1958 Ford Ranch Wagon "Class Project" - year 2

ummm....might have a problem when it comes time to paint that car, pick.

 

Good product to know about though, I use galvanized hardware on my big pivot gates on the backalley entrance (my own invention), and that would keep the bearing shells and counterbalances from rusting up.

 

Maybe. But this was recommended as something that wouldn't interfere with paint later, in contrast to WD40. I had wiped down one of the fenders with WD40 before learning this, but it has since been blasted and primed.

We'll see how it goes in a month or so...

 

Session 14

It's time to patch the floors the right way before we lay down carpet. Another dad from cub scouts is a professional welder and agreed to help us out. We got together on Friday night and worked for 3+ hours to get the driver side cut out and the patch panel ready to weld in. Here's how much we removed.



When class started on Sunday, Jake got to work cutting out the passenger side.



Eric explains welding to the students.


We setup a firewall in the car so we could work on both sides without anyone being blinded or catching each other on fire. Eric worked on welding the driver side while the students prepped the passenger side.


In the mean time, Zach worked on cleaning up the portion of the body exposed by removing the back bumper.


Zach and Anika trim down the patch panel to fit. The panels are high quality pieces that exactly match the stock floor that we got from hot rods sheet metal: http://www.hotrodssheetmetal.com


The passenger side had more rust, so Anika cut out part of the toe board.


Here's what it looks like now.


We need to use some of the scrap we cut off the patch panels to fill in the toe board, weld the passenger side, grind all the welds, and then paint it all. We're going to try to finish up the floors before the next class so we can put the interior together in the next class.

 

Working on the floor

Between classes we put in two 8-midnight Friday night work sessions to get the floors done.

All the welding done:


Fresh coat of paint:

 

Session 15

Today was the day to work on the interior. Unfortunately I only had one student and one helper. Dave and Mitchell worked on the back seat and door panels while I installed Dynamat.

This was my first time working with Dynamat and it went a little slower than I was expecting. Dave and I kept working past the end of class and by dinner time I had the floor done.


It took just a little more than one box of Dynamat to do the whole floor, so we have more to work with if we want.

In the picture above you can also see the new door panels we cut out to replace the warped originals. They still need to be covered, but we were testing the fit today.

For a low buck interior, we're doing Mexican blanket upholstery. I'm sure there are people who will frown on this approach, but I think it's turning out real well so far.

 

Thanks for the update, that dynamat will be a nice upgrade over original I bet. I may have missed it in another post but has a body color been decided yet?

 

We're going to paint it some shade of blue.

Our inspiration this year is this car:

 

i went over the whole last years thread and now im following this one !!! this is great !!!

hope to see another update soon too

 

Cool Blue! On another under appreciated Ford, a 59!

 

Session 16

This week we had all four students in attendance (only the third time this has happened) and we worked on the body and interior.

Jake worked on straightening and smoothing the fenders with hammer, welder, and a little body filler.



Anika and Zach covered all four dour panels and reassembled all the doors.


And Mitchell worked on covering the front seat (which got a new piece of foam on the bottom cushion)



We only have three classes left and we've still got a lot of work to do! We really need to get it out on the road to get some miles on it before we have to drive it to Billetproof in June.

 

man i love what your doing with the interior !! great idea:2_thumbs_up_-_anima

 

Thanks! I know it's probably not for everyone, but we love how it's turning out.

-Dan

 

Sheet metal

We're going through a long period here with no class - between Easter, cub scout camp, Mother's day... But the guys and I got together this week to work on the car a little. It's getting close to the end of the year and we've still got a lot of work to do.

We thought we better start getting the front end back together if we hope to get it painted or at least primered this year.



We couldn't quite figure out how the radiator support shims went on and I was surprised to find this in the manual:


This has got to be the most detailed manual I've ever seen.

Now it's starting to look more like a car

 

Is that the original manual? Sure is coming together.