Читать книгу Project Street Rod - Larry Lyles - Страница 8

Introduction

Had someone asked me as I began to put the finishing touches on the Project Mustang car if I planned to start another big project, I would have said “no way.” I desperately needed a couple of days off to take care of a few nagging issues that were weighing heavily upon me, the weather was exceedingly hot, and starting a new project just wasn’t what I had in mind.

My, how things can change so quickly. The rains came, the air cooled down, my battered body began to heal, and my apprentice, Bryan, found a 1946 Ford Business Coupe. But don’t start laughing just yet. As you already know, my forte is 1960s muscle cars. I restore them, revamp them, retro them, and revive them. I don’t do ’46 Fords.

But then Bryan convinced me to take a walk around the ’46 and give some thought to what could be done to the car. I liked the shape, if modified a little. I liked the interior room, if modified a little. I also liked the fact that someone else had already transplanted a Chevy 350 under the hood, although it, too, could stand to be modified a little. I was beginning to like what I saw.

I made a second trip around the car to kick the tires, then made up my mind that this 1946 Ford was going to get a new life, and I was going to eat my own words about not doing ’46 Fords.

The catch was I had no desire to take this car apart and rebuild it back to original, the way I did in Project Charger and Project Mustang. What I had in mind would require a completely different mind-set on my part.

My thought was to take this aging vintage ride, which even in its prime was not much more than a means for moving from point A to point B, and upscale it into something very nice. Don’t get the idea I’m about to hack apart a perfectly good original vintage ride and change it into something different. This car sat in the weeds far too many years to even consider that option. What the mice didn’t eat the sun baked into crumbs. All I have now is a bullet-riddled hull in need of a lot of TLC and a whole host of modifications designed to transform this car into one heck of a nice ride.

I’m not looking for maximum horsepower, radical looks, or big tires. My goal is to transform this ’46 Ford into something that looks nice, is very dependable, and is decked out with many of the modern-day trappings my wife would insist are necessities, not accessories.

What does that mean? In this case it means taking the car down to the bare frame and starting over using the latest in automotive ride, handling, and performance technology to rebuild it. In the end, what you will see from the outside is a somewhat modified ’46 Ford; but on the inside, it will have all the modern accoutrements necessary to bring this car up to today’s driving and handling standards.

In some parts of the country, this type of work, in which a car that in many cases is unsafe to drive at 50 mph is taken and modified to be safe to drive at any speed desired, is referred to as “resto-mod.” In the sticks where I come from, we simply call it making the car “wife approved.”