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I bought the '49 in October of 2009. Back story in a condensed version is that my new wife (married Sept. '09) told me at one point that she wanted an old car. This is her wedding gift from me. It was supposed to be a surprise, and it was for a couple months until my sister had too much to drink one night and spilled the beans.

So here it was the day I went to look at it the first time. Of course it was raining...











It was rusted, glass was busted, it smelled like ass and there was dirt and grime everywhere. Basically love at first sight, right?

The car ran when I bought it, which was a huge relief since I don't think I could have tackled a motor rebuild along with a complete car overhaul. Of course the brakes were shot. So, I replaced the steel lines, rebuilt the master cylinder, replaced the front brake cylinders, rebuilt the rear brake cylinders. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I did this all in one shot. No, I decided to do one piece at a time and every time I fixed one brake leak, another one would show up. I should have just done them all at once, but I was still being sneaky at this point and trying not to spend noticeable amounts of money on car parts. Seriously, I was scrapping stainless and brass and aluminum from work so I could afford a new battery and other things I needed to get it to start up! Eventually I got all new brakes and took it for it's first real drive in who knows how many years.

By now, the secret had been ruined by my sister, and I still give her a hard time about it. But, since my wife knew, she wanted to see some pics of this car that would eventually be hers to have and drive and keep. All this time I had been keeping it at a friends house, working on it in his driveway. I still intended to keep it there until it was really ready for some everyday driving. And now that my wife was on board, she was excited and giving me the go-ahead for bigger and better (and more expensive) parts!
So now that she knew, I was able to bring a few pieces home and work on them at my leisure. The first piece I stripped and re-primed was the hood. It's just such a big piece and something you can see through the windshield, so why not start there?

I also reworked the dented right rear fender. I don't think I did too bad as this had been my first bodywork attempt in over 10 years.

Enter suspension...

The leaf springs were actually broken on one side, and had some sort of junkyard weld and flat stock steel bolted around them keeping them together. Rather disgusting and unsafe, to say the least. I contacted St. Louis Spring and had them make me a set with a 2.5" drop. The blurred pic below shows the difference between the taller stock spring and the new lowered version.



I also was able to get a new set of shoes for the car at the same time. Below is a pic of stock ride height.




And here is after the new lower springs.

After I did the rear leafs, I decided to try my hand at cutting the coils up front. I cut one and one half coil out to get from this stock ride height...




To this new lower height...

I was pleased with the results, and liking the new stance of the car.

During the time that I was tackling some of the bigger things to get it really drivable, I was also doing some of the smaller things that needed to be tended to. I took the heater blower motor out and rewired it since the original wiring was brittle and cracked. I rewired the ignition, which ended up being a huge pain because of the awkward angles needed to get up under the dash. Replaced the headlights, taillights, turn signals...

The next big project was the exhaust. Here is the original leaky rusted system. That muffler had to be about 3' long!



I decided on 2" pipe with a FLowmaster Delta Series muffler, and had the tip tucked up inside the rear bumper and dumped down where it isn't visible from behind.





The sound of a Flathead 6 running though a good exhaust system is great!


You can see there is no gas tank in the car, the original one was rusted beyond fixing and I was trying to source a new one at this point. I had a 5 gallon gas can in the trunk and the black rubber fuel line zip tied to the frame. Wasn't a pretty solution, but it got the car down the road.

So now that I had a good running car (albeit a still ragged looking one), I needed to do something about those nasty ass seats!

3 blankets and 25 bucks later and I'm not afraid to sit in there anymore!

Fast forward through the rest of the winter... I brought the car home in the spring of 2010. Now I had it in my driveway with all of my tools and resources. Time to get serious. I started stripping the roof next, and making plans for a new windshield, rear glass gasket, floors, and seats.