Forgive the dust on the car, look past the clutter, do what I do and just let this soak in. It’s been a little over a year with this ’34, it’s gone from a pile of mis-matched reproduction and ancient, cast off parts to a roller, that’s wiring and upholstery away from being a car. It looks exactly as I imagined when I started, which sort of amazes me every time I look at it.
And I go out to the garage and just look at it a LOT.
I won’t re-hash the build step by step, that’s already done here. Suffice to say that I’ve learned a lot, gotten frustrated, done a lot of steps over, and put a lot of other stuff on the back burner to get this car to this point. It’s a 40 year long fantasy fulfilled, that of having a ’34 Roadster.
I must say, I’m rather proud of myself.
I’m at the point now where I can imagine Kim and taking an evening cruise in the summer, color touring on a crisp autumn afternoon, and a cross country trip with the rumble seat loaded with luggage. Vague fantasy just a couple years ago, now just a few months of tinkering away. Not that we couldn’t do all these things with the ’48 Pontiac convertible we’d had for 40 years that got sold to finance this, we did, and could have kept on doing those things with that car, but fate intervened and the “next project” beckoned.
Our friends Brandon and Liz from the vintage trailer group we belong to had tried (rather relentlessly) to convince us to part with the ’51 Pontiac wagon, but we weren’t ready to let it go. They even came over to the house to try to convince us to sell it to them, but seeing the convertible in the garage, unused for three years, asked if we’d part with it. We hadn’t considered selling it, and when we considered the pros and cons of keeping it, and doing the things I thought it would take to make me happy with the car, versus parting with it, having some extra garage space, and the chance to move on, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Brandon has done all things that I wanted to do to the car, it’s rewarding to see it used and enjoyed, as opposed to it gathering dust under a car cover. I had “built” the car several times, there had been 4 different engines under the hood, several paint jobs, 3 interiors, and I wasn’t enthused about starting over with it again.
Sort of a “been there, done that” kind of thing.
So, we’ve moved on. I’m still using the T’bird as a work bench, storage shelf, and coffee table, and the Riviera hasn’t been touched for almost 2 years. That’s OK. Retirement is just around the corner4, and I’ll need some things to do. The “heavy lifting” and big expenses are all done on both of them, it’s down to body work, paint and interior for both, the things I really like to do, so I think I’m set for activities to keep me busy, and have a pretty interesting collection of cars. when they’re completed.
So, this is where I am. I’ve been invited to show the roadster at the Detroit “Auto-Rama” at Cobo hall in February, I should be able to get the interior and have the car wired for that. It’s flattering to be asked, and would make a good debut, so that is a reasonable and realistic goal.
Now, I just have to stop going out to the shop, sitting in a lawn chair by the T’bird and staring at ’34. Time’s a wasting!
Building a car, or any project, is an overwhelming task if looked at in the whole, but it’s really just the completion of a multitude of little tasks. When the last task is done, the car is done. Like eating an elephant, it’s one bite at a time.
The seat riser got rebuilt, a clearance bump in the trunk (rumble seat) floor for the differential was made, and I added a couple layers of ‘glass mat and resin to the buggered up corners of the hood apron/splash shields. The hood and grill shell fit is reasonably close, (REALLY good by ’34 Ford standards!), and I’ve got the ignition wiring done enough to fire it up. My goal this week is to get the body prepped for paint and in high build primer, and the hood and little parts in color. It’s tantalizingly close to being a real car!
I got the instructions for the ’34 Roadster the other day, so I jumped right in on it! Sadly, I repeated what I used to with model cars, and the full size equivalent of getting glue on the windshield, and am now mopping up the mess.
The first, and I mean the FIRST guy who asks if this is “…one of those kit-cars…” is going to get one of these bronze windshield posts shoved right up his arse. Up until yesterday, I had the posts and windshield frame just loosely bolted on, and no hinge bushings in the posts, and it looked reasonably OK.
Cool McCool's Garage 