Our '49 Ford's History

Our 1949 Ford Custom Tudor was built in Somerville, Massachusetts.  The vehicle identification tags in 1949 carried very little information compared to later cars (see, e.g., http://chris67ss.blogspot.com/). Therefore, I do not know that much about this car's build history.

What I do know is that the '49 Ford (also called the "Shoebox" Ford) saved the Ford motor company.  



It was Ford's first post war car and it had to succeed. Thanks to Ford and those of us who enjoy them, it did.  I am one of those people who enjoy Fords. (I also own Dad's/Grampa's '31 Model A, a 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible, and a 1963 Ford Falcon Futura convertible. More blogs to come). 

The '49 was named "Car of the Year." It was also named the "Fashion Car of the Year"!

Apparently, even babies (at least smart ones) knew this:

Our Family's History With the '49 Ford:

My uncle Tom bought the car from the original owner.

The seller, Willard White, is not to be confused with the Willard Whyte from the James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.

In the glove box was Willard and Anabelle White's original "Service Policy" from the Ford dealer.

 

Our family is the second owner of the car.  

Tom runs "Howard's Body Shop" (Howard is my late grandfather).  Tom stripped the car and then saw that the body was perfectly straight.

Note the new metal added rather than plastic filler (i.e. "Bondo")

The markings on the body indicate areas that are too low or high that need to be repaired.

You can see from the newspaper ad above that the car was originally white.  Tom painted it a beautiful deep blue (an original color), but left everything else original (interior, engine, etc.)  

A very fresh coat of paint.

I bought the car from Tom in August 1989.  It looked like new. The odometer read 78,847 original miles. Dad and I picked it up.  It has a "three-on-the-tree" transmission.



It cruised surprisingly well at 65 m.p.h. with its original overdrive option.





It got 20.5 miles per gallon - not bad for a car made at a time when no one really cared about gas mileage (gas cost only $.26 per gallon).  It has no turn signals (they were a dealer-installed option). 

In the glove box were the 1949 Iowa hunting laws:


 Driving the '49 back to the Twin Cities was very comfortable. Upon reading another brochure in the glove box, I realized why:



The car did have a few luxury options.  One was a heater:

The car came with the quaint "Magic Air" installation drawings.

Note how it encourages me to "laugh at the weather  . . . all winter long."

The '49 also had the top-of-the-line radio which allows you to switch between "HI FIDELITY, MUSIC, and VOICE."


The car had no seat belts. That had to change as Anna was age two, Ben was one, and Jack would arrive in a couple years.  I added belts in the back for their car seats.

We drove the car everywhere: church, pancake breakfasts, A&W, car shows, and soccer, baseball and hockey games.  

A handsome young man!

That all temporarily ended in 2006.  After Back-to-the-Fifties that year, it seemed to be "missing" (not hitting on all eight cylinders).  

The first plug I removed was #5 (front driver's side) and this is what I saw:

To paraphrase the old Sesame Street song: "Which of these plugs is not like the other."  The diode on the middle plug is gone.  Looking into the spark plug hole I saw what looked like a free floating valve.  I know little of flathead engines, but I knew this was not good.  Life was too busy at the time, so rather than fix it, I parked it.  It sat at our Car Farm ever since.

That all changed with wedding bells.  Anna and Clay asked to use the '49 for their wedding this fall.  This was exciting for me as the Father of the Bride.  You see, the FOTB has nothing to do with planning a wedding aside from smiling, nodding approvingly and writing checks. So, to be able to actually contribute something meaningful is a big deal.

The problem is, while I know something about Big Blocks, I know next to nothing about "flathead" engines aside from the fact that they made hot rods famous.  Ford has not put them in cars for decades.  I started with Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_flathead_V8_engine.  I then searched for someone who could take a look at the engine.  I learned that flathead experts are a dying breed.  I found only one person.  I put the '49 on my trailer . . .

and headed to northern Anoka county to a nice motorhead (and I mean that to be very complimentary) named "Rick." Rick scratched his head and said I'd need to pull the head to find out what is going on.

I brought the car home, backed the trailer into my garage (with one inch to spare on each side of the trailer wheels) and started taking apart the engine. 

Note that my M5 has taken the spot of Jo's ML

Usually, the greatest frustration in taking old cars apart is that the bolts are disinclined to come out without great persuasion.  Surprisingly, however, all of the many head bolts and bolts holding down the various parts (fuel pump, thermostat housings, carburetor, oil filter housing, generator, etc.) came out exceptionally easy (with the help, of course, of an impact gun).

Fuel pump

Distributor

Here is the head before removal:

I removed the driver-side head.

Dome of combustion chamber on bottom of head.

There I found the free-floating valve head. 

The valve broke where the head meets the shaft.  

The valve had worn a small dent into the head itself which I do not think will be much of a problem.  This explained the damaged plug.

Here is a look down the exhaust valve hole on #5:

The intake valve is to the right and the cylinder at the bottom.  Note that the cooling holes are nearly corroded  closed.  For this reason, I later pulled the other head.

I then removed the intake manifold.

Here is what it looks like under the manifold:

You can see the four pairs of valves on the passenger side

Here is a close up of where the valve components sit above the cam shaft which has lobes on it and it pushes the lifter (the piece on the lower left of the photo above) up to raise the valve to let fuel/air in (for the intake valve) or let exhaust out (for the exhaust valve).  Here is a close-up of the valve pairs:

Note the missing valve on the far right of the driver's side

Below the manifold, I found the loose #5 valve components.

The broken valve guide is in the middle

The source of the problem was a broken valve guide. More specifically, the guide broke at the slot that accepts the clip that holds the valve components in place.  

My plan with Rick is to take the car back to him and he will install the new valve components and I will then put the engine back together.

I figured that if I am going to put the engine back together, I might as well make it look nice.  I put all of the parts into my parts cleaner (one of the best purchases I've made) and spent hours shedding the parts of more than 60 years of road grime.

I then prepped the parts for painting with high temperature engine paint.  Jo wondered what I was cooking on Sunday morning:

This may look like a pot, but it is actually the oil bath air cleaner.

I explained that each painted part needed to be baked for one hour at 200 degrees to fully cure the paint.

This is how far I have gotten as of this time.  It will be nice to have the '49 back on the road.