I don’t have a lot of experience with early Ford bodies . Was wondering if anyone could tell me the main identifying visual factors to look for to tell the differences between a real Henry body and a brookville. Thanks
Hmmmmm Painted you have to look close. Naked the uni-side is easy. Plus the areas body panels are welded are different. The firewalls are easier to spot. the grill shells, the ones I have messed with, lack some details in the hood seal area. I’m sure we have purists that can give you more details. They generally fit better (I’m going to get flamed for this) The uni-side. This is how modern cars are built Overall I’ll give em 2 thumbs up
Where to start !!! Most can not tell unless you are a pierced. There are clues every where if you know where to look. Metal ga, Door jam , subrail / trunk & drain rails ,door frame , quarters, cowl , cowl vent & drain cowl Feet , door hinges ,roof , A& B Pillar , supports , braces , over the wind shield . Dash , under dash cross support , its a long list. Missing Rivets, marking on Rivets. No Nail Wood Missing braces , spot welds , size & shape of spot , in wrong places or non in correct location where they should be. Welds , Crisp body lines . There is so many places to tell a Brookville Roadster / 3Window or a U-P 5 w body . & the same with Brook Steel A body's All this is just body not including Trim , lights , handles interior trim, List long also . All listed ONLY if you care if a Henry steel body & parts .
Mostly missing the rot, holes, tears, metal fatigue and subsequent cracking at the stress points. That’s in addition to what is posted above.
Have the Brookville bodies been out long enough now that you may find one that has rot holes tears crash damage bad repairs and be mistaken for a real Henry Ford? This is not sarcasm I’m fairly new at traditional hot rods and in the middle of my first build a speedster because I simply can’t afford body parts
LMAO. I doubt there are ANY rusted, rotted Brookville 3 Windows out there. Only folks who paid $25 for a '32 3window back in 1950 would let it rot outside or languish in a leaky shed. Folks that paid $25K+ for a Brookville body probably would take pretty good care of it.
How about the open seam at the rear end of the rocker panel ? It is the easiest to spot as it is right in front of your face.
Some have correct this obvious detail, Their is not may 32s that have Original sheetmetal , Your Question was can you tell by Visual between Henry & B V R , Yes !! There are certain marking & details on the Out side of Body , Some are so faint that most do not know of , unless you have worked / been around a Original body document /study. Average person will not know the difference. Unless you say its a FoMoCo body & you know its not , (The Pierce) might start to pic the body a part pointing out details you might not be beware Of .
I have an original 3 window body. You can tell it from a Brookville by the rot, rust, split and general mayhem inflicted on it before I pulled it out of a shed years ago. No problem at all! LOL.
Driving down the road, (that's the purpose of a build, isn't it?), not likely you could tell the difference. At a Corvette type concours, likely someone could tell the difference.
Honestly the brookville isn’t a Ford copy. It’s a brookville 32. A nice alternative for a builder not wanting to do a ton of metal work to an original one. as far as the details, a lot closer than glass. But look how many original hot rods eliminated a lot of those visible details
It all depends on what your looking to do restoration? Recreation or hotrod. I will say brookville does a excellent job making early ford reproduction body’s. So are the perfect reproduction no but what are you doing. Me I am one of them odd balls that like the real deal. I dont know if it’s the challenge or hunt but thats me. Dont think a guy driving a real or aftermarket ones have less fun building or driving or enjoying friends... unfortunately guys can nitpick real or aftermarket so enjoy what you can find or have for miles of smiles....
if i ever get a 28-31 highboy fenderless phaeton or roadster it doesn’t matter if it’s henry or brookville. what’s ever is the cheapest by a longshot at the time. it will be a rough and unfinished banger. i just would like some ford in the similar present style of that kid in san francisco. rough is tuff.
At Deuce days in 2019 you could most often spot the real roadsters by the little details that showed their age. That is if you were really looking close and spotted the little detail mentioned by the guys above. That wasn't counting the cars that we all have seen photos of for the past 50 or so years though. There were a number of cars there that while not world famous you realized that you had seen them in event coverage like the LA roadster show for decades. Sometimes it didn't hit until you were back in the hotel putting the photos on the laptop.
That a Question that should not be a Question But it is & others need to know. Its hard to under stand how 90 year Technology is better then Modern technology with c&c 3D printers and so on. Even how 1930s Gaps, Quality,Craftsmanship Better then the New reproduction and license Ford & parts , A's $10,tho 32 $20,tho Roadster , 32 $25 tho 3 w & 5w steel bodys . Pretty much every FoMoCo A,32,33 34 & so on fit almost exact to each year almost Exact like off the Assembly line ( with minor Issues) with several thousand body sequence numbers apart. Both BV & UP You get a rust free sheet metal that needs work & modifications & it depends on who/the person that assembled your body @ each Company. If you are a body man / craftsman most of the issues are not that big of a deal to fix/Address. But more unnecessary labor time. Because lack Craftsmanship and quality from BV& UP .these parts/ bodys are not cheap for the majority. But if you're not they can be depressing. over there head issues. B-V parts donot fit there own body that great , Same with U-P bodys & part. There are parts from BV & UP will not fit the opposite brand.. that are used between roadster ,3w , 5w & Sedan. I have no experience with 32 PU trucks. Then the FoMoCo parts do not fit BV or UP body's great either & some parts not @ all . some need major modifications.
I was one of those to have had both at the same time. I did find that on a original . The area behind the doors "B" pillar body line are a real weak area. My original when stamped had weakened the body line metal to the point , that area had to be tig welded back together and metal finished. The Brookville has way better door gap fit. Mine was #9 out of the plant and it was put together well. I did sell my Ford body and kept the Brookville body. In my avatar is my brookville car as it sets today. Vic
It’s easy to see how there can be differences between bodies. For one, BV copied a Ford body Ive pulled patterns from Ford bodies and found lots of differences from side to side. The Ford fenders are asymmetrical when you pull a pattern from side to side. So are the BVills so imagine you are designing parts from an imperfect prototype (original car). Modern scan technology can find every flaw. And you need to build a new body while trying to make parts interchange with original bodies. Now measure multiple OE bodies with differences looking for a happy middle for a car that uses force on a cowl bolt to align the doors. I’ve had folks complain a part doesn’t fit (OE or aftermarket) on a body that’s been used and abused and improperly mounted to the chassis. I’ve measured Ford doors and openings and found differences in length and the same with BV I used a BV deck lid and rear panel on a Ford body. I had to tweak the contour of the deck to fit the Ford body but I’ve found inconsistencies in the Ford qtr panel contour. So for me it’s a wash. The fact that a 90 year old economy car is still popular and in a demand that a steel reproduction shell is available is kinda cool
Yes !!! That is a true statement only if blind . But a person that is blind learns other Senses to use , like there hands & touch / feel . So if that person was thought what to feel for , they could tell witch is Original 1932 body as long as all the tell signs have not been removed or altered, there is many Tool marks most do not know of unless you have had a compleat bare body's & study each , just on cowl band location there is tell signs that are not on BV or UP & would be hard to duplicate, but it could be done , even modern screws heads, rivets ,nails take time to duplicate like one used in a Original bodys ... From my Under standing the OP Wanted to Know if a BV 3 window IF there was Visual identification between a Henry body """"Yes """ If you know what to look for & where & what details . It would take a lot of time to fake to make look Original or erase all the tell signs from a Original. If I was in market to buy a Body that was all pained up looking like a 80s to present , advertised as ""Original ""Henry Steel body, I would use my sight , if not for sure by sight , then I would have my hands up under dash , in A & B pillars up under deck lid ,cowl braces , quarter braces , back window , under roof insert & other places , I known what I am felling for because BV UP do not have , & more then I mention
I had the pleasure of meeting Kenny years ago when I bought a model a roadster body. This was many years ago and they were starting to build the 32 roadster body. He was asking if I wanted to get on the list of new bodies and that was body 115. Kenny and his pops took dimensions off a few of the 32 roadsters his father has and all dimensions are off original body’s s. As a tool maker building a big deep draw die to replicate a original isn’t easy...
You bring up some interesting points. Now I don't have a dog in this fight (if this is even a fight) but I will throw in some observations and opinions. Really it's apples and oranges. 90 years ago Ford was building cars. They had the massive tooling and labor force to do so. Skilled hand labor was cheap. On the other hand the "fit" issues were somewhat solved in R & D. These cars had to roll off the assembly line. They had to be made to fit together in assembly as time was money. The repro bodies are made by very small specialty companies. They could really care less about production speed and how well they fit together. They sure don't have the massive support and tooling of a major 1930s factory. 90 years ago was close to the peak in American Industrial manufacturing. CNC 3D printers and all that cannot compare to what FoMoCo or any of them for that matter could do in 1932. The market is different too. Ford was selling to the car buying public. These companies are selling to hobbyists building or paying people to build a hobby car that looks like ....dare I say... the real thing. Look at Winchester Model 92 from 1932. It's factory made but it still has that 19th Century ideal of craftsmanship. Look at a new or newer "Model 92" repro...not even close really but maybe close enough. It's really apples and oranges.
Vinyl records, twin reverb amps, a wood encased speaker/radio, vintage mic All have a distinctive sound. Sun, Chess, Motown, Muscle Shoals recordings have a distinctive sound. Modern recording studios didn’t sound like these old technology studios even back when HiFi was a current term. The phrase “perfect imperfections” comes to mind Old cars were build with old tools. BV bodies as noted by the 32 scholars lack the “beauty marks” or the tooling marks or limitations of old technology manufacturing. A BV body is like trying to get a Sun Records sound without Sun Records equipment. But I still give em major props for giving folks one more option for owning a cool car. The fact that the ones that know can tell is good. It keeps the real ones value up and preserves the hunt for those that know.
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