Projects 1960 Ford Falcon Ranchero: updated 7/14/12

I just picked up a 1960 Ranchero earlier this week. It was advertised as a '61 and I didn't give much thought to it until I got it home and started looking at the grill. A quick check of the title and sure enough it's a '60. I've owned a few of these small Fords and have always enjoyed them. I happened across this one locally after deciding I wanted a small project for this summer. It's fairly straight, extremely minimal rust, complete, and never been hacked into. It's got the 144 I6, and a three on the tree.
Plans are for an early sixties custom. The body is getting a complete shave with filled seams, including fender to cowl and rounded door and hood corners. I'd also like to run '60 Buick tailights, if I can find a pair. The body will be repainted the original white, but will receive flaked, candied, laced panels on the roof and top of the dash. I have plans for a custom interior as well. The engine will remain stock except for a small splash of chrome and a split manifold with dual straight pipes. I'll try and get as much drop out of the stock suspension as possible. Static, no bags. I plan on removing a coil and a half from the front and reversing the main leaf and removing a leaf or two in the rear. Just enough to get that satisfying scrape from the tailpipes as I pull into the driveway.
Hopefully things will move pretty quick with this project. I'll be starting by getting all of the uninteresting mechanical stuff out of the way first. I'll update this thread as progress is made. Thanks for looking.

 

I was a little slow at getting this thread started, so I already have my first update. I brought the car home on Tuesday and when I came home from work on Wednesday the car greeted me with one completely flat tire. It looked pretty pitiful. A new set of pinner whites was on the list anyway, so I figured now was as good a time as any. I went to check my tire size and was surprised to find that the car had 14's on it instead of the stock 13's. Apparently the 14 inch four lug steelies that accept the small cap were an option on '64 and '65 Falcon's and early six cylinder Mustangs and are somewhat desirable. I guess someone had upgraded the car somewhere along the way. Honestly since I have plans to go low I would have been just as happy with the 13's, but the 14's were a nice surprise. So Thursday I went to the local tire shop I usually deal with and ordred up a set of 185/75/14's.

 

Cool!

 

filling the seam between the fender and cowl would suggest your expecting never to have to take the fenders off again; something i wouldn't bet on with a Falcon-based car. plastic filler, maybe.... don't weld it up. they're loads of fun and dead easy to work on; i've probably had a dozen or more over the years and still have a '62 permanent project car....

 

When filling the seams remember this body flexes ALOT!!!!

Here is mine

 

62rebel, I really don't expect to have to remove my fenders. I've owned a few Falcons and have never really found cause to remove the fenders. I actually think this is the perfect car to do this to as the core support is already part of the car, so it's not like you can remove the dog house for better acess to anything anyway. Are you actually suggesting I would be better off just filling it with bondo?
Fuzzy Knight, nice Ranchero. I'll admit, I actually didn't think about the amount of flex in these bodies. Those seams are too ugly though and have to go! Maybe I'll look into some subframe connectors and just cross my fingers.
No real exciting updates yet, but I did finish a complete rebuild of the front brakes. New Master, wheel cylinders, shoes, hard and soft lines, and hardware. Now I'll be focusing on the rear. It took a little bit of detective work to track down all of the right parts. Being a first year model some things were a little different. I think I've got it all sorted now though and should have a completely new braking system by the end of the week.

 

Nice score, a friend has been looking for one here in Houston, nothing but rusted out floors, quarters and wrecks for $2000 on up..

 

Cool ford!

 

I usually only remove the fenders on my old truck when I'm swapping engines, but the most recent time I had to replace them, after the wreck. You never know.

Neat little truck, nice find!

 

People be confusing the years of Falcons all the time.

 

Small update, nothing too exctiting but progress none the less. Finished up the brakes this weekend. Got the tank out and took it over today to get it cleaned and sealed. Got everything I needed for a full tuneup on the motor aside from the carb rebuild kit which had to be ordered. Going out right now to do the tuneup.
I've been entertaining the notion of moving the battery and starter solenoid to the area under the bed that these Rancheros have, just to clean up the engine compartment a little. Going to try and replace the fuel line from the tank to the motor and clean up that area of the underside before I get the tank back in a few days. Thanks for all the comments and hopefully soon I'll have some more interesting updates.

 

There was one in my neighbors yard for 25 years, burried by ground squirrels. Thought about getting it when they redid the property with a new house. They tryed to pul it out with a loader and ripped it to pieces. Whole engine compartment was filled with dirt from squirrels

 

Moving right along. Like I'd said before, I'd pulled the gas tank to have it cleaned and had the intention of cleaning up and undercoating that section of the car while the tank was out. Well I knew I'd wanted to remove the rear axle and suspension to clean, paint and reverse the main leaves, so I figured why not do it all at once. I ended up removing everything from the back half of the car then cleaned, scraped and generally made a giant mess before undercoating everything with a nice coat of spray on bedliner in a can. I also removed the cover over the rear "treasure chest" area of the bed. It was piled full of crap, but thankfully solid. I just ended up vaccuming out all the crap, and intend on making the area more accessable and mounting the battery and starter solenoid down there. I suck at stopping to take pics as I'm working, but I'm working on it. So here's some crappy cell phone pics.

 

The rear spring pack was disassembled and I proceeded to reverse the main leaf, thanks to this tech thread: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90824&highlight=spring+reverse
I had done a couple Model A springs like this before with good results, so I figured why not try it on a bit of a larger scale. I had previously tried this on my white '64 Falcon Sedan and you can see how that one sat in the pic. For this one I wanted to go lower, so I removed one leaf as well. I'm also planning on a C notch for a little extra clearance. First pic is a comparison, top spring is stock, bottom spring has already been reversed. Second pic is reassembled and painted with one leaf removed.

 

Been doing a lot of cleaning and painting. Got the underside all cleaned up and undercoated. Cleaned up the rear end and all the miscellaneous components and put some new seals in the rear and threw some paint on all of it. Now I'm finally ready to put it all back together. Also I wanted to thank Nads for hookin' it up with some four lug spider caps. I know these aren't that easy to come by and I feel fortunate to have them. Now if I could just find some of those spider trim rings...

 

cool pick up!interested to see how low you get it on stock suspension.. these things kick and scream all the way to the ground ha ha.. watch for bad bumpsteer

 

I got the rear suspension back together. You can still see lugnuts, so it's not low enough yet. I'm actually a little surprised, at this much drop my other Falcon was just about bottomed out, but on this Ranchero I've still got a good three inches of clearance. Looks like I'll be ordering some lowering blocks. I'd planned on tearing apart the front suspension today, but It's just too hot to be outside and I think I could use a day off anyway. Thought I'd throw a better pic up of the spiders on a painted wheel too

 

Looking good. Keep at it!!

 

Looking good!

 

I wish I could change the date on the thread title, but it won't let me anymore, oh well. Took the day off Saturday, but wanted to get something acomplished this weekend. I've been getting tired of crawling around under the car, so I decided to spend some time inside of it instead. I spend a couple hours on it Sunday and ended up gutting the interior. Ripped out the old headliner, removed the floor mat, and scraped off a bunch of old undercoating. Found a few surprises I wasn't too happy about. It's not too bad, but I will have to replace some of the floor.

 

Did some custom taillights the other day. Well, not too custom. I literally had to drill one hole and they bolted right on. They're 60 Dodge taillights. I'm actually still looking for a set of '60 Buick taillights, but found these and couldn't pass on 'em. If I end up keeping them I'll probably trim down the housing a little so they don't stick out so far, but they fit the car perfectly. Overall I think they loook alright and they kind of add a whole new element to the car.
On a side note, my computer crashed this week, so there went the money for my front end rebuild kit. I've got enough small stuff to keep me busy though that shouldn't cost too much until I can build up some more savings though.
Here's a few before and after shots. Let me know what you think.

 

Did you rotate them to see how they'd look with the longer part in another position?

 

Cool idea on those tail lights!

 

Cool!

 

Great little cars! Here's mine!

 

sgtlethergic, I did rotate them to see if I liked them better positioned some other way, but ultimately decided that they looked best mounted upright.
von zipper, nice little Ranchero. Where is everybody finding these four lug Cragars? I'd kill for a set!

 

I was lucky enough to get them for a case of beer because the guy was using them as rollers on his Mustang till he put 5 lugs on! Look on Craig's or save a search on EBay! They come up now and then.

 

Cool 'chero, I like the direction you going

 

Ok, so long time no update. Like I mentioned before my computer crashed and there went some of my savings. Waiting for some more cash to come in, ordering parts and then installing those parts ate up the last couple weeks. Also on a somewhat unrelated note I've got a new girlfriend, so there goes all of my spare time as well.

Anyway, I got the front end rebuild kit and installed it along with all the related cleaning and painting involved with such a task. While I was in there I cut two coils from the front spring. Now that I know where the front is going to sit, the back end needs to come down a little more which I was kind of counting on. Not sure yet if I want to just pull another leaf, or go with 2" blocks. I'll probably just end up pulling another leaf because, well, it's free.

 

I'm assuming you cut some coils in the front, how many have you cut to get it where it is??