This gorgeous 1929 Ford was built in the early 1990’s for the owner of The Hour Glass Restaurant which was on Fraser Highway in Aldergrove at the time.
In our opinion, it was one of the finest local Fords of its era back then. The body was 100% perfect and so was the paint, it was absolutely stunning, so when it pulled up at our shop back in October 2006, we knew it would be a great day.
The current owner wanted to chop the top by 3 1/2 inches, but didn’t want to damage the existing paint, with the exception of the areas we’d need to work on of coarse.
It was beautiful show quality paint, so that was not an easy task. I don’t think the owner realized the magnitude of his request but Kurt & I (Ewald) were up the task, so we took the job on. We love doing the “impossible” so we were excited to get going on it. We came up with a good project plan and moved forward with it.
In order to protect the show quality paint from all the sparks that the major amount of cutting, grinding and especially welding (no Tig welder at the time) would produce, we needed to protect the paint as if it was a rare jewel.
We lined the car with new cloth sheets, then added a few layers of welding blankets, then we added a layer of thin sheet metal in the extremely precarious areas, then more welding blankets.
Once we felt it was good and protected very well, we braved a first few cuts, checking for any sign of damage on the protective layers. The tension and stress was high because there was a lot at steak but none was found throughout the modification process.
We always reinforce the pillars when we perform a chop top, so you can see that on the pictures. We insert the strengthening pieces into the pillars, then weld them in place. This makes them stronger than the original, so we need not worry about any failures over the coarse of time.
Matching the paint was another challenge because it needed to be a perfect match. There are hundreds of variations of black, so those who say “black is black” don’t understand how many variations there actually are. It’s a never ending thing, just like any other colour.
We got the mix just right so the paint match is perfect and you can’t tell that it was chopped after the initial build.
We see the owner and the car at car shows at times. The last time being at the Stay Gold car show 2 weeks ago and it still looked as good as it did 17 years ago when we performed the work.
This car is proof of the quality of our work and the longevity that goes along with it that we perform, so if you’re looking for quality work, contact us to bring your vehicle into the shop.