 |
The '36 was very complete: The body looked fair, the interior parts were all there and it was still in running condition. We started the project by taking the car to Drezek Environmental Stripping for a baking-soda blast. |
The car didn't look too bad from the rear. The original spare tire was attached when we purchased it, but we removed it for the trip to the stripper. It was obvious upon close inspection that this car would need plenty of work. |
Close inspection of the rumble seat made it clear that the seam alignment of this car was way off. This decklid will require a lot of work to perfect. |
We were surprised by how quickly the paint came off with blasting. Baking soda removes the paint but doesn't attack the body filler or rust. Drezek offers media blasting to remove rust. |
At this point we were able to clearly see exactly what we were dealing with--and it wasn't a pretty picture. There was a lot of thick body filler in this car. |
 |
One rear quarter-panel had been poorly installed. It had to be cut to remove stress and then welded back together after it was pounded out properly. Notice the tail section of the car--it's going to need some major bodywork. |
A Bitchin Products firewall was installed at the Drezek body shop. We ordered a big-block firewall so that we'd have plenty of clearance for the Ford engine. Small-block Ford engines are a little bit longer than Chevy small-blocks, but not as wide. |
When Drezek's body men finished the side bodywork and installed the firewall, the car was primered with Ditzler K-200 with a guide coat. The body looks pretty good in the photo, but plenty of work will be needed to perfect it. |
Fat Man Fabrications has a super-nice chassis for '35-'40 Fords with the buyer's choice of several options. The chassis we ordered has a tubular Mustang II front suspension with large 11-inch brakes, rack-and-pinion steering, front and rear sway bars and a master cylinder/power booster installed. Notice the heavy-duty crossmembers for strength. |
This close-up shows the Fat Man Fabrications optional tubular front suspension. A metal bar is used in place of the coil-over shock that will be installed later. Notice the front sway bar for excellent handling and the large rack-and-pinion steering box. Brakes are big 11-inch units with GM calipers. |
Although the chassis is sitting upside-down in this photo, you can see how the master cylinder/power booster is mounted on the driver side of the car with the pedal in the stock location. This photo also shows the heavy-duty crossmembers and the adjustable transmission mount. |
We located an early Ford 9-inch and took it to Currie Enterprises for narrowing and rebuilding. The company installed its Traction-Lok unit and Richmond 3.55:1 gears. We located the pinion angle on the axle and tack-welded it before we delivered it to Currie. The company welded the perches on, then straightened the tubes during the rebuild. |
We got the frame in rolling condition, but it wasn't painted or detailed at this point. The car had to be fitted together before any paint and detailing work could be done. To swap frames we got several large friends to lift the body onto the sawhorses. We rolled the old frame out and the new one back under the car. |
From stocker to hot rod in about 10 minutes. Wow, what a difference. Now the car is sitting low and looks great with the Halibrand wheels and BFGoodrich tires. It was sure a shot in the arm to get this car finished. |
The '36 is going to be an all-Ford Ford with the addition of this EFI 302 engine. It produces around 250 hp and is hooked to a T5 five-speed manual transmission. The Ford engine with the fuel injection and overdrive trans should give the car plenty of power but will also be stingy on gas. All in all, it's a great car for long drives--like Americruise. |
All the lower quarters had a small amount of rust so they were replaced with patch panels from C.W. Moss. |
Engineering & Mfg. Services offers this reproduction tail panel for '36 Fords. This cabriolet's tail panel was in pretty bad shape and needed some new sheetmetal. (In a future installment we'll show you how to install the unit properly.) |
We laid the tail panel over the car and marked where it had to go. If you look at the spare-tire bracket mounting holes you can see some heavy filler in the upper section. |
Plenty of block-sanding and filling was necessary to straighten this car. Most of the problems were very minor, so the filler was used only as a skim coat. We used an electric puller on all the small dents before we added the filler. If you look closely you'll notice the 21/4-inch chop in the windshield posts. |
Here is the bad side of the car--but at this point it was actually starting to look pretty good. The upper section of the door needed plenty of pulling to straighten it enough to add filler. The door handles were also filled and removed. Note that the window frame has been chopped. |
After block-sanding the car, we applied a coat of PPG K-36 filler primer. The body is starting to look rather good at this point, but there is still plenty of block-sanding and primering to do before it's perfect. |
The rear end of this car was in really bad condition when we started but has improved dramatically. We added the lower section, then cut and pounded out the upper section. At this point we were skimming the entire rear with a very light layer of filler to remove the waves. Also, when working on the rear sheetmetal section of a '36, the brace for the spare tire should still be incorporated for strength. |
After much block-sanding and filler, the car's rear was improving. Notice that we are not going to run the spare tire. Check out the rumble seat seams. |
Fairlane Company manufactures top-quality fiberglass '36 fenders that will make finishing the car easier. We scuffed the fenders down with 80-grit sandpaper, removed the seams, then primered them with PPG DP-50. |
Fitting the fenders can be tricky. We bolted them together on the garage floor, then installed them in one unit. (We'll show you the details in a separate tech story.) |
After bolting the fenders together, we elevated them to see how they fit. Satisfied with this, we began drilling the mounting holes. We must admit the car was looking much better with the fenders on, and we were also able to see its stance. |
Just when you think that all the early Fords are gone, you stumble across one that's a real find. Roadsters, cabriolets and convertibles have always been desirable, so it's unusual to find one that hasn't been restored or turned into a street rod. We were at Pleasanton, California, a year ago when we spotted this '36 cabriolet for sale. The car looked fair, ran like a fine Swiss watch and seemed to have plenty of potential. It was parked in approximately the same spot each day of the event. We kept seeing it and thinking about what a cool hot rod it would make. Finally, late Sunday afternoon, just before the show closed, we made a low-ball offer and the owner accepted it. We were happy, he was happy and the following weekend the car was loaded up and trailered to Los Angeles.
We were curious about how many cabriolets were made in 1936 so we did a little research and found that 14,068 were made, a small number in the scheme of things. In fact, there were two cabriolet styles offered in 1936: the standard two-passenger type with a rumble seat (the one we bought); and the club cabriolet, a four-passenger model with a trunk. Only 4616 of the four-passenger models were made. It's hard to say how many of each have survived the past 60 years but an educated guess would be about 10 percent.
When we arrived home with the vehicle we fired it up and drove it around the neighborhood. The car was fun with the old flattie and three-speed, but we wanted a reliable street rod that looked good and had plenty of power. We also wanted to keep this an all-Ford Ford.
After a little planning we ordered a Ford Motorsport 302 EFI engine hooked to a T5 five-speed manual transmission. We found it would be less expensive to buy a new engine than to pick up a similar junkyard engine and rebuild it. The 302 cranks out around 250 hp so the cabriolet should provide fine performance.
We believe real hot rods should have manual transmissions, and the new five-speed should make this car a fun driver. We are also going to stick with a Ford rearend, a Currie-prepared 9-inch unit running 3.55:1 gears. Lower gears are a must with an overdrive transmission.
With the driveline in mind, we discussed the car's foundation. Should we start with the stock frame and beef it up or go with a stronger custom frame? This was an easy choice because Fat Man Fabrications has just come out with a great chassis for '35-'40 Fords. It's super-strong, priced right and available with your choice of Mustang II front suspensions from the company's stock Stage I to the tubular Stage III. We went with the nice-looking tubular setup. The chassis comes with rear springs, but you must install the rearend. We specified a frame that was made with clearance in the front crossmember for the Ford pan. With the IFS and the rear leaf springs, this car should have terrific ride quality. The chassis also comes with front and rear sway bars, so our Ford should have great handling ability. (In a future installment we'll show you how we detailed the frame, and its many fine features.)
We also had to come up with a design theme for the car. Did we want to go totally high-tech? Should it be nostalgic? Would we want a contemporary rod with a little flavor from several eras? We've always liked the '60s look, so that became our focus, but we also wanted to add a few contemporary changes (such as shaving the door and trunk handles, molding the front fenders together, chopping the top, bullnosing the hood and changing the side panels to hot rod-style louvers).
We never did like stock '36 louver vents. We believe the best wheels for this style of car are Halibrands with knock-offs. We're running 15x8-inch in the rear and 14x6 in the front with BFGoodrich radials. We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, so Thom Taylor sketched up a rendition of how the car would look.
With a plan of action in place, we started by having the car stripped. We took it to Drezek Environmental Stripping for baking-soda blasting. This takes the paint off without removing any body filler. The company also has other media available to remove filler and rust if necessary. When Drezek finished the body we saw how bad this car really was. It had obviously suffered more than its fair share of abuse over the years. The car exhibited a lot of bad bodywork that would need to be repaired. The lower body quarters were rusted through and fixed with body filler somewhere along the way. (If you've been reading R&C, you've probably seen many of the small bodywork stories we've already done on the car so we won't get into all the details here.)
After inspecting the fenders, we decided new fiberglass replicas would be the way to go. We ordered a full set from Fairlane Company and were impressed with the quality of the parts. They were nice and strong, had a beautiful gel-coat finish, and only needed some sanding and priming to ready them for paint. The front fenders are molded in one piece but have seams similar to the originals. We filled the seams to smooth the car off a little. We also needed new running boards so we ordered a set of repros from Lobeck's. The company offers them in smoothie style or for rubber covers. We decided on the ones used with rubber. To fix some of the body parts, we got a set of patch panels from C.W. Moss and a new rearend panel from Engineering & Mfg. Services.
While the car was at Drezek, we had the company's body shop work on one side that had a replacement quarter installed many years ago. The installed panel had to be entirely reworked to the correct shape. The bodymen at Drezek did a great job. They also installed the new firewall from Bitchin Products. When they were finished fixing the Ford's side and installing the firewall, they primered the car with Ditzler K-200 with a guide coat. It was only a starting point for the bodywork that followed.
In this installment we will show you how we completely assembled the car before it was taken apart for paint. It's very important to assemble a car in rough form first so that parts can be fitted to one another. In this case, many parts had to be slightly modified to get a tight fit for the fenders, hood, bumpers, doors and trunk. When we were finished, the car could be taken apart for paint and detailing, which is the part of street rod construction that we like the best.