Projects BChrismer's Beater '40 Ford Panel Project

Cool project, movin’ right along!

 

I won't say a thing to Bret. Good luck with Silas truck....

 

Bret will never know...

 

Uh...I think you subscribed to the wrong thread. LOL

 

Well, weekend update time.

This week was about gathering parts and trying to make a run at making some big progress for the weekend. Just like expected, however, it was a week of things not being just quite right.

I already mentioned the pressure plate, the missing speedometer drive gear, etc, but Thursday, I got a call from the tractor shop where I dropped off the spindles to have bushings pressed and reamed. They had assured me it would be no big deal. Well, the service guy says his guy says no, he can't do them. I run out to pick them up and he charges me for a half hour of labor and says that is because the guy pressed in two bushings but didn't want to ream them. I figure, "fair enough", and left with a little bit of a chapped butt over the thing.

I stop by the machine shop that used to be the "go to" place in town, but they advised me that they STILL do not ream kingpin bushings. I then stopped by FleetPride, and visited with the guy at their service counter. He takes a look at the spindle that the guy put bushings in and says to me, gimme one of your kingpins. I do, and he says to me..."Looks like the guy tried to ream the bushings individually and ruined your bushings". Kingpin was off at least 1/16" top to bottom. Now my butt is really chapped that I paid the tractor shop good money to ruin kingpins.

After all the running around and the fact that I didn't feel comfortable with any of the answers I was getting regarding local competency for reaming bushings, I chose to take the easy button and bought some of the Speedy Bill "deluxe kingpins". Figure I can press in the bearings and they don't require machining, so the cost will even out.

Saturday wasn't as productive as I was hoping for, because I was waiting on parts to arrive, but I did manage to get the frame rails and firewall cleaned up and we sandblasted them and the inside of the rusty floor pans to give Mike something to weld to for the new floor pans.

When I got home yesterday, I was surprised to see the box from Speedy Bill, so I went out to the garage and installed the spindles on the dropped axle. The install of the kingpin set went well, however, I always fight the kingpin lock pins and getting the kingpins turned in the right position to happily accept the lock pins.

Next trip out to Mike's shop will involve some paint, some drilling and bolting of the center crossmember stuff, & replacing the stock axle with the dropped one. That last part will also involve replacing the spring shackle bushings and migrating the brake setup from one set of spindles to the other.

 

Charged you for jacking up your parts. Awesome. I miss Monarch and Hardys.

At least you found some lemonade in there somewhere...

 

I knew that you had picked up a '40 Panel but somehow missed you starting the build thread until now. Well, I'm in for the duration...

 

Yesterday, I ran over to pick up some 18ga sheet to use for the replacement floor panel under the seat. The plan for today was to get the x member braces voted in with the proper bolts, pull the front end and install the Nostalgia Sid's axle, and hopefully have time to make plans for the floor.

I was busy with the axle swap, and wasn't paying attention to what Mike was doing.

He braced the substructure and cut the sheet and welded it in.

This next weekend will be spent at the Chili Bowl Midget races, but the following weekend we will set the flathead and 4 speed, and work on the rest of the floor.

Now to get the transmission apart to install the speedometer gear and get the flatty cleaned up. LOL

 

Movin in the right direction buddy.

 

Yup... that was yesterday. We did some snow day shop projects too.

You guys are moving quick. Keep steppin!

 

I didn't start the thread until about 2 weeks ago, so there's not a whole backlog to get caught up on. ;-)

 

This morning, I started a trade conversation for some front end parts in exchange for a '39 sedan front seat. Don't know how soon I can make the run towards St Louis to pick it up, but I definitely like the idea of an early Ford split back bench seat in the old beater.

 

Did those have a single bucket seat originally with an option for a second one?
Look forward to seeing running down the road.

 

Making good progress Bret! I did nothing on any projects this weekend...

 

Love it....Regarding your transmission choice: I put a 50 chevy delivery together some years back and used the exact trans/linkage you're using. Those old Vega, 3 ring trans's were 50 bucks at U-pull-it and they had a bunch of them. A buddy gave me an Olds 10 bolt with 2.29 gears. Worked perfectly with that 3.50 low gear trans. No clutch-slipping in city driving and with a 406 chevy SB, I had all the torque to overcome the ratio jump from 1st to 2nd gear. Would cruise on the interstates easily at 75-80 MPH.
My only bitch with that trans was the reverse idler. Mine wore out and to get to it, everything else has to come out of the case...idler sits in the bottom. I got lucky and found a local trans shop with a disassembled trans in a box...idler was ok.
I beat on that trans with a good running 406. Good thing the car was fairly light or I'd have busted it. Traded the car off and the new owner finally broke it. Strange the cheesy 10 bolt didn't break first. BTW, I had the same "too narrow" problem with the little G-body rear end and fixed it by using American 15X8.5" wheels with a 1.25" offset.
Great project!

 

Yeah, if you look at the earlier photo of the floor that I cut out, there was one of the two seat brackets remaining for the driver's side. With this being a 4 speed build, a bench seat might be a little cramped with the shifter, but it will provide a good challenge. The Saginaw that I bought for it had a Hurst shifter already mounted on it, and it is forward of the usual tailshaft mounting location. I'm kind of excited/concerned where it will wind up landing, so I am looking foward to getting it set into the truck to satisfy that curiosity. We may have to make an offset shifter handle lever to make things "fit".

 

I had a shifter handle that was offset similar to what you may need in a pu that I had years ago that was bench seat and a floor shifted Saginaw actually. I may have another one still if you end up needing one Bret.

 

I am also a fan of the three ring Saginaw, and have also done the bent-shifter-handle-around-the-bench-seat trick. In my poor-man days we would use the Vega shifter as well, and that thing was practically under the seat in an AD truck. The shifter was a wet noodle at best, but I rowed a lot of gears with it behind a small block.

I'm playing with T-5's now, but still have my OG Sagi sitting on the shelf in the barn. Someday...

 

When I swapped the transmission in my '40 coupe, from a th350 to a standard, I used a 3 ring 3 speed. Since it has a 350 in it, I didn't have any issues with the wide range between the gears. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the rear seal was messed up, so I burned up the 2nd gear synchronizer in it, so I swapped in a 3 ring 4 speed, and shift it on the column. Works great with the 2.79's in the coupe.

With this one having a flatty, I figured I would be better off with using the 4 speed with the 3.0 gears. From the numbers I have run, it should prove to be a decent choice, and I can't imagine blowing it up with a 221ci flatty.

 

Lookin' good! I have some 40 parts still floating around in my garage, I'll go digging and see if there is anything you can use.

 

Pretty much what got me into the game after the muscle years....the little old lady was sweet....she wanted a nice new 12x12 metal building and that's what I built her on concrete slab before I hauled her 1941 panel storage she made out of her old man's work truck.....this back in the late 70's....

 

Not much progress to report. Last week I took off and went to the Chili Bowl Nationals (midget races), down in Tulsa. This week, I have been traveling with work and will be in St Louis tomorrow and Sunday, no direct work on the panel.

I did take a few minutes to go out to the garage to remove the tailshaft housing off the Saginaw to install the new speedometer drive gear. It requires taking the side cover off to open the snap ring and release the tail shaft housing. I was having some difficulty with it, so I ran it over to some friend's at a local garage. After they fought with it, we discovered that the output bearing's cage had broken. Glad we found that. Ordered a replacement bearing and hope to put it all back together next week and hope to get the engine and transmission set in the panel next weekend so that we can mock up the front floorboards.

 

I looked through my stash Bret and all the 40 stuff I have is banjo rear end related and a front and rear transverse spring, so nothing you could use.

 

All good, Dan.

This evening, I wound up putting the new bearing on the tailshaft, as well as the new speedo drive gear. The bearing was a pretty tight fit, so I used the old bearing as a makeshift slide hammer to get the new bearing "pressed" into place. When I put the tailshaft housing on, I found that I was about 1/16" inches away from the big C clip groove on the bearing and I had jammed the input and output shafts together making it engaged like 4th gear. After a quick call to @cvstl, and some brief discussion, I went back to the garage with a wooden dowel rod and a hammer and tapped on the back gear towards the tailshaft. This seemed to be the magic trick to get everything back to normal, and it seated the C clip in the process.

Now I just need to pull the input shaft bearing retainer, replace the seal and a gasket, clean up the side cover gasket surfaces, fill it with some gear oil and bolt it all back up. With any luck, I can have that all done, and everything loaded in the truck to haul out to Mike's on Saturday.

 

I got a call, last Wednesday, asking if I had a spare driver's front '40 passenger fender, so yesterday I picked it up from Doug's shop and brought it to Springfield. Mike said he wouldn't be to his shop, where we're working on the panel, until after 11am.

I dropped by the guy's house who was wanting the fender, on the way out to Mike's, and one thing led to another and I wound up not leaving his place until about 11:30. When I got to Mike's, he already had the panel truck moved from the cattle barn over to the shop and had tacked the toe boards and lower firewall back together and was making a patch to fix about 5 holes that were in the firewall, apparently for a heater.

After he got that knocked out, we pushed the panel outside and rattle canned the front frame rails and the firewall, so that we could set the flatty and the Saginaw 4 speed into the frame. One thing I learned from this is that it places the Saginaw's rear mount about an inch and a half further back from where a SBC/Saginaw would bolt in. With any luck, I am hoping to find the driveshaft that I had shortened when I did the initial 3 speed swap into my coupe, as I think it should be a direct fit.

We did have to notch the X member a bit to allow room for the shifter. With the Hurst shifter mounting kit that came with the transmission, it places it on the rear of where the stock transmission tunnel bolts to the floor (sorry...didn't take photos of that when we were test fitting the floor panel.)

Anyway...with the engine and transmission in, we were able to measure for the driveshaft, if the one I have doesn't fit. It isn't quite as low in the front as I would normally like a '40 to be, due to having a '41 6 cylinder style front crossmember, but it still does have some rake. I was slightly concerned that it would sit level or a little more nose high.

I initially intended to paint the firewall Almond color, with some Rustoleum appliance epoxy, but decided that as much blow by that comes from the oil cap that black would be a better choice. LOL

Next on the agenda is plumbing the brake lines and finishing up the floors.

 

LQQKIN GR8 Bret.

 

Thanks, Don!

This afternoon, I swung by Doug's shop and found the old driveshaft out of my coupe that I had shortened for the first round with the 3 speed and series of SBC/early Ford/early Ford/Chevy manual transmission adapters. When we put that setup in the coupe, we made a transmission mount adapter to bolt the transmission to, then bolted it to the holes in the split wishbone mount. That same adapter is being used with the Saginaw behind the flathead, so the only variable should be the placement of the rear end on the rear springs. (when we pulled the adapter setup out of the coupe, and used a Chevy bellhousing, everything lined up where it was supposed to and I had to get a new driveshaft for it the same length as I had before shortening this one!)

 

I know this sounds like hackery, but I think it would work fine... If the front ends up too high for your liking, you could cut out the top of the flat part of the CM where the spring rests against it, and "raise it up" so to speak with a piece of square tubing with the bottom cut out, weld in to your desired drop. Looks like there's a country mile between the CM and the pan so clearance should not be an issue.

I hope that made sense, it's hard to describe what I'm seeing in my head sometimes.

 

Yeah we shortened the driveshaft on Colby's 58 when the axle was flipped. Took 2" out of it. Had to flip the axle back and the guy at the driveshaft shop is looking at us crossways. "Didn't I just take 2" out of this last week?" Yeah, you still have it?

 

Yeah, I have considered that, and it isn't totally out of the question, but I think it will be fine. The old truck is gonna be a driver, and I bang the grille on the coupe enough to make up for what I don't in the stake truck and the panel combined. LOL