No difference in ride. Only reason to split them is if you need to take the tunnel out for trans clearance. I run a Muncie, you may have to split them for an automatic.
Thanks - I've always liked 'em, never had one and looked at that one sitting near a shop for about ten years before I stopped by and talked about it. My Dad had a convertible '40 back in the day and he and Mom were out for a Sunday ride in it back in December of '41 when they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. I thought that if it wasn't meant to be that I wouldn't have been able to get it last year and now I'm pretty excited to gradually bring her back. When Matt over at IronTrap Garage started his You Tube series on the '39 Forgotten Hot Rod , I knew that I made the right decision. They look like they could be related. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. I can't wait to see how you do yours too!
Here’s my ‘40, 4” dropped axle with Posie reverse eyed spring, and 3 leaves removed from reverse eyed rear spring Drives beautifully.
Nice 40 and having it since 1966 is great. I have a hemi in mine so I boxed the frame and added ford nine inch rear with parallel leaf out of 69 torino it put the tires dead center in the wheel openings. Also added turbo 400 trans behind the hemi. As for the front suspension I bought the car as a project it already had the chassie engineering front suspension. Your car do what you think is right on the car.
My brother has a 40 with dropped axle and 6.00x 15 bias ply. he had to raise it an inch due to tire rub.I did not split the bones on mine or his and they steer and track well. Ford did some good engineering when they designed their front ends. I built a 40 truck about 30 years ago with stock front ,discs and PS. It went to California twice-no problems.I would not split the bones,but thats just me.
There may be, but I’ve never noticed it on any that I have done. With your plans for a ford motor and an auto, splitting the bones may be the way to go. It’s not tough to do. You just need a cutoff wheel, a welder and a torch to realign the spring mounts after you split the bones. I even have the right main leaf made by Chassis Engineering to use when you split the wishbones and use the original spring if you need it. Don’t think they offer it anymore. when you split the bones on a 35 to 48 Ford you only spread them out a few inches to get the clearance you need. Not like hairpins that bolt to the side of the frame rail. Let me know when you get to that stage. I’ve done about 20 28 to 48 front ends and they are a snap. Half the time the hardest part is getting the old stuff apart!
Also if you do go with a dropped axle, the 35 36 front axles have a narrower perch width than the 37 to 40 Axle’s. This means the wishbone is narrower on 35 36 at the perch pins, which I like, it clears the steering box bracket better when lowered, but the same front spring is used for 35 to 40 so you can interchange the axle and wishbones from a 35 36 on a 37 to 40 car and still use the same spring you had.
And you can actually use any axle from 32 to 36 in the 35 36 wishbone. They all have the same axle perch width 36 and 3/8 inch apart. And when you drop them it narrows the track width about an inch to inch and a half. I have 5.60 15 bias plys on mine with the 4 inch dropped 36 Axle and no tire rub anywhere.
Great information, Jason. That part about the narrower track width is where so many folks go wrong and wind up with tire rub.
Hey guys: I'm stuck! I am trying to take out my window regulators as they do not operate properly. However, I can't get them out. What's the procedure?
"This may help. http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/flathead_glassinstall-40-46_pg6.htm" Thanks! I'll try it.
Okay, I've got the passenger side, front door glass and regulator out. Lunchtime and then on to the rest.
Today, I started by trying to take out the passenger side front window and regulator first. I struggled with this one all morning and then, after Algoma56 rescued me (see earlier posts, above) with instructions/diagrams, I was able to get it out relatively quickly (a big Thank-You for that help!) Here are the window molding, window, regulator, and guide channel out after half the day: It also took quite a while to get the driver's side out. Part of this stemmed from the regulators being so difficult to wind up or down and they didn't want to wind all the way up - a necessity for window removal. Notice, below, that there are three attachments used to hold the handle/gear/housing in place: a screw, a wingnut, and a screw of the negative set (remember your math?) Drivers-side regulator side-view, below. Nice big gap on the right between housing we were just looking at and the main body. Yep, I'm gonna have to rebuild these! Passenger-side regulator a bit better, but still needs work: note gap on left side. Umm, the rear window removal process was definitely not joyful. After much struggle I gave up on the passenger side and worked the driver's side. I finally got that one out by tilting it and managing to slide the rollers out of the channels. Thinking that I had figured out how to remove the rear-seat window, I then went back to the passenger side to find that removing the channel stop screw made no difference at all as somehow this side worked completely different than the driver's side! I finally took out the 6 screws holding the regulator in place and managed to somehow disassemble the window from the regulator and get everything out. I still have to take out the driver's side regulator. but what is interesting is that (as you can see below) I had taken it out in high school and replaced the 6 screws holding it in place (of course, I have no remembrance of doing it or why I did.) At this point I had the windows out and 3 of the 4 regulators out. The down-side is that I have no idea of how I'll re-install the back windows since I have no idea of specifically what I did that finally got them out! (Jason: what you said!) By the way, that is the passenger side rear regulator in front of the storage box. I'm still going to have to de-grease and clean all of this stuff up. I was going to start removing the windshield and rear window but started thinking about how filthy the car was (see three pictures up) and that I should have pushed it out of the garage and washed it down before I took out any of the windows. So, since this was one of those "do everything the hard way" days, I filled up a bucket of soap and water and washed the car down without the benefit of hose or rinsing. Halfway done with that and my wife came out to help and decided I needed to get indoors and drink lots of water and while I recovered, she finished the wash-job (Thanks Deb!) Of course, the work was still not done since I had to download these pictures and rename them all so they will make sense (and are find-able) when I try to refer to them in the future. Plus, I now have to get over the trauma of "yes, I got them out; how the hell will I get them back in?"
I'm pretty new to this stuff too Scott but I saw this. I would imagine that if Drake's has them then the other usual suppliers probably do too. https://www.bobdrake.com/40windowregulators
I would take a look at The Early Ford Store. They have regulators and gear repair kits for your Tudor. https://www.earlyfordstore.com/
Cleaned up my regulators and windows today. They were pretty filthy. Happily I had an old can of Gunk to spray stuff down with. Looking closely I see a few problems. Not sure what you call the little knob on the passenger side rear window frame that I have the pencil pointed at, but it is a bit loose: And here is the driver's side rear window regulator and it is missing a spring: Flip it over and you notice that the arm is bent but not the way it should be bent: Here is the passenger side front and it has got some bad teeth: And then the passenger side rear has bent up spools (if that's what they are called. I am unsure of the correct nomenclature.) So, the rebuild kits are all about replacing the little gear in the regulator. My problems may include that, but there's a bunch more that I need to fix besides what the rebuild kits can help me with.
The teeth on the big gears may be the death knell. You can fix the bent arm, the kit for the handle spindle, reweld the rollback stud, tweek the "spools" so they are fairly round, and get some new tension springs. But nobody sells just the big gears.
I have repaired a few bad regulator gears by replacing the bad gear section with a good piece from another junk gear. The gears don't seem to be hardened metal and thus you can tig weld in a new section with out problems. Use a three corner file to clean up the tooth where the weld bead is. Worked for me.
So now I have an interesting choice: I can order replacement regulators for the front doors or maybe I should install electric windows? Further, my brother had noticed where 40 owners had eliminated the wing window on their 40 by replacing with 39 regulator and molding parts to give the car a "cleaner" look. Not sure I'd want to do that. And so far, I haven't found any NOS rear window regulators for my sedan. Maybe not looking in the right places.
My skills are not that high at TIG welding. After I retired I decided I needed to take a class in welding. The local community college curriculum catalog was not very clear in descriptions and I ended up enrolled in a TIG class for my first welding class. I found out that I was pretty good at melting holes in aluminum plate....
I think I got my window regulator parts from Dennis Carpenter parts but I don't know if he's still in business. I used brake clean on the regulators to loosen them up to get them out of the car it helps the windows to move up and down easier. There's a set screw in the rear glass track that needs to be removed so the regulator arms swing out of the way to remove the glass and regulator. The window trim inside has to be removed to let glass have more room to lift out
If you're looking for replacement original regulators (not aftermarket) or parts, you can try Roy Duffield, he's been most helpful for me and a couple guys that I've sent to him: www.regulatorroy.net/ Email address is: [email protected] Good luck, Tim
Yesterday I used up the rest of an old can of Gunk and then some brake cleaner and a bucket of soap and water to clean up my window glass and regulators. I noticed that while the front regulators seem to be mirror images of each other, the glass holding rails (not sure of the terminology) are slightly different. You can see that the channel on the left continues as a flat piece of metal while the channel on the right doesn't. Additionally, the channel on the right does not have a screw stop. It appears that the channel on the right was manufactured that way and not modified. Are these from different years? Different models?
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