'41 Coupe Build

RC Drown · November 25, 2008, 06:48:44 AM

You must feel like what Hannibal Smith use to say.."Love it when a plan comes together"

The instrument cluster looks fantastic

Go Fleiter · November 25, 2008, 12:52:49 AM

Your have gotten a really beautiful reult! Compliments!
Greetings! Go

mvair · November 24, 2008, 11:52:52 PM

Yes, some of us are crazy...in case you hadn't figured that out yet!

Here is the insturment panel from my '41 project. After a year of work and waiting, it is back together and ready for installation.

Not everyone finds enjoyment in the same way. Restoration entertains me, while driving old cars is the key for others.

This is the original instrument cluster from my car. I did the following:

-Completely disassembled the cluster
-Sent the instrument faces for restoration
-Sent the glass for repainting
-Sent the instruments for rebuild and calibration
-Replaced the fuel gauge and temperature gauge with NOS
-Cleaned and re-plated the case
-Sent the bezel for nickel plating
-color matched and painted the gray, off-white, and brown faceplate using the original spay pattern. (The faceplate was not faded under the bezel and I had Auto Color Library match the color.)
-Reset the odometer to zero since I am restoring the car to factory tolerances.
-Restored and/or replaced the celluloid speedometer needle color bar and blue celluloid around the panel lights
-Hand cut new gaskets using the pieces of the old as a pattern. (I actually took the old brittle pieces and stuck them to contact paper. Then I cut that out and used it for a pattern to cut the new gaskets.)
-Reassembled

mvair · September 28, 2008, 10:41:29 PM

I was out of town for the past few weeks so nothing got done. The body is finally on the car. It looks like it is coming together.

Ron King · July 17, 2008, 09:53:49 PM

thats a nice job...looks great !!!

mvair · July 17, 2008, 01:40:05 PM

The paint is just about finished. I hope to put the body on the frame next week. The attached pictures show (1) the color coat on the body, (2) the door jams with overspray on the interior (3) the fender with color coat on top and blue-gray on back. I matched the blue-gray color from the original. A previous discussion thread indicated this blue-gray color was on the back of nearly all sheet metal (i.e. fenders, hood, gravel guard, etc.) for a number of years.

notdavidspade · June 26, 2008, 11:12:58 PM

Ah, that makes much more sense. I couldn't figure out why you'd have such a custom look with all the attention you've put into keeping it original. Thanks for going through the trouble! Yours is a benchmark car for sure!
Stephen in FL.

mvair · June 26, 2008, 09:36:07 PM

The other stuff belongs to another car. My car is going to be the original color 501-Airwing Gray.

notdavidspade · June 26, 2008, 04:56:55 PM

is your car going to be two tone? I see the hood latch is red, as is the radiator.

mvair · June 26, 2008, 01:41:04 PM

As I said, things are moving quickly. The sheet metal is painted. I will post a picture later of the back side showing the blue-gray color used on the backside of the painted sheet metal.

The back of the door matches the original very closely with the undercoat and finished coat applied.

mvair · June 24, 2008, 10:17:44 PM

It took so long to get everything ready for paint, it seems like the actual painting is going too fast! The bottom of the body is painted black. The undercoat is red oxide. (I am only using the red oxide where there is no finish coat.) The exposed surfaces under the dash, in the trunk and behind the rear seat are painted black. It won't be long until the finished color is on the exterior.

There was some discussion about the color of the bottom of the car. Larry Jenkins, the '41 tech advisor says his is painted the body color. I know mine was painted black because the black paint was still in place under the gas tank, under the running boards, etc. The only thing we can figure is that perhaps the bottom color depended on the body builder. My body was built by Dodge; however, most of the bodies were built by Briggs. There are a number of minor differences, including the manufacture plate, some of the attachments (like the trunk lid catch), etc.

mvair · June 15, 2008, 10:58:57 PM

I can now say that all of the sheet metal on the car fits together without any struggle. I have assembled the sheetmetal only to check for fit before painting. I didn't want to paint the car and then find out a fender needed to be reshaped. There is a small problem on the trunk lid. A rust repair left one corner about 1/16th of an inch too wide. It is not rubbing against the body, but it is a little close for comfort. Once that is fixed the car will come apart for painting. The next time it goes together it should be to stay.

mvair · May 29, 2008, 10:05:18 PM

I'll let you know when I put the car together how everything fits. When I took it apart, the fender, grill, shields, etc. all lined up without needing to apply any force. I did get an NOS grill to replace mine. (The car had been in a small garage and the lady who owned it knew she had pulled in far enough when she hit the hot water heater with the grill!) I hope bolting the new grill on will not be a challenge. It is OEM NOS and made of steel. If I recall, there was also a later aluminum replacement grill available. I have heard it can cause some assembly problems.

Jim Yergin · May 29, 2008, 11:01:46 AM

Stephen,
I realize your question was directed at mvair but I thought I would horn in with my post since I spent most of the past long holiday weekend installing the fenders and rear gravel pan on my '41 P12 wagon. The front fenders, grill and driver's side "catwalk" are from a different car and the "cat walk" piece on the passenger side is from yet another car. I was surprised to find they fit together fairly well. Only the passenger side needed a little massaging to fit. Before painting I did trial fit the grill too and that seemed to fit OK. I am in the process of polishing the stainless steel trim to install on the grill before I put the grill piece on. Rather than use the stainless steel fender welting, I opted for the chromed fabric welting which was pretty easy to install.
Jim Yergin

notdavidspade · May 29, 2008, 12:03:03 AM

I have a question to the fit of the front end. I'm going to be bringing the front of my car (wagon, so no need to worry too much about the rest of the body) down to metal and then painted this summer. At this point, I have parts from 3 different cars (maybe 4) making up the front of the car (firewall forward). I'm wondering if these parts should easily bolt together, or is it common, as I have found, that the bolts REALLY hold this thing together. My grill/fender extensions/fenders fit together rather poorly however I've been able to pull them together with the bolts once I assemble them on the car. I've been assuming that this is common and probably why they have wind-lace between the fender extensions and the fenders, but I've found that even attaching the grill to the splash shields required a few vicegrips and some torqued nuts on studs. I'd like to know what your experiences are on this matter. Thanks again!!! By the way, I'm very happy (entirely for personal reasons) that you have a 41 as well. Your input has been a great help!
Stephen in FL

mvair · May 26, 2008, 02:56:15 PM

UPDATE 5/26/08:

The entire car is primed and ready to paint. I am going to put the body back on the frame and assemble the doors, hood, trunk, etc. to make sure all of the alignments are good. After that, the body will come off again and get the final coat of paint.

In the meantime, I have finished all of the dust shields. (There are actually 11 pieces. The picture just shows a sample.) I put these in a hot tank, rather than scraping and sandblasting. The metal came out looking like it just came out of the stamping machine. There were only a few rust spots. I media blasted those and etched all the panels. I could tell from looking at the overlapped surfaces that these items were all painted before assembly...so that is what I did.

mvair · April 25, 2008, 12:54:17 PM

UPDATE:

The body work is complete. The person doing the rust repair is young and interested in my project. He decide it would just not be right to lap the seam on the trunk pan. He went ahead and butt welded the entire pan. I must say, once the primer is appied, I don't think the seam will be visible at all. He also repaired the only other rust-through on the seam between the trunk rail, pan and body sheet metal. It looks perfect as well.

You can compare the before pictures in the prior post with the after pictures here to see why I am pleased.

mvair · March 22, 2008, 03:04:12 PM

The body has now joined the other sheet metal at the shop for paint. The only rust on the car was in the trunk pan. I think this was a result of the exhaust pipe being rusted off and lack of a good seal on the trunk lid.? Although I always kept the car in closed storage, the rust damage was done in the 1950's and 60's when the car was still being driven.

I cut out the trunk pan and had a new one made to match the original. Photos show the progress. The rear edge will be welded to the rail and finished so as not to see the seam. The plan is to lap the rest of the edges and spot weld. I'll post a picture of the result.

notdavidspade · March 16, 2008, 10:05:45 AM

Quote from: mvair on March 15, 2008, 10:06:46 PM
By the time I got back to the car again, the battery was dead...so I decided to do a factory original restoration.

Wow, a dead battery gets a frame off restoration. What would you do if it had a flat tire? :)

mvair · March 15, 2008, 10:06:46 PM

I have gotten a lot of good information from the board. Since I am ready to start building the body of my car back to factory original, I thought I would share the progress from time to time.

I finished the frame (was happy to show it at the Santa Maria POC meet) and now have the body down to nothing but sheetmetal and welds. I removed the paint with soda blasting and got all of the seam sealer out of the seams with a scrapper and dental pick.

I will prime all of the hidden interior surfaces with red rust encapsulator and then it will be off to the body shop for body work and paint. The fenders, deck lid, hood, doors, gravel guard, grill, and hood-to-fender panels are already blocked and primed ready to assembly to the car for a final fit.

I know I will have several questions as this goes back together, so hope you will share your experience.

For background, I have owned the car for almost 40 years. I bougt it from the son if the original owner for $50 when she died. He was the minister at our church. I put it in storage until I had time to work on it...which turned out to be about 35 years! By the time I got back to the car again, the battery was dead...so I decided to do a factory original restoration. This club turned out to be the perfect place to start.