39 Ford Project

[Custer55]

It has been quite a while since I last posted!! We got a new puppy in early August so my time for working in the garage and posting on here has been more limited. I have been working a little so I will try to catch up with what I have done.

I finished up the modified radiator baffle and got it painted up.

Then got the radiator bolted in place. It sits nice and solid so I am happy with how the mounts turned out.

At the bottom I bought a couple of compression springs to duplicate the original style mounting. I believe this was done to account for chassis twist as the gas tank is mounted with springs on the bolts as well. I still need to get a upper and lower radiator hose to finish this up. I made some wire mock ups for the length and shape I will need but haven't made it to the auto parts store to see if I can find something that will work.

Next up was to get my swap meet seats mounted. One seat had the sliders (above) and the other didn't, so I ordered one new one from Amazon and figured I could get these to work for the other seat.

Here is one of the original sliders after de-rusting and taking it apart to replace the bearing balls thinking It would work fine then. They still worked like crap after putting new balls in them. Not sure why, maybe they are just slightly bent but I gave up on it and just ordered another slider as the first one seemed to work well.

The new sliders were not as long as the originals so at first I just drilled new holes in the seat base which worked ok but seemed to limit seat travel a bit to much.

I ended up adding a section to the seat sliders to be able to use the original seat base holes. This was a bit of work to do but worth it as the sliders have plenty of travel now.

Top view of the added section before finish welding and grinding everything smooth. I had the slider taped up very well as I was doing this to keep weld spatter and grinding dust out of them.

Here is a modified slider next to one that still needs a section added to it. The new hole to bolt up to the seat ends up right on the weld seam where the section was added.

Here are the modified seat sliders bolted up to the seat. The adjuster handle is nice as it operates both sliders at the same time and is easy to use being right at the front of the seat.
Glad I just bout another set over trying to use the original on one seat as these work very well without even having the seat bolted into the car.
Brian

[Custer55]

continued from above.

Next I built a pair of seat pedestals as I couldn't even see over the dash with the seats on the floor. These are 6 1/2" high so it will be a perfect spot underneath the seats to mount the fuse block under one of them. Eventually I will make some trim pieces that go from the seat bottoms to the floor so everything will look nicer.

Here is one of them bolted to the seat slider and seat.

Here is the pair set in place in the car. They fit good side to side as there is still clearance to the doors and room between the seats for a small console. They still may be a bit low but I figure that is better than being to high. I can fix to low with spacers!!

Another view. At this point with the seat in the middle of the slider travel and positioned where I want them I marked the position on the floor boards and determined where to drill the mount holes in the pedestals based on where the obstructions under the floor are located.

The Bitchin Products floor board kit had come with braces for seat mounting so it was a no brainer to just use them. So the seats could be installed and removes without going under the car I made threaded bungs our of 3/8" steel with will be plug welded in place on the braces.

I first drilled smaller holes for plug welding in the brace and then with the slug bolted in place I drilled the holes larger right into the slugs. This put the holes right at the edges of the slugs and with the little bit of an indent the plug welds should be very strong.

View from the bottom after welding one of them in place.

Top view before and after grinding down the plug welds.

Here I have the passenger side under floor braces ready to bolt under the floor and plug weld in place. To compensate for the bead rolling I did on the rear floor boards I added a small piece of 16 gauge on the one bracket (Left hand side of the lower bracket) and will plug weld a couple pieces on top of the floor board so the seat pedestals will sit better when bolted in place.

And finally Harbor Freight sent me a 25% off coupon for anything in the store. Said they missed me since I hadn't bought anything for a while so I used it to buy a mini lathe.
Won't be able to make anything big with it but I am sure it will come in handy for a lot of things.
Brian

[Belair-o]

Hi Brian,
Great stuff, and great progress, even with the puppy distraction! The compression springs usage was one I had not previously seen used. I paid special attention to the seat work, as I pulled the trigger on some Saab convertible bucket seats for eventual install in my 57. My honey-do list is way long (and very growing), so will be quite a while before I start - I will capture what you did for ideas. Thanks for your continued, helpful documentation!
Thanks, Doug

[Custer55]

Hi Brian,
Great stuff, and great progress, even with the puppy distraction! The compression springs usage was one I had not previously seen used. I paid special attention to the seat work, as I pulled the trigger on some Saab convertible bucket seats for eventual install in my 57. My honey-do list is way long (and very growing), so will be quite a while before I start - I will capture what you did for ideas. Thanks for your continued, helpful documentation!
Thanks, Doug

Thanks Doug and your welcome!
I will mention that my seat pedestal design was based in part on the materials I had on hand. If buying all the steel needed I may have designed them a bit different but these are plenty sturdy the way they are.
Brian

[Custer55]

Been plugging away on getting some of the little detail stuff done.

With the radiator mounting complete I still needed hoses so I bent up wire mock ups to the approx. needed shape and length. The local Advance Auto let me look through the hoses they had on hand.

The upper hose was easy enough. They didn't have a regular hose that would work but they had a flex hose that was just about the perfect length so I just went with that.
Thinking a 55 Chevy upper hose for a 6 cylinder radiator position might be pretty close though.

For the lower hose I found this one which is for 68 to 72 Chevy/GMC pick up trucks or interestingly enough 87 to 92 Jaguars. I had to shorten the end that connects to the water pump and cut and rotate the end that connects to the radiator. I just have a piece of black plastic plumbing pipe for a splice connector at this point so I will get something better before using it.

Here it is in place on the car. This one worked out about as well as I could have hoped for.

My intention was to use electric fans only, but remembered I still had this clutch fan that was on the engine that I have from a late 70's full size Chevy. This will need to be cleaned up and repainted but is in good shape otherwise and should move plenty of air. I may need to re-do my alternator brackets to get better wrap on the water pump pulley but I think it's worth giving it a try.

Here is the clutch portion of the fan. This was for a long water pump so I just had to drill the mount flange for the short water pump pattern.

Another view of the clutch cleaned up enough to give it a fresh paint job.
I did get the fan and clutch painted up an bolted in place but didn't get a picture yet so that will come later.

So before filling the engine with coolant I figured I should get some gauges hooked up to monitor things. I had a cheap set of gauges from a swap meet but no fuel gauge. I bought a fuel gage and tank sending unit from Speedway. Couldn't find a fuel gauge the same diameter as my set of oil pressure, Water temp, and volt meter so I will be making a panel to mount the 4 gauges under the dash. Should be room in it for some indicator lights if needed as well. The fuel gauge is not an exact match and had a silver colored bezel which I painted black to match the other gauges better.

Here they are in my mock up panel. I think I can get the original speedometer to work as it is mechanical so I just need a speedo cable to connect to the transmission. The other gauges in the dash will not be functional, just there to fill the hole at this point. You can buy nice gauges that fit the original dash openings but at $600. and up I will just use these for now.
Next post I will have the panel made and mounted to the dash.

Lastly when I screwed the bushing into the head for the water temp sender there wasn't room to get a socket on the bushing below the header flange so I removed the header to fix that.
The headers are stainless steel so no coatings or paint were affected. Also the headers if anything tuck in to tight to the block so getting a wrench on the collector bolts would be a pain so I welded the bolts to the collector flanges so bolting up the exhaust pipes will be easier when I get to that project. (hadn't done that yet in this picture)
Brian

[Belair-o]

Hey Brian,
Great hot rodding work! Looking forward to how the gauge panel works out!
Thanks, Doug

[Custer55]

Hey Brian,
Great hot rodding work! Looking forward to how the gauge panel works out!
Thanks, Doug

Thanks, me too!

[Custer55]

Work continued on making a gauge panel to mount the water, oil, volt and fuel level gauges.

Before getting to that though here is a shot of the clutch fan painted and mounted to the water pump.

To make the panel I made a hammer form and cut a piece of 22 gauge to size. The holes in the metal and the hammer form will be the center of all the gauges.

Bolted up and ready to start forming the panel. You can't see it in this shot but I already put the top bend where it will mount to the dash on the bending brake.

Close to the finished shape here. I did end up making relief cuts on the corners as there was to much metal to shrink into itself at those points.

Out of the hammer form and ready to weld up the relief cuts and the top corners.

Welded up and ground out with the gauge holes drilled and the gauges test fit in place.

I drilled the holes for the smaller gauges the same size as the panel that came with them but to me it seemed like there was to much play so I made rings / washers to make the holes a bit smaller. I welded them from the inside so they won't show at all. I still needed to do the top two small holes at this point.

From the outside view you can see how much smaller this made the hole. This one for the volt meter actually needed to be smaller than the water temp and oil pressure gauges. Not sure why the volt meter gauge was smaller but maybe because it is an Electrical gauge vs the water and oil gauges being mechanical gauges.

Here I have it mounted to the dash with all but the water temp gauge in place. Didn't have that one in place at this point as the capillary tube is kind of a pain to deal with. Looks good enough for me at this point and saves me money for bigger items that will be needed to make this a running and driving car.

And finally with indicator light holes added and a quick skim coat of bondo and paint job. I have a few parts on order to finish up the installation, but have plenty of other things to work on in the meantime!
Brian

[Belair-o]

Hey Brian,
The gauge panel came out great - and I appreciate you showing the steps in the hammer forming. The two MDF forms made sense, with the two different exterior dimensions, and with the radius on the lower form.
Thanks! Doug

[Custer55]

Hey Brian,
The gauge panel came out great - and I appreciate you showing the steps in the hammer forming. The two MDF forms made sense, with the two different exterior dimensions, and with the radius on the lower form.
Thanks! Doug

Thanks Doug 😎

[Custer55]

So while waiting on parts to finish the gauge panel install I decided to start working on the exhaust system. i had ordered a set of mandrel bends so I had the parts on hand, just hadn't got around to working on it yet.

Started on the drivers side from the header collector. It really paid off welding the bolts into the collectors as it makes this job much easier. Hard to see in this picture but it is tight as the exhaust has to go around the master cylinder and booster and follow pretty close to the outer frame rail which kicks up and in slightly just behind the front of the doors.

A little bit easier to see on the passenger side pipe. I am using the butt joint band clamps where the pipes will need to come apart which also came in super handy for holding things together fitting things up.

Here is the drivers side pipe tack welded together ready for finish welding. This will get it to about the back of the doors which was about as long as it could go and still be able to install and remove it from the car as it has to pass through a crossmember at about the middle of the door.

Decided to attempt tig welding to finish up all the joints. I did a couple of test pieces first to verify I was getting mostly full penetration on the welds before doing this one. The big bump in the middle was a mig tack weld. After doing this weld I ground the mig tacks mostly flat before tig welding which worked out better. I am not real good at tig welding yet but there is much less grinding to finish out the welds so well worth doing that way.

Here is the weld joint after finishing out the welds.

So next I had to solve how to make an exhaust pipe hanger and still be able to feed the pipes through a 3" hole in the crossmember in the middle of the frame. I didn't want to use those ugly u-bolt clamp types so this is what I came up with. I welded a 1/2" nut to the exhaust pipe (Just tack welded here but will be fully welded eventually) and made up a 1/2" bolt with a longer shank to fit the rubber hangers I found and short threaded section so it will bottom out on the nut before pushing in on the exhaust pipe.

This is the rubber hanger I bought from O'Reilly Auto parts. (they are available from Amazon and on ebay as well). They are very sturdy and should work well. My custom bolt will allow them to pivot freely with exhaust system expansion.

Here is one of them in place. The top mount is a simple U-bracket bolted to the floorboard which I used a 3/8" bolt with a bushing to allow the rubber hanger to pivot. It sucked that I had to cut out a section of my seat mounting brace for the top mount but there was no other way I could figure out to avoid the hack job.

And here is how I made the custom bolts for the exhaust hangers. First I welded up and ground a section of the threads to lengthen the shank so it would be about an 1/8" longer than the thickness of the rubber hanger. I may have been able to find a bolt with the right shank length but figured it was quicker to just use what I had.

Then I chucked it up in my mini lathe to turn down the weld to the same size as the bolt shank. Then just had to cut off the threads to the proper length and chamfer the end of the threads a bit.
So at this point I ordered some mufflers to finish out the exhaust system. Then it dawned on me that I better have the gas tank in place before making the tail pipes. So my order to Summit Racing was for mufflers and a Tanks fuel tank that I am working on getting installed now. Update on that will be coming soon!
Brian

[bigblock]

Thanks for the update looks great.

[Custer55]

Thanks for the update looks great.

Thanks, the to do list is still long but getting shorter everyday!

[Belair-o]

Hi Brian,
Great idea and execution on the exhaust pipe hangers! There are so many solutions on the car that will never be seen, but that make the car seem simply natural.
, Doug

[Custer55]

Hi Brian,
Great idea and execution on the exhaust pipe hangers! There are so many solutions on the car that will never be seen, but that make the car seem simply natural.
, Doug

Thanks Doug, 😎