’34 Ford Coupe: Details Part IV

If you’ve been following the progress on Bill Evans’ coupe, you know we had to relocate the air conditioner from the trunk to the firewall. There were some fitment problems on the passenger side, which were addressed in our last post, plus a small area on the driver’s side where the corner of the A/C unit hit the underside of the dash. As the dash went in and out, it became clear we had another problem.

The big one-piece bushing we’d inherited along with the column drop wasn’t going to work with Bill’s newly polished column. The attendant wires and plugs on the column wouldn’t begin to slide through. A slug of Delrin and some lathe time and the problem was solved:

Back under the dash, Gary formed a small blister to accommodate the corner of the A/C box:

While under the dash, we were once again reminded of the complexity of the car’s electronics. We decided to fab an access panel that would allow us to get at the column wiring, the headlight relays, the backside of the gauges, and more. Gary began by cutting a hole in the dash and forming a flange:

When the panel is in place, it’ll be virtually invisible:

Back in the trunk, we decided to move the battery off the differential cover (the large white box with the yellow tape in the photo below). Sitting on this cover, the battery literally ate up a third of the trunk space. I found an Odyssey gel cell that was small enough to drop into the floor, but also had the reserve power to serve the coupe’s sizeable electronics demands. I enlarged an existing hole in the floor to accept a battery box, then fabbed up a set of ribs to bring this irregular fiberglass floor up to level.

Once the ribs were glassed in and threaded inserts installed, the floor was painted with a rubberized undercoating. We’ll do this with all the trunk’s inner body surfaces. We then cut out and welded up a stainless battery box.

Cardboard templates were made and transferred to aluminum panels, details were sorted out, and the trunk started to come together:

Check back in, we’ll keep you updated.