This
was our 1928 Ford Roadster on our front lawn in Escondido.
This car was originally built in the '70s. The color is
black cherry, probably laquer. Engine is a 365 cid chevy
with a Muncie 4-speed and Halibrand quick-change rear end.
The body is largely stock. I've replaced the clutch and had
Wilwood front brakes installed to replace the original
Girling discs. This car has been to the LA Roadster Show
five times and loved every trip! I recently sold this car
back to the previous owner -- who bought it in 1959 and had
it until the mid 90's. Hope he's enjoying it.
We also have two 34 Fords. The cabriolet came from Oregon
on a mystery chassis with a Chevy 350/350 combo in it. I
drove it this way for several years. I had a 34 Cabriolet
when I was in High School and loved it. That car had a
stock driveline but a bored-out '50 Olds engine. Had a lot
of fun with that car -- especially when I broke a rear
axle. Which was all too easy to do. Of course, it was
pretty easy to swap them out, too, back in the day.
The cabriolet now has a Ford FE 390 Hi-Po tri-power engine,
a TKO 5-speed trans, and an early Corvette IRS. Dan Waldrop
from the SDRC made the headers (seen below partially
complete, they are finished now and powder-coated in
stainless steel color). Julio Hernandez installed the
rollbar and did some body work. The cabriolet is intended
to be a daily driver. Check out the cool Mercury valve
covers on the engine! I 'borrowed' the TKO-500 trans for
the Mustang the last year I ran it; it is out of the
Mustang and waiting to be mated to the (recently rebuilt)
engine.
The sedan has a Ford FE 428 engine (thanks to an SDRC pal,
Tom Morton) with a C-6 trans and a 1953 Olds rear end.
Justin Baas put the chassis together for me and installed
the engine, trans, and rear end. The sedan is set up for
towing (won't it look cool pulling the Lakester on a
trailer?) but may also see some time on the drag strip.
With a pretty stock 428, the computer predicts sub-11's at
120+ mph! Gotta love a good tow car.
And this is Martha's pride and
joy (no, not me! the car behind her), a 1932 Ford 5-window
coupe. She found this car languishing at the Carlsbad
airport. It had been a drag racer in the mid-west at one
point. She bought it, had a TCI chassis installed by Hot
Rods and Custom Stuff in Escondido, along with a stock 5.0
Mustang engine and AOD automatic transmission I had bought
for the 34 sedan, added air conditioning, etc.. Daughter
Annie drove it to high school. Got so much attention from
the guys she had to learn what all the parts were so she
could answer questions. Also learned the names of all of
the tow truck drivers in the area. Turned out the header
flange was too close to the fuel supply and return lines.
The gas would get hot and the fuel pump would quit. Got
kinda irritating after a while until I figured it out. Ask
Martha about stopping on the main drag in Vegas to hunch
under the back of the car and spritz the fuel pump with
cold water so the car would run!
Oh, yes. The deuce made it up to Bonneville in 2000. Got a
great picture on the salt.
This car has donated several
engines to the Mustang over the past several years. I built
another engine for it in 2009 from left-overs from the
Mustang. I'd had such rotten luck with hydraulic roller
lifters that I bought a solid-lifter cam from Comp Cams to
install. Stabbed the engine in and started it up to break
in the cam -- ran like crap! Nothing I tried made any
difference. Until I got to thinking. The cam is for a
289-302 engine from 1965 on. Ford changed the firing order
on the 5.0 engine in the 1980's. Hmmmm. I swapped some plug
wires and darned if it didn't start running like a real
engine! Comp didn't mention this in their catalog. Would
have been nice, I suppose. But then, I probably should have
known this from the start. It turns out this engine was a
pull-out from the Mustang just prior to getting it's race
engine, however. Compression was in the 90 psi range on 4
cylinders! Not even worth trying to tune that engine.
I have a newly-rebuilt 306 installed and running. Yippee!
Still some details to sort out. Keep getting sidetracked.
By the way, I figured out what I was doing wrong installing
the spring clip that holds the little dogbones that align
the roller lifters. This clip goes on TOP of the dogbones
-- I had been trying to thread the dogbones through the
loop on the end of the clips. I guess I over-thought the
problem.