About 8 years ago I bought a ’56 Ford for my wife.
I brought it home and found that it was pretty rotten. I was on a tight budget and didn’t want her driving a rusty looking pile so I did a quickie patch and mud job on it and shot some primer on it. It ended up like this….
She drove the hell out of it and I did as well when I was building my T. I knew the cheapo body job wouldn’t last, so over the last year I decided to get after it. Well needless to say I got distracted with a new job, family stuff and just trying to be a good Dad. I also decided to redo my garage into more of a shop before I got to working on it (the garage difference can be seen in the first and last pics). Anyways….the rot had gotten pretty bad so I decided it needed new floors and lower fenders all the way around.
I took the doors off and welded in some supports. Next I removed the rotten rockers, welded in a 1 x 1 tube from the toe board back to the door post and back to the rear wheel well. Then I dissected out the inner rockers and rotten floors.
I built new inner rockers and attached them to the 1×1 support and continued on to fabbing new floor supports and body mounts. Floors were to follow.
Next I re hung the doors and aligned new rocker panels. Rear fenders were next. As I cut the fenders off and separated them from the inners I discovered more rust….go figure. A pic of the driver rear cut away.
I fabbed new inner panels/fender lips and welded and hammered and welded and hammered………that’s a lot a friggin seam! The driver side is complete now. I haven’t taken pics of the finished side yet…sorry.
Here’s the passenger side cut up and ready for me to fit it all up.
A pic of my daughter “helping”…”Dad, what did you do to Mom’s car?”
By spring I am hoping to have the body work wrapped up with new chrome reverse wheels and shiny paint…Some of you have seen my T…I like Flake….
Oh yeah…I forgot to show my favorite part….
292 ECZ-G heads Isky cam…
I got a Meco midget torch from my wife for Xmas last year and have been playing around with it a bit. I have welded all of the sheetmetal on the 56 with it (except areas I can’t reach with a dolly).
I have all of the panels done now. They all need a little dolly work yet.
You can see just above the wheel opening that I used mig welding and how it sucked in a bit. The inner fender doesn’t give any room for hammer welding so I wire welded it there. I am not opposed to using some filler in those areas. Overall though it is pretty straight. I’m getting the hang of the O/A welding and hammering. All of the O/A welds used little to no filler rod and hammered straight pretty quick Its a little tough going at it teaching myself but I think I’m catching on. On to the Air ride….
Here, the car is masked so the roof can be painted a vanilla color.
This is the finished vanilla, flake, and a couple light coats of clear. It will get more clear when the rest of the body catches up.
The body in guide coat being blocked in 320 before sealer.
The jambs were painted in base/clear without any metalflake. Then they were masked before the outer body was painted.
Sealer being applied:
And the blue that the rest of the car will wear:
Here, the base coat is finished – ready for clear
The clearcoat gets red/gold and red/green flake:
Here it is. You can click the pictures below to get a bigger image. The large image happens to be 800×600, so you can use it as a background. When you open the larger pic, just right click on it and “Set as background”. If you’ve got a Mac, what can I say? You’re on your own.
