center and
then punched them out. 1/4 inch bolts will replace the rivets.

The green grill came with this cross support but because it was mounted farther forward
with the previous cross brace it was too short for this application. So an extension had to
be fabricated.

Had to custom fit it and tack it in the car.

Finished up the welds in the bench vise.



While I was doing the latch modification, Don was busy making these air baffles.

I know that Ford used air baffles in 1940. Can anyone tell me if they were supplied on
1939 Deluxe fords? These came out real nice. He had to put one bend in the panels
to get them to follow along the leading edge of the radiator.

One of my buddies was watching us work on this baffle thing and showed up a couple days
later with this stuff to finish off the baffle to radiator interface. Said he found it on the internet.
Sorry I don't have any part number or specifications for you.

 

Spent a good part of the rainy cold day here catching up on your build Sam. You and Don are definitely “solution “ guys. Wealth of knowledge being passed on here and the board should be grateful you take the time to share…..I certainly do.

 

Mmm, I have to do that. A job for next time the radiator is in.

 

Thanks for taking a look at the thread i'rant ! Problem solving keeps the build interesting for us. If people don't learn from this content I hope they are a least entertained and maybe encouraged to step up and give some of this building stuff a try.

I am looking forward to seeing your solution to the baffle issue on your sloper. It should be a more challenging project than this one was.

Here's one more baffling project:

I think Ford called this piece a gravel pan. This one came with the car.



The paint was pretty thin so it didn't take too long to media blast it.For some reason
it did not fit around the base of the radiator. So we had to cut all of the spot welds
out and and reassemble it just a little wider.

The pan was way to deep for this application. Leaving as stock would have made
hooking up the bottom hose a real pain and the drain would have been almost
impossible.

So out some surgery was required.

I decided to fill in this hole. Of course it was not flat so this little plug let me play
with hammers,dollies and the planishing hammer. I would place a tac weld then
tap the piece into position as worked my way around.


Little grinder/sander work later.... Also filled in the oblong holes at the front.


This should keep rocks out of here and guide a little air to the radiator.


Finished.

 

You might have the only lower air dam still in existence for this era Ford. Those things got tossed after the first engine rebuild.

Good work!

 

McMaster-Carr sells this stuff, that's where I got mine. Look for edge trim.

 

Nice work ,Sam. I'm definitely going to use that "drip pan" on my pickup and I have been thinking about my coupe also. On the car it's difficult to get it in place, however, trimming it like you show may be the answer. Thanks . I always wondered why Ford put the flat pans (that everyone removed) on my 40; I now think it was for airflow under the chassis to improve the performance of the road draft /pan evacuation system. Not everything Ford did was wrong.

 

More great stuff from you and Don!
The pics really help to simplify things in my old brain.
Thanks for sharing with us.

 

I see a lot more cardboard in my future!

 

Looking to get in touch with you about a hood you have.

 

Looking to get in touch with you about a hood you have.

Creative64, I sent you a PM. The white hood is still for sale.

 

Great work as always. I enjoy following along and seeing you work out solutions to the little things that crop up. It also makes me aware of some of the things I will probably encounter during my build. Thanks for taking the time to share.

 

I'm admiring the 'inside/never see it when' items you open up to rust inside...And remove them and take them to be sandblasted!
So many others replace some skin...only to cover up a rusted inner that looks like a trisquet! (Love 'em, but they remind me of the insides of old rusty subframes, and backings of bad rockers...)
Very thorough, Sam. I salute. (and imitate)

 

Thanks Alchemy! Yes I suppose a lot of people have discarded them in the past as they may it kind if difficult to install radiator hoses.

Yes, Mc Master Carr is a great resource for the unusual stuff you will seldom see in a local hardware or car parts store.

Hi Joel, I think they may have installed that pan for the same reason I like to use them, ( making all that air that comes through the grill go through the radiator. I highly recommend using them.

Thank you hotrodA! Happy to see you are still watching the build!

You are welcomeronzmtrwrx ! Seems like this car has more than the usual amount of little things to sort out. Never boring though.

Thanks Mike! We do see the value in getting rid of as much rust as possible even though neither of us will likely be around long enough see what the benefits of the extra work I sleep better knowing I did the best I could to preserve this old relic for the future.

Lets move on to the getting a fan in this old car.

Now that the radiator is in we needed to install the motivation for this car and see how
much room we have for a fan. Turns out ,not much.....

This little 350 has a blower on it, so we have this blower belt pulley to deal with. After a lot
of measuring we figured we had about 2 5/8" to work with at the pulley.

After a lot of internet searching we decided to try this 16" fan. It had a decent CFM rating
(I think it was 2500) and it was pretty thin at 2 5/8".

We liked the motor being tucked down inside the fan hub. Most are not.

This is our third fan shroud project so we came up with a plan that eliminates the plastic
shroud that comes withe the fan. The first project was to cut a mounting flange for the
fan. I tried using the drill press first but it could not swing this big hole saw.

So I switched to the good old Milwaukee wrist breaker my Uncle Mike gave me many
years ago. Drilling with caution I made it through the plate without a visit to the ER.

Next was bending some 3/8" rod to span the radiator.

This one way we tried bending the rod. This didn't work to well. I eventually made a
simple fixture for this project that worked great but I forgot to get a picture of it. getting
the span just right was difficult and took a few tries. I was glad I bought a few extra lengths
of rod.


Time to lay out the shroud on some 19 gauge sheet metal.

The first bend was made on the old frame this old car project came on.

It hadn't rained in a long time here so of course it had to do so while we were outside
doing this little project. So we just clamped the panel on the frame and slowly hammered
the panel into a rounded 90 degree bend on two sides.

Cut bend .

To bend the other two sides we clamped the panel to this fixture on the table.

We used the same hammer technique for this bend. I shaped this corner later.

Two sides needed flanges. We were able to use the sheet metal brake for these.

The top and bottom are just cut off parallel with the bottom of the flange.

Arrow points to the corner before welding. Mocking up the fan location here .
Dividers were used to scribe the fan opening then I highlighted the scribe with red marker
so my old eyes could focus on it.

Screwed the shroud down to some 2 x 4"s to get clearance for the jig saw blade.



You can see here that the old plastic mechanical fan hit the radiator a time or two. I had
this old Walker radiator checked out and it is sound.

The cardboard was used to space the fan off of the radiator.

To be continued!

 

Time to lay out the flaps/ vents



Started cutting them out by drilling some corner holes with a multi bit. and dremmel tool.



Time fro a test fit.

With the fan centered with cardboard it was time to weld on the fan support brackets.

16 gauge sheet metal was used for the mounting flanges for the brackets.

Ready for paint.

Made a little paint booth.


Mounting the vent flaps. Sheet Metal strips were cut for the rivet flange, We used
1/8 aluminum rivets.

The holes were punched a little oversized.so the gasket material wouldn't bunch up when
pinched.


I found the gasket material at McMaster-Carr . It cost $24.00 for just a small piece of this stuff!!


The top and bottom edges of the shroud were covered with the same edging used on the
radiator baffle plates.

Inside.

Outside



This thing really puts out some air flow! Happy with the results so far. There is maybe
enough room to get the blower belt (on it's side) between the fan and the blower pulley.
This project used up about three weeks (maybe more) of our shop time. Hopefully it will result in many worry free miles of reasonable engine temperatures!

 

The engine had the alternator mounted on the drivers side. We couldn't make it work over there so we started another sub project. I wont be running AC on this car so we decided to convert the AC compressor bracket to an alternator bracket.


So this is one of the few times I wish I had a mill. We had to cut out a lot of metal....


So I broke out the old saws all and roughed out the new notch.

A few cross cuts got it roughed in.

A few hours of filing later got it pretty close to what we needed..

Fits good now. Notice the hex head bolt sticking out on the left. Discovered that head
could not be there.

Another revelation is that the SBC right head is farter back than the left head so we had
to make some spacers to line it up with the other pulleys.




As mentioned before the hex head bolt would not work here so once again I wished I had
a mill but decided to try wood bit to countersink the bracket for an allen head cap screw.
To my surprise it worked great.



Even with the recessed bolt the belt was still too close to the bracket.

So I ordered a double pulley for the alternator. Since we didn't need that first groove on
the crank pulley this turned out to be an easy solution to the problem.

The alternator needed a means to adjust the tension.So I fabricated this bracket that attaches
the blower snout.

I was thinking it would be easy to come up with a top radiator hose for this configuration.
Turns out I had to use two partial hoses and metal coupler. When I do the final install
I will cut another hose to smooth out the connection and use some of that shrink tube
stuff instead of clamps to make the connection.I like how that weld turned out on the bracket.
It's my fake tig looking weld done with my little mig welder.

Hope you all are having a good 4th of July!

 

Now that is some “engine”uity. Nice work.

 

Nice job Sam..I'm reminded of my youth, where I would have longed for a sawzall...similar results would have needed to be accomplished through shear stubbornness and perseverence with a hacksaw. Lol.

 

Nice work, Sam. Since you're in the engine bay, are you done with body work?

 

Thanks ronzmerwrx! That engine uty keeps the old mind from going to mush. There is always something to figure out on these projects. Keeps life interesting and my body off the couch as much as possible.

So true! I am a very patient fabricator but I never would have been willing to do that modification with a hack saw.

Nope...Have a few more things to do on the body fab. We just wanted to check grill to radiator clearance which led to doing some more projects while we were in the area. I was thinking it would be a break from the usual body repairs (which it was) but it turned out be a lot of fabrication anyway. It's good to get a lot of this stuff figured out before the car goes to the paint prep stage. It's all (mostly) fun!

Next project was to figure out the plumbing for the cars heater. You may remember the
heater hoses in the car were plumbed to -10 bulk head fittings in the cowl.


After a lot of trail and error and a couple of Summit and speedway orders I was able to
route the hoses in the engine bay to the inner fender panel.


It seemed illogical to me but this 45 and 90 degree fitting combination gave me just the
correct angles to rout the hose past the alternator bracket.

These bulk head 90's make for nice clean transition through the inner fender.I used a
Fragola push on fitting for a lot of the connections. The 90's in the bulkhead made by Earl"s
The push on fittings are easy to work with. There is no way you can pull the hose back off
the fitting. It has to be cut off. You can ask me why I know .


It took awhile to make this bracket. Mostly just hammer work over some steel pipe of the
appropriate dimension.

The clamp holds the hose up out of harms way. This is my third time to use this routing
for the heater hoses on a 39-40 car. Of course each one is a little different. I think this one
will work well.

 

This post should get us to the current progress on the project. The picture below shows my 40's
Air dam and the hood latch mechanism. I show them this for comparison to the 39 Deluxe latching
system. The 40 latching system is much simpler and better (in my opinion) than the early 39 system.
Fabricating the air dam on the top of the grill was straight forward and looks like it should be there.






The 39 system is cumbersome noisy and doesn't lend itself to putting the air dam on the
grill top.

The guides protrude through the upper hood bracket

Latched



I figured I place the air dam on the hood. Paper pattern first of course.

Trial fit #1. Left the back side kind of long at first.

Originally I figured I would use the the holder gizmo (center), but after opening and
losing the hood several times I figured it was a pain in the butt. So it eventually was
eliminated it.







So after cutting and bending the back of this a few times to get clearance for the radiator
I made a new one with just a slot for the hood safety catch.

Just an inside shot. You can see the plate is bent 90 degrees at the back. Stiffens it up a little.

Okay I am all caught up. guess I better get back on the project.