This isn't a build thread but just a bit of history and info on our '40 Tudor. My Dad bought this car near Bethel Missouri in 1965 for $100. It had been setting for quite a while with a hole in a piston on the original engine. A fellow '40 collector was flabbergasted when he found out Dad had bought it. He told us he had spent way more than that in gas just trying to buy it at any price! Dad saw it, stopped and talked to the owner and made the deal. It had 42,000 miles on it. Front seat and front door panels had white vinyl panels with black boxing over the top of the original upholstery. Also had later Merc door and window handles on front doors with stockers on the rear. It also had '49 Plymouth bumpers front and rear. My brother and I were playing with a mole in the back seat which got away from us and we never found it. Well, not until many years later when my friend Jim Anderson and I were stripping it to do a new interior! That was about 1988-89. There was his remains in the right side below the quarter window! Interior got finished and all new glass and seals were installed. Interior is as close to original as we could make it with the exception of a wood rim steering wheel. I needed something with more dish so I could slide the seat back. We moved to Hood Canal in Washington for nearly 5 years and I didn't want it in the wet weather there so it stayed in Madras Oregon in my shop during that time. Back to Madras in August 1995 and work resumed. A good friend said if I got the car running in time for the rod run in Prineville he would shoot a coat of primer on it. Well, I did. And he did. Then he asked how long it would be before I was ready to paint it? I told him he knows me and it will be at least 4 times as long as I think it will be and then double or triple that! So, after many beers, he decided we should go ahead and shoot some black paint on it, so we(HE) DID. That paint is still on it! Not a pro job and was never intended to be. Nice enough to like it and bad enough to not worry about it at all. I had to promise to not mention who did the job as his reputation was doing top notch work. I don't know if I have many, if any, old pics except one of it and me in 1965 with me on my bike. I'll have to scan that. Last September we towed the '40 behind our motorhome on a multi state vacation which included Springfield Missouri for @bchrismer Bret Chrismers Mid West '40 Meet. Included are pics from that meet and also from the trip along with pics here at home, etc. Engine is a '52 block with offset ground Merc 4.125" stroke crank with early rods and .125 overbore for 286 cubes. '48 and earlier type Offenhauser heads and '50-'53 type narrow belt car water pumps with adapters to '40 type rubber cushions. Old Mallory dual point, Offenhauser 4bbl intake with a straight 8 Buick WCFB 4bbl carb. Fluid damper. Still 6 volt. Tube headers, dual exhaust and glass packs. Yellow plug wires are gone because they went bad causing a miss. Replaced with original old 1951 Ford REAL wires! Rubs great now. 15" wheels with stock caps. Original trans and '40 rear end. F100 front brakes and stock rears. New Drake bumpers 25 years ago, back when they were on sale for $99 each to replace the well weathered '49 Plymouths. So, here ya go. That's all for now, I'll pos more pics as I retrieve them from my old dead computer. Enjoy! Dave
Great story, and great car! Imagine engine with black cables are perfect Can’t wait to get my own ‘40 rolling…
Dave, Your 40 is a beauty. Well done. If you can, please post lots of photos and describe how you were able to install and use the 8BA narrow belts water pump set up. be sure to include a photo of the fan you are using, how it's mounted and how you were able to not have the fan blades cut into the upper and lower radiator hoses. Thanks so much. Jim
Here is the pic of me on my bike at 11 or 12 years old in front of the same '40. We went to that same property in 2018 but barn and old house was gone and a mobile home was setup there but no one home. Kinda looked like a vacation home. Bethel Mo. Dave
Fan is a foreign car or maybe pinto or something. My friend machined an aluminum adapter to bolt it to a stock '51 car type fan hub. Motor mount adapters came out of a '35 Ford sedan with an 8ba. Aftermarket factory made pieces that bolt to the car water pumps where those late motor mounts bolted, then has an ear to bolt through stock '40 rubber mounts. I put new Dennis Carpenter water pumps on it in August along with a new fluid damper for the crank pulley. It will be a while before I get more pics for ya. Thanks for the kind words! Dave
Thanks, I think you are probably just a little biased! I have loved '40's since I was 10 years old and prefer Standards. Yours looks great. I have a set of aluminum slot mags I ran for years and sometimes switch back to. Dave
As others have said, great car and a great story. I had one of these back in the early sixties; somehow, I let it get away. Ya' know, if I had to keep a forty for the rest of my life, I'd rather have one of these than a DeLuxe coupe. Now, a '39 DeLuxe coupe would put me in a real quandary.
I get ya! In High School I had a '39 Deluxe Coupe and a '40 pickup. My '39 had '40 trim and headlights and wheels with a '39 grill. It was one of my favorite vehicles. Loved the banjo steering wheel and the crank out windshield. I do wish at times my '40 was a coupe but the family history trumps that. Now, a '39 DeLuxe convertible? Oh man! Dave
The trip to the Mid West '40 meet was kind of a return home for our '40. Since Dad bought it in MO, it now has made it full circle. Originally we were going to take my uncle Charles in West Frankfort Illinois for a ride in it. He had driven it to Oregon for us from Illinois in 1970. Unfortunately he passed away 9 months before our trip. He drove the '40 2000 miles to get here and never shut the engine off once! Not for anything. He drove the trip in 36 hours including sleeping for 6 hours in it while still running. I asked him why he didn't shut it off and he said "I didn't know if it would start again if I shut it off."! I said "You drove a car 2000 miles that you thought might not start back up if you shut it off?" Dad had told him to not drive it over 60 but Charles said he drove 70 all the way. I told him that was because the speedo was very slow! "Don't tell your Dad" he said! That was Uncle Charles! He always had someone watching over him. I miss him a lot. We did take my aunt Rose for several rides in it though. The side effect of that trip was I spent a good amount of time getting the '40 back in proper shape. The rear axle bearing surfaces were bad so did a swap to a very nice stock rear end with fresh brakes. I installed F-100 brakes on the front and also rebuilt the master cylinder, new brake lines and nice u-joint. Fuel sending unit had quit years ago, found float had sunk so I bought a new float so gas gauge works again. Another thing happened in 1972. Dad took the 6 of us for a ride on a dirt road up the north side of Grizzly Mountain. Rough road with big mud holes. Finally bottomed out in a huge hole and we were stuck. It split the seam on the bottom radiator tank. We finally got it dug out and refilled the radiator with kinda yucky water. Dad used pepper as stop leak and it sealed up good enough to get us home. That incident broke several grill bars and smashed the chin pan. Good thing it was black as it ended up with part of a bar gone on the left side and stayed that way for many years. Last year I reached out on the HAMB and found a decent replacement left grill side. It got replaced during our trip on a very windy day in an RV park in Rawlins Wyoming! I had also replaced the lower chin before we left. The '40 will go to our son Kenny eventually and then down to Kenny Jr. Hard to believe KJ is almost the same age as when Dad bought the car! Now that I have my new laptop, I will work on retrieving my pics off the old one and my backup hard drive. Stay tuned. Dave
The story just keeps getting better! I often wish my family would have held on to at least one old car. I suppose I could start that tradition. My oldest has already laid claim to my 56 even though it has only been mine for 11 years now. I had to buy someone else's family heirloom to get a clean old survivor. Looking forward to more stories and pics.
Speaking of family history and 39 convertibles...this pic is of my Dad back in the mid-forties. This car was replaced some 10-15 years before I was born. Funny though, the '39 made way for a '49 convertible. I think Dad was a ragtop man.
Oh yeah! Smells much better than stop leak too. At the circle tracks over the years we have used tobacco from a couple cigarettes too. My buddy uses paprika! Any thing that floats and is soft when wet will do the job in a pinch. Cheap too! Dave
Only things I'm not crazy about on the '39 models is the headlights and the wide 5 wheels and caps. The '40 column shift is great especially for a 1st year thing but nothing at all wrong with the old floor shift either so not a negative. I like the short roof on the '39 vs the long one for '40. Dave