32 specifications?

[28ACoupe]

Greetings all,

I may have a project coming up to build a '32 coupe from the ground up from scratch. i am curious to find out if there is a website where I can find the specifications for these cars.

Thanks,

[Pat/Ohio]

I recommend you purchase the 2-volume set of the 1932 Ford Restoration Guide from the Early Ford V-8 Club of America or Early Ford V-8 Foundation Museum. It contains great information for restoring your '32 Ford.

[Charlie Stephens]

The book Pat recommends will probably answer all of your questions. If you have specific questions after reading the 2 volume series post them. There is also the Early Ford V8 Club site (earlyfordv8.org) but it gets less traffic in a week than fordbarn does in an hour. If you are into modified cars go to http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/. What type of car are you building and what type of specifications are you looking for? Have you considered it might be cheaper to buy a finished (or partially finished) car instead of building one from the ground up? Be sure to price everything out before you get too far. The rule of thumb used to be that almost everything for a '32 costs three times as much as the same part for a Model A and is harder to find.




Charlie Stephens

[28ACoupe]

Thanks guys,

Actually, this is not my car. The guy I am working with would like to build one from the ground up more as an opportunity to hone/learn metalworking skills than anything else.

The specs I am looking for are technical diagrams for the various body panels.

Thanks again,

[DavidG]

Given your objective, your best bet by far is to locate someone near you with a bare body of the type you wish to create who is willing to let you measure and photograph it for your purposes. I'd call that Plan A.

The original engineering drawings for the parts that compose a '32 coupe (there were three different ones, so you'll need to decide which one you want to create) exist on microfilm at the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn. They can provide you with restricted use copies for a fee. The fees vary depending on the form of the copy. The least expensive are paper copies derived from microfilm readers, but due to equipment limitations, the copies are limited to a size of 8 1/2 x 11. As many of the drawings are full scale or half scale, you can imagine how many different overlapping copies you'd have to make in order to create a whole drawing of say a quarter panel.

They also offer CD copies which while way more expensive are at least of the whole drawing.

In order to obtain any copies from the BFRC, you need to know the original part number of the part drawing (blue print) that you want. Some of those numbers are contained in the '32 body parts catalogue (readily available as a reprint). Unfortunately for your stated purposes, the only part numbers that appear in that catalogue are those for parts that were available for service. As often as not, that service part was not a single component, but rather an assembly or sub-assembly. For example, there's a part number for a coupe deck lid in the catalogue, but quite possibly there's no drawing of a complete deck lid, but rather a list of the parts and part numbers that are the constituent parts of a deck lid. Those part numbers are the ones that will lead to the drawings of those constituent parts. I'd call this Plan B.

You'd be faced with an incredible amount of hunting and sorting through microfilm images to get to what you'd like copies of for your project. (For a task of this magnitude, the BFRC is not sufficiently staffed to do this job for you.) You'd have to spend some serious time on site to do it yourself. While this process will be an education in itself, you may end up regretting not pursuing Plan A, especially once you've totaled up the cost of Plan B in terms of both time and money.

[28ACoupe]

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Sounds like a plan.

I agree that plan A is definitely the way to go. I was just hoping that maybe there was a website that already had those drawings available. Oh well.

[34billct]

A site that might be of use is www.mikes-afordable.com They have aline of 32 body and frame parts.

[redo32]

A lot of information on the HAMB. Deuce Daddy Don in Bend has blueprints for frames and roadster quarter panels. I haven't seen any other prints for other panels. Jerry Kugel had Marcel's build him some steel bodies. He bought a fiberglass body to modify to his specification, then Marcel's used it as a pattern to build out of steel. There is a guy in your area that makes one piece glass '32 roadster bodies for about $1000. That is a pretty cheap buck. Look up Lazzie in Ca, he has classes and sometimes makes bodies as class projects. Lazzie has a lot of videos on Youtube. Collect videos from Ron Covel, Fay Butler, Kent White and there are several guys on Hamb that share their talents. Check out A&M in Cornelius and Steve's in Portland, they have the ability to scratch build bodies. There is a guy that builds Willys that is usually at the swap meet this weekend, sorry I don't remember his name. Metalshaping is an interesting art and everybody has a slightly different philosophy on attacking a project. With ingenuity and patience you can form panels with simple hand tools. Lazzie is interesting because he uses mostly an English wheel, bead roller & a shrinker stretcher. If your beating on stuff in his shop, your making too much noise. Guys with Yoder & air hammers make lots of noise.
just read DavidG response, great info

[Charlie Stephens]

You are about to embark on an extremely challenging task. When you finish if you do a good job it will look just like any other '32 coupe (which you could probably buy for a fraction of what you spend on yours). How about something more out of the box that Ford didn't produce like a 2 door phaeton, a dual cowl phaeton or a deluxe roadster pickup? Maybe even a deluxe closed cab pickup, they didn't make too many of those and I have never seen one that survived.

Charlie Stephens

[Charlie Stephens]

Post number 9 was made with the assumption that your friend couldn't be talked out of building one from the ground up. I would like to make another suggestion. I may miss the mark since I don't know him. Suggest that he buy a restoration out of the seventies (or a barn find) that can be driven and have him update it to current judging standards. Being able to drive a car will keep his interest high. There is usually plenty to do on a seventies era restoration since there wasn't much restoration information before David Rehor's current book. Very little attention was paid to when a car was built in the production sequence, if it was a '32 part it got installed. A barn find will probably have a lot of parts missing or replaced with the wrong part. This should keep most people busy.

Charlie Stephens

[Andy]

I can not immagine a more difficult project. 32's have parts that almost can not be measured as they are ALL curved. You would need drawings with section cuts to show the contours. You really need the loft drawings. I am sure all the repo parts were developed from taking splash molds off original parts. I think doing it from drawings would be impossible.

[28ACoupe]

Again, the project isn't about building a '32. It is about learning how to create all the different panels involved. We had to choose a vehicle to emulate and since he already has 3-Model A's and a '33 five-window, the '32 was a natural choice.

Believe me, I am very well aware of exactly how much work is involved.

[Bassman/NZ]

Over on the Hamb there are several highly skilled gentlemen who have built bodies from flat sheets of panel steel. Two that spring immediately to mind are a Model A roadster and a 32 closed cab pickup. We have a guy here in NZ built a 29 closed cab pickup straight from scratch. Then there are the equally talented gentlemen who do seemingly impossible projects like creating a 36 3window from a 4 door sedan. I'm no help with regard to dimensions, merely offering encouragement for a brave project.

[redo32]

Isn't it interesting on the 'net that someone reads a post & comes to a different conclusion as to what you mean. When I went back & re read your post I realized you asked about a coupe & I had skipped over it.
What is your & your buddies experience with metalshaping and what tools & equipment do you have or are planning on getting.
I've had a couple of classes with Ron Covell and have visited other shops when I'm in the area. Everybody does things a little different, depending on their personal attitude & the tools they have available. On his TV shows Jessie James beats the crap out of metal until it submits to his shape. "Professor" Covell will gently persuade the metal into his shape. On his video Covell makes a race car nose out of 5 pieces of aluminum with nothing more than hand tools and a welder, by stretching with a hammer and a sandbag . Fay Butler builds one in two pieces with his Yoder by shrinking the shape into it. $200 in hand tools or a $35000 Yoder. Same finished product. Fay can do it by hand too,but the Yoder is way faster.

From an old guy who's played with cars for 50 years and has done lots of small projects,and like you would like to do a major scratch build........ keep it simple. You have a better chance of success. IMO.. do a roadster, no top,way easier. Do a highboy. Marcel says the fenders doubles the time for the build. Get a good frame and firewall. That will be your platform to build around. the firewall will set the height of the body. Some guys will use the rear fenders to set the height of the quarters.
If you both take a class with Lazzie I'll bet he will let you do the quarters for your class project. That,s the most complicated part of a roadster, if you can do that the rest of the body is easy.

[28ACoupe]

Again, I am very well aware of the difficulty of the task. Rather, not so much the difficulty, because no panel is inherently difficult, but, rather, time consuming.