1932 Ford Roadster: Back from the Paint Shop, Final Assembly

Todd Anderson’s chassis is back from the painter. It’s a bitchen shade of dark blue, one of those cools colors that somehow looks vintage and hip at the same time. The axle, bones, backing plates, banjo, etc are all an off-gloss black. The black-and-blue theme led Gary to dub it The Bruiser. An apt name considering the number of times I’ve busted my shins on the frame horns and spindles as I stumble around the shop.

While vintage in appearance and style, the roadster’s traditional components are modern in manufacture. The flathead motor is French, built of new materials with modern tooling in the early 90’s. The heads, intake, carbs and headers are all traditional parts, but also brand new.

A modern five speed from a Chevy S10 couples the flathead to the updated banjo rear end.

The banjo is a 3.54 and has been converted to open drive. It’s also been set up with modern, industrial-strength axles and bearings. The steering box is Flaming River’s version of the popular, but now hard-to-find, Vega box.

If you’ve been following this roadster’s progress you’ll remember that when it arrived at our shop we had issues with its stance. With a full tank of gas, tools, luggage, ice chest, and a couple of buddies on board, the car would turn into a tail dragger:

Here’s the stance we wanted:

We had a couple of options. We could tear out the rear cross member and redo it, or we could mess with the spring. We opted for the latter and sent the spring pack off for a new, re-arched main leaf. You can see the difference in the photo below. The main leaf in front is the original. The one in the middle is the new pack, it will raise the rear end a couple of inches. For reference, the third, tall spring is from a stock Model A.

We had the spring made by a company that’s been doing this kind of work for over a century. While beautifully arched and right on spec, it took five weeks to deliver. It arrived yesterday morning and will go into the chassis today. This held us up a bit, but the body is nearly done and, with any luck, we’ll have Todd on the road just as the weather warms up.