Derek's 1950 ford coupe shoebox build and introduction

Your absolutley right , do with yours what you want , because in the end your the one thats going to appreciate it . Others ?? who cares what they think ? Go for the chop and post as you go man ! Later .. Subscribed !!

 

I love the looks of your car looks great lots of work but it is worth it after it is done

 

Looks greatl lots of work went into but it is worth it after done

 

ha ha ha exactly, thanks brother, will do.
cheers

 

yeah shit loads of work in those cars, but you gotta start somewhere and mine is a nice solid start buddy.
thanks

 

Greetings Hombre, If you would like to pm me & I can give you my contact details to discuss Spinology (I still can't get my head around that Shoebox terminology?). I'd really like to get my combo, the F100s, to play at Chopped this year. Any chance you can bend Ryan's ear. www.reverbnation.com/thef100s

 

ha ha ha i am still trying to get him to get the snowdroppers back for me, we had a listen the other week though,i will see what ui can do, im always in his ear, i will pm u, yeah im a spinner man myself, i say shoebox for the amwericans out there reading the hamb so they dont get to confused, ha ha. single and twin, easy.
cheers mate

 

out in the shed till 11.30 last night then had a half day strike at work, so got a bit of cleaning up and stuff done on the flatty while i wait for my full gasket kit from vanpelt spares aswell as the gearbox kit. nice and cheap, all the shit ill need, gasket, seals, input bearing, selector shaft seal, the works.
good bloke to.
so heres a few pics of how its coming along.
alot of paintstripping, wire brushin on the drill and wire brushing up bolts,
48 HEAD BOLTS= NOT TOO MUCH SKIN LEFT ON MY FINGER.

 

Awesome stuff Derek! Way cool...

You've got a nice shoebox on your hands and am looking forward to seeing it at Chopped!

Was just over at Mike's place scoping out his Shoebox. Very, very cool ol' Coupe.... And gee, I can't believe it's a stock Flatty! Sounds real nasty!!

Keep up the solid work.

HC.

 

Certainly not mucking about. Straight into it huh! Cleaning up really well. But there is nothing quite like building a car with the help of your mates. Good times indeed.

I didn't realise Ahron is working at Waddingtons but then again its been awhile since I caught up with his old man!

 

Wow your moving along fast, looking good . Wish I could get in the shed more.!. Would love to get down to Chopped , its on the list..Rod..

 

Looking the goods mate. Cant wait to see the progress after the weekend.

 

Thanks mate, yeah seems to be a clean old stock flatty that's had a freshen up at some point not too far back. It's had a hone, rings, bearings and a valve or two changed. It will get a full rebuild one day but it's too good and it runs awesome. Hence the nice clean up job for now see how goes for a tear or so. I'm gunna be driving the shit outta it at chopped fingers crossed. Don't see why not just gotta keep up the pace.

 

Yeah it's all cleaning up really nice and really keen seeing this car change or te better all the time. Plenty of late nights and weekends at home
oming up.
Yeah Ahron has been at waddingtons for a few years, that's how I met him he's aroud my age and moved to castlemaine, always handy when u meet a guy ur age interested in the same things and Ahron is always extremely helpful and keen to get stuck into shit. Not to mention a very talented beater. And I mean panel not him self ha ha.
Cheers mate
DES

 

Yeah easy when I own my house by myself and can just hang out in y shed with the fire going all night. The house cleaning and te valiant is getting a bit neglected but all worth it.
Rod I've been like an ambassodor for the chopped show the whole time it's been goin. One because the three guys that run it are all in our club and there my good mates, but two, it's the eat weekend of the year now, an each year it seems to double in size. I think the chopped show is going to be a massive thing especially this year.
Hope to meet you there.
Cheers rod
DES

 

Cheersm brother, check it out Sunday and I'll upload or progress on the chop ad anythig else I get done.DES

 

friday night, got a bit more done, chicken bought his chopper frame over to smooth up the welds and stuff while i keep working on the flatty. ahron came over later on and started planning out the cuts and measurement for the roof chop start tonight, we are heading in a different direction to the norm, there is plenty of info on choppin tudors, not a great deal on coupes, we both have a good understanding of how people genereally do it, the way we want to do it is alot ore work, but we think it will end up good, fingers crossed, our plan is to bassically, try keep the quarter windows at the same length but lean the radius, so as to not loos any length or not much and fab up some panels for the window frame, not sure if that makes sence but our goal is to try keep some of the size in the quarters instead of draggin everything forward which is cool for a tudor but on coupe "can" give you that small window on the quarters which i really dont want, slanted b pillars will also give it more size, Ahron is confident that it will work after talking about it for a couple hours and doing measurements last night, and i have a lot of confidence in him and we will make it work, may be a lot more work but we think it will turn out cool with a nice shae to the roof and not to small, rear window will lean down to meet the roof somewhere or near abouts to give the rear glass a nice rake type look.wish us luck. hope we dont fuck it lol, gotta have a crack though.
cheers
heres a couple pics of hit last night,
oh and i have found the eldorados club meet new food now, hotdogs in a pot on the fire in the shed, tooooooooooo easy.

 

it would appear we chopped the spinner, alot of planning and measuring and we have deffinately gone about it a different way which is going to keep the roof at the same length and and the quarter windows long, is a lot more work and a bit of fabication will be required but fuck its a roof chop and it s not supposed to be easy and straight forward. other wise you probably wouldnt do it cause everypne would do it.
heres a few pics of the roof before

 

once the roof and the door frames were stripped we got the back glass out and started to brace the rear window and then the inside of the car so as to not move and go weak when we started cutting

 

Good stuff, enjoying the post. keep it comin'

 

Cool....be careful grinding and welding with that cotton carpet pad they will smolder for a couple of days.

 

thanks guys yeah its cool nothing has caught on fire ha ha, yet.

 

ok, so after me and tex had something to eat sat night waiting for Ahron to get here,
Ahron turned up and it was measuring and talking about it for a couple hours before we made any cuts, this has been discussed alot with other people aswell to get the desired look we are going for, so with ahron and tex on the ruler and me talkin it out with them for a while we had our tape lines and cut marks all measured up ready to go, i will try give as much detail on this as possible,
first me and tex drilled out the spot welds on the inner of the a pillars (were the windscreen sits) and also on the other side near the drip rail and i free'd them up with a hammer and chisel, once we had the outer skin popped, i made two cuts on each one above and one below, on the straight of the a piller well above and below were our actual cut were the pillar will come down, the idea behind this is to take the outer skin of the a pillar off and do our cutting on the inner skin were all the strength is in the window and roof, so as to tack in and fully weld the inside at the end then trim the outer skin up to suit and sit back in and weld that too, giving you a much stronger way of doin it rather than just cutting through the entire pillar, it will be strong neat and we feel is the better way to do it, everyone does shit there way, this is just how were doing it.

 

after those two peices were removed and marker left and right, me and tex cut the door frames off once we marked were exactly we wanted to cut, these were cut at the front just after the radius and the bottom of the back end of the door on an angle which was set on one with a set square and then transferred to the other door as to keep it as similar as possible, remebering my car will have slanted b pillars once completed, you simply mark where u want to cut and follow the tape or texter mark all the way around with the grinder, parts like inner skins you cant get to we clean up with an air hacksaw.

 

so while i was stuffin around with the door frames and the a pillars, ahron was making cardboard templates of how he wanted the rear qaurter windows to look, him and tex were then applying then to the roof and working out were the rear cuts should be, it was all happeing and moving along quite well with heaps of questions and discussions, which is really good thing, Ahron kept saying "you can do it the easy way which is shit or the hard way with a bit more work that will turn out heaps fuckin cooler", tex kept saying "cant wait to just cut this fucker up, and i kept saying "you guys are letting me doo all the cuts huh" which they both kinda smile and said "no shit, if you fuck it, its your car" which is totally fair enough, ha ha ha.
anyway, with the final taped out marks and shit it was gettin close to removing the roof, but first we had to mark out the a pillar inners and get the desired amount out, this is going to be a mild custom chop, so we agredd on 3 inches in the front and four and a qaurter to four and half inches in the rear, which is kinda hard to work out cause as your lay your rear screen you can move it around and prop it up to the desired look, but thats later,
a pillars, then the b pillars cut on the angle for leaning later on, every cut on the strucural parts on the roof, you should have someone holding it so when it lets go your grinder doesnt grab and do something crazy like lop of a finger, they come in handy.
heres the pics

 

right so then it was onto removed the peice above the qaurter windows and when i say this i mean bassically because our whole goal aside from lowering the roof obviiously is to keep the qaurters at the same length, to give it more of the tudor look without loosing all the size in the qaurters, this is the hard part but will hopefully pay of in the end, this has been much discussed between the three of us recently as to how to go about this, i will be the first to admit that in this area i relly didnt have much of and idea how to go about this, i knew what i wanted and we all agreed on it but it was up to ahron and tex really to figure this out and fill me in on the plan, what we did was mark out at front of the qaurter window just after the radius and the bottom of it just before the radius, the pics will make more sence, we cut it on the straighter parts so that it can be heated and relief cut later to go back in and give a nice flow, it will require a little peice on each side to be fabricated to fill the gap as the top of the qaurter will end up a little longer, you will see what i mean, ma and ahron cut straight through the window frame and the drip rail and up about 5-6 inches into the roof the along out taped out line on both side so we could remove those peices first, like i said this is alot more work but my buddies have it under conrtol, it will pay off in the end, im in the moon hoodie, ahron has the hat backwards and tex is the bearded menace weilding the five inch with big cut off wheel and no gaurd ha ha

 

once those two panels were removed and set aside, the texas five inch massacre came in and cut straight through the a pillars and then we did our cut across the back above the window and down the c pillars as to leave the rear window sitting in stock position, that comes later, then it was roof off and a couple pics and a beer and cigarette break.
scary shit when your roof lifts off and we just put it on a panel stand and everyones like "fuck yeah"
the guys are like "alright des good hanging out and cutting the shit outta your shoebox, we'll catch ya in a couple weeks or so when were free"
lucky they were joking.

 

looking ace derek, keep up the super work....

 

the roof on the panel stand was short lived, tex cut the remaining amount out of the a pillars then we sat it back on, remembering roof chops are measured vertically or at least should be, so 3 inches vertically once leaned over can equite to like 4 and half or something like that that actually gets cut out of your window posts. so once the roof was put back on it was a massive shock cause it can look like alot but the more you look at it and the more it takes profile the more you go fuck yeah, it isnt over chopped its nice, in our opinion anyway, the thing Ahron said to me and really makes the most sence to me is this, i said "man it looks like alot outta the screen" and hes like "na its how your looking at it you gotta imagine the door frames are back on and the rears finished then you will get a good idea of how its gunna look",
he then said this, "if your not happy with the amount we can raise it back up" and i said "na fuck that it looks good its just a shock" he then replied "i dont think its over chopped i thinks its just right, and fuck, dude its a spinner its supposed to look like its gunna eat ya"
fair enough. and couldnt have said it any better myself.

 

thanks man, im flat out typing and putting pics up,cheers