Hot Rods A 40 Ford Coupe for Uncle Mike Build Thread

You bet !! Awesome work.

 

Thanks Kidcampbell71! I have a few more posts in the works. The floor is next.

 

When my Dad built his 55 f-100 for the first time, he repainted it the original "baby blue". I'm pretty sure the factory color was call waterfall blue.
30 years ago when we started the rust-repair on my coupe, about the only sheet metal available were quarters and a tail panel. Neither of which have the proper contours! We used them anyway, and they've always bugged me! Sure is a lot easier to save the 40's now! Looks good!

 

I probably could have just patched the floor pans on this coupe but they were pretty well pitted and had quite a few holes in them in the front. I bought two of Bradley's full length floor pans for the coupe.They are very high quality pieces. Yes I had some issues getting the panels but I had ordered them long before I needed them.

If Carpenter had been offering his full floor at the price he was selling them in August I would have used the full floor with drive shaft tunnel set. It would have been much easier and would have looked much better than this. Well it is what it is. I'll show you how we did it.

 

Here is what both panels looked like. Lots of extra holes for a variety of seats and plenty of rust. fortunately a quart of 30 WT oil had been left in the car and leaked all over behind the seat leaving that area dirty but clean of rust on the top side. So we did not have to use the full floor pan.

We welded a one inch square tube support in to keep the drive line tunnel in place.

The floor stiffeners were cut off of the old floor and transferred to the new floor. I read on the HAMB since doing this project that these stiffeners are being made by someone. Please feel free to chime in and let the guys know if you know who that is.

Notice the panel is drilled for plug welds. Not all of the contours lined up perfectly. We had to do some hammer and dolley persuasion to align some of them.


By this time in the project we had built the rotisserie. It is so nice to be able to just roll the car over you and position it for easy welding. We had access to a spot welder but chose to use the mig, and plug welds. The spot welder required very clean metal and very tight joints. Not to say we didn't get em tight and clean but I just prefer the plug welds.


Plug welds before grinding.

Here the rocker panel is welded on. It was a nice piece. We trial fit the door to make sure we had it in the correct position.

Ok, one down and we repeat on the DS.

We cut the grooves in the tunnel so it would be easier to blend them to the new floor panel. Once the floor panel was tacked in place we went back and hammered and dollied them to shape and welded up the seams.

Note we left some of the original floor to weld too at both ends of the door opening.

Not a good picture but there it is , a nice clean floor with no holes.

After removing the frame and sandblasting the area I was able to go back and weld the bottom side of the floor to cowl connection.

After sandblasting we did find a few more holes farther back on the original floor pan where it was double thickness.

So that's it for the floor. Not very good pictures this time. I must have been to caught up in the work ( translates, having too much fun) to remember to take pictures.

 

Thanks 40&61!
It's true we do have a lot more parts available for theses 40's theses days. If I was a better sheet metal man I would try to save more of this stuff. Some day I will make some resourceful Rodder very happy with my cast offs at the swap meet.

 

I like seeing a Henry 40 get this kind of attention any day!
Mine was a typical midwest rust belt car. My response when people ask what it was like when I started with it is "well, it had a nice roof..." I was 13 years old, and the car was $150 in 1983, so it was about all I could afford! It's a little crude on the bottom side by today's standards, but it was all replaced in the same fashion your doing yours, just without the original looking pieces. My Dad and I built the whole thing in our 2 car garage at home. I'd love to someday go through it and do it right, but I fear that if I tear it down to do that, it would never see the road again!

 

40&61
I did have a forty coupe back in the 70's. Got it for $500 back then. Fortunately it had a great body and a nice paint job except for one fender. I was able to build my first 283 for it and install it and a 3 speed in my little one stall Model A sized garage with very few tools. I drove it for a few years and then kids and work got in the way and I sold it to buy a K car........

I got out of the car thing for several years but could never shake my addiction and started up again a few years ago. I am so spoiled now with a comfortable shop lots of tools and good friends to enjoy the hobby with. I am living the dream as they say. I like lots of other body styles but I seem to stuck with the 39 to 40 Ford's. Not a bad place to be I would say. I just hope I don't run out of health and money before I get this car and the 39 Ford sedan convertible finished. All of this metal work on the coupe is just good training for the sedan convertible that I bought out of New York. It should make for some interesting posts as we will be replacing a lot of the rear quarter of the car. I will be certain to use the carpenter floor on that build.

I have a Wescott 39 that is in dire need of freshening. But it must wait and may never get the rebuild it needs. But I just love to drive the beast and I don't have to fuss about rock chips and making sure it is super clean. I just drive the wheels off of it. I hope you keep enjoying your great looking coupe just as it is. Don't let any dust settle on it in the shop!

 

Man that powder blue car is outta this world cool. Very interesting thread...keep after it!!! Tim

 

Thanks timwhit! I am glad to hear some of you guys like the color. I almost chickened out. I was looking at some pale yellows but decided to stay with the original plan for blue. I have some of the parts painted already and I am happy I stayed with it.

 

This has to rate right up there as one of the best tech threads ever on the HAMB. Great work guys. It's hard to quantify just how many people have been and will continue to be helped by your efforts here. Can't wait to see the finished car.......................Don.

 

I agree with Don, top notch thread. I just recd my Dennis Carpenter one piece floor pan and it comes with the stiffeners. I will be doing some similar repairs to my 40 tudor project soon. Your thread is very helpful.

 

Thanks very much! I have gleaned so much from HAMB build threads also and am delighted some of you find some value in the work that Don and I are doing on this coupe.

 

Here is a little project. The car came with a 39 Ford transmission in it and the of course the cover had been modified so we had to fill it in.


had to scrape the insulation and grease off first.

Don made a patch. It was a good time to try to do some compound bends. It was much harder to do than it looked at first.

We also welded the vent hole. I can't figure out whythey ever put that in this panel in the first place.

We did a little hammer and dolly work after it was welded and ran the piece through the bead blaster. but I didn't take a picture of the nice gray metal. We didn't spend a lot of time on this piece since it will be covered with insulation and carpet in the end.

 

Quarter panels were next. Before the body was sandblasted I had tried to make a repair on the passenger side quarter panel and I did not like the results. As many of you may have discovered small holes become big holes as soon as you touch them with a welder. After sandblasting I found that the DS quarter was not only rusty at the bottom but the first few inches were pretty thin also. So I decided to take a chance on welding on some patch panels. I really was concerned that I would end up screwing up what was a nicely contoured quarter panel. As usual I took a lot of pictures so I could document the process and ultimately share it with the HAMB. So this may take a couple of posts to get through the project.

So here is the panel. It does not look like there is too much rust but you can see some of it just above where Don is drilling the spot welds out. There were also several small pin holes in the first 5 inches of the panel. I didn't want those holes to become rust bubbles under my nice new paint job in a few years.

The new panel purchased from Bob Drake. A nice looking piece with pretty accurate contours.

We laid the new panel over the body and marked it with a sharpie.

We made a new cut line 1/2" below the first line to make the initial cut on. Notice the verticle line in the door post. We thought this would be a good place to hide the seem and that it would also retain the door gap.

The first cut was along the top cut line and otherwise inside the intended new panel lines. We wanted to see what the substructure looked like before we committed to the final borders of the cut.

You can see that even though I tried several different angles with the sandblast nozzle I had not been able to clean the metal in this area. This reminds me of advice given by a fellow HAMBER recently that if you intend to make a panel repair in an area like this you should cut the metal away before blasting so that you can get the inner metal clean.

Substructure on this side of the car was in pretty good shape. The old bottom edge of the quarter panel was stripped off of the substructure at this time.

Not wanting to drag this out and sandblast this area I chose to wire wheel and sand this area to clean it up.

The area was primered with Rustoleum primer for rusty metal.

New Panel prepped for spot welds.

 

We put the door on so we could confirm contours and door gap.

I wanted to show how we cut the top edge of the panel and since I didn't get a picture on the drivers side I will throw in this picture from the passenger side. With the panel laid over the original panel we marked a line 1/4 inch below the edge of the new panel and used the dremel cut off wheel to cut through both panels. The dremel is easy to keep on track and cuts a very fine (Thin) Kurf. Yes it is slow but I work for free and I don't like jagged gaps.

Don working on the door gap interface.

We chose to bring the panel around the corner so that we could weld and grind the panel in side the wheel well.

This door jamb area became quite problematic. Eventually a lot of time was spent getting the contours to match and the door gap correct.

Once again all welds are done with a mig.
Grinding this to contour was done mostly with the cut off wheel of the dremel tool.

Door jamb and wheel well welds are done and I started slowly connecting the spot welds allowing the metal to cool to touch between tacks. It helps to have other project to do while you are allowing the welds to cool.

You can see here that the first holes we drilled for the spot welds were too far in and we had to drill some new ones and plug weld them.


We checked the back side of the welds to make sure we were getting enough penetration.
The finished weld. We were pretty happy with it. There was very little shrinkage. We did not use the hammer welding technique that is usually recommended for this type of panel. If there is any hammer and dollie work needed on this panel we will let the painter take care of it.

We had to cut in the holes for the fender attachment. I didn't get a picture but before we cut off the original piece we took a clear piece of plastic and laid it over the area covering the two bottom sets of holes and made some match marks on the body to use as reference for aligning the plastic for marking out the new holes. You can see the match marks in the fourth picture of this post.

 

The passenger side quarter panel was cut out a little differently. I thought that cutting it an inch short of the B pillar would avoid the trouble we had with the drivers side door gap. As it turned out it created a different problem.

Here is the panel measured for the first cut. Notice the lumpy repair on the bottom. Thats what I got when tries to weld a small patch in a very rusty area.


This brace was pretty well rusted through so we decided to replace a portion of it.



So here is where the problem area develops. We think we should have made a rounded corner here. As soon as I hit this corner with the welder the metal puckered up ( shrunk) and distorted. If any of you metal wizards have an opinion on this please chime in. I read somewhere that a rounded corner develops less stress. I was wondering if there was any connection with the stresses that would be induced when putting all of the angles in the B pillar.

We did some shrinking and dollie work in that corner and managed to get it back to contour.

We ended up with slightly more shrinkage on this panel . We will leave it to the painter to finesse it the rest of the way .

 

Next was a little floor repair.

Drilled out the rust holes.
Inside of the car view.

Don made a steel patch on the shrinker stretcher

I first filled the holes with plug welds while Don pushed down on the patch from above.
I then welded all around the perimeter of the patch from the top.

 

So I had been looking at this spare tire mount in the trunk for quite awhile. I didn't like the way it went so far into the passenger compartment. I don't intend to carry a spare since I am running big and littles on the car. Besides that's what cell phones and credit cards are for. I didn't want to take it all of the way out of the car because I think it is a good stiffening element in the car. So I took it out and modified it a little before welding it back in.

Lousy picture but you can see the spare tire brace welded to the front of the seat pan.

Cut it out. I had to make a few weld repairs to the upper brace.

I also filled some holes in the seat pan while I was at it.

The brace before mods.


I ran some string line between the two outside braces.

I had to reshape both ends of the mount then welded it in at the same angle as the two outside braces.


So that's it I hope it gives me a good brace for trunk interior panels and a little bit smoother look in the interior of the car behind the seat.

 

We had this PS inner fender that was in pretty bad shape,we also know you can by reproduction ones. But I had seen the repos (not the great) and decided that this would be a good place to practice our skills. We put way more time into this piece than is warranted but we had fun,learned a few things and I think we came out with a piece that is better than a reproduction.

It seems like all of these panels are ripped here. Ford chose to use just one bolt here and there must be an awful lot of stress put on this spot, especially when you get in a fender bender.

This back corner was also broken off.
Just another view of the missing bolt flange and a crack that ran vertical from the middle.
I can't remember what Ford used the staples for but they sure left a ragged hole.

Someone had tried to weld this piece back together.
We did a lot of hammer and dollie work to get wrinkles out of this piece.
The metal was so fatigued that we cut it out.
Made a pattern
Cit some 19 gauge steel to fit.
Mig welded it in.


Ground to contour.

Another patch.


Patched the back corner.

 

Tried it on the car and it fit good.


We decided that the frame to panel bolt area might need some gusseting so we made up this piece

Welded it everywhere.

dressed up the edges.

Dressed the interior face. and eventually sent it the painter.

I chose an off white color for the firewall and inner fenders.

Since this car is going to be a driver I chose to have the backside undercoated and then painted with a clear coat so that it would be easier to wash and rinse the road grit off. The undercoating makes it look much lumpier than it really is.

So yes it did take a lot of work to save this piece but we enjoyed the project and I think it is much stronger than the original piece and looks better than the reproduction piece that are available. we were fortunate that the battery acid had not eaten away more of the metal.

 

Nice work, you are doing a great job.

 

Thanks biggeorge. I am anxious to get back out in the shop and get back on the project. Making all of these posts has been a good diversion though. It reminds me of how far we have come on the project so far. A long way to go yet but I always say it's the journey that counts.

 

What a great inspirational thread for those of us who like to save old Forty Fords. Lots of nice work and you can be proud of your story. You have more skills than most.

 

Thanks for the kind comments Pewsplace! I guess I just have the crazy gene in me that likes to make old rusty things look like new... Our skill levels and confidence grow with each project we do on this car. It is just fun to get to finally be able do this stuff instead of reading about it. Most of my experience has been in the hydro electric industry. Although clearances were measured in thousands of an inch the materials were seldom less than 1/8" thick and most often were often weighed in tons. So working with sheet metal has been challenging but fun.

 

Ok here goes the grill project. The grill center in this thing is a two piece aluminum thing. It is ugly and didn't fit well. If any of yo out there recognize this thing I would like to hear from you. I am curiuos about who made it , when and whom was it sold by.

The grill had taken a few hits. The arc or curve was flat in the center. The top section was pulled down. and the top corners of the the grill sides were torn. Several of the fins or louvers had to be straightened and reshaped.

Passenger side was mangled. Once again I could have bought new ones but there was this challenge....
Drivers side.

A little more evidence that this car must have been a hunting rig or maybe a moonshiners ride. I decided to buy a new chin piece but will keep this old one and hammer it out some day for a spare.That bottom plate was saved.
Another view of the grill center.

This is supposed to be flat across here. I managed to straighten this on the hydraulic press.

Just another view of the damage on the passenger side.

Inside view of the drivers side.

Before

After an hour or two.

We decided to weld in some gusset plates on the back side. They are out of site but give me piece of mind that the grill will not crack and split at the weld repair.

Passenger side repairs.

Since I am picture heavy on this stuff and you can only post 12 pics at a time I will have to show the finish product in the next post.

 

It took many hours of patience trying trial fitting and metal shaping to get to this point.

The masking tape was added to the vintque grill to protect the chrome during the many trial fits.



I decided to cut 1/2" out of this grill support so that an air diversion plate could be installed on top of the grill.
My first chop job.

The plate now fits flat on the top. I found this plate at a swap meet. I will either paint it or get a new one.

After a trip to the painter I laid out all of the parts for the assembly.

Putting freshly painted parts together can be nerve racking.

A few hours later and some pushing here and pulling there we have the final product.It took about two weeks of work to restore just this one element of the car. It now sits up high and out of the way waiting for its final install. I take a look at it when I get a little bogged down in rusty stuff and dream of seeing the rest of the car looking this good someday.

 

I'll bet that original grill center was a J.C. Whitney type South American repro. That was what was available before Drake & others started reproducing better parts. Great build, by the way.

 

What a great job on the grill. I can't wait to see your completed 40. Just an outstanding job and thread.

 

Thank you! I am happy you guys are enjoying the thread.

I decided to take a closer look at the old grill today. In one edge of the casting I found the following engraved in the casting. EA. Authorized by WRP 11-8-44 L.O.A. LOARS FDRY. & MFG Co. So I guess it was a very early attempt at an aftermarket grill. I was surprised by the 1944 date since I thought that all aluminum was going to the war effort at that time.

40LUV that coupe in your avatar is very close to my second color choice for this build.Looks Good!

Hope you keep watching I have a few more posts to make in the next few days.