1958 Ford Ranch Wagon build "Class Project"

Project's coming along nicely!
Saw them scraping on the roof. Now ould be a good time to stick up some Dymat ('Dynamat'? for sound insulation...

Norm - I thought the reason the manufacturers were thinking of switching to 42V systems was the simple fact that there are getting to be too many devices in the modern car to be efficiently powered by 12 volts.......

 

The formula is the same for watts (I=V*R), but the higher voltage lets them push fewer Amps down the smaller copper river. So the actual demand (watts) and related heat gets focussed at the point of usage, rather than the fuse block or voltage regulator. I don't think its a good strategy for the car's longevity, but its good for new car sales.

 

I try to stay under 1984 for the same reason. That's when Ford went with OBDII right down the entire line, but I want to swap to an I4 Turbo, from a 1986 to 1989 Mustang/Capri/Cougar or TBird, and they have the Computers and Dash displays. No way around it. Worth it though. My strong I6 is stock at 85 HP, a stock I4 Turbo runs from 170 to 210 HP.

And in a Wagon, they get down the road at a pretty decent clip, without buying shares in Exxon:

Turbo Ford Fairmont wagon drag race with a TransAM (14.37 Secs @ 98.4 MPH)


Original 1978 Ford Fairmont Futura Commercial (33 HWY, 23 City on a US gallon) My I6 is from a 1978 2-door sedan.


I'm going to bid on a 1991 Mustang I4 with the Standard trans, next week. Body is a wreck, but the mag wheels and power train are fine.

 

Session 14 - the beast lives!

It's hard to believe we're already seven months into this project. This week Jake was away at some kind of elite basketball invitational, but the guys brought a substitute student to take his place and the new guy was quite an eager participant. It's too bad he's a senior this year so I can't recruit him for next year's class.

The goal for this week was to get the car moving under itts own power. While we still had it up in the air the boys installed a set of six retro seat belts that I bought this week. I bought them from SeatBeltPros http://www.gotbelts.com/ and I felt like the price was pretty reasonable. And they are located in Washington state so I got the belts real quick.

Here's Derek drilling holes for the rear seat (this car never had seatbelts, so we had to drill all the holes). I had to show off Derek's new mohawk, too.


Once the seat belts were in, we lowered it down onto the wheels.


Then we topped up the ATF level and took it for a drive!

I can't figure out how to embed video here. It looks like HTML code support is turned off in my posting rules.


We drove it during the 4 minutes that it rained on Sunday. It started pouring just as we were ready to take it out of the garage, but we couldn't stand to wait. By the time we backed it back into the garage, it was sunny. Since the car is about 50% bare metal, we had to do some drying.

 

I'll bet you Jake's 'roof' didn't take long to dry off!

Great work guys! How many more months to the finish line?

 

The original plan called for the class to run from September through May, for a total of 18 class sessions. Based on the original schedule, we only have four more classes planned.

Our goal is to drive it to Billetproof in Chehalis, WA - about 100 miles away - on June 26th. The boys have volunteered to have class every week so we can make more progress and be assured of getting it road worthy in time. April is a little crazy with spring break and Easter, but starting in May we'll meet every week - probably right up to Billetproof. I'm hoping we can get in 8 or 9 more classes.

 

You've got a good team there, sounds doable! Good luck.

 

Session 15

This week was our smallest class yet, with only one student. But we still got some good work done.

During the week we were able to bash the pickup tube out of the gas tank without doing too much damage and then got it cleaned out and reattached. In class we got the tank put back together, installed, connected, and functional. No more red gas can strapped to the radiator support!

Dave wired up the voltage regulator and alternator according to this diagram:


The motor will now run with the battery disconnected, but the generator light on the dash is still on. I'm not sure if I need to worry about that or not.

The only real bad rust on the car is on the front floor. Since we don't have welder in the garage or on the team, we used the license plates that came on car as patch panels and rivetted them in place. (Before anyone gets too upset, the plates were in pretty bad shape already).

 

This might help solve the Indicator light problem:

http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/index.htm

http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/AlternatorConversions.htm

I just peeked at my 1979 Ford Shop manual about the regulator and Indicator. If the 1958 has an instrument panel voltage regulator then the Diagram you posted is correct, because the newer Ford gauges should only get 5.1 volts. If it doesn't then he may need to use the 'S' terminal (Stator) circuit. The best thing is to use a voltmeter gauge.

 

Session 16

April 18th was our 16th class session. Just Derek and Dylan this week as Jake was off playing basketball.

In the weeks between classes, Dave got busy on the roof and it's now 99.9% bare metal.



The car is now licensed and insured, so the only thing keeping us from driving to the exhaust shop is brake lights.

I had Derek and Dave work on the lights. Everything is pretty dirty and crusty, so they cleaned up the sockets and chrome as well as the whole tail gate area. The innards of one of the sockets was completely deteriorated, so Derek fabricated a new one from materials found in the recycle bin. We also had to replace some of the wiring back there that was brittle and frayed. Jake usually does our electrical work, so it was good to get Derek some experience wiring.



I found the original hub caps for the car that we had taken out of the back a year and a half ago when we first brought it into the garage. They were pretty cruddy, but restorable. I set them out on the bench before class and I was going to use them as "punishment" for anyone who couldn't stay focussed or who got bored. To my surprise, Dylan wanted to clean them up and jumped right on the project when class started. It took pretty much the whole class, but we now have nice, shiny hub caps.



Now I wish we had painted the wheels some color so we had more contrast between the chrome and the wheel color (I was pushing for lime green).

It was a quiet class, and I can't say that we got a whole lot further toward our goals, but it was nice to have each of the boys focus on a project and see it through. We still have some work to do to get the brake lights working. It looks like the headlight switch and the turn signal switch are part of the brake light circuit and one or both of them aren't working.

Our next big goal is to get mufflers on the car so we can take it for a cruise and take it to the body shop to get advice on how to prep the body for primer. I'm planning to take it to an exhaust shop in White Center that I've heard about, but if anyone in the Seattle area can help us fabricate a system, I'd love to do that instead.

 

Looks like your still doing well on the project. The wagon has certainly shaped up pretty fast.

I had a set of those hubcaps, but a bit dinged up. sold them for a decent hunk of change on eBay. Sort of wish I'd kept them, but it hopefully they went to a good home.

 

Great job! I wish I had classes like that when I was younger. Great to see young kids working on cars.

 

Session 17

We had our 17th class session on May 2nd with only one student. May 1st was the senior prom and two of the boys have senior "service" projects they are working on. I'm going to have to put on my teacher hat here and have a talk with some of these boys about their level of commitment to the class...

We're still working on the tail light wiring and getting the tailgate back together. Since we were low on manpower we put my 5 year old to work. I think Elliot had more energy than the rest of us combined.

Here he is shining up the chrome strips for the inside of the tailgate.


And installing them.


The tail lights all work now (after taking apart the rest of the sockets and scrubbing out the grime). This is the first early Ford I've ever worked on, so I wasn't aware of the fuse hidden on the back of the headlight switch. Once we swapped that out and fixed the light sockets, they started working. Now we have to replace the brake light switch on the master cylinder so we can be legal.

I found a local exhaust shop that will install a dual exhaust system for us on a Saturday and let the boys help. He only has a couple Saturdays available, so we need to be ready to take it in this Saturday the 8th. It looks like Dave and I will be getting together a couple evenings this week to make sure we hit that date.

Here's Derek catching up on sleep from the night before.

 

I'd go on YouTube or IMDB's movie sites and see if you can find some classy flicks with those 1958 wagons in there. Then ask them to summarize what made the wagon good, bad or indifferent to the movie. Sometimes the cars are the stars! That's why sites like this exist!

 

Session 18

Today we had a special Saturday class for our 18th session. The Muffler Shoppe in White Center opened their doors for us (they are normally closed on Saturday) and let the boys help build a dual exhaust system for the Ford.

We were in the shop for over three hours and the boys got to help out the whole time.

First we took a few minutes to checkout the underside of the car when we got it up on the rack.


Derek and Dylan were kept busy checking welds and holding pipes in place.


Here's our brand new exhaust system - the nicest thing on the car!


I owe a huge thanks to Dave at The Muffler Shoppe. Not only did he open the shop for us on a Saturday, but he did a great job of keeping the boys busy and teaching us about exhaust work.

Unfortunately, while the car was up on the rack we saw that one of the lower A-arms has some issues that we need to address before we can put any miles on this thing. We might even need a new A-arm.