Projects 1937 Ford Hemi Coupe Build Thread

About a year ago we acquired a 1937 Ford from the family of my dads recently deceased cousin. It was originally built as a drag car in the early 60's but was never driven. We just started working on it a few days ago so I'm starting this thread before I take more pictures than I can post. Hope y'all like it!

A few pics from when we got it-


354 Hemi






Teardown-












All we got so far! More coming soon.

 

Nice! What are the plans?

.

 

Gonna keep the Hemi, IFS and leafs from Chassis Engineering, Tremec TKO 5-speed, and a Currie 9 inch 3.50. That's all the big stuff I can think of right now. Hoping to get the body off in the next few days!

 

Cool project. Now that a tight fit for that hemi.

 

Careful not to scratch it! That car is a masterpiece.
Much envy here...

 

Thanks! The paint looks really good considering it's probably 40 years old.

 

Wow! The mother lode....I'm going to keep an eye on this one....

 

If you go Currie be sure and inspect closely. I've been disappointed with their quality in the past.

 

Looks like a great car to start a build with. Plans sound good. I will have to follow along also.

 

Alright, I'll say it........looked good the way it was.....I would have finished it and used it on the track (but its yours NOT mine)

 

I agree it looks good... But its not going to look much different when we're done. Aside from different wheels and tires, we're doing mechanical upgrades, not cosmetic ones.

 

Wow what a time piece!

 

Coolest 37 I've ever seen!

 

Very cool and neat car. That is some serious setback to fit the engine. Interested to see more, lot of potential there and the 354 Hemi is just too cool.

 

Interior gone... Almost ready for body removal

 

37's are cool.

 

Injection off, hoping to pull engine in the next few days.

 

Polished?

 

Nice! Real nice.

 

That engine looks pretty good inside for sitting around all of those years!

 

Very cool find to start with - I hope you try to disturb only what's necessary, and preserve the soul of what you found.

Subscribed . . . And jealous!!

 

From what we know he never actually drove it.

 

My heap came to me with IFS (Corvair), and being new to this I kept it even though I had to re-engineer most of it. Since then I have ridden in some great riding and handling solid axle cars, and if I had it to do over again I would have gone that way, I still might. Your car is such a great time piece I would leave the solid axle. Just my 2¢.

 

WOW! Awesome car,wouldn't mind having that car in my garage!

 

Yea I understand that, but we have all the parts here now so we're going to go the IFS route, maybe someone else can use what we can't if we decide to get rid of it. If we were doing a car without fenders it'd probably be a solid axle.

 

Well she's a roller now! After a lot of coaxing (and a little cutting) we finally got this elephant motor where we can mess with it. The transmission came pretty easily but the engine required some... extra clearance. We hope to have the body off sometime this week so stay tuned! Also, if you check the earlier posts there is a picture of the cylinder head intake ports, which look to have been ported/polished. Any thoughts?

 

'37's are WAY Kool! Their styling flows really well.

 

I notice a stiffener piece welded on the back
of the rocker arms. I understand this was done to help
prevent breakage at high r.p.m and high spring pressure.
I also noticed a tie bar type device on the lifters. Is there a
roller cam in the motor? Considering all these details and
the fuel injection system it looks like a serious race motor
effort. Very cool!

 

Yes it is a solid roller, not sure what kind. I didn't notice the rocker arm things. That's pretty neat.

 

INterested in this, messing with a 37 myself