Thread: My 64 Ford Custom Project

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Originally Posted by Mike P

"....Did ya take the 6 popper out and give it a good Christian burial?????..."


I believe so Dave, the last time I saw the poor locked up old 6 it was in the truck of a car sitting in the crush pile (it will come back as rebar).

Heck, it'll probably come back as parts in a new Lexus!!!!!

Mike- Nice work- I love a nice sleeper- and that car looks good in a 2 DR style! Too cool man...

One of the other things I took care of when the 64 was in the shop last was removing the nub off the steering column. It's one of those things that I really hate seeing on any car that's been converted to a floor shifter.

I'm trying to have the 64 done for about 1/5 the cost I have in the Plymouth so doing a swap to an original floor shift column was out of the question besides the removal process is a lot easier than doing a column swap.

I cut the nub off with a cut off wheel, filled the hole with body filler, sanded and primed and that was it.

Originally Posted by Mike P

But any time you see something that's advertised as "Universal Bolt on" and "easy installation" keep in mind they are generally lying.

Kinda like believing that putting a whirly giggy thingy (technical terminology) under your carb will save you 10% on fuel consumption while raising your horsepower! Woo hoooooo!!!


Looks like you're moving right along there.

That's going to be real nice. Back in the day I had a Vintage Burg. 500XL
427 4 spd. Still one of my favorites. I always am confused when the car programs on TV talk about muscle cars GTO'S GS'S CHEVELLES .ETC and
how fast they were. I guess they never saw a 427, 409 or 426 wedge run.
They were true muscle cars. I've had more that one 10 sec FE 15 yrs ago,
have fun with yours, RON

Had an unexpected day off today, so after it warmed up a bit I decided to get the front end of the FE put together. A friend donated a set of pulleys to the project, so I picked up a water pump, fuel pump alternator and dug around and found a set of low mount alternator brackets. Everything went real smooth until I started to install the alternator. I'm using an early (pre-62) 352 block which didn't have the hole for the alternator pivot bolt. Fortunately there is enough of a boss there to drill and tap the hole so that was a simple fix.

I should get around to ordering the radiator and Pretonix kit for the distributor later this month so it's getting a little closer to running. The new headers for the HEMI for the 37 Dodge came in today, so I'll likely get that finished up and on the test stand before I get back to the Ford

Mike,

Looking good. A lot of these cars that were "Plain Janes" back in the day, make great rods, cruisers and customs today.

The late president gave you a day off also?

Hey Mike P,
This is going to be a sweet ride! I had a 64 Galaxie 2 door hardtop as my daily driver until 1 year ago when a hapless young girl ran a red light and T-boned me at an intersection.....bent the frame, insurance co didn't want to fix it. If I bought it back it would have a "salvage title" so worked a decent deal with the insurance people and let it go. It was tough though because my grandmother bought the car from the original owners in '67. She gave it to my dad when she could no longer drive and I inherited the car when my dad died in '98. I restored the car and brought it southern Cal.

A few months before it met it's demise, I converted to Granada discs (the Granada spindles drop the front about 2") and rack & pinion steering with an Ididit tilt column. A guy in Colorado Wurth-It Design, had created a rack & pinion conversion kit for these old Fords using the center-mount rack from the GM "J" cars. It was completely bolt on and worked really great. I think he's shut the business down for now due to health issues but it wouldn't be a hard thing to re-create for yourself if you're ever so inclined. Really changes the way these old things drive. Mine was a bone stock 289, Cruise-o-matic. It was a little under powered but a nice cruiser.

Anyway, looking at yours brought back fond memories. Good luck with it. I look forward to tracking your progress.

Here's a pic of mine prior to it's demise:

Looks REAL GOOD Mike! I like it that you didn't just put in the floor shifter... but went back and cleaned up the old evidence... first class... that's going to be a real nice car when you're done

Thanks Randy and Jeri the 64s in a hold pattern right now, I'm still waiting on a radiator to come in for it so I can finally fire it up and hear what it sounds like. The current goal is to get it running before I take off for Tulsa in June.

Wow Randy that's same exact model I took my driving test in. 289, etc. I loved the old beast and if my dad hadn't been stupid abusing it , I would still love to own it. The 289 did smoke the tires and with 3.00 rear gears it would recieve a lot of visits on the side of the highway from the storm troopers. I like seeing a work like this in progress. Nobody dares to try them. Except for some of the CHR faithful.

I've been eyeing this sweetheart for the past 6 months.
I just have too many irons in the fire as it is (like that's stopped me before).
406 tri-power
4 spd.

Alas somebody had mercy on my soul and took me out of the running.
It was listed at $27,000 plus change.

Well...... didn't make it run prior to Tulsa and the radiator is still on backorder (I'll be checking with another supplier later this week).

Before we left on vacation I was having problems stabbing the distributor, so I set it aside till this weekend. When I was looking I found that the oil pump drive shaft was sitting HARD against the back side of the hole the distributor goes in.

The only way I was going to find out exactly what was going on was drop the pan. For those who haven't dropped a pan in car on an early 60's Ford, it's a lot of fun. After you get all the pan bolts out and the motor raised, you have maybe 2" to get a wrench in there and drop the oil pump (you let it fall into the pan) THEN you can get the pan off. It's even more fun putting it back together especially if you have added a windage tray like I did.

Well with the pan off I found out the crank counterweight was hitting the oil pump drive shaft......the extra thick heavy duty one I had installed. The shaft was bent causing the binding. Had I used the stock shaft like I will be putting back in there would not have been an interference issue. When you think about it there is really no advantage to running the thicker one anyway...it still necks down to the same original size on both ends.

Oh well, wish I had found it prior to putting it in the car, but at least I caught before I fired it.

THere's nothing like a self-inflicted foot wound to keep you humble.

Ain't it da truth! Glad you found it before anything other than time was lost.

Pat