Projects 1939 Ford Convertible Sedan Resurrection

This weeks project has been the right side trunk corner.

It may not look like much of a problem to solve but it was a challenge.

After a lot of thought I decided to use the old sedan tail pan we had removed from the car
to supply us with the new corners.

Sorry about some of the fuzzy pictures. Cut out the corner of the new tail pan.

Several test fits were required with little tweaks of the donor metal required.

piece number two fabbed from sheet stock.

close.


Tacked while on the car.

I decided to weld this piece on the bench. this allowed me weld both sides which allowed
me to contour the rounded edge of the reveal.Forgot to take pictures of the weld.


Well I did take a picture of the finished weld but this time it is really fuzzy.

corner welded in and drilled for plug welds for the back section.

Another element ready for welding.The corner was built from four separate pieces. I missed
a lot of opportunities for pictures of this corner building process. I will try to catch some on
left side.

Okay the corner is in so it's time to modify this brace and get it installed. Since we raised
the tool box floor an inch we had to reshape things a little. This end piece was pretty
messed up so it was cut off.

Test fits.

Painted the bottom side before final installation.

Repaired some cracks and welded the unit in.

Parting shots

Took about a week for this repair/modification. Should work pretty good when finished.
Merry Christmas to you all!

 

Credit to Mr Ashworth from a October 1999 Street Rodder Magazine. Just could not resist posting it.

 

I do read n look carefully at what you n others post. Not everyday, but it's well worth my time to learn from you guys. Wish I could learn in person. This is next best. Thanks for the effort posting pics n comments.
Marcus...

 

Thank you Marcus, it's always good to hear from those that watching. It makes me feel better about investing the time to post.

 

I like that you're making your corner mods look factory.

 

Some factory parts involved..... started the left side today. Hope it turns out as well as the right. I have to do a lathe project for Don's Jeep this week and will be busy with family during the Christmas week so progress will be slow on this corner. Did you say you were going to round off your trunk corners?

 

Yes I am. The opening was done some time ago and now I am working on the shortened lid. I cut the inner bracing out years ago to get access to the panel to fill handle and license plate bracket holes and re do old repairs...but I'm wondering why I cut it out in so many pieces. All good, the jigsaw is back together and am back to the lower skin and inner area for the latch.

 

No progress this week. Spent the early part of the week machining some brake baking plates for Don. Had a fun Christmas Holiday with some of the family.


I had a blast with my Grandson Atticus! We built some weird stuff before he decided he needed his own work bench. Look how tidy/organized his tools are. Of course the bench wasn't big (typical garage guy) enough so he had to add some wings on the sides. Atticus is the youngest of seven grandsons and newly acquired in a second marriage of one of my sons. He is a great kid and the most promising of all of them (including my sons) as far as mechanical interest. I feel blessed. Merry Christmas !

 

As usual you make it look easy! Great work so far! I am looking forward to more progress in the near future.

 

Thank you daleeric! I see you are from Omak Washington. Have we met before. If not maybe this year.

Well it's been awhile since the last post. We have been busy but progress is very slow. I will try to start catching up with the progress we have made though.


DS lower edge drilled for spot welds.

Weather strip backside was formed on the shrinker stretcher.

Clamped for welding

After finishing the backside weld a flat piece was bent to fit and welded onto the backside.

It's time to modify and repair the trunk support.

Some relief cuts to help with reshaping this section.

Fixed. I left some brass in this piece but the remaining brass is in non stress areas and
Paint adhesion should no be a problem here.

I had to make a new end for the bracket and shorten it a little to fit the new trunk pan.



Installed support

Top corner was repaired with the same methods as the passenger side.



Finally moving on to the next fun repair

 

It's time to gap the trunk lid. We spent considerable time deciding where the optimum location in the hole was for the lid before starting the gaping process .

Well you might not be able to throw a cat through this gap but any mouse worth his
cheese could have fit through it.



My weapon of choice here was some 1/8" welding rod. It bent around the corner
very easily. I just tacked it on about 1 inch apart and then started spot welding it
on to the trunk filling in the gaps. plenty of time was allowed between welds to allow
cool to the touch between passes.



I kept welding until all of the spots were connected.

This process went on until three pieces of rod ( in some places) were welded on. The
trunk lid was then flipped over and the welding process repeated on the bottom side.

Ready for finishing

Metal finished welds


I had to grind so much of the passenger side skin's edge to get a gap that matched the body
that it separated from the from the skin.




So I cut it off and cleaned up the the surface.

Made a paper contour gauge for reference so I could return the edge to contour after
welding the edge back on.

Plug welds were applied to secure the metal strip before welding the edge.

The corners were missing so new pieces were made for them.

The edge was then spot welded on before metal finishing to contour. I guess I missed
getting a picture of the welded edge.






A second layer of corner metal was added after this to make the corner appear stock.


After grinding the drivers side corner to contour some weld repair was required.

Corner repaired.

Top drivers side corner finished

Passenger side corner contoured.

This project required a lot of patience and time. I took me a few weeks and I still need to
do a little more touch up before the body work phase.

 

Man that's a ton of work, but has to be satisfying. Good job.

Glad your pics includes the prop rod bracket and spring. Reminds me I don't have that. Hunk of wood has been serving duty.

Also interesting are the variances in internal bracing between body styles.

(Just be grateful your top corners were rounded to begin with)

 

Throwing cats through things, thanks for the flashback to working with my Dad, gone since 1983, miss him every day. Bob

 

It was a lot of work as you well know. ( Thanks for the PM) Each one of these sub projects when completed is celebrated with some high 5's around here. It is satisfying. That stock prop rod works very well. Hope you can source one for your Sloper.

 

Glad to see you’re getting around to this one Sam. Don’t you already have a complete chassis for it?

Making me jealous about not having a shop any more. I even sold my nice Lincoln mig welder to Mike. Guess I will just keep buying them done and miss out on the real fun.


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Gee John it only sat in that trailer for 15 years or so....... I do have the full chassis for the car. The body is sitting on it now, I just have not caught up with that in the thread yet. It seems like you are having a lot of fun driving your Hot Rods. Nothing wrong with buying them done especially when you drive them as much as you do. Not building them also could make it easier to sell one to buy another one to enjoy for awhile. I tend to grow to attached to them after all of the effort it takes to build them and just can't bring myself to part with them. Hope to see you this summer!

 

I know about attachment. I owned the first 32 sedan for 20 years and although it was a complete car when I bought it I wanted it different so tore it completely apart and built it back with the blower motor. Lots of work although no body work like you are doing.


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Same.

 

Coming along nicely..appreciate your updates.

 

Great work on a finicky project!

 

What other cars have you built and held on to?

 

I still have the deuce roadster I built in the 90's. It's been on the road 22 years now. I sold my 39 coupe half way into the roadster build and always regretted it but, the funds helped and 'where do you keep them all?'
With civilian cars, once I have one I tend to drive it forever. I'm not into renewing every few years.

 

I saw a picture of your roadster on Facebook the other day. Definitely a keeper! I fortunately have enough room to keep the three I have and maybe one more.....

A few weeks ago we made the decision to move the body to the frame it will be living on. It's a real mood lifter.Even though it's not, it feels like a giant leap forward in progress seeing the body on this nice frame.


I built this tube frame for the car years before knowing that it would soon be a pile of parts.
The frame works like an assembly jig. I can't say it has worked perfectly as we have had
some problems getting the doors to fit. We spent the better part of a week trying to get the
door gaps right. We are still not satisfied with the fit but we will get there as we progress through
the project.



I didn't always like the 39 Ford trunk latch assembly but over the years I have come to like
the art decco element of it. So I have gone to considerable time and expense to piece together
this one. For years I thought I had a latch for it but found out I didn't so I figured I would just
buy one.......

Turns out no one is making them and I was having difficulty finding and original. After
some searching I ended up talking to Karl Wescott. Karl said that the 35-36 Ford would
work with a small modification. All I did was drill an access hole in the bottom corner
of the latch and it fit right in and works great.


Well that's all for now. We have been making good but slow progress and I have a lot of
pictures stacked up . I just need to set aside more time for posting this stuff.

 

Wow, that's a lot of steel for the assembly jig/body framing! Looking good. It's always feels like progress when the body goes back on the chassis (even if it's only for a short time knowing full well that there will be seven more on and off cycles before the project is done!).

 

That's because there is no floor in the car to tie it together is my guess. JW

 

Just read through the entire thread and I'm exhausted. (in a good way) Kudos to you for doing the good work to save such a cool car. I did the tool tray and trunk on my 40 sedan and it was not as nice as what you're doing. Subscribed!

 

So true. It is a mood lifter but it certainly will be as you said. At least seven.....

That's right John, She now has 1/3 of her floor. It's nice to not have the rear of the car flopping or waging it's tail anymore.

Thanks Dan , hope you didn't break a sweat reading the thread.... I remember enjoying your build thread on the 40 Sedan . Hope you get another 40 project someday and share it's build with us. The tool box was one of those things I thought would take a few days. As it turned out I just finished the last details of it this week after months of fiddling with it and all of the other parts it connects to.

 

Nice work, I do like those radiused corners, and nice use of the coupe tail pan for the bumper slots, great idea.

 

It's time to work on the trunk and rear seat pan area now that the body is on it's new frame.

This piece had to be cut off to accommodate the wheel tubs.




This nice piece had to be reconfigured to accommodate the pan hard bar.

You can see the pan hard bar in this photo. The frame has been C notched and we were
concerned that the pan hard bar would be hitting the floor on occasion. After considerable
measuring for max travel of the suspension we thought we needed about 4 inches of room
for travel. I noticed well after making lots of room for travel that the shocks only have 2 1/2"
of travel so I would say we now have plenty of room ( unless I change the coil overs out.


We ended up cutting the left edge off and bending this piece a couple of times to make room
for the pan hard bar. We tried in the stock rear seat bottom spring set to see if it would still
fit after this modification. We think the spring set can be modified to fit. Worse case scenario
is it may have to be replaced by a foam cushion.

We recently acquired this 6 foot break and have used it several times already. Works
great and didn't cost much thanks to my Uncle Mike.

First bending project on the new tool. This piece replaces the lip we had to cut off
of the seat pan.



These pieces needed some modifications to fit the modified seat pan.



Self drilling screws were used to hold the panels together for welding.




Pre drilled some holes for plug welds.


Marked for pre drilling of the rear end cover.

Drilled some holes for the C pillar support mounts.

We had borrowed this fancy spot welder to weld these panels in. If it had worked correctly
it would have been great. But try as we might we could not get enough weld penetration.
I ended up having to go back and drill all of the spot welds out and plug weld them....
Yes looked good but would not hold.

Welded, could have left them like that but chose to finish them. You can see the rocker
welded in here .I will cover that piece in the next post.

So far I think this Bitchin Products floor stuff is pretty good quality and fits well over all.

Plug welds sanded .