Thread: 1941 Ford truck 4 Wheel Drive possibilities

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Originally Posted by rspears

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of dropping a classic body on a "new" chassis. Some people like that approach, but to me you destroy the whole "Classic" approach. In this example you end up with a XXXX Ranger 4WD that has a '41 Ford body on top. It's the worst of both worlds, to me. I'd much prefer to adapt the Ranger drive line into the '41 chassis, keeping some semblance of the origin of the truck. Just my $0.02 on the approach....

Actually, in most cases I agree with you. But in this case, with the amount of surgery that would be required on the original '41 chassis, I'd prefer saving the original and cutting up a Ranger chassis.

Originally Posted by Zandoz

Actually, in most cases I agree with you. But in this case, with the amount of surgery that would be required on the original '41 chassis, I'd prefer saving the original and cutting up a Ranger chassis.

In all reality, I can't see where you're going to be chopping much of anything besides the X member. The front suspension would be under the frame or if you went with an IFS, the diff assembly can go in with maybe some notches in the lower rails to acheive a closer to the ground stance. On the rear use outboard springs instead of the factory spring set up. And if a guy uses leaf springs front and rear, major cutting would not be needed. When I was in high school we took a 40 Ford truck right out of a junk yard and made it 4x4 and stuffed a 390 C6 NP205 combo in it and that truck had 33's on it. My friend mud raced it until he moved on to swamp racing. I wish I had some pics of that truck. It was pretty sweet.

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Here is a picture of a 4x4 1940 Ford Pickup in Norway that have four wheel drive IFS from a Chevy S10 pickup.

Originally Posted by 452 Hemi

Here is a picture of a 4x4 1940 Ford Pickup in Norway that have four wheel drive IFS from a Chevy S10 pickup.

In countries outside the USA there are often very good reasons for doing the full chassis swap, with no significant modifications, in order to obtain the mandatory government certification of road worthiness. New Zealand, for example, has stringent requirements for chassis engineering, basically saying that an OEM design is pre-certified, providing it is not modified; but any change in geometry must demonstrate proper engineering to stringent standards. Thus for jb's RV school bus conversion the best way through the certification maze was to drop the body on a Chevy dually truck chassis. We also saw a nicely done early thirties Hudson (I believe it was Hudson, Tony's car) that's full fendered, sitting on a Toyota chassis. I'm not saying that a chassis swap cannot be done in a way that the finished product "looks right, functions right" (this '40 and the examples posted by Tech above are examples of the "right look"), but I am saying that once done the vehicle is now a hybrid, classic body sitting on modern chassis, and for most of the USA market the value of such a hybrid will be significantly lower than a body & chassis that's been updated with a modern running gear. That's my opinion, it's not likely to change, and others are free to form their own opinions which differ.