Chuck,nothing about this car is boring,please keep the updates coming. BTW,that rubber looks like a winner. HRP
I agree with HRP. I would like to see pics of this project all the way to completion. I am liking the tech on the glass. Keep up the Beautiful work. It is truly an inspiration to some of us.
I'm REALLY liking this build. I think you're going to be surprised by all of the attention this car will get. Good choice on the spokes.
When you live with a long term project year in and year out you become blind to all the progress you have made and sometimes the way you approach a problem inspires the follower to try something similar on their project. In my humble opinion you guys have elevated the lowly Ranch Wagon to new heights,makeing real genuine Woody was thinking outside the box,you sure didn't do it because it was easy but to push the envelope. The car is exceptional and is exactly what we have come to expect from the Strange Days crew! HRP
I've been watching from the beginning. I just admire your work , well everyone's work, and keep my mouth shut. Probley a lot more like me.
I'm absolutely still interested! Seeing how you solved some of the challenges of the woodwork has been instructional to say the least. Can't wait to see what's next. On the taillight / gas door - seems like repurposing a couple of the rare earth magnets from the woodwork would keep the taillight tight.
Actually with the spring on the assembly it stays pretty tight to the body, Those magnets are about a 70 pound pull so we might not get it open even with one. Believe me we ran that through our thought processes
Today we drug the old rear end out from under the car for updating, cleaning, and painting...What a greasy mess! We had to scrape all the old grease/dirt off with a putty knife and then wash it with lacquer thinner. The pieces we could fit in the blast cabinet we sandblasted. Here is a before / after of the axle u-bolt. Its just a lot of dirty , crappy work. Once everything was cleaned we painted it a nice gloss black. It sure looked a lot better! We on the other hand looked like SHIT! We had thought of getting a new ford nine inch, but it really wouldn't make much difference for our situation , so we'll just install new wheel cylinders, shoes and get the drums cleaned up.
This week I took apart the front seat I got from over on the Ford Barn... The back was broken and fixed poorly without aligning it first. I cut off all the old weld and bracing and aligned the back and re-welded it. Much Better! Then I sandblasted it and painted it black. To my surprise there were no broken springs and the bugger works and looks like new. We then installed it in the wagon. We lost the mounting holes when we replaced the floors, but found the holes underneath on the body mount braces and drilled them up from the bottom. The best part of the week was that the wheels and tires arrived! The rear end with its new brakes and wheel cylinders was positioned, and the wheels attached. All my measuring paid off. They fit inside our blended fender skirts! AND THEY LOOK AWESOME. Check it out! TruSpoke 15x5's with bias look radial whitewalls.(pay no attention to the disasterous condition of the shop)
Looks amazing Chaz. The wheels and tires just brings this work of art all together. Thanks for keeping us along for the ride! TEB
Yowza! Haven't been a fan of custom wires for a long time, but they really do give it the touch of class that it deserves....
Well, Steve finally got back to wiring the dash. A good deal of this will be done on the bench and then the dash will be installed and the rest of the wiring run throughout the car. It took him a while to review everything and get re-acquainted. Dana and I began dinging out the stainless beltline moulding and polishing it up to place back on the car. I bought all new molding clips from Dennis carpenter, and they SUCK! BIG TIME ! They are Chineese reproductions, and the tabs that lock them on the body seem to be shorter than the originals. Consequently they do a piss poor job of doing the job they're intended for. We ended up buying a bunch of adequate ones (Balkamp) from our local NAPA Dana did an awesome job of polishing the stainless, and by the end of the day the trim under the window line looked pretty amazing. This thing is starting to get "THE LOOK"
it is looking better every time.I see Danno tore up his shoulder so now he has excuse for not dropping in to help with the polishing.
Lotsa little crap this week. Steve has the dash all wired and ready to go back in the car, but before we do that we decided to get some work done in that area before the dash install makes it harder. We put in new defroster hoses with nice ss clamps. The wipers on a 53 ford are vacuum operated and by all accounts are barely adequate. Since this car is a woodie we are gonna try to keep it out of the rain as much as possible so barely adequate wipers are fine with us. I looked up how to rebuild vacuum wipers and tore into the unit. They are really simple and it was an easy rebuild. Hotrodprimer here on the Hamb has a ranchwagon into which he adapted the brake booster and master cylinder from a 84 mustang. Super nice install. I contacted him and he walked me through it. I modified both the pedal and firewall to fit, but HRP is right. It's a beautiful install. Finally we started insulating the floor. We used a product we got from lobuckrod here on the Hamb.We used it before with great success on Steve's cobra project and it worked just as nicely this time. Great service, a nice product, fairly easy to install, and priced right. We like it!
I followed this in the beginning and then wasn't on the forum much and lost track. You guys have done well. I have no doubt that this will be a great car when you're finished. All of us old guys that know about your group always have high expectations.
The Jalopy Journal
