Projects 1939 Ford Convertible Sedan Resurrection

Wow Sam, a lot of work going on there, that cowl replacement would of had me questioning my sanity! Great job, rather you than me..

 

Not sure how the final alignment will happen. We have been chasing it around for a few months now. We are close now on the frame (more on how we got there later) but we are planning to move the body to a body dolly soon. So I expect to have to re shim everything when we put the body on the dolly and again when we put it back on the frame.

You got that right ! Takes a very patient team.

Yes a blasted clean body is a must for this kind of project. This one was blasted many years ago. It is a good thing I live in an arid climate.

Thank you, it is a huge project and preparing the posts is time consuming. I enjoy it all though and appreciate you guys following along.

Thank you I hope it inspires some more guys to try challenging projects. Hopefully some of my posts will be helpful to someone trying to build a basket case like this one.

Thank you Tim, that's very much appreciated praise from a talented builder like you. I feel the same when I read your posts. I hope your shoulder is healing so you can get back on your convertible project. I miss your posts.

Thank you! Yes both new sides of the cowl have been have on and off the structure too many times to count. I am hoping to reinstall the right one for the last time in a few minutes. Sane..... I am not so sure I am......

You guys all have a nice day! I appreciate all of your comments!

 

Have to join the chorus, and chime in again. Exceptional work, but damn, what a challenge!
Refresh our memories again; how long have you had the car, and where did it come from?
With all that rust repair, could not have been the Yakima area! (A big "tip of the hat" to you
guys for saving a rare body style. Just don't see many C.S. these days..)

Hope to drive my very long-term project over to a show on the Dry Side, someday soon, and see it!
Let's get them done while we're able!

 

Hello ROKIT, it's good to hear from you! I have had the car for about 20 years. I bought it from the PO owner in the Watkins Glen area of New York. Any time you are coming to the Wenatchee area just let me know and I would be happy to show you the project. Thanks for the compliments!
Sam

 

With the cowl off we decided we better make some modifications to the frame so we would know how to modify the front sections of the floor while they were easy to remove for test fitting and fabrication.At a risk of getting the thread shut down I will show just a few pics of OT pieces of the project. If the moderators don't like this content please just take this post down and no the whole thread.

It's pretty easy to remove an engine when there is nothing in the way.

Out with the old and in wit the new 200.

This brake system had to go.

The 200 requires some more surgery in order to clear the pan.

More surgery required for speedo access.

Getting lighter?

A new transmission mount was needed.

Bracket is for the emergency brake.

Tight but adequate room.



New mount maintains the same angle as the previous mount.


A genie shifter will go on the transmission. I had to change the shift gate out in this one.
Shift position sending unit purchased long ago for the 350. I had to modify the linkage
to fit the 200.

Yellow arrow points to the new longer linkage. Tricky to make but it works .

 

Looks great Sam. Just asking...Is there enough room at the crossmember to slide the trans back and remove it from the bottom? It would be a pain to take the front sheet metal off in order to remove the engine and trans from the top in the event of a trans issue.

 

This build is an excellent example of patience and intestinal fortitude. I can’t say anything that’s not already been stated.........amazing execution of problem solving.

 

Thanks Tim! We did consider how much room would be required to remove the transmission without pulling the engine and hopefully we have added enough room for doing that. We have had to pull the engine out too many times in my coupe to remove the transmission to not consider that likely scenario.

Thank you i.rant good to see you are watching the painfully slow progress.


The PO of this frame evidently didn't think he needed to have a top on the old Ford X
member box but I did. So using the holes that were already there I fabricated a new top.

Using some 1/8 plate I laid out a plan. What I really wanted was a nice half round
center section but I had no luck finding any at the local steel vendor and nothing on hand.
So I decided to try using multiple bends on the metal break. Well that didn't work to well.
So I settled for two pieces with one bend each welded in the center. Of course the next
week when I took my drive line in for some work, there on Drive line Dave's shop floor
was all sorts of varying diameters of steel tubing I could have used for this project.
Oh well.... This will work.

I guess I didn't take a top side picture of it installed but this picture shows it pretty well.
It should be stout enough. I like that brace the PO made in the foreground.

As I mentioned in an earlier post this single master cylinder and remote power booster
just wasn't going to beadequate for me so we took it all out.

I thought I was going to need a a new pedal assembly since I was switching from power
brakes to manual. So I ordered a kit from Speedway that included a the corvette MC and
pedal assembly. Turned out that the pedal assembly I had was the same ratio as the new one.
We double checked the charts for pedal ratio and decided this old one will work just fine.
Speedway was nice enough to allow me to return the pedal assembly and keep the master cylinder.


They say this MC is supposed to work with disc disc applications. I have been very happy with this same
MC in my 40 coupe So I will give it a try. If I don't like it I will convert to the the disc disc version later.

Don is a wizard at brake lines and was able bend up theses tight radius lines in a couple
of hours. That arrow is pointing to a PVC pipe spacer I installed along with a cardboard
template of the pedal so I could determine where to make the hole in the toe board.



Don also installed these 2 PSI valves in the lines front and back since we have disc brakes on both. This is a nice kit. I remember when building my coupe the adapters were not included with the valves so I had to order and wait for them. They even put the the thread sealant on them! Sorry I didn't get a picture of them installed.




We installed all of this stuff so that we could finish installing the the front floor boards.
We will start covering that in the next post.

 

Now that the master cylinder and shifter are in place we can figure out where to put the holes for them.

I put the floor panel in place and traced around the MC from underneath . Drilled some
holes in the corners and then cut the hole out.

Came out pretty close. When I was done I thought I should have made the hole bigger,
but I was trying to keep the cover as small as possible because that lump will be under
my foot. There is plenty of room to get the MC cover keeper off. Then I decided to
recess the flange in the floor.

We used the bead roller to make the recess . The dome was fun to make. I used the sand
bag, several hammers, planishing hammer and English wheel to shape this thing. Looks
okay considering it will be under dynamat , insulation and carpet.

I chose to tack some 10-24 nuts under the cover to secure it.

 

Well done Sam; can I say again that I'm so relieved that I sold that convertible. You guys did some masterful work getting the cowl panels and firewall repaired. I really enjoy watching you guys accomplish things; it makes my project problems seem small.

 

Sam, It is looking great. Great post and pictures. Lots of info being shared to help all of us on our projects.

Keith

 

Thanks Joel, It seemed like for months we were getting nowhere on this project. It now looks like we have broken through and things are progressing nicely. I am a little behind with my posts but things are looking up. Still a lot of work to do on the doors though but they all finally close and latch!

Thanks Keith!

It's time to modify the transcover before it gets welded in. My previous 40's have all utilized
the stock transmission cover and wooden toe boards but this time I decided to use the Bitchin
products kit that is meant to be welded in.


After installing the Gennie floor shifter It was obvious that we would need access to it
for adjustments and wiring the neutral safety switch. So I marked out a generous service
opening.

I used my dremel tool to cut the cover so as to get the most accurate cut with a small
gap.
I decided to try a different method for securing this cover . I welded a perimeter of 14
gauge plate around the perimeter.

I used the plug weld technique again to secure it.



I tapped the flange for a lot of 10/32 screws.

It takes a lot of them make the panel stay tight to the original shape of the tunnel.

I will put some shorter screws in later or cut these off a little.

While we were aligning the floor before welding we discovered we were a little off center.
After moving the transmission cover over the shift boot hole was no longer in the center.
That necessitated a little adjustment. I took the the piece I cut out and welded back in to
make the hole round again.




A little bit of grinding and sanding later and it's good as new.

Boot ring fits now.

The result is good access to the shifter assembly. This shifter will probably have to be
removed if the transmission has to be removed for service.

That's it! Another project done.

 

Good work. So often service access is never thought of.

 

Thank you! Well sometimes you learn things the hard way. I have learned that when you modify a car to this extent and combine parts from other cars and parts suppliers from over an 80 year period not everything works together right out of the box. So Some pre - planning for repairs,adjustments and corrections is always a good idea. It took the transmission builder several attempts to get this transmission to function correctly on his test mule so I wanted to be ready to pull the transmission out without removing the engine (just in case).....

 

Watching and enjoying! Good coverage and images. I often lose interest without pictu

 

Keep up the good work Sam!

 

Well if you like pictures you are watching the right thread.... Thanks for watching! I am enjoying your thread also.

Thanks sshep!

We dug the hood out of storage to test it's fit with the cowl.

We had to make a couple of adjustments to the cowl but it fits good now. It was nice actually
see it on the car.

The top of this bell housing cover needed some adjustments. We ended up with a gap
at the firewall that had to be filled.

I used some clear plastic to make a template.

Lots of spot welds again. Ugly but you can see the blue indicates than thin strip of
metal was getting hot.

Some metal finishing to both sides made it look decent and it's ready to weld on.



This yellow arrow shows the stock rocker panel . The floor fit up tight to the cowl. The
bitchen floor and rocker kit is flat in this area.





So Don made this piece to fill the gap.

The floor is now ready for welding. You can't see all the plug weld holes in this
picture but most of them were drilled on two inch centers. Hole sizes were around 5/16 inch.

The sheet metal screws really work well for this temporary clamping. As Joel said earlier
you should not weld any of this stuff down until you are sure every thing is lined up correctly.
This is sage advice. I had to adjust the front flooring a few times before I was happy with
the alignment. I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier but you need to drill the top
panel holes a little larger than the screw diameter. To do that you have to drill the screw holes
and plug weld holes before you put the panels together. If you do not do that the screws will
force the panels apart instead of clamping them tightly together.



A lot of plug welding later ... I also added some weld beads in between the plug welds.



That's it for tonight. Thanks for watching.

 

Great job Sam (and Don)!

 

Beautiful work ,Sam. It's a shame that when the car is finished, all that work will be hidden. I hope you're saving these digital pics to make photos ; they should be in an album.

 

Thank you Tim! Without Don I probably would have given up on this project. His skill both mental and craft wise are indispensable. Just having him come over to work on it every day gets me off my butt and out to the shop to get something done.

Thank you Joel and yes there will be thousands of pictures before it is finished, all saved in a specific file on the PC. I plan to make a book from the HAMB thread when finished. I made my coupe build into a book ( three ring binder) It was 700 pages after editing and was pretty expensive to print. But I enjoy just looking through it once in a while, I often use it for reference during maintenance on the coupe or when trying to find some information on the build while trying to help someone on the HAMB.
Cowl sides:


So as shown before I drilled a lot of holes for plug welds on the pinch flange.

I used a lot of small clamps ( not shown) to hold the two panels tightly together while
welding.

Plug welding again. I will sand them down later on. The top arrow shows an area
that will be behind the hood hinge so the priority was a solid weld ,as in didn't have to
be pretty.



The inside of the pinch flange should look pretty good without much metal finishing

So this joint needs some special attention. I took a little too much metal off of this years
ago.



Finished

The inside of this part of the pinch flange was challenging to weld. I ended up putting
some weld metal in that black hole behind the bolt also. The hole with the bolt in it is
used for the hood hinge.






Eventually plug welded all of the holes in the firewall base.

 

Looks good really nice work

 

Real progress. You'll have a complete body before you know it!

 

I think we follow the same philosophy on welding in replacement pieces. Try to replace the factory weld plus extra weld for strength. The factory spot welds are tough and the other visible spots were probably stick welds ( great penetration) .
I've also been thinking about an album. I lost a bunch of pics of my coupe build but I have all the truck pix of the truck on the computer.
Great work on the cowl.

 

Thank You!

Thanks, At least now when I grab onto the car and give it a shake the whole car moves as one.

Agreed, when I can I add few more welds . When I butt weld I like to leave full penetration welds unfinished in areas that they will not be seen I just think they will be a little it stronger. You can always copy pictures off of your coupe build thread back into a file on your computer. I use a digital camera for all of my pictures. I copy all of the pictures to a file on the PC and since I don't trust computers to not fail I keep the SD cards for backup when they get full.

Right front passenger door:

Now that the body is pretty much welded into the shape we hope it will stay in with decent door function it is time to work on the doors again. This may seem a little repetitious to some of you but to me they are all a little different and I want to document the work we do on them.

This one had a simple piece of tin braised to the bottom. We could of left it as it was
and used it but that's not the way we do things here.



I am not quite sure why they added all of this bracing but it has to go. I have never seen
a carriage bolt installed in a door before.

Top side of bottom corner Pretty lumpy . This area actually looked pretty good before
the bondo was blasted away.

Peeling away the tin cover.

Yep pretty much like the back doors....



The trick here is to maintain the shape of the door while replacing all of this stuff.





Eventually there wasn't much left. we did manage to save the door skin pinch
flange .



Don spent some time on the shrinker- stretcher and matched the shape of the door skin.

The upper piece is a little more complex. The bead roller was used for the step.

There was some surface rust on the skin but no holes so we treated it.

We used Eastwood Rust Converter. Two coats.

The bottom piece was easy to fit but the top was challenging to clamp for welding.





Don checking the arc or curve in the drivers door to be sure we hadn't lost the shape
during the fabrication of the Passenger door.

A 2X4 (not shown) was used to help these clamps hold the bottom piece tightly to
the top section.

The bottom seam is welded at the bend to make it look like one piece. Now all I have
to do is make about 100 more spot welds to join all of this together.

More later

 

More door stuff


So now the front section. Shorter but just as many challenges as the longer one.

I don't remember why Don wanted to make that last little piece separately.

The top edge of the bottom piece was trimmed off with the Dremel tool.



The last piece was made out of a little heavier piece of sheet metal.





Done with this. The good news is that the drivers door does not need a new bottom so
we are done with door bottoms.

 

Door Skin and door corner support :
I have to admit I have been very nervous about this part of this project. Welding a
new or donor skin onto this door won't be easy...... I have to master or at least gain
enough skill to hammer weld the new patch in without too much warpage. The plan
is to have me mig weld a spot weld and then have Don give the weld a few light
smacks with hammer and dolly. Allowing for cooling between welds means this patch
will probably take a whole afternoon. But there is plenty to do before we get to welding.
It's kind of like painting, if you don't prep things right it will not turn out well. So let's
get started.


More brass to cut out.



So we decided to make our cut with a large radius. Rounded corners are supposed to be
better than 90 degree corners when welding patches. Less puckering of the metal I am
told.

Cut out with a Dremel tool.




This door stop and support had been worked over before and we decided to replace it.



The whole bottom of the support was missing. This was also an area of the door that had
been replaced many years ago by the PO.

This corner of the door jamb had been replaced. We deemed it ugly but usable.



We cut out a piece of 20 gauge and laid out a 2 inch grid to help with keeping on
track with the english wheel. We were surprised at how easily the metal moved to the
shape we needed to math the door. We haven't decided for sure but we think we are going
to use the donor panel. So we may come back to this piece later if the donor does not work
out.

The donor door given to us by a good friend.

After some clean up it looks pretty good. Except for this spot by the bottom hinge.
It seems like a lot of Fords suffered this same fate.


Ford didn't put very many welds along the edge but they must be carefully ground out.
I laid the piece I cut off of the convertible door on top of the donor door and marked
the donor door 3/8" larger and cut it out.

We will get back to the skin later. This donor door had a better looking door stop support
so we will try to salvage it.

We cut the whole corner out sand blasted it and started the salvage work. Just 4 spot
welds hold the top section in.








Meanwhile I continued prepping the CS door for the new donor parts. The arrow points
to another weld area that I needed to metal finish so the new corner would fit.

Not much left of the old door stop brace.....

This donor piece looks pretty good after clean up but it is missing it's bottom corner.

I had to cut the some metal out here to make this piece fir the modified CS door.
You will see this in photos below.

We eventually removed this bottom piece from the donor but we could not use it.


The bottom hinge is now a bolt on item. I had one threaded bracket for this left over
from a Bob Drake hinge kit I bought for my coupe. The only problem was it was for the
passenger door . Since the bracket has to span or bridge over the support I had to make
some spacer bushings to make it work on the passenger door. The lower arrow points
to the notches I had to cut out to fit the modified door.

Of course I made a trip to the hardware store looking for a 3/8 spacer. That drawer was
empty so I figured out a way to cut them from longer bushings. Just another time consuming
challenge....



I tacked the the bushings on to the bracket since they were hard to get in place and
keep them there.




The test fit on the car showed the door fit was still good.
This is a project that just keeps breeding more sub projects. So we will have to spread it
out over a few more posts.

 

Ha ha! I know that song... and am tired of singing it!

 

We should know it by heart by now!

 

All 738 verses.

 

These simple panel clamps are great for that type of work provided you can access the rear of the worked area.