Chip's Page
1939 Ford
39 Coupe
This car has been in the family for 14 years. The car became mine when in ‘84’ my father bought a 39 sedan so that the whole family could enjoy street rodding.. I was 14 in1984 when we began to turn the car into a street rod.
The car was a complete ‘basket case’ when we got it. The firewall, floors, dash, and chassis had been ‘hot wrenched’ out to make room for some earlier engine swap. This work and years of neglect left the car barely restorable, but all of the important pieces were there so the deal was made.
My father and I started to turn the car into a street rod with the help of some of the club members. My goal was to have a driver by my senior year in high school. I eventually reached the goal and occassionally drove the car to school.
I painted the car in our garage and it was originally done in red lacquer. The end results were OK for a first paint job at age 16. The car remained red for a couple of years until I became dissatisfied with it and decided to redo some of the body work and paint the car properly.
I repainted the car the the current color, again in lacquer because it was easy to work with and by buffing the finish I could make-up for my painting technique.
After another couple of years I decided to go racing. I spent approximately $6000 building a full boogie small block and the car ran in the 12’s (about 5/10’s faster than my old $500 small block. I kept working and eventually the car ran back to back 11’s (11.32 and 11.40) at Atco. To go any faster would have required further chassis modifications and more trans work and I felt that getting into the 10’s was not going to be worth the additional cost considering we only raced about 3 or 4 times per year.
I decided to put the car back on the road with a mild small block and go street rodding again. The car has been back on the road for 2 seasons and I enjoy the car more now than I ever had before
To contact Chip drop e-mail here
Last Update 6/2/09