The 1995-97 Restoration

HERE IT IS almost February and I’ve done next to nothing on the truck since dismantling it in the fall. I’ve been busy writing and working on the motorcycle since then. But here are some photos you haven’t seen: the record of the first restoration on the ’49 Ford. I worked on it for about a year and a half, from late summer ’95 though the spring of ’97.

The light was stark when I took these pics but the insurance company wanted them ASAP.

We set an agreed-upon value of $10,000.

That was seriously low and much to their advantage over mine but I was eager to get the paperwork done and put the truck on the road.

Derriere view…

Here’s the truck a year and a half earlier, the day I trailered it home to Rhode Island from Alabama.

Rolled it down the hill into the backyard, took the nose off, the cab, the box…

Daughter #3 used to like to hang out with me in the truck yard. She was nine or ten here. Just turned 26 this month.

The chassis was in good shape. No structural rust.

I sunk a pair of used fence posts in the ground for an engine stand, bolted the front motor mounts to the posts, stuck a plank and a couple of concrete blocks under the back of the pan. Kept my motor out of the dirt.

The six-cylinder flatmotor was in decent shape, all I ever did to it was the usual: carburetor, generator, starter, clutch, water pump, head gasket, paint job … I ran that motor for seven or eight years, wore it out, replaced it with a flathead eight I had collected in bits and pieces over time. Found a good engine block in Connecticut with a crankshaft and connecting rods, a pair of NOS (new old stock) engine heads in New York, and so on. It’s the correct V8 motor for 1949. It makes 100 horses—5 more than the flathead six! Hang on tight…

Here’s the engine ready to go back in. The chassis has been wire brushed, power washed, primed and painted.

I had to hang new leaf springs all around, the originals were beyond shot. The truck hadn’t been greased since the Eisenhower administration, if then. The shackle pins had worn through the bushings decades ago and were rattling around in the hangars. All the bores were egg shaped. I ground out the factory rivets, knocked the hangers off the chassis, bought NOS hangers and secured them with hardened steel bolts. Haven’t had a spring fall off yet.

Here’s how I came to take on this job in the first place: Every January, Richard and Margene Smith of Orono, Maine, my in-laws, would drive down to their winter home in Huntsville, Alabama. Over the years, Richard had bought a few antique vehicles there for himself. With little or no exposure to road salt, the old rides don’t go to the junkyard as fast as they do in New England.

I made an idle comment to Richard when he was passing through here in January ’95, Hey, find an old truck for me in Alabama this time, blah blah…

A few weeks later, the phone rings: You bought a ’49 Ford pickup.

Huh?

Come get it out of my driveway.

Wha?

And send me eighteen hundred dollars.

U.S. dollars?

Here’s a pic I snapped of Richard on the last fishing trip of his life. He wasn’t doing well, we had to cut that trip short. This was his favorite brook, in Aroostook County, Maine, quite a ways off-road but I think I could still find my way there.

So I trailered the truck from Alabama to Rhode Island, rolled it down the hill into the backyard and took it apart. A frame-off restoration is a big project if you have a garage to work in; working out in the weeds, all the more so.

Honey, I blew up the nose metal.

The right-rear fender, ditch side of the road. You can see were the wheel threw up rocks in a pattern, battering the fender from the inside out for the first 46 years. It took quite a lot of hammer & dolly work to beat these fenders back into shape.

Hammer out the dents, skim the low spots, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it…

The new red is close to the original Ford vermillion. Look how it faded between 1949 and 1995.

When the body work is nearly finished, I like to shoot a thin coat of paint. The shine shows exactly where you need to work a bit more to get it right. Professionals don’t do this. It burns time and wastes paint and they don’t need to in the first place. As an amateur, I find it helpful.

Take your time, get the body work right, mix some more paint, shoot for coverage-plus-one, declare victory and depart the field. I used Dupont Centari, an old fashioned single-stage acrylic enamel, with isocyanate hardener. Avoid getting that material in your lungs.

Some islamo dude used to drop by and offer to help. Most of what he did was drink my coffee. He finally ran off to, I dunno… storm the embassy in Tehran.

Here he is again with my old bud Larry Stanley. I threw up this cheapo rain shelter at one point. See the light up top? That was so the mosquitos would know to come in out of the rain at night and keep me company.

Larry owns the same truck, one year newer. His came out of Colorado. The only difference between ’49 and ’50 is the color of the grille. Silver in ’49, ivory in ’50.

Daughter #3 hanging with her best friend, Larry.

That first winter. I hammered rebar in the ground, set up hoops of electrical conduit, threw a tarp over the top.

The tent had a kerosene heater, good opportunity to get gassed by carbon monoxide instead of isocyanates. Nice change of pace.

The rain shelter took a beating but was still good for storing parts. We had 105 inches of snow that winter and none whatsoever the next, the first winter I had the truck on the road and introduced it to road salt. So destructive…

The salt is why I have such a job on my hands now with this second restoration. New England had her way with the old Ford over the last 15 winters. I have a ton of welding to do this time.

I didn’t own a welder in ’95. My friend and neighbor John Kendrick lugged his over and went to work burning wire.

The box, ready to go back on the chassis. It had a stamped metal floor originally. I cut it out and made a new floor out of white oak from a mill in Connecticut.

Months go by, I get more paint out of the can and onto the metal, aware that once you stop on a project like this, you’re sunk.

The secret? Don’t stop. Do at least one thing every day, without fail, even if it’s just running after some oddball piece of hardware: a nut, a pin, a washer, a grommet…

Daily effort adds up. By the looks of things here I’m just about ready to reassemble the vehicle. Time to run to NAPA for a few rolls of wire, break out the soldering gun and start fabricating a harness.

Buy the service manual. Follow the diagram. Take it one wire at a time.

And question authority! All service manuals contain mistakes.

I spotted an error in the wiring diagram. Can’t remember now what it was. I’d have to study the diagram all over again to find out.

I celebrated milestones now & again with a nice Don Tomas maduro. Kinda wish I had a picture of that. This one’s close enough, a shot of me complaining to the neighbor about his dog. Can you believe it? Still smoking. Now that’s what I call evidence.

When the truck was roadworthy, my friend Jimmy Clarke sent a wrecker over to winch it up the hill. I had four new tires and no traction. Skinny tires, correct for the era, with a vintage tread pattern that will hardly grip asphalt let alone grass. They were made by Coker Tire of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the original Firestone molds. Old-fashioned bias-ply construction. In raised letters on the sidewalls, Firestone happily boasted their latest high-tech innovation—Gum Dipped!

Cresting the hill into the front yard.

The truck was back on the road, and for interstate miles often enough: north to Maine, south to Pennsylvania. When my old man was on the way out, I remember driving the truck past the smoking ruins of Ground Zero on my way to Philadelphia. My home town in Philly, the bride’s in Orono, Maine, those are the longest rides I’ve taken in the truck, 600 miles out and back.

That’s nothing in motorcycle miles. A warm-up run on the iron piggy is 6,000 miles. A satisfying one, twice that.

Friends and neighbors came around to inspect the resurrected old Ford. My neighbor, Rose Lafleur snapped this pic. We all called her “Rusty.” She’s gone now. How I loved her and miss her every day. Her husband, Frank, in the cap, gone. Old Joe, also gone. He was a funny old Guido.

That little girl Pam’s holding is just about in college now. That’s her mom, Ann, in blue jeans, and her dad, Big John Ross by the truck with Larry. Our neighbor, Elsie, no longer with us. She and Rusty were great friends.

Indeed, many a change happened during the second incarnation of the old Ford. I see there’s no porch on the front of the house. I hadn’t built it yet. The Ford was there to haul everything I needed: concrete, lumber, hardware, roofing…

What will be different 15 years from now, when the old Ford is used up yet again and needs to come apart for a third restoration? If I’m here to do it I hope I remember how. Maybe I’ll be shuffling around mumbling to myself, wondering how my islamo bud ever made out.

Tony DePaul, Cranston, Rhode Island, January 29, 2012

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About Tony

The occasional scribblings of Tony DePaul, 68, father, grandfather, husband, freelance writer in many forms, recovering journalist, long-distance motorcycle rider, blue routes wanderer, topo map bushwhacker, blah blah...
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18 Responses to The 1995-97 Restoration

  1. Wayne Baker says:

    Awesome job there ! Loved the pictures of the work you did. Amazing that you could actually take apart those vehicles and see so much metal . Take one apart today and see so much plastic !!!!!!! Great job!!!

  2. Carl says:

    Tony. That is a great looking truck. I’m glad to see you kept the original wheels. I see so many “so called” restored pickups and cars for that matter, that have big chrome wheels and wide tires. For me, that look detracts from the beauty of an old, restored, ride. I like to see an old truck that looked like it would have in the show room, in the 50s and 60s.

    CJ

    • Tony says:

      I like the skinny wheels and tires myself, Carl, but I eventually replaced them because out of the seven original wheels I owned (4 on, 1 spare, 2 snows) I think only one ran straight and true. I was on the highway quite a bit and the bent wheels didn’t do much for the drivability factor. If I had it to do over, I would have bought reproduction originals. They were pricey at the time and I wanted 16-inch wheels, for highway roll. The reproductions quit at 15 inch. Dunno if they still do, I haven’t looked in years. I’ll probably put originals on it again at some point. Cheers!

  3. Rusty Barton says:

    Tony, I approve of your truck’s name! Classic.

    RUSTY Barton

    (PS: new email addy)

    • Tony says:

      Pretty soon it’ll be weldy. Motorcycle engine’s going back in the frame this weekend, I think. I need to get the bike running ASAP, then get after the truck. Spring’s coming!

  4. Chris Whitney says:

    There is a ’48 – 52 GM pickup in a barn I drive by every day sunk to the hubs in the dirt. I see the nose peeking out. Owned by a white haired geezer “Shorty”. I stopped by one day, 15 odd years ago, when I saw Shorty in the drive and I’d driven by there a few years already. ‘Hello’ I said (I didn’t know him) ‘Would you be interested in selling the pickup?’ ‘ Nope, no, not ever going to sell it. Gonna rebuild it one day.’

    Shorty went to his reward a couple months ago. Truck is still there. Wonder if I should stop and chat with Shorty’s wife. What is the etiquette on matters like this?

    • Tony says:

      Hmm, I’m not sure I know the answer to that, Chris. I think I’d query by letter and see if the family is receptive and has a price in mind. You never know exactly what you’re walking into if you turn up at the door unannounced. Shorty cashed up months ago? I’ll bet he wasn’t even cold and people were trying to steal the truck at 25 cents on the dollar, even his so-called “old friends.” That was certainly true in my father-in-law’s case. There was one in particular that if he were younger I would have enjoyed physically kicking his ass all the way to the property line. Same goes for another, if he were older and not so big and had come alone. 😀

      There was a ’51 or ’52 Ford around here that I was aware of, a really nice unrestored original, just needed paint and a little mechanical tinkering. The owner never did put the truck on the road, and when he died I mentioned it to a friend of mine who was interested in restoring a Ford. I gave him the street address and felt kinda bad later because he got a really hostile reception when he turned up at the door. You never know who’s been there first and has antagonized the family at a time of emotional distress. That said, you never know, they might be eager to sell; it’s just all in the approach, I think.

      Let me know what you decide to do. And good luck!

  5. Denise Waterbury says:

    Unreal! And Richard would be so proud of you. I would be more than delighted to be driving that pick-up truck around! It’s beautiful. I look at my old Toyota and think to myself , “They sure aren’t very creative with design in pick-up’s anymore. The lines on that truck Tony refurbished are simply elegant!” So be it. Good work Tony!

    • Tony says:

      Thanks, Denise. The truck was my daily driver for many years. Lots of fun. It would be a long ride out to Bishop, though! No creature comforts, and it’s work to drive. About 300 miles a day is the max, so that would be 10 days on the road headed west.

  6. brad says:

    Another wonderful remembrance, Tony. You are so right about doing one thing a day, no matter how small. My motorcycle project is the recipient of that mantra. Miss one day and it might die in place. Cheers.

  7. Ellen Liberman says:

    As always, Tony, impressive in words and in deeds. Looking at those pix brought me right back to my first week in West Bay, when you pulled out a picture album and invited me for a look. I thought, what a nice man — wants to show off his kids to me. That’s really sweet. Little did I know that the “kid” would be a ’49 Ford!

  8. Rob V says:

    Great story, as always! A few more like this and you’re going to motivate me to finally get started on a restoration project!

  9. Tarquino F. Flores says:

    It was a very enjoyable adventure. The world change every day, and is good to remember how it was a few years ago, but more important: to see how much have we changed in those years.
    I’ve meet surgeons that speak about their procedures with less passion than you, they lack the neccesary love for the job.

    blessings!

    • Tony says:

      Thanks, Tarquino. I’ll bet there are some good 1949 parts trucks in Mexico. I saw a few in California I’d like to have. Usually have to get a little elevation to find a good one, up into semi-arid country.

  10. Mari Nelson says:

    Thats what I call reusing…love it.

    • Tony says:

      Extreme recycling. These were the “Bonus Built” Ford trucks, first post-war redesign. One selling point was that the cabs were taller so you could wear your fedora while driving.

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