1931 Ford Restoration Diary

I got the new 2-blade repro fan. Ironically, it had the same problem as the old fan I had originally planned to use: it would not go far enough down on the tapered water pump shaft for the nut to fully screw on. So I put the nut in my lathe and made it a bit shorter. I also had to take my angle grinder and grind down the front of the water pump casting so that the fan pulley would not rub on it.  But after all that was done, the fan worked fine.

Since I had the radiator off the car,  I repaired the top mounting bracket, where a piece of it had cracked off.  I had to weld on a bit of metal about a half inch on a side and grind it down to match the rest of the bracket.  Then I re-installed the radiator and put the newly-painted shell on over it, and now the front of the car looks quite handsome.

I packed up and put away my painting tent- I won’t be doing any more painting until next spring. The next step is to work on getting the new repro fender I bought to fit properly.  It will need some metal work in a few places to get it to line up properly with the car.

I painted the radiator shell, and now it’s ready to be installed.  It was sort of a pain: I had to mix primer and two different colors, just a half ounce of each, which is as much work as mixing a quart.

I also visited Hershey this year. I picked up a new repro right fender, and a very good original right fender. Hopefully I will make some progress on them over the next several months, and get them painted by next summer.

I decided to replace the radiator fan before installing the radiator shell.  I haven’t touched the fan since I got the car, and it is non-original and rusty.  It also has four blades, which makes it impossible to remove the fan or water pump without first removing the radiator.  At Hershey I got a nice old two-bladed replacement-style fan (the kind that has a single stamping for both blades, riveted to a hub). I bead-blasted and painted it, took off the radiator, and removed the old fan. But for some reason the new fan’s mounting hole was a bit too small, and the fan would not fit properly on the water pump shaft.  So on Monday I’ll order one of the aluminum reproduction two-bladed fans, which are supposed to be original-looking and trouble-free.

I got very little done over the summer, since our kitchen was being remodeled, and the garage was full of building materials and contractors’ tools.

But I am in the middle of fixing up the stainless steel radiator shell.  It had several fairly deep scratches and a few small dents, and I had to bump out and file the dents, and sand out the scratches with fairly coarse sandpaper.  Then I had to go over the entire thing with fine and extra fine wet-or-dry sandpaper, and buff it twice, with emery and then stainless compound.  I ended up doing the sanding and buffing about three times, since after the first polishing I could see lots of scratches from the coarser sandpaper that were hidden, but not actually removed, by the finer grades.  Stainless steel is a very tough metal that takes a lot of work to sand and polish, and the radiator shell is pretty big.

Once it was polished up all nice, I carefully masked off the painted plain steel inset panel at the top, and bead-blasted the remains of the old paint, without damaging any of the polished stainless steel.  I did the masking with heavy duct tape, since bead-blasting does not penetrate it.  In the next few days I will prime and paint that panel with the body color, and also paint the lower panel black.

I also fixed up the oval stainless steel “Ford” emblem that goes on the top of the radiator shell.  I sanded and buffed it,  sprayed it with black paint, and wiped off the paint, leaving paint only in the recessed lettering.  After it dried, it looked quite handsome.

 

I painted the headlight bar and front bumper braces with epoxy primer and acrylic urethane topcoat, just like I did for the rear bumper braces almost three years ago.  I also painted the special studs that attach the braces to the frame. Once it was all dry, I bolted the bumper braces in place. Now in theory I can install the front bumper, but it is pretty rusty and ugly-looking.

I think I will give my “temporary” front fenders a quickie paint job, so the next step is to build some sort of jig to hold the fenders while working on them.

I have finally finished painting my 1972 Triumph Spitfire.  That job has occupied most of my free time for the last year or so.  So now I can get back to working on the Ford.  The next task will be painting the headlight bar and front bumper braces.  I had bead-blasted the headlight bar about a year ago, and the bumper braces about three years ago, so I went over them one more time to clean off a bit of light rust that had accumulated since then.  I also got rid of a slight bend in the headlight bar.  I had to do it carefully, since the bar has a complex curved shape, and it is built up from solid forged ends and a tubular center piece.

Once those are painted, I plan to buff the stainless steel radiator shell, and paint the colored inserts on the top and bottom of the shell.

I’ve been driving the car at least once a week, but I haven’t made any progress on the restoration. The next step is to fix the fenders, which is a big job, and has to wait until I am done painting my Spitfire. I did notice that some of the bolts holding the front fenders and headlight bar had vibrated loose, since I had installed them “temporarily”, without the lockwashers.
Last weekend I drove about 30 miles each way to a antique auto swap meet. I bought some goodies: a spare carb, a nice headlight trim ring, and some glass headlight lenses. I installed the new carb (a ten-minute job), fiddled with a bit, and the car ran fine with it. I put the original carb back on, and I’ll keep the new one as a spare.

I haven’t touched the car in a couple of months, except for driving it around occasionally.  All my spare time has been devoted to getting my Triumph Spitfire re-painted before winter arrives and it is too cold to paint.

The Ford was very useful during the four days we had no power thanks to Hurricane Sandy.  It had a full tank of gas, and it was very easy to siphon gas out of the tank to keep my generator running.   It is almost impossible to siphon gas out of a modern car- there are too many twists and turns in the filler pipe to allow a siphon hose to actually reach the gas tank.

The car runs well overall, but it idles sort of roughly.  This can often be caused by a leak in the intake manifold, especially at the joint between the manifold and the block.  So I removed the manifolds and double-checked how well the intake and exhaust manifolds fitted up against the block.  The fit had looked pretty good when I assembled everything a couple of years ago, but it was definitely not perfect.  So I spend some time filing the manifold flanges until I could not detect any irregularity or gaps.  Then I reinstalled everything, with a new gasket.  It had absolutely no effect on the idle quality.  Bummer.

I also tried changing the spark plugs.  I had been using some old Presto-Lite #78 plugs, so I re-installed some Motorcraft TT10 plugs that had been in the car when I bought it.  Again, no effect on the idle.  Swapping the distributor cap also had no effect.  Oh well, maybe the idle is as good as it gets.  Anyway, the car drives fine, and I take it out a couple of times a week.  I reached 500 miles of driving since last December, so I changed the oil.

My new floor boards were making an annoying creaking noise, so I trimmed them a tiny bit where they were rubbing, and the creaking went away. I also put some sealant around the edge of the windshield glass, so that the car would be more weatherproof.
I have actually been driving the car a lot- I’ve put on about 500 miles since last winter.

I’m spending most of my free time for the next couple of months painting my 1972 Triumph Spitfire, so not a lot of progress on the Ford. I did get around to installing the rest of the window garnish moldings, and all the screws that hold them in place. The interior had been looking a little strange with all those empty screw holes around the windows. I finished replacing the brake rod return springs with the late ’31 style. They actually work, and the brake rods no longer rattle when I go over a bump.
Once my garage is set up to paint the Spitfire, I will probably paint a few Ford parts, such as the headlight bar. But any major work on the fenders (about all that remains to be done) will probably not happen until the fall.