Jim Paxton's 1937 Ford Fordor Convertible

A Pretty Rare Car For A Frame-Up Build

By Rick Amado

photographer: Jim Paxton, Rick Amado

Here’s the body being dropped onto the completed TCI chassis. Dennis Overholser is proud of the uncut firewall, and there’s now only 1/4 inch at each end of the engine. Dennis spent a lot of time getting this one right, blocking the engine in place and custom-fabricating the engine perches. TCI supplied the chassis with boxed rails, IFS, TCI’s own sway bars, spindles, and disc brakes, and a pair of Pro Shocks to absorb Texas chuckholes. Out back, a Ford 9 with 3.00 gears rests on parallel leaf springs and Pro Shocks. A Mustang II power rack steers the car via Borgeson joints and a factory column.

The entire floor of the ’vert was rusted so badly that David Fish had to replace it with the floor from a four-door sedan. The car was complete except for a few trim pieces. The entire folding-top mechanism was in pretty good condition so it only needed a cleanup, paint on the exposed pieces, and upholstery by Jackie Collins.

The body had lost a few skirmishes with Mother Nature by the time David Fish got his metalworking hands on it. He had to repair and replace a few panels, which were supplied by Engineering and Manufacturing Services (EMS) in the form of year-specific patch panels and a new tailpan.

The woodwork in this car is nothing short of amazing—mostly because it’s not really burlwood, but a paint process from Innovative Coatings. It’s a dip process: The liquid coating floats on the surface of a tank of water, then the parts to be painted are raised up through the coating. Once dry, they so closely resemble wood that a couple of local beavers had to be fitted for dentures after a close encounter with the dashboard. A Painless Performance wiring harness provides power and the original gauges were refurbished by United Speedometer Service. Bob Drake provided much of the reproduction interior trim while a Vintage Air Gen II system cools the Texas summers. A Lokar shifter handles gear selection.

Jake Hudson pulled the pinstripes the length of the body, pausing long enough to add a small Thirty-Seven script to each side just behind the rear doors.

The body was kept to factory specs with many of the missing trim pieces provided by R.T. Street Rods in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. The boys went so resto with this one that it even has an original radio antenna on the center windshield post.

Out back, a set of gennie ’37 taillights from Bob Drake hangs from the quarters. The lights have been updated with LED internals. An EMS reproduction tailpan hangs between the fenders and the chrome bumpers with over-riders from Bob Drake. The fuel fill in the rear fender feeds a Tanks Inc. fuel tank housing an internal fuel pump.

The injected 5.0L Ford includes a Summit Racing bottom end blueprinted by Pete’s Machine Shop in Fort Worth. Edelbrock aluminum heads and an Edelbrock intake for the factory-style Ford EFI suck air through a K&N filter element. A Crane hydraulic roller cam nudges the valves and a set of Cable wires fires the plugs. The headers are from Hedman with a custom stainless exhaust system by Classic Street Rods in Chagrin, Ohio. A U.S. Radiator keeps things cool with the help of a pair of Flex-A-Lite electric cooling fans and Inglése Cool-Flex radiator hoses. The trans is a Phoenix Transmissions–prepped Ford AOD.

Once Dave Fish completed the metalwork, Bob Bodreaux of Perfection Auto Body got it all arrow-straight, and Barney Koon, also of Perfection, sprayed the PPG two-stage Vanilla Shake.

Bob Drake supplied the headlights and fog lamps while Wheel Vintiques provided a set of 15x7 steel spokes, which are wrapped in BFGoodrich 215/70R15 widewalls from Coker Inc.

Jackie Collins covered the seats and door panels in tan leather. One of the odd things about this car was the fact that the front seat provides structural rigidity through the center of the body. The door alignment can be adjusted by shimming the seat mounts. Jackie also handled the stitching on the folding convertible top.

For a guy who has built a business making automotive electrical systems as simple as possible to install, Jim Paxton and Painless Performance Products sure didn’t take the easy route when it came time for a new project. Jim picked a pretty rare car for a frame-up build: a ’37 Ford Fordor convertible. A big fan of resto-rods, he decided that his next one was going to be a Ford four-port convertible, and after doing some research at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, he settled on the ’37. It wasn’t too popular even in its heyday—only a little over 4,000 were sold—and not many have survived this long.

Jim located just five that had eluded the crusher.

Once the ’37 was procured, Jim turned it over to his business partner Dennis Overholser for a complete buildup. Dennis is the VP of Engineering at Painless Performance and a self-described gearhead who has built many cars over the years, both for roddin’ and racin’. Dennis has a home shop that would make some pro builders envious with the outstanding iron that has rolled out of its doors. Dennis fingered the usual suspects, enlisting Jack Brewer, Jackie Collins, Dave Fish, and Bob Boudreaux to help with various stages of the build. The car was intended to be driven hard, so the choice of a late-model overhead-valve V-8 was natural—a Ford 302, thankfully. All told, the car spent almost two years in the shop, but since it was built to drive, expect to see it on the show circuit this summer.

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Jim Paxton's 1937 Ford Fordor Convertible

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