1957 Country Seday restoration

[cokefirst]

Good progress this week.  We are waiting a few days to put in a large parts order.  One of our suppliers has specials around holidays, so I am waiting for the 25th of this month to put in a good order to finish the front suspension, brakes and rear end.  I am toying with the idea of bumping up the gear ratio so I can cruise at 70 with the engine spinning at 2500 instead of 3000 RPM.  I did this on my 56 pickup and was amazed that it did not affect the power at take off. 

So this week, I finished the rear brakes and have them mounted to the backing plates.  My body man has completed the doors and tailgate and it is now all in prime waiting for the color coat.  I hope to have a rolling chassis in the after Halloween,  In the mean time, we are going to work on the rear end pumpkin.

[cokefirst]

two more photos.

[CobraJoe]

Looking good!

[Ford Blue blood]

X2, the fun part is going to start soon!

[cokefirst]

Not much progress to take photos of this week, but we did start on replacing the rear pinion seal and resetting the preload on the pinion.  Great videos on how to do this and something that I have never done.  we cleaned up the rear end housing and hopefully got most of the sand from the sand blasting out of the housing.  We also had to scrape some areas where the sand blaster did not get all the dirt.  The pumpkin was cleaned and then painted with the red primer, followed by an application of matte clear.  If it works as good as it looks, we have a winner.

[cokefirst]

A little more progress on the old girl.  We discovered that a metal extension that works with the control arm bumpers to the frame was apparently missing.  It likely fell off sometime during the vehicles life. Fortunately, we had a parts car, so we unwelded the part, we de-rusted it and attached it to our frame.  We also mounted the front control arms and all the associated parts, along with new brakes, wheel cylinders and hardware. 

We also mounted the rear end housing and springs, and discovered another problem.  we replaced the original brake lines with SS Classic Tube lines.  Always a learning experience, we noticed that the left line from the left rear wheel cylinder to the junction box is about 2" too long and the right side was 2" too short.  For whatever reason, this kit was supposed to be for the wagons, but the rear lines are for a Skyliner.  I called classic tube and told them of the problem so they can correct it in future shipments.  We verified with the parts car that the wagons and skyliners have different housings for the rear end.  The position of the rear distribution block on the rear axle housing is about 2" closer to the left backing plate on the wagon vs the Skyliner.

[mustang6984]

Progress...looks good. 

[RICH MUISE]

Looking good..........thanks for the updates.

[cos]

Hello  Just read thru your info, very nice redo.  Your front end shim pack appeared to be  very thick.  Was there any evidence of prior damage.

[cokefirst]

I am not sure why there are so many shims in the upper control arm.  There has been no apparent front end damage, but in dis-assembling the car, I did note that it was apparently hit in the right rear as the rear quarter panel and the wheelhouse had ford part numbers on the inside.  Also the rear side glass on that side did not have the FoMoCo bug, so I assume that was replaced also.  There are some other tell tail signs of damage, but it must have happened back in the 50's or early 60's.  anytime after that it would probably been totaled.  I bought another parts car that has also sat for years.  it is a beater also, and the floorboards are in much worse shape.  The parts car did have factory air.  The parts car was missing the evaporator, radiator, and the water pump along with the generator. The carburetor and intake manifold was also missing.  It looks like it had some oddball engine work done as it is a 312, but it has one G head and the other is an earlier possibly 272 head with the soft plugs in both ends. It also has the earlier rockers on both sides that have the nut to hold the adjustment instead of the interference fit adjusters. 

Both the car we are restoring and the parts car seem to have a boatload of shims.  The last car I did, I left the shims out and the alignment guy said to leave the shims in and bring it to him rather than remove them all.   

[lalessi1]

The number of required shims depend on several variables. In my case it was desired ride height, desired camber, desired caster, and the desired rake on the car. There were not many options to get to all of my "desires" though, so I got as close as I could by cheating a little here and there. Manufacturing tolerances on these frame was also very loose compared to modern cars, another reason for shim stack differences.

[cokefirst]

More progress and a few problems.  We were assembling the ball joints, springs and front control arm bumpers.  We purchased new KYB gas charged shocks.  Now the first problem.  The two holes that mount the shock to the lower control arm are approximately 2 3/4" apart and the shock holes are 2 1/2" apart.  I checked my Skyliner and see that shocks on it have a elongated set of holes allowing this to fit different widths.  The shocks were modified with a die grinder and are now on the vehicle.  KYB was notified and photos were sent.  You may not want to use their shocks unless you modify them like I did.  We will see if they fix the problem.  No other problems with the assembly up front. 

I also purchased SS pre-bent brake lines from Classic Tube.  They make a set for the wagon and they are spot on,...Except for the rear end.  We went to install those lines and found that the long line from the right wheel cylinder to the distribution block was about 2" short and the short line from the left wheel cylinder to the block was approximately 2" too long.  We took those lines over to the Skyliner and found them to be correct for that application.  We bought some  SS line and flared, bent and installed the rock guards for the right side and just cut, flared and re-bent the end of that line and it looks as good as the factory bends.  I checked the parts book and sure enough, the rear end housing is different between the wagon and Skyliner, with the distribution block is located about 2" to the left of the one on the Skyliner.  Classic tube was also notified of the problem and maybe a check with them will see if they fixed it.  We now have a rolling chassis again!

[cokefirst]

Ok, just a few photos of some of the progress.  We have been using the Hot Rod Reverends method for cleaning and reusing the original hardware, We are salvaging as much original fasteners as possible.  The first two photos are pre-sandblasting at the sandblasters.  The next three are of the finished shell with the roof in prime.

[cokefirst]

one more photo

[CobraJoe]

Looking good!