Projects 348 powered 40 Ford sedan

What a great job! And thanks for explaining what your doing with the tailpan area. I'm going to have to go through the same process with mine.

 

In amongst the tool tray stuff, I’ve also dry plumbed my vac and oil pressure gauges, involving drilling and tapping the inlet for the vacuum, and then decided the manifold casting was too rough for me, so cleaned that up a bit. Also ran the pipe work for the clutch ( that pedal bolt will change..) made a ‘factory’ looking bracket based on the front brake line brackets to take the clutch flexi/hardline union..

 

Finally got around to making the repair panels for the bottom of the rear quarters .
I made a wire ‘buck’ to help get the shape right, and with help of a good friend and his tools, I bent the rough vertical shape over my leg, then folded the sides, which I then shrunk to get the curve. Next, cut out the bumper slot, and folded the sides and hammered the radius in. I added a reinforcement plate into the corner for the bottom fender bolt, as per original, and today, got them on the car! I’m really pleased with how these went, a fair bit of time involved, but will need barely any filler.
I also made the top seal lip on the tail pan as it hadn’t been stamped properly, and was non existent in the middle.

 

I’ve also done a bunch of other stuff, filled the ariel hole in the cowl, A big bunch of derusting at the bottom of both cowls, and started replacing all the cage nuts as the all seized up. I tig’d tapped down the folds on the new cage nuts, and tig’d them up, just because..

 

I’ve also derusted and repaired the cowl behind the hood hinge mounts. Drivers side was worse because at some point the hinge pivot had broken, and a PO ran a bolt all the way thru the hinge and cowl, it wasn’t pretty.
So what do people do with this seem? It looks like a huge rust trap. I’ve been thinking about running a weld seem all the way along to seal it, after de rusting as much as possible, and make it look the same as the rest of the body line.

 

I’ve been using some kind of orange/pink rust removal solution on the bodywork that’s I ‘found’ at work, but I also wanted to de rust the inlet manifold, front hubs and some other stuff, so I tried citric acid. It needs a fair bit of agitation and re soaking, but the parts came out great. Also did a few body parts.
Also decided I didn’t like the rough cast trippier manifold, so set up loosing some of the bumps.

 

Making lots of progress. Nice job.

 

Nice work Neil. Keep at it.

 

Thanks Walt, slowly but surely. I thought i'd get the tail pan on yesterdya, but spent 5 hours planning and preparing it to go on, and then lost the daylight.....

 

nice work!!

 

I finally got the butt of my 40 back together, can’t believe it’s taken me 5 months, all though I have done some small stuff in between. Next is finish repairing the lower cowl, and rear mini tubs....

 

Looks good enough to eat off!
Keep at it Neil

 

Looks GREAT! I can appreciate how long the project took you. We have been working on the tail of my 39 for several weeks now with little progress and often find excuses to do something easier for awhile. You know something that can show some real progress. For us the degree of difficulty for this section of the car is a 10 out of 10!

 

Wow, that looks nice ! I wish mine was that far along and looked that good. Even though I can't be working on mine right now I am sure enjoying watching you progress .

 

Thanks Tom, just dropped in on your build, looking good.

 

I cant believe its taken this long, I know its not a fi=ull time thing, maybe only a day a week, but over 5 months, thats still alot of days, even taking into account the other smaller jobs done in between. Mini tubs are going to be interesting..

 

Your Sedan looks great, at the rate your going, you'll definately be driving your W powered sedan before me

 

On to the rear inner fenders. To get my 8x15 Halibrands under the fenders, I need to narrow the axle, and just to make sure, mini tub the body. You can see in these pics how much the inner fender slopes out and comes away from the chassis rail at the front, this all needs addressing for tyre clearance.

 

I didn’t want it to look like ide welded in trash cans, so I cut the inner fender so that I could move it in and make it vertical to gain the room I want, but blend into the existing bodywork, so it hopefully isn’t too noticeable unless you know. I also trimmed the body mount back and boxed it back in.

 

At this point I realised the body needed support( as it dropped about 1/2 an inch), so I cut the trunk floor, and braced it all to the rear cross member. I made a new ‘subrail’ and rear body mount to attach the modified inner fender and floor to

 

Now this project looks familiar. I'll be watching with a high level of interest.

 

Nice work.

 

I made a bit of quick tooling for my fly press to run a bead for the replacement part of the bottom of the inner fender, and ran it thru

 

This panel was tiged to the original, which was Pk’d in place to make a template for the infill piece. This was drawn on masking tape, which was trimmed and then stuck on the new steel to cut to size. Some careful clamping and tacking got it in place.

 

And after a lot of tacking, tapping, a bit of cursing, one side is in. It’s not as nice as I’d like, but I’m no body man, and it looks pretty ‘stock’ if you didn’t know. I’ve got some rust repair to do on this side, and I’m going to replace all the slide in fender bolt fittings the cage nuts, and then on to the other side...

 

Nice job.

 

Looks good !

 

Tedious work Neil but it came out real nice. The other side will be a piece of cake

 

Nice job. You've got some skills.

 

Quick update, this is how I finished the inner fender/rear quarter. The holes are to plug weld the flange of the back of the rear quarter, but it’s rusted out, and I can only get to it when the body is off, because the rear body mount is in the way. You can also see the first off 22 cage nuts installed