A little light entertainment: 1939 Ford 1 ton Utility restoration

[jack neville]

The previous photos show the door pillar re attached and the front and back sections rejoined. You can see half of the front cowl has been removed. For two reasons, one half was badly rusted but also to open the area for sandblasting. A replacement section was taken from the hardcab. Luckily it was not rusted in the same areas.

[jack neville]

A few patches chopped out and replaced. The worst areas in old Ford cabs are the front and rear corners. There is always rust in them and the laminated layers means you have to chop them up to access the rust to sandblast it or cut out the rusted sections for replacement. There are usually lots of vibration cracks to weld and they can be found any and everywhere.

[cliff]

very nice work. One thing I never learned was how to weld.

[jack neville]

Get a mig welder Cliff. Nothing to it. And I just bought a chep Chinese electric spot welder. Very handy for this sort of work.

[jack neville]

The half cowl went in perfectly after trimming up and matching the other half.

[jack neville]

once the cowl was in I cut the top half of the windscreen off to replace it with the other top half I had previously repaired with the top section filled in. This is unique to the roadster cabs to take the hood arrangement. Small sections of frame were tacked in to help align the two halves. I have only tacked the two halves together until I check that the windscreen will fit properly.

[jack neville]

The bottom section of the left side was cut out both because it was rusted and to open up the inner frame for sandblasting. A salvaged section from the hard cab was good enough to repair and refit.

[jack neville]

The side panels were removed from the old body by grinding away the spot welds on the pillars leaving the panel intact to be reattached to the new pillars. The bottom areas are rusted out and will need replacement sections and cleaning up before reassembly. The dark green paint is the original colour, which is unusual for an Australian vehicle I would have thought. Khaki is visible but the dark green is the factory colour. The red would indicate some Country Fire Authority service post war. A common fate for many ex-army vehicles in Australia.