1936 Ford Project Part II: Chassis & Body Upgrades

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.