My 35 Ford Five Window Coupe Build. Disclaimer: I'm not a Body Man/ Fabricator/Painter/ Engine Guru. I know enough to get me in trouble....I'm also not rich and wouldn't even call myself middle class.... I am good at finding bargains and buy used when I can and like to buy things to repair and resell to justify spending more money on the car. ...I'm not a writer either so this may be hard to follow for some.
The car....
I bought this car a couple years ago. I was told it was rust free and ready for paint. It was someone else's project that apparently started 35-40 years ago and never finished. It came with a rebuilt 327 small block Chevy and 350 turbo. It had an 8" rear on dual leaf springs, It had a 4" drop front axle with disk brakes. It had several totes of new parts to finish the car like wiring harness/ gauges/ all the weather strip/felt/welting/emblems and so on. I looked it over as best I could before buying and like I said above I was told it was rust free, It technically was for the most part but I did find a couple things I didn't like and that was where the rabbit hole opened up as it seems to happen to anything I touch. First thing I found was a little bondo in a place that didn't need it, That morphed into walking all around the car searching for more and boy did I find it. Bondo over a 1/2" thick where a skim coat would have been plenty. Little blemishes like a high spot that could have easily been tapped down with a hammer and dolly...instead they used bondo to blend it in across a large area. I swear the person was a sculptor not a body man. I found 1/2" thick filler on the fenders that they had no reason to use any...not even a little, It was like they enjoyed using it or something lol.

One of my worst traits is that I can't just set a simple goal and stick to it, No matter what I do it always turns into huge undertaking. I always see a way to improve it and before that gets done I see something else and on and on. examples.... Kitchen cabinets needed painted...end result, Gutted everything down to the studs including the floor Took out a wall... by the time it was done I had replaced everything including plumbing and electrical, Another project was supposed to be dropping an LY6 in me S10 Xtreme over the winter... Turned into a frame off build .. Holley EFI...LSA supercharged LY6/ TR6060/ narrowed frame and tubbed bed with all new suspension and bushing everywhere.

So as I said the car was technically ready to paint and finish assembly. That went out the window as soon as I found the bondo. I debated just selling the car for a profit because after some thought I knew the little 327 wasn't going to cut it and if I kept it I knew I was going to have to upgrade the whole driveline not just the engine....this is where the wheels fell off. I pulled the 327 to see how an LS would fit, It almost fell in place but was a little tight at the firewall. It was at this point I just had to see what my 6-71 blower would look like on that LS, it looked good but there wasn't enough room for the upper blower pulley so the engine would have to be set back a few inches. That meant the firewall was going to have to be modified. Well as you know you can't put a roots blown LS in a car with the stock unboxed frame because it's going to twist a lot. I order a frame boxing kit to fix and made a call to Speedway Motors for a tubular X frame... Next thing to come to mind was ditching the straight axle and going with a mustang II IFS... for you know.... safety... speaking of safety, You can't put the blower on stock LS because you're going to hurt it, So I decide to use a motor that I was saving for another project.. Iron block 408 LS, Billet pinned mains/ Callies crank and rods/ Wiseco Pistons/ Keith Craft AFR 245 ported heads/ Ed Curtis cam/ BDS Blower Intake/ Blower is a 6-71 for now but trying to find a deal on an 8 or 10-71. Trans will be 4l80e because you have to have overdrive so you can take your 900hp?? blown 35 Ford to distant car shows.

Speaking of HP, you can't run a 6" wide wheels with skinny tires and wimpy old 8" Ford rear on leaf springs so now you know you have to cut that perfect 90yr old steel floor out so you can stick a narrowed 9" and some 14"x15" Billet Specialties double bead lock Street Lites and a call to Summit racing for a pair of Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/R 31x18-15 tires and matching 15x6 wheels with tires to match the rears. At this point I took the body off the frame and found that someone had welded everything on the X frame. They did crappy Repairs in a couple spots, At this point boxing that frame would be a nightmare and since I was replacing everything else I might as well get new frame rails... after a 12hr round trip drive to pick them up I was ready to get started. You know it's really painful to spend 12hrs driving and spending two thousand dollars for rails.... just to cut them up lol. A few more calls to SummitRacing.com / Jegs and Speedway for 4-link brackets/ Rod ends and I was ready to get started. The first thing I found was my plan to cut and reuse the stock rear frame rails by moving them in wasn't going to work very well. It was going to leave the car sitting to high in the rear and I honestly didn't expect to be able to stuff those big 31" Mickeys under the car and still get it to sit low but there was more room than I thought..... Another call to SpeedwayMotors.com for Competition Engineering 4-Link frame rails and I was all set again

Right now the car is still far from being complete. The IFS crossmember is welded in, the rear rails are welded in, 4-link brackets are welded on the frame. The rear end has the axles tacked to the center and the big Ford ends are welded up. 4 link brackets are just tacked to the tubes. I got the axles ordered and put slid into the housing. Everything else is just mocked up including the front suspension, The engine is just for mock up and not the 408, The intake and blower and just set in place/ No trans..... It's going to be put together and taken apart many times before everything is painted and final assembly.
I'll try to update this thread every so often, but progress has slowed considerably because of health issues making it impossible to work on it more than an hour or two here and there. I'm also not able to work so that makes spending on the car impossible right now.

 

It's been almost an hour. Is the build finished yet? LOL!

 

Sweet project! Looking forward to following along.

 

Know what you mean when doing a project and it snowballs. Did a '35 pickup years ago. Going to weld up a few holes in the frame...fast forward carrying the frame outside to sandblast. How did I get here!!! Glad to see you are doing it right. Please keep us updated.

 

I'll have to go out and see if the garage fairy came by last night and finished it, I doubt it though.

 

Love the new project. This quote you said is exactly how I'd describe myself! I love nothing more than buying a bunch of parts, then selling enough to pay myself back for the initial investment and get free parts.

 

Welcome! Glad your documenting your build. I've enjoyed posting my build on here and reading the comments. I've learned a lot on here and hopefully have been able to help some people learn how to do things as well. There are some really good folks on here and I've also met some in person here and there at car events. There was one sentence in your intro that stuck out to me ....." It's going to be put together and taken apart many times before everything is painted and final assembly." YEP totally agree and that's a running joke with the wifey when she visits the shop and says why did you take it back apart Good luck on this project and I'm anxious to follow along.

 

Nothing exciting to report, I did get my front tires mounted.