My 1939 Ford Standard Coupe - The Tear Down

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The radiator looks to be in decent shape. No signs of leakage or corrosion, and no significant damage to the cooling fins either. I'm not sure if the side panels that attach to the radiator are unique to the 60hp V8 cars or not. I plan to strip and paint them regardless.

The outer grill is made up of two halves. There are two stainless steel trim strips mounted horizontally on each half. You can just make them out at the 1/3 way up and 2/3 way up from the bottom. They attach with little slide-on spring clips (like the side trim on the body of the car).

Here's another view of the grill. There were various sheet metal screws and nuts/bolts holding these together to the various other body and fender panels. Many of those were difficult to reach and, of course, many resisted my efforts to remove them. I had to grind off a couple.

My once pristine concrete floor is looking like an old auto shop floor.... grease stained and worse. Does that bother me? Hell no!

You can see the tank vacuum I use......besides cleaning out dirt and debris from the car as I go, it's helpful in keeping the garage floor clean enough that I don't track it all into the house. It's amazing how many times I dash back into the house for things..... paper towels, a cold drink, wash something off my hands so I don't dirty up the next thing I need to hold, answer a phone call, etc. I keep the cordless phone in the garage, but certain teenage daughters keep retrieving it from me.


I turned the grill assembly upside down for this picture. It shows the lower splash pan that Ford attached to the grill. Those two sheet metal screws were not easy to remove, but, like all the others......they had to leave!

The grill also had two layers of black paint on them. I had a go at one of the two halve with paint stripper, but it was too difficult to get into the various openings and around all the curves.

So, I took the grill to the shop I've used for some powder coat work. They cleaned them up with their cabinet blaster for me.
And here they are.......totally cleaned up and primed for me. They were very careful with the blaster, since I didn't want the parts to warp. They turned out quite nice!

Page 11 of the Tear Down

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