Projects West Michigan 49 Shoebox Resurrection

Well this is my first official post!
A few years ago a good friend of mine was willed a 1949 Ford Tudor to him. It was his Grandpas car since 1950 I believe. It was his pride and joy, and driving it like he stole it! HAA. In fact her went through 2 different flatheads I think. Well living in Michigan, i'm sure you know where this is going. When Jeff, my friend told me he had an old Shoebox that he wanted to restore and have me do the metal work, I said SURE! Not knowing what I was getting myself into. LOL Well, I was committed to this. The car was parked years ago next to a barn and trees literally growing around the car almost swallowing it into the earth. The cool part about the car is that ALL of the car is there. The trim, interior, everything. Everything except the bottom 1' of the car. SO here is teh car back in it's glory day when Jeff's Grandpa owned it. Note the cool Buick fender vents.



And when it was removed from the woods.



And now barley supporting itself sitting sad in the garage.


Jeffs goal for the car is to bring it back to as close as it was when is Grandpa owned it. The original #2 flathead will be rebuilt as well as the 3 on the tree. I will begin posting progress pictures later.

Justin

 

Cool! I have a good friend that lives in Allendale. Love those Shoebox Fords.

 

Ha! Does it happen to be Mike Boerma?

Justin

 

How can that be the same car, what happened to the Buick Ventiports in the front fenders?

 

Looking at the rest of the accessories (trim strips on c-pillars, mud-flaps) I would guess the portholes are not actually Buick but the old accessory "vents".
Looks like a cool project. Exhaust tips still there?

 

Great question. I'm not sure what happened to the vent ports, but they were just bolted onto the fenders for looks. If you look closely at the picture just after the picture of the car taken in 1950 you can faintly see the outline of them and see the screw holes. There are also 4 stainless or aluminum strips screwed to the outside of the C pillar that are seen in the old pic that are still there.

 

LOL, no sir, just the rotted remains of the single pipe going over the passenger side of the axle.

Justin

 

No. She is a professor at GVSU. We grew up together early in life. And she's not a 'car chick'. But her hubby has a couple late-model Chevy trucks (square body).

 

So Jeff went ahead and pulled out the engine, transmission, interior, and the front end to really see what was going on inside. But before, here are a few pictures. The first one was maybe back in 1992 or 1993 when the car was pulled out of the barn after sitting for nearly 20 years.

Somewhere along the line the car must have been painted because the firewall is still a really nice maroon. Currently the paint looks like that red oxide primer.


Now upon first glance the floor doesn't look TOO bad... But the passenger door literally is holding that side of the car from breaking in half. While trying to open the door the passenger side wants to come with it.

I do want to give a shout-out to FINNRODDER for his build thread as that built up the confidence that I needed to take on this project.

 

So now that the car is at my house it was time to figure out what I had to buy and what I could make. Well i'm glad there are places like Shoebox Central and EMS for these needs. I went ahead and bought the outer rockers, inner floor supports, the front fender outer and inner repair pieces, all of the rear quarter panels a tail piece and one inner rocker which was easy enough to copy. All of the other stuff I could make with the equipment I have in the garage.



My biggest challenge now is to get it up on stands, leveled out and to try and make heads or tails on where the hell to begin. I was going to start with doing the rocker and the outer steel first, BUT without being able to make sure things were squared up and door opening as they should I started pretty much at the doors to start leveling things out.
Once up on stands it was clear that this process was going to take some time. I would say it took about 6 hours to get things somewhat straight and level. With nothing to push or pull with (rusty weak metal) I had to get creative with conduit and ratchet straps. I tacked some 3/4" conduit to the door jamb at the bottom hinge and was able to get the proper width by using the "big green book" which has all of the critical measurements. Now was the time to get the doors to open and close. It seemed as they were jammed and sagging. Well the door hinges weren't sagging the whole firewall, A-pillar and the dash had the gangsta lean going on. So I poked a hole in the floor and used a jack and a 2x4 on the bottom of the dash and a ratchet strap hooked to the conduit at the bottom door hinge and hooked the other end to the roof area near the top back of the door and started pulling little by little on both sides. After an hour of pushing pulling and some penetrating oil both doors were opening absolutely awesome!
So below are a couple shots of the rigging I did to get this area lined up. Disregard the new steel in there at this point.

 

So Now time for a little work. After measuring up what was there I made up a few floor pieces and firewall toe boards. After more bracing, and steel removal I thought I would give the body mount bolts a try. Yeah, nope. I drilled out the rest of the bolt and simply welded a 3/8" nut to a washer and welded the washer to the frame. Now there was also NO good steel left to even think about starting with the rocker panels. So I got the poster-board out and just made up pieces for just below the lower hinge.Ya gotta start somewhere.





More tomorrow.

Justin

 

Wow, that one is going to take a lot of work. Out of the three that I looked at before buying my '51 that is worse than all of them. Keep up the work and don't look back, only ahead at what it will be.

 

I like your thought process on getting the remains pulled into repair mode. It can be tough to “see” what the missing parts used to look like. There’s not a shoebox on every corner to look at anymore.

Keep up the good work.

Charlie

 

Major project Wow, Stay with it, Good luck.

 

Looking forward to this one, keep up the great pictures and details! I have a 48 Fleetline that I will be doing similar work to, looks fine on the outside but the whole rear structure is gone.

 

I admire your tenacity... watching this one too.

 

Thanks everyone! It has taken me a year to actually start this process. Sometimes I overthink things and say, forget that! But ya gotta start somewhere.

Justin

 

Well that went pretty good! New steel! There is something about making precise cardboard templates (Cardboard Aided Drafting) that I really like. Possibly the ease of cutting and re-making the template if something isn't quite right. Cheap and easy.
Dave, that Fleetline looks like a heck of a shell to start with! Kinda like this car. From 1' above the rocker it is super straight and solid. And you are right Charlie, these cars just aren't around anymore. If it were my car, I wouldn't be trying to go as original as the owner wants. The entire floor would be out and I would frame in a sub-floor with some 1x1 and make it all new. But I can respect the fact that he wants to keep it somewhat original looking.

Stay tuned for the next episode of "This old Ford"

Justin

 

All right,
Now that the rocker panels are stitched together (inner and outer) I found that if you try to align the bottom front corner of the door to the seam of the new rocker panel things just don't line up. The new rocker is flanged to the bottom of the A-pillar. After a lot of head scratching i'll just mate the flange up to the A-Pillar and trim the body seam reveal later. This makes sense as the rocker now lines up nice to the bottom of the B-pillar.


Here is what I did for the body mount and the seat bolt threaded insert into the frame.

Now that I am this far into it, I noticed that the new floor supports when in place they don't line up to the rocker panel. More head scratching. My only logical conclusion is that over time everything just sagged down over the frame. Well at this point there is no way in hell i'm going to try and lift the entire body up 1/2" to make this connection. So if it sits i make it fits....So it gets a 1/2" body drop, now its lower. HAHAA I just diced up the support to give the floor a little slope to the top of the rocker panel.
Note the liberal use of ratchet straps. LOL






Justin

 

Fantastic work! I know what you mean by overthinking shit. Actually if I remember those floors actually did slope to each rocker a bit. Not sure of the dimension but I'd say 1/2" is close. I built a lot of shoeboxes but yours is a MAJOR undertaking. Stay with it, if you stop you will have a hard time getting into it again. I'm tuned in on this thread.

 

I wouldn’t stress too much over fitment especially when it comes to the poorly shaped overseas replacement sheetmetal. Compare your old stuff to the “new stuff” before you cut it out and throw it away is a good practice to get into. Everything will require some massaging and finesse to make it work nicely. Good job getting after the rust repair and not letting it slow you down!


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Look closely-you can see the outline in the rust/paint where someone removed them..




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thanks for buying ems panels

the ems guy

 

To paraphrase an old line “ wow!that looks good !”


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Thanks for the words of encouragement fellas! Not sure if I need that or some heavy drugs..hell, maybe both! HAA
Well, from the top of the rocker panel up maybe 6' the bottom of the B-pillar is a little holy or lightened by nature. I will address that later. As I stated earlier, the doors open and close super nice with actually good gaps so I am supporting the back of the rocker panel with a piece of threaded rod for now.
I formed up the kick panels or half of the firewall, LOL. On the drivers side I used what was there as a guide as to where to trim for the clutch and brake petals. After trimming several times, I got full range of petal motion. There was also that half sphere stamped into the toe board. The dimmer switch was mounted on a plate and the switch and switch wiring was in that half sphere. So I cut that out of the remains and welded that back in where it should go. I also bead rolled a wire chase of sorts for the wiring.



Passenger side floor and toe board initial fitment. Dang, I love me some Klekos!!!!



I am noticing as I cut and trim the original steel, 95% of the rot is from the top of the frame rails out. There is a heavy coating of greasy oil, caked with old dirt on underside of the sheet metal from the frame rails in. Probably from a leaky trans, leaky rear end etc.

After this fitment, it will be time for some more bead rolling and steel fitment.

That's it for this episone of "This Old Ford"
Wait, this ain't Motel 6. But I left the light on for ya...



Justin

 

Mornin'
Super busy weekend on the ole 49. All 4 floor supports have been modified and bolted in place. I did a little trimming on the pans as well. There is 2 seat bolt locations on each frame rail that had to be drilled out and a weld washer welded in place. I transferred those locations onto the pans and also added a support for the seat mounts. basically a U shaped piece that welds to the pan and lands on the frame. This is where the bead roller comes in handy. I really have not bead rolled much but it is one thing that I v'e always wanted to do. I bought an Eastwood 18" unit and modified it to be stronger.
Here is the passenger pan.


I also bought some Kleko's off of Ebay. HOLY CRAP, why didn't I buy these a long time ago! Stupid handy for fitting sheet metal up.
I was going to use the original trans tunnel, but I figured while I was this deep into it I would just build a new one. It is very similar in shape, but 1.5" taller for possibly a different trans in the future. Again, I tried my hands at bead-rolling. This time I did a diamond pattern. I figure I would try it on something that wouldn't bee seen all the time. This was made out of some 20 gauge.

And here is the new floor!

While the garage was warm, I kept going. Yeah, spring is not coming very fast this year in Michigan...
I wanted to make the trans tunnel. This piece will be built in a similar fashion to the original 2 piece bolt in unit. The top was still good, so I built off of that. I drilled out the original holes and put in some 1/4"-20 riv-nuts. These little suckers are awesome. After some creative forming some cussing and a beer or 2 here is the floor fit up. You know it's time to weld when you are out of Kleko's. It's amazing how stiff things are now even with just Kleko's holding things together.

 

Awesome work! I've got a '59 F-100 down here in Wayland that needs a little tin knocking if you're feeling extra ambitious! Great to see that old shoebox saved.

 

Justin, out of curiosity, what size clecos did you get? -Marc.

 

Thanks!
Thanks! I may be interested in doing that for you. Iv'e gotta get this hunk of metal out first.

Justin

 

Marc,
I got the 1/8" ones. Very handy!

Justin