1936 Ford Five Window Coupe Street Rod Restoration 2017
March
Head Light Issues
This has been one of my big problems with this car from
day one. The car is lifted so high in the back that the headlights point
down about fifteen feet in front of the bumper, which makes it impossible to
drive at night.
In the second photo I made a small spacer to lift the headlights up about a
quarter inch. That did not work, so I made a larger wedge that
lifted the headlights up about a half inch, and no success there, the headlights
still
were not high enough.
I called the all knowing Jim Boffo from
Boffo Motors
for some help, because I have played with these headlights all last summer and I have made no progress at all. The first
thing Jim discovered was the headlights were mounted directly to the cars fender
which did not allow for much of an adjustment. Jim
said their should be some kind of bracket or adjustable mount for the headlight.
We took a quick look on Google and it turns out he was right, I was missing the
mount that allowed the headlight to be adjusted.
I attached the headlights to the new mounts on the car, and they were still were to
low. So I
came up with the idea to add the mount to a wedge and lift the headlights up one inch.
First I traced the shape of the original mount and cut the sheet
metal to match, and then I cut a large nut in half to use as a front spacer.
I welded the three parts together, used a little body filler, primer,
paint, and we were good to go.
Wait not so fast, when I went to attached the headlights to the fenders with my
new wedge mounts, I ran in to a problem.
First I discovered the headlight mount shaft hole in the fender is off center,
Second a large part of the mounting back plate was missing and half of the
back plate is not
level. I had to make a new back plate to level and support the one
side of the
headlight mount then re-dill the hole in the center of the fender.
A little primer and paint and now we are good to go, If I don't say so my
self my head light wedge looks factory, and now I have plenty of headlight
adjustment. I also replaced the internal headlight components with
an upgrade from Bob Drake Reproductions, and now I have plenty of light on the
road.
Click any picture to enlarge.
June
The Beaver Falls Car Show Curse Continues
For the past four years ever since I purchased this car,
I have tried to attend the Beaver Falls Car show. Something
always happens to this car and I ultimately fail to attend every year.
This year was no different. The day of the car show, I went to start
the engine and it would not run no matter what I did. I could get it
to start with starter fluid, however the engine would not continue to run.
The following week I called Jim Boffo his response was, it has to be the
carburetor remove it and bring it down so I can look at it. I said,
I have had nothing but trouble with this carburetor from day one, if I remove it, I
will take a hammer to it. So we agreed it was time to purchase a new carburetor.
Jim recommended Holley Four Barrel Ultra Double Pumper. I replaced
the carburetor, and with out any adjustments the engine started right up and did
not run half bad. Jim
made the final adjustments, now she starts first time every time. I will see you next
year at the Beaver Falls Car Show.
July
Finish Rear Panhard Bar Paint
Last year I had a Panhard bar installed to stabilize
the rear-end, however the
welding that was done damaged some of my paint, and it need to be touched up. The
problem is the limited amount of space to work in, and my inability to lift the
car off the ground to a reasonable height for painting. I decided to tape and cover the
whole under side of the car from the cab back to the bumper. If you have seen my Bugeye Sprite page you know I like lots of color as you can see the Panhard Bar
is now yellow. The yellow Panhard bar is my first step to deluxe the
cars underside.
September
Front Suspension Problems
As I start to get more and more comfortable with this
car, and I keep fixing all the mechanical problems that keep popping up. I
decided to take her on the highway and really push her for the first time.
Well I did not get to go real fast before the frontend started to shake and shimmy
bad at high speed. The car recently had a frontend alignment done, I
knew that could not be the problem. I have already replaced the rear tires but not the front
ones, and after talking to Jim Boffo about the shimmy in the front end. He
said that car sat for eight years with out moving, maybe those front tires are
out of round.
Fine, lets replace them I thought, well after checking
with what seemed like everyone, Mickey Thompson does not make a matching SR
tires for my 14 inch Drag Light front rims. I have said this
before, and I will say it again nothing is easy with this car. The only
logical step is to purchase larger 15 inch Drag Light rims, so that I could then
purchase matching SR tires for the front, however it just so happens that the
smallest SR tires are 3/4 inch wider and 2.5 inches higher then the previous
tires.
The real problem is space is very limited in the
fenders for the front wheels, and the cars front ground clearance is way too low
as you can see from the scratches in my paint, I have about 4 inches at the
bottom of my grill. Upon further investigation I noticed that the
front springs had spacers installed to give the car its 4 inch clearance that
needs to be increased. At this point Jim decided to replace the
front Coil springs with QA1 Coil Over's to help increase the ground clearance at
the grill. When we went to install the Coil Over's we discovered that the old
springs were cut to fit, and that not cool at all very unsafe. We
then had to grind a notch in the A arm for the QA1 shock adjustment dial to fit.
You can see by the photo w are now at 8.5 inches of ground clearance at the
bottom of my Grill.
Turbo 400 Transmission Reprogramming Upgrade
I was looking to change my shift points in my Turbo 400 automatic transmission, for better acceleration. The first step was to replace the modulator valve with one that could be adjusted, and that moved my shift points from 2,000 RPM to 3,500 RPM. This was better however my power band starts at 3,500 the engine needs to shift at at least 4,500. I then investigated replacing the governor weights, however there is not enough room between the transmission and the car frame to accomplish this with out removing the transmission. I went back to Jim at Boffo Motors and one of his techs Tim recommend a Transmission reprogramming kit from TransGO. This kit installs in the lower pan of the transmission, and allows the tech to reprogram the shifting points. The kit has different levels of performance so we went for the next level up and I must say it definitely made a difference however my RPM only went up to 4,200, so its time to try the next performance level. All I can say is wow! My shift points are now at 4,700 RPM.
I also replaced the transmission lower pan with a larger one, to increase the fluid by an additional five quarts.
Fuel Pump Problems
I noticed a small puddle of oil and the fair amount of gas odor coming from under the car. So I located what I believed was the source and replaced the fuel pump and both the oil leak and fuel odor disappeared. Once and a while I get lucky with a easy fix for this car.
Contact Bob Capo at
bob@bobcapo.com
for further information
on any of our restorations.Thank You.