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Vehicle Quick Facts

Profile ID: 17929
Year: 1932
Make: Ford
Model: 3 Window Coupe
Markets: Performance, Rod & Custom
Vehicle Type: American
Contact: SRBM

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Vehicle Story

This car project started 20 years ago when I traded Mark Kirby of Motor City Flatheads a 32 SRBM chassis for a blown flathead engine.  I then bought a S-10 transmission for the flathead, talk to Mark about it and he convienced me that the little flathead had too much power for the S-10, so I bought Tremec 5 speed. Now I had an engine and transmission. I talked my son John into helping me build a chassis for a 32 Ford of course.

The engine & trans looked great in the chassis, so great that someone came in the shop and wanted to buy it, so out the door the chassis went, but I kept the engine & transmission. Because we are always building cars around here the engine & trans got shoved in the corner for a couple of years. So then I talked my son John into building another chassis, put the engine & trans in it, this time we put a body on the chassis, stuck it in the show room, and someone came in and said “I’d like to buy that”. So out the door the body and chassis went. The flatty and the tranny stayed behind. This happened a couple more times. Finally, last year I decided to try again. Believe it or not I talked my son into helping with the chassis. Got more excited talking to my friend from Lokar Brian Downard about having a hot rod, then got to talking to Jerry Slover at Pete & Jakes, with all of these good friends how could I miss. I had a real nice Redneck body laying around and decided to use that, it was chopped 3-1/2 inches and channeled 4, so that meant we had to bob the rear end and fabricate a roll pan.

During all this time I got my pilots license, so I was really into the airplane thing. That’s why when I fabricated the interior, I used rivets to hold the copper to the aluminum to give it that airplane look. John McCloud from Classic Instruments showed me his Bomber style gauges, so I had to put those in they were a must. Then Coker came out with the way cool dirt track style tires and David from Rocket Wheels had those really cool Launchers and Injector wheels and I knew I had to have that combination of wheels and tires on my car. Glass cars always get a bad wrap, but this Redneck body is so close to Henry’s that it even fools me sometime. So I couldn’t just have a flush mounted windshield, that when I called my friend Pete at Brookville Roadster and had him send me all the pieces for a stock 32 3-window tilt out windshield. Of course I had to cut it down to fit the 3-1/2 inch chop, as a matter of fact I did such a good job, I had to do it twice. I then sent the frame and all of the little parts to my good friend Tom at Advanced Plating, to put the Advanced shine on my car. The major hurtle on this car for me is it has a 3-1/2 inch chop and a 4 inch channel and being 6 foot tall and 250 pounds it would be a tight fit. Therefore I remember a 41 Willys we built awhile back it had these great seats in it that the customer had me buy from GTS Classics, that were styled after seats in a 40 Zepplin. The nice thing about these seats is they are low profile on the bottom, so I bought a pair of them. The upholstery on them is a brown copper color, that makes the seats tie in with the copper inserts on the aluminum.  Believe it or not I can almost stretch out in behind the wheel and I have plenty of head room, it is very comfortable. I am real big about hiding wires in when I am building cars, so on the headlights, I had Jerry from Pete & Jakes send me his new shock mounts in pieces, so I could cut them down and change the position of the headlight mount, so that the threads come up through the headlight instead of going down through it.  That way the wires could be hidden through the frame and keep the front real clean. On the back tail lights I wanted to keep them close to the body, so I took a pair of 37 Ford tail light buckets I got from Ken at Rodworx and fabricated a mount to the tail lights and then contoured it to the body, so that the tail lights were real close to the body. Fabricated a rear roll pan which is difficult to look good on a 3-window. When I installed the flathead, I wanted the O’Brien Truckers hood scoop to just peak out of the hole in the hood, so I set the engine up so that it would work that way. Normally when someone channels a 32 over the rails, they chop the grill shell. That’s not a look that I care for very much, so I left the grill shell long and moved the frame notch up, this also gives an illusion that the car is sitting lower than it is. I always liked Moon Tanks, again because the car is channeled if I would of used the larger tank that most builders use it would of looked out place. I chose the smaller tank which I think fits it just right. I was first going to run the exhaust headers, capped off on the end and then run the exhaust under the car and through the mufflers out the back. Sanderson has some headers that had bafflers and mufflers in them with turn outs so I used those instead. OTB Gear made a lot of neat little trick parts, I got my fuel, and oil filter and oil breather cap from them. Their old timeyness made it all fit in.

So like old hot rod shop builders, I wanted to do all of it myself and I did a lot of it myself, but I have a great bunch of guys here at the shop. I would like to thank my son John for helping me put one more frame together for my car. I would like thank Scott Huskey for laying a cool PPG hot rod black paint job on this car. I would like to thank Gary Mizar as always for the outstanding graphics and stripping. I would like to thank Jayson Vassar who is my frame builder and fabricator for helping me with some of the welding and other things on the chassis thank  for getting It’s nice to have a great guys who love the hobby, work for your and help you get your 20 year project on the road.

Build Sheet

Manufacturers

Shops

  • Advanced Plating - Plating
  • Street Rods By Michael Inc. - Builder, Body & Paint (painter Scott Huskey), Custom built chassis, C-notched front & rear, bobbed rear, narrowed to fit body, Custom fabricated aluminum and copper door and body panels